deweydecibel

@[email protected]

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deweydecibel, (edited )

There’s a podcast I listen to where the LA comedians routinely use Android as a punchline, while clearly having very little understanding of it. They talk about android users as if they’re this bizarre group of social outcasts and libertarians. Tech isn’t the topic of the podcast, it’s just something I notice any time Android comes up during improv or something. Like this is a well they routinely fall back on. And a lot of guests seem to think something similar.

So I believe there is a weird stigma, but it exists in certain areas more than others. LA is iPhone country, lot of people there see Android as some subpar aberration.

deweydecibel, (edited )

With some exceptions, it is at most a minor annoyance, the vast majority of poeple are not so hung up on it that they’re going to bother raising a complaint.

Besides, there is an argument to be made that the easier it is to remove an external label without leaving residue, the more likely it will fall off during shipping or stocking, or removed outright by someone before the customer gets it. These kinds of labels stay put and that’s what the company wants until it’s paid for.

Hell, the label OP posted has “Important” right there. The manufacter wants to ensure that label stays right where it is until its in the customers hands so they can convey whatever they need to convey. These types of labels absolutely accomplish that.

deweydecibel,

It’s still a thing because why wouldn’t it be? It’s, after all, mildly infuriating. Not enough of an annoyance or issue to push anyone to change.

Also, “Importado”. The label has some sort of message they need to make sure the customer reads, so they make it very difficult to remove in transit.

deweydecibel, (edited )

Some of these are good, some are just needlessly assertive nonsense. Especially the two where it’s actively refusing to acknowledge fault or apologize for it, which is standard PR crap. Refusing to apologize and instead saying “thanks for your patience” is what I expect to hear from my ISP when they miss their scheduled install, not from a coworker.

There’s nothing wrong with being a normal human being that is capable of admitting their own shortcomings. If never saying sorry means “being a boss” then that explains why there’s so many sociopaths as CEOs.

“Hope that make sense?” Vs “Let me know if you have any questions.”

The latter is saying “here’s the explanation, figure it out, bother me again if you can’t”. The fromer, while poorly worded, is being helpful, actively attempting to make sure the person understands before leaving them to it. It’s both a kindness and doing your due diligence.

deweydecibel, (edited )

It’s a gated community, basically, not a social network. And a very snobbish one at that.

deweydecibel, (edited )

To answer the question about Tildes specifically, Tildes has been around for years and remained effectively dead. Its moderation is extremely controlling and screen all people before letting them in. It’s a club of people the owner approves of that only post “quality” content (I.e. the in-group’s definition of quality). This results in an extremely inorganic experience where content is removed for little reason beyond mods thinking it’s too “low quality” (the definition of which is very flexible). Your presence on Tildes is considered a privilege that can be taken away at any time for any reason (no alts, no second chances), so there is a perpetual sense that you’re under the lense, and can’t disagree with the rest of club. It’s a custom built wind tunnel, ostensibly to screen out hate, but in effect created a gated community of the same people celebrating their own exclusivity and very concerned with strangers walking down the sidewalk.

In essence, it doesn’t want to be reddit, because it views itself as “better” than the riffraff. It’s an elitist clubhouse, not a true social network.

deweydecibel,

Yes there was. It was called multi-reddit.

deweydecibel,

Every last single app I’ve tried has this. That can’t seriously be a selling point.

deweydecibel,

It also makes it easier to profile users and weed out anyone who disagrees about literally anything.

Like, you guys need to consider not every admin is a paragon of virtue.

deweydecibel, (edited )

Reading these comments, seeing so many excuses, sarcastic responses, and handwaving, makes me realize a great deal of users really need to develop some imagination.

This is not about privacy. It’s about data that can easily be used for targeting and profiling users, and how that creates countless avenues for targeted harassment and wide scale retaliation. It’s about all of the innumerable ways public vote information can and will be abused to manipulate scoring across the site with targeted/automated shadow banning and shared blocklists. Raise your hand if you trust every single admin to never abuse such a tool to curate the outward appearance of an instance to fit a narrative.

For a different example: I could say something about how great Nazis are right now, and have a bot programmed to read every single person that downvoted me, add those names to a shared blocklist, and viola, I’ve made myself and all my alts invisible to the people that would challenge me on a massive scale.

I promise you this is going to be a big issue as tools for this site get more sophisticated over time.

deweydecibel,

Also, it’s not just about privacy, it’s about retaliation. It will be the easiest thing in the world for people to put together bots that will track the downvotes on every post they make and automate adding those people to block lists. Suddenly a whole fleet of alts is invisible to the people that would disagree with them.

deweydecibel,

Yeah, and guess what? They can do that to you.

Effectively, every single person can use a bot that will automate the blocking of any user that ever downvotes them ever.

Like if I made a post that says I like Nazis, and then waited for the downvotes to pour in. Add every single one of those names to a block list, share that block list with all of my alts and all of my friends, and suddenly you have a whole army of Nazi sympathizers that are invisible to the users that would downvote them.

These hand waving excuses about votes being public are really lacking imagination. This is extremely abusable information, and cursory tools can will be put together to make abusing them simple.

deweydecibel,

The problem that Reddit realized early on is that user voting is the engine behind the content aggregation. That aggregation is one of the main selling points of Reddit. The more users vote on what they see, the more information Reddit has for how to aggregate that content. That’s what keeps the front page fresh, that’s what keeps content moving up and down on the site. In a very real sense, the voting is the heart pumping blood through the site.

