[News] The Internet Was a Mistake

A thread for updates on the various ways the internet is destroying everything and the undying hellsites of social media. Let's all laugh at the abyss.

Prederick wrote:

LOL, he's reinstating trump based on a Twitter poll

EDIT:

Trump was asked about the poll and him potentially returning to twitter in an interview with right-wing gossip site The Post Millennial and he said he “doesn’t see a need to” because Truth Social is “doing better numbers and has higher engagement” than twitter.

ruhk wrote:

Trump was asked about the poll and him potentially returning to twitter in an interview with right-wing gossip site The Post Millennial and he said he “doesn’t see a need to” because Truth Social is “doing better numbers and has higher engagement” than twitter.

His contract with Trump Media & Technology Group states that he's "generally obligated to make any social media post on TruthSocial and may not make the same post on another social media site for 6 hours." He can, however, make "political messaging, political fundraising or get-out-the-vote efforts" posts on other social media platforms anytime he wants.

Considering that TMTG is actively being investigated by the SEC for securities fraud and Trump removed himself from the board of directors right before that investigation was launched there's a danged decent chance that Trump will come to the conclusion that he milked the rubes for all he can get with the Truth Social grift and it's just time to go back to Twitter. Trump's ego will probably also push him back to Twitter because deep down he knows Truth is a puddle compared to the ocean of Twitter and he just craves that level of attention.

ruhk wrote:

Trump was asked about the poll and him potentially returning to twitter in an interview with right-wing gossip site The Post Millennial and he said he “doesn’t see a need to” because Truth Social is “doing better numbers and has higher engagement” than twitter.

Oh, I don't think he necessarily planned it with Trump, but I think it's fair to assume this is broadly a larger "trigger the libs" agenda.

Prederick wrote:
ruhk wrote:

Trump was asked about the poll and him potentially returning to twitter in an interview with right-wing gossip site The Post Millennial and he said he “doesn’t see a need to” because Truth Social is “doing better numbers and has higher engagement” than twitter.

Oh, I don't think he necessarily planned it with Trump, but I think it's fair to assume this is broadly a larger "trigger the libs" agenda.

I just told a friend “some things you don’t put to a vote. More to the point, you can usually shape the results by how you form the question. I bet if you told Americans they could end veteran homelessness forever by taking all of Elon's money, the motion would pass by a 50 point margin”

Eh…not so sure..lots of folks in this country sure do love themselves some billionaire types… what have the homeless ever done for them?

Also Trump will be back by mid week.

OG_slinger wrote:

His contract

Like swearing contracts before financial authorities, government authorities, or religious authorities has ever stopped him.

Not to mention, Truth may be a puddle, but it's his puddle, and it reflects only him back at himself, enamored as Narcissus ever was.

Probably worth a re read, since it's a pretty clear harbinger for Twitter: The Curse of Monster Island: a four year experiment in unmoderated free speech

The result was several years of the purest banality of evil. We ended up needing to add rules against doxxing, blocking admins, explicit threats of physical violence, and taking photos from people’s personal profiles and photoshopping them into sex acts with military dictators. Meanwhile, the quality of discourse deteriorated from semi-functional, where some folks could have actual arguments or at least do a dance that looked vaguely like presenting evidence, to endless spam of the most disturbing memes you’ve thankfully never seen.

Spoiler alert, the memes in question are nowhere near the most disturbing memes you've ever seen, they're just the most disturbing memes on facebook circa 2020. Also, a member of the experiment was terrorist Ryan Balch, known for being one of Kyle Rittenhouse's friends and advisors.

Seth wrote:

The Curse of Monster Island: a four year experiment in unmoderated free speech

The result was several years of the purest banality of evil. We ended up needing to add rules against doxxing, blocking admins, explicit threats of physical violence, and taking photos from people’s personal profiles and photoshopping them into sex acts with military dictators. Meanwhile, the quality of discourse deteriorated from semi-functional, where some folks could have actual arguments or at least do a dance that looked vaguely like presenting evidence, to endless spam of the most disturbing memes you’ve thankfully never seen.

We want "unmoderated free speech" but then we need to add all these rules because, surprise, it turns out people can't be trusted with completely unmoderated free speech.

It's like nobody ever heard of 8chan.

Whatever.

Elon's a selfish, "self-made" rich dude. He knows tons about all kinds of things. This means he's highly informed and quite knowledgeable about humans and understands the nuances of human interactions. He can be trusted to navigate the world of interpersonal dynamics in a worldwide platform with many intersecting spheres, including politics/religion/sex/gender/economics/education/philosophy/life/death with tact and aplomb. Evidence: the whole history of his public career, where he has interacted with other humans and these fraught topics in a mature, sophisticated, considerate, even kind, way.

As our god-emperor sitting upon the golden throne, may his will be done. PRAISE THE EMPEROR!

“Unmoderated speech” favors the asshole with the biggest troll farms.

Meh. I think Trump’s return to Twitter was inevitable. Probably would have happened even if Musk wasn’t busy burning it to the ground. “He’s running for political office” or some sort of hand waving of that nature.

My hope is that this only speeds up the implosion of Twitter and possibly of trump himself.

@elonmusk’s revolution at Twitter is one of the biggest stories in the country right now.

And here are our nation’s magazines…Trying their best to ignore it.

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The most amazing brains.

