lvxferre

I typically interpret it two ways:

• egregiously poor quality content, that does not contribute with a topic
• unpretentious content posted for the sake of fun and entertainment

Which is which depends on context.

My prediction is different: I think that, in the long term, banning targetted ads will have almost no impact on the viability of ad-supported services, or the amount of ads per page.

Advertisement is an arms race; everyone needs to use the most efficient technique available, not just to increase their sales but to prevent them from decreasing - as your competitor using that technique will get the sales instead.

But once a certain technique is banned, you aren't the only one who can't use it; your competitors can't either.

And the price of the ad slot is intrinsically tied to that. When targetted ads were introduced, advertisers became less willing to pay for non-targetted ads; decreased demand led to lower prices, and thus lower revenue to people offering those ad slots on their pages, forcing those people to offer ad slots with targetted advertisement instead. Banning targetted ads will simply revert this process, placing the market value of non-targetted ad slots back where it used to be.

No one is forced to use our advertising technologies – they choose to use them because they’re effective.

Like an antlion saying "ants aren't forced to fall into my trap! They choose to!".

Google's advertisement monopoly is directly associated with its other monopolies: browser monopoly, search, mobile OS, video sharing. It can use each of those monopolies to change the rules of the game ever slightly, to prevent competitors from entering or remaining into the market.

The difference is sort of like the difference between a qualified ESL teacher and a native English speaker [...]

This example is perfect - native teachers (regardless of the language being taught) are often clueless on which parts of their languages are hard to master, because they simply take it for granted. Just like zoomers with tech - they take for granted that there's some "app", that you download it, without any further thought on where it's stored or how it's programmed or anything like that.

As others highlighted this is not surprising given that Gen Z uses phones a lot more than computers, and writing in one is completely different than in the other.

[Discussion from multiple comments ITT] It's also damn slower to write in a phone screen, simply because it's smaller - you need a bit more precision to hit the keys, and there's no room to use all the fingers (unlike in a physical keyboard).

Swiping helps, but it brings up its own problems - the keyboard application needs to "guess" what you're typing, and correcting mistakes consumes time; you need to look at the word being "guessed" instead of either the keyboard or the text being written, so your accuracy goes down (increasing the odds of wrong "guesses"); and eventually you need to tap write a few words anyway, so you're basically required to type well two ways instead of just one to get any semblance of speed.

Yup - Reddit is still mostly memes, questions, and links; this gets evident when you look at the top 5 subs: memes (r/funny), links (r/gaming, r/worldnews), questions (r/askreddit), "fluff" (r/aww). And yet Reddit is large enough that you can ignore those and find people sharing their minds in smaller comms.

That won't last long though. The place is collapsing, and the first ones to kick the bucket will be the smaller subs, that'll become ghost towns.

Forming their own thoughts [...]

I think that it's deeper: it's the impact of social media in our societies, plus phones (that you mentioned in the OP), plus the voting system (that you mentioned now). Together they shape a culture that encourages short, shallow, uncontested, polarised worldviews.

And when people are exposing their thoughts on a matter, there's a high chance that they actually thought about something that is longer, deeper, controversial, full of counterpoints. As they share it they get replies like:

• "WAAAAH TL;DR!!!"
• "U say dat 50 is not 100? than u think dat 50 is 0? dats dumb lol lmao"
• "If you're saying that you like apples then you hate bananas! Fuck off banana hater! Why so hateful?"
• "I dun unrurrstand, why you think that [distorts what the other person said]? I'm so confused..."

Eventually you get weathered by that. Too much attrition to bother; you stop exposing your thoughts.

Coordinating with other people, I’ve had zero success with and must just not have any clue how to go about it.

Frankly? Ditto. But this is the sort of issue that we can't solve individually, we need numbers for that.

Lemmy has both thoughts+observations, and links+questions+memes. It's just a lot more of the later than the former.

There are a thousand potential reasons for that. I believe that a few of the ones that you mentioned have some impact, but there are two that you didn't mention that might be extra relevant:

1. Lemmy starting out as a federated replica of a link aggregator, also mostly about links, questions, and memes; this is bound to replicate a certain culture.
2. The Zeitgeist of the internet of the 20s is considerably less kind to people who form their own thoughts.

On how to solve this: perhaps the first step could/should be to co-ordinate with other people who have the same desire, and nurture communities with that goal.

Fair - my conclusion in this regard was incorrect then.

They're still using children as guinea pigs though.

This is bad on three levels. Don't use AI:

1. to output info, decisions or advice where nobody will check its output. Will anyone actually check if the AI is accurate at identifying why the kids aren't learning? (No; it's a teacherless class.)
2. use AI where its outcome might have a strong impact on human lives. Dunno about you guys, but teens education looks kind like a big deal. /s
3. where nobody will take responsibility for it. "I did nothing, the AI did it, not my fault". School environment is all about that blaming someone else, now something else.

In addition to that I dug some info on the school. By comparing this map with this one, it seems to me that the target students of the school are people from one of the poorest areas of London, the Tower Hamlets borough. "Yay", using poor people as guinea pigs /s

My sides went into orbit. Specially because I'm aware that I'm often annoying, too. And... yeah, it's hard to control it, I know, fair point!

When it comes to instances there's no "right" answer for everyone. Pick one that you enjoy, that you identify yourself with, that you don't distrust the people in charge, and that is neither shitting its pants nor overly large. This site might help you with that.

I can't recommend an app.

Sometimes it's fine to be annoying. But only sometimes.