So it behooves the site to not give any reason for users not to vote how they feel. Keeping votes private was part of that. It is one of the most basic tenets of democracy: the only way to give people the freedom to vote honestly and frequently is to give them the privacy to do it.

The potential for retaliation against users, in any number of conceivable ways, far outweighs any benefits that come from making votes public.

The voting information also makes it insanely easy to automate mass blocking of any opinion under the sun. Nobody in this thread seems to grasp all the things you can do with that data to manipulate user interactions on this site. If you think troll armies are bad, wait till those troll armies have a shared automated block list of every single person that has ever downvoted them.

deweydecibel, (edited )

And just think how much data you can gather by sending out puppet accounts on various instances, accounts that will serve only to publicly state an opinion, such as “I support this candidate”, so the data on the people who upvote it can be harvested and categorized more easily. There is so much data harvesting potential here with a little imagination, and with a little more, a lot of ways to use that data to influence the way average users engage with the fediverse.

That site would also be a great advertisement for Lemmy. Come here to our decentralized platform, where you can vote…but you better not, lest you end up on the site. What social network wouldn’t grow when users are peer pressured into not using one of it’s basic underlying mechanics that makes the whole thing work?

deweydecibel,

It’s literally the only non-chromium browser left other than Safari. That’s why it is critically important that Firefox maintain a presence

deweydecibel,

I’m happy to see .world growing for this reason. There has to be a neutral ground for everyone. The gatekeeping of communities like Beehaw are fine for them, but in order for the lemmy to grow, it has to be shapeable by the community. Moderation screening, content rigidity, and walled gardens are antithetical to the type of social network that people are looking for as a replacement to Reddit. The community has to be allowed to make the place its own.

Edit: For the record, I’m perfectly aware they plan to refederate once they get their “moderation” tools. I just question what tools they deem sufficient to permit refederation. Moderation tools on Lemmy will be extremely powerful thanks to votes being public, and I don’t trust admins of some of these instances to be responsible or fair with them, or to only use them on the most toxic elements. Petty, groundless shadowbanning and admin “curation” is going to plague Lemmy going forward, mark my words. That’s why we need some neutral ground.

deweydecibel,

Much more importantly, advertisers and marketers have less incentive to invest time and money in the platform if people are being rate limited and forced to make accounts just to see the ads.

deweydecibel,

You can definitely feel it.

Scotty, divert power to stabilizers.

deweydecibel,

Honestly, just wait and try again in a few minutes.

Bugs and weird sporadic downtime are to be expected at the moment.

deweydecibel,

0.18.1, guy

deweydecibel,

Ahh, look at that reply string we started. It’s feeling like home around here already.

deweydecibel,

Lower Decks and Prodigy aren’t standard Trek but they’re both fantastic, too.

deweydecibel,

Except you’re not making a case for why they should rather than go to some other alternative once it pops up soon.

deweydecibel, (edited )

I foresee a lot of issues with defederation and the proposed mod tools in the future, as well. They can refederate but it’s not a good look for the platform when the federation can be fractured so easily. We have not seen the last of this issue.

I also question what it’s going to look like when these moderation tools are implemented. Lemmy has more avenues for moderation/admin abuse than Reddit, and less recourse for users. There are a lot of concerns here that just seem to be swept under the rug under the pretence that “you can always go to another instance”.

Ultimately it’s not an issue with the function of the fediverse, but with the moderation philosophy of the people running these instances. Particularly when it comes to the viability of voting. That’s a huge opportunity for suppression that I don’t trust certain admins not to abuse.

deweydecibel,

They still are. I have no idea what this price is from, tickets where I live at normal theaters are still under $10 at most

deweydecibel,

So you haven't been to a movie theater in, like, 20 years? Because none of that is new.

deweydecibel,

Fine. I'll bite.

Why are you against student loan forgiveness?

deweydecibel,

Centralization is a result of social behavior. People naturally gravitate towards the place where others are.

Like, the internet wasn't centralized by corporations. It was centralized by the users. And it will always happen. It's a very predictable pattern of human behavior.

Shouldn't all the instances show the same community content?

I'm learning about the Fediverse and am confused about how federation is supposed to work. I understand that there can be communities with the same name in different instances, with different content. But I also understand you can subscribe to another instance's community. For example, there are sysadmin commnunities at...

deweydecibel,

That's the idea, but the reality is turning out to be very different with defederation. The result is two users looking at the same post see different content, which is not a great look for an aspiring reddit replacement, frankly.

deweydecibel,

The issue is, because it's "understandable", it's also what gives spez the power here. If they weren't willing to go all the way, they needn't have bothered with the blackout at all. There was never any actual hope spez would change his mind from a 2 day blackout, anyone that knows anything about how he's handled things in the past should have known this. This was always going to be a standoff.

Besides, after everything spez has done, these mods shouldn't want to be modding for the site anymore. Spez has displayed a level of malice and disrespect for everyone, especially them. Why give him free labor?

That's all it is. Every minute you spend moding reddit is polishing the investment you will never see a single dime of. Spez is going to get a good deal of money off you while spitting on you, and you will get nothing but saliva. Continuing to mod there is an acceptance of that.

Also, let's be real, this isn't the end of it. Reddit will continue to get worse as Spez continues down the Musk-path. Users already can't block certain advertising accounts; I promise you a day is coming when mods won't be able to stop them in their own communities if they decide to post there. Mods will be forced to make their communities adhere to even stricter "ad friendly" content guidelines, just like YouTube. Etc etc, on and on, ad infinitum. Why stay there for all that?

This is the time to leave, to find a new place to start your communities again, get in early and find places as mods around here.

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