This was posted by a "Journalist," mind you.

I, for one, am disgusted by the editorial cowardice of Easy & Healthy Air Fryer magazine.

(I just scrolled down to the "More Tweets" section. My god, that site is a cesspit. Beats me how anyone can use it without their faith in humanity being destroyed in days.)

Tasty Pudding wrote:

I, for one, am disgusted by the editorial cowardice of Easy & Healthy Air Fryer magazine.

(I just scrolled down to the "More Tweets" section. My god, that site is a cesspit. Beats me how anyone can use it without their faith in humanity being destroyed in days.)

Having already lost your faith in humanity helps.

Tasty Pudding wrote:

I, for one, am disgusted by the editorial cowardice of Easy & Healthy Air Fryer magazine.

I know! When are they going to admit air fryers are just convection ovens?

Tasty Pudding wrote:

I, for one, am disgusted by the editorial cowardice of Easy & Healthy Air Fryer magazine.

I expected the Wanking Material section to be more hard-hitting.

I mean, Maxim is a magazine about enormous boobs so they should definitely be covering Musk.

(Etymology follow-up, did you know the word "boob" as an insult predates the use of "boob" as a descriptor for breasts by over 300 years?" I was curious.)

Prederick wrote:

(Etymology follow-up, did you know the word "boob" as an insult predates the use of "boob" as a descriptor for breasts by over 300 years?" I was curious.)

Ugh. "I'm just asking questions." You're as bad as the rest of them! /s

Listen, I genuinely want to get an explanation as to how a several-century-old insult suddenly got turned into a term for breasts in the midst of the Great Depression.

"breasts," 1929, U.S. slang, probably from much older term boobies (late 17c.), related to 17c. bubby; all perhaps ultimately from Latin pupa, literally "little girl," hence, in child-talk, "breast." Or else it is a natural formation in English (compare French poupe "teat," German dialectal Bubbi, etc.).

This is.... helpful-ish?

Prederick wrote:

(Etymology follow-up, did you know the word "boob" as an insult predates the use of "boob" as a descriptor for breasts by over 300 years?" I was curious.)

Interesting! I'm going to go and Google boobs to learn more.

Be back in a few hours.

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My only disagreement at this point is that it's "the idea."

I think it's obviously clear.

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This is more accommodating than I thought Twitter would be for me.

Amazon's Alexa is a colossal failure.

The report says that while Alexa's Echo line is among the "best-selling items on Amazon, most of the devices sold at cost." One internal document described the business model by saying, "We want to make money when people use our devices, not when they buy our devices."

That plan never really materialized, though. It's not like Alexa plays ad breaks after you use it, so the hope was that people would buy things on Amazon via their voice. Not many people want to trust an AI with spending their money or buying an item without seeing a picture or reading reviews. The report says that by year four of the Alexa experiment, "Alexa was getting a billion interactions a week, but most of those conversations were trivial commands to play music or ask about the weather." Those questions aren't monetizable.

They made a fancy timer that tells you the weather and, with some serious investment and finagling, can automate some parts of your house. They wanted to make a voice activated "buy now" button and nobody wanted that.

"by the way, I can drone on and on about all the features that you don't want to use after you asked me for the weather, and you can't disable this for more than a week. Should I turn those features on for you?"

Seth wrote:

Amazon's Alexa is a colossal failure.

The report says that while Alexa's Echo line is among the "best-selling items on Amazon, most of the devices sold at cost." One internal document described the business model by saying, "We want to make money when people use our devices, not when they buy our devices."

That plan never really materialized, though. It's not like Alexa plays ad breaks after you use it, so the hope was that people would buy things on Amazon via their voice. Not many people want to trust an AI with spending their money or buying an item without seeing a picture or reading reviews. The report says that by year four of the Alexa experiment, "Alexa was getting a billion interactions a week, but most of those conversations were trivial commands to play music or ask about the weather." Those questions aren't monetizable.

They made a fancy timer that tells you the weather and, with some serious investment and finagling, can automate some parts of your house. They wanted to make a voice activated "buy now" button and nobody wanted that.

"by the way, I can drone on and on about all the features that you don't want to use after you asked me for the weather, and you can't disable this for more than a week. Should I turn those features on for you?"

I am surprised they haven't found a way to monetize an embedded listening device in your home.

Alexa, play world's tiniest violin.

Yeah it harasses us about upgrading to music unlimited every time we play regular Prime music. But we're never going to say yes.

It's nice for notifications that things have shipped or been delivered. But so is the Amazon app on my phone. Thanks for the free speaker

Alexa is all about setting fart timers. Well that’s what my daughter and I like to do…

farley3k wrote:

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Meta and Twitter are facing fines for breaching the new Digital Services Act.

For what it's worth I walked out of one of these companies after they tried to switch me from permenant to contracting. Highly illegal of course but basically told me I was out of a job about 2 weeks before Christmas unless I accepted. Thankfully I knew my rights and made sure I remained whole until the new year but got out as soon as I could and gave them zero notice. I was advised that while they did act illegally, given that I did land on my feet I would probably not do all that well at the WRC so it was probably best to drop it to protect my career going forward.

I'm quite sure they've done similar to others in the past even though the law says they can't. I suspect there was some thinking that regardless of the regulations, which they are aware of, they were above them to some degree or face little to no fallout either way.