Behold the tale of a Facebook data scientist fired because he refused to run a little test that his bosses demanded ...

... in which he'd update Messenger so that it drained some users' batteries faster

The data scientist accurately noted that this was unethical as hell -- it could literally endanger people who rely on their phone as a lifeline

As @pluralistic notes, it's part of why "feudal security" -- trusting a big tech firm to keep you safe -- never really works: medium.com/@doctorow/when-face

short low effort posts + rapid feedback = twitter

longer more effortful posts + slow feedback = blog

mastodon does not fit in this, despite me being fully on board with the concept :/

so far the only people who do seem to post around here are programmer type people. like hacker-news, but twitter like

Show thread

so i think the main aspect of social media in general, and twitter in particular is the whole i'm already here for a short quick dopamine hit, but i can also post stuff and get feedback and dopamine

for me i still haven't found on mastodon the same level of engagement that would make me open it, nor do i find the same level of rapid feedback

this makes me want to write longer form and post it on my blog instead

good news is that i'm using the time to focus on longform writing (was going to do so anyways, but now i have a twitter corporation made distraction blocker)

i keep forgetting that toots are longer than tweets. my writing has definitely gotten more short and snappy and this is a good thing.

but i don't need to make each point into a tweet/toot

Show thread

(i mean like, i myself am not exempt from this shit lol)

maybe we should make meme bots to get people to come and stay?

Show thread

it doesn't look like my account has been banned nor shadow banned. but it deeply bothers me

makes me regret not posting as much on mastodon

the main problem rn is that most of the people i'm interested in are on twitter and i have no clue how to encourage them to migrate

Show thread

TIL that there is a "daily limit" for tweets. i can't tweet nor retweet.

even worse, for some reason my DMs stopped working.

lowkey suspect that its because i added a link to my blog. but the again i actually have been tweeting a lot this week

A lot of people in 1995 thought the web should remain non-commercial

Now we know that they were right

5. i feel like this stuff should be in a political science 101 book. but at the same time what little political books ive found seem to want to push a square peg through a round hole. forcing a theory instead of looking at the data

my impression of history books is that they try to tell a story. they dont compare between different events

True Believer by Eric Hoffer is a good example of the type of book i want to read. talks about social movements and brings several historical case studies

Show thread

3. if voting is a tool for gaining legitimacy, then what other ways could we build that legitimacy. e.g. building it based on religion or monarchy or whatever

4. what counts as legitimacy anyways? lack of opposition? willingness to obey and coordinate? faith in leadership?

Show thread

(the following is my own. not pwang's)

1. i had never considered that voting was a tool for legitimacy, instead of how its usually presented as a tool for discovering and implementing the will of the people

2. this kinda makes sense though. we've had plenty of corrupt votes here and no one could dare challenge the government for it. absurdity is a feature of authoritarian regimes, not a bug. 2 + 2 = 5 and no one dares challenge it, dont stick your neck out

Show thread

RT @pwang

Voting is not a great way to surface the “best ideas” from a group.

The primary purpose of voting is to maintain legitimacy of the regime in the minds of the losing cadre; you get their “buy in” bc they were part of the “process”

It’s not a tool for collective sense-making; it’s a tool for popular control.
Always has been, always will.

If, somehow, some general sense of “the collective will of the people” can emerge from a voting process, it’s a nice side benefit.

*makes an alt to post things that can get me in trouble*

*stops posting spicy takes once i got mildly popular* 🤦‍♂️

but this place is cozier and nerdier. so lets have fun

Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity 

Interesting comment on Hackernews regarding a possible scenario/long term risk should Mastodon threaten the corporate sphere of social media.

news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3

I received an email pitching "managed Mastodon hosting." So, apparently someone's realizing there's a market there...

eyes (pupil dilation) are incredibly expressive, but i don't get to see that because most people here have very dark irises

If I had a lot of money and I cared about the future of knowledge, I'd take a snapshot of archive .org, libgen, scihub, etc. and then make a big torrent (i.e. hash it in chunks), and then publish the infohash as widely as possible. (and maybe also embed the infohash in the bitcoin blockchain 🤮)

The reason being, LLMs are very good at making shit up. There are indirect economic incentives to do so (SEO), and more direct ones (disinfo campaigns, propaganda, etc.)

I predict that *provably* pre-2022 information will be increasingly valuable in the future. We don't just need archival, but "proof of existence before [timestamp]".

To be clear, machine-generated content and disinformation are nothing new, but I think we're at an inflection point where it's going to get a whole lot worse - both in terms of volume, and how convincing it is.

Footnote: torrent+infohash is just an example, there's probably much more intelligent ways of doing it.

people will never explicitly say "i envy you." however they will say that this is "unfair" or "immoral" and that you "*should be punished*" for it and have it taken away

i wonder how many political movements started with envy

(this toot is a minefield of hazards. but its quiet here so should be ok. nice to experiment)

Show thread
Show older
Mastodon

a Schelling point for those who seek one