HarkMahlberg

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I'm part of a few Telegram channels full of highly progressive IRL friends and colleagues. I also know Telegram is full of channels dedicated to crypto shilling, liveleak-esque video and imagery, piracy chats, privacy chats, QAnon forums, etc etc. I used it to communicate with family when I was out of the country and didn't want to pay for roaming charges.

Telegram itself is just a piece of software. Telegram's community is wide and varied. Does it need moderation? Yeah probably. Who should be doing the moderating, not just of individual channels but of all the channels? Eh, I don't have a good answer to that.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah as others have stated, Google could deduce your usage of an adblock through any myriad ways. But you've got a point - it's one to thing to throw a popup saying "Our ads couldn't play for some reason, we won't show you videos until they do," and another to say "We know you are using an adblocker, we won't show you videos until you disable it."

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

I'd still rather give directly to the creators than indirectly through Youtube. Youtube can change how much money those creators get, and I can... as well, I guess, but at least that's an individual choice, rather than a choice made for me.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

two sides where consumers are on one and content creators and youtube are on the other.

Youtube and content creators are not on the same side. This woefully reduces a complex problem with many different actors down to a Right Side and a Wrong Side, and anyone whose not on My Side, must be on the Wrong Side.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

“If SpaceX is ~~correct~~ honest in reporting zero surviving debris, as SpaceX reports in FCC filings, and Starlink is a fully-demisable spacecraft, the rise in reentry risk is minimal over the current risk.”

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I think that's exaggerating. The instructions are actually fairly neutral and extremely informative, minus the obvious upsells on Microsoft software and services. It's clear that they ordered the list of install methods by lowest complexity and highest user-friendliness, specifically for people who have only ever known Windows. It's a good thing for Linux to give this audience a fallback option if something goes wrong with their install and they are unable to use it or fix it. If they get frustrated or brick their PC the first time they use Linux, they'll likely go back to Windows and never return.

They explain virtual machines, dual booting, the various pros and cons to different install methods, which methods are suitable for which purposes... I wish I had such a helpful article the first time I used Linux.

Now, my cynical read on this article is that it's a way for Microsoft to avoid the appearance of monopolizing the desktop market: "see regulators? we show people how they can leave our closed garden ecosystem!" But the text of the article is hardly one massive scare tactic.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Democrats literately have been dying at a higher rate than the WASPs, and loosing this demographic warfare.

You are absolutely going to need to provide a source for this claim. I can already imagine some nutjob twisting this statement from "people who live longer tend to be conservative," into "people who are conservative tend to live longer!"

I could just as easily take this hypothetical class reunion and say "well one conservative died at 30 from accidentally shooting himself, one conservative died at 40 from being antivax and getting COVID, and one conservative died at 50 from lack of health insurance (everyone needs health insurance)."

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

As an added bonus, it runs all the way down the hall and into the bathroom.

https://redf.in/j7OUKy

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

There was a way to exploit the flaws in generative AI without actually contributing to propaganda and disinformation machines. Believe it or not, the "Mickey Mouse holding a Garand" in Facebook's AI stickers would be preferable to show corporations how AI can harm their business interests in the hopes they drop it or reform it.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Oh look it's exactly what I predicted with generative AI. We've wound the clocks back to 2014, when Russia used 4chan and reddit to fuel organized campaigns of hatred that paved the way for the alt right, Trump, and his ilk.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I've come to the conclusion that I have to put my money where my mouth is and pay for the websites I use. After all, running a website is not free, and it never was. Self-hosting, service-hosting, doesn't matter. Computer hardware costs money, internet service costs money, a good web developer costs money.

For decades we fooled ourselves into thinking that the internet is "free and open," and we still ardently defend it on that ground. And yet, that illusion was built off the back of the advertisement industry. We let them pay those costs for us, and now they want a return on their investment.

And don't get me wrong, ads were always poisoning the internet, for as long as I can remember. I saw "You're the one millionth visitor!" ads on computers in school. I've gotten viruses from insecure ad networks. I saw perfectly usable websites turn into an infinite billboard fighting to the death, with itself, for my attention.

Now I contribute to the Patreon my fediverse instance runs, the Patreons of creators whose content I like, and I plan to start up active donations to Wikipedia. I think it may not be possible to make the internet really free and open, maybe ever. But I think we could contribute to a healthier ecosystem if we - the users - took ads out of the equation of running a (non-profit-motivated) website.

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