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“1 in 10 people believe they are not at risk when using illicit sources to watch TV, film or sports.”

ONE in ten? Man, they’re even bad at cherry picking statistics 😂

They even cite a study with only 1,000 participants for their statistic that “32% OF PEOPLE HAVE BEEN VICTIMS OF FRAUD”

In the title, at least. The body of that claim’s card says that it’s the people, or someone they know that have been victims of fraud.

Gosh, I hate dishonest scare marketing campaigns.

I’m not a big expert on database technology, but I am aware of there being at least a few database systems (“In-Memory”) that use the RAM of the computer for transient storage, and since RAM doesn’t use files as a concept in the same way, the data stored there isn’t exactly inside a “file,” so to speak.

That said, they are absolutely dwarfed by the majority of databases, which use some kind of file as a means to store the database, or the contents within it.

Obviously, that’s not to say using files is bad in any way, but the possibilities for how database software could have developed, had we not used files as a core computing concept during their inception, are now closed off. We simply don’t know what databases could have looked like, because of “lock-in.”

That’s what some databases are. Most databases you’ll see today still inevitably store the whole contents of the DB within a file with its own format, metadata, file extension, etc, or store the contents of the database within a file tree.

The notion of “lock in” being used here doesn’t necessarily mean that alternatives don’t or can’t exist, but that comparatively, investment into development, and usage, of those systems, is drastically lower.

Think of how many modern computing systems involve filesystems as a core component of their operation, from databases, to video games, to the structure of URLs, which are essentially usually just ways to access a file tree. Now think of how many systems are in use that don’t utilize files as a concept.

The very notion of files as an idea is so locked-in, that we can rarely fathom, let alone construct a system that doesn’t utilize them as a part of its function.

Regardless, the files example specifically wasn’t exactly meant to be a direct commentary on the state of microblogging platforms, or of all technology, but more an example for analogy purposes than anything else.

What social media platforms don’t have some kind of character limit?

What platforms don’t use a feed?

What platforms don’t use a like button?

What platforms don’t have some kind of hashtags?

All of these things are locked-in, not necessarily technologically, but socially.

Would more people from Reddit have switched to Lemmy if it didn’t have upvotes and downvotes? Are there any benefits or tradeoffs to including or not including the Save button on Lemmy, and other social media sites? We don’t really know, because it’s substantially less explored as a concept.

The very notion of federated communities on Lemmy being instance-specific, instead of, say, instances all collectively downloading and redistributing any posts to a specific keyword acting as a sort of global community not specific to any one instance, is another instance of lock-in, adapted from the fediverse’s general design around instance-specific hosting and connection.

In the world of social media, alternative platforms, such as Minus exist, that explore unique design decisions not available on other platforms, like limited total post counts, vague timestamps, and a lack of likes, but compared to all the other sites in the social media landscape, it’s a drop in the bucket.

The broader point I was trying to make was just that the very way microblogging developed as a core part of social media’s design means that any shift away from it likely won’t actually gain traction with a mainstream audience, because of the social side of the lock-in.

short form content with just a few sentences per post sucks.

I 100% agree with this sentiment.

Jaron Lanier has a great book called You Are Not A Gadget, where he talks about the way we design and interact with systems, and he has some thoughts I think reflect this sentiment very well:

“When [people] design an internet service that is edited by a vast anonymous crowd, they are suggesting that a random crowd of humans is an organism with a legitimate point of view.” (This is in reference to Wikis like Wikipedia)

“Different media designs stimulate different potentials in human nature.”

He talks about how when a system becomes popular enough, it can “lock in” a design, when others build upon it as standard. Such as how the very concept of a “file” is one we created, and nearly every system now uses it. Non-file based computing is a highly unexplored design space.

And the key part, which I think is relevant to Mastodon, the fediverse, and social media more broadly, is this quote:

“A design that share’s Twitter’s feature of providing ambient continuous contact between people could perhaps drop Twitter’s adoration of fragments.”

Fragments, of course, meaning the limited, microblogging style of communication the platform allows for. I’ve seen some Mastodon instances that help with this, by not imposing character limits anywhere near where most instances would, opting for tens of thousands of characters long. But of course, there is still a limit. Another design feature by Twitter that is now locked in.

But of course, people are used to that style of social media. It’s what feels normal, inevitable even. Changing it would mean having to reconceptualize social media as a concept, and might be something people aren’t interested in, since they’re too used to the original design. We can’t exactly tell.

As Lanier puts it,

“We don’t really know, because it is an unexplored design space.”

I don’t know of any super high-quality ones that run well, but the Open Assistant project, (now archived) collected responses from voluntary participants (myself included) to build what is now considered a very high-quality dataset of chat conversation pairs, truly open source, and all voluntarily submitted instead of scraped.

The models are reasonable for fine-tuning, but aren’t very good compared to newer models from large companies.

I find those kinds of chatbots useful, but those aren’t the ones I encounter 90% of the time. Most of the time, it’s a chatbot that summarizes the help articles I just read, giving faulty interpretations of the source material, that then goes on to never direct me to a real person unless I tell it multiple times that the articles it’s paraphrasing aren’t helping. (and sometimes, they have no live support at all, and only an LLM + support articles)

TLDR; “weak people have to conform to social consensus otherwise they get hurt I guess?”

I, on the other hand, am a big, strong, high T alpha male, that isn’t worried about what anyone thinks! I am a free thinker, and I know my opinions are correct because I instantly based this entire opinion on a subjective, anecdotal view of the world that I then extrapolated meaning out of, the best evidence! /s

Oh yeah, it’s definitely useful for that!

Since LLMs are essentially just very complicated probabilistic links between words, it seems to be extremely good at picking the exact word or phrase that even a thesaurus couldn’t get me.

I primarily end up using LLMs through DuckDuckGo’s private frontend alongside a search, so if my current search doesn’t yield the correct answer to my question (i.e. I ask for something but those keywords only ever turn up search results on a different, but similar topic) then I go to the LLM and ask a more refined question, that otherwise doesn’t produce any relevant results in a traditional keyword search.

I also use integrated LLMs to format and distill my offhand notes, (and reformat arbitrary text based on specific criteria repeatedly for structured notes,) learn programming syntax more at my own pace and in my own way, and just generally get answers on more well-known topics a lot faster than I would scrolling past 5 pages of SEO-“optimized” garbage just designed to fill time for the ads to load before actually giving me a good answer.

I have never once found an “AI” feature integrated by a corporation useful.

I have only ever found “AI” useful when it’s unobtrusive, and something I chose to use manually. Sometimes an LLM is useful to use, but I don’t need it shilled to me inside a search bar or in a support chat that won’t solve my problem until I bypass the LLM.

There are people who think that “positive” or “negative” words have a magic-like effect on natural processes.

From what I’ve seen, this was originally popularized in 2004 by Masaru Emoto’s book “The Hidden Messages in Water,” where part of his claims were that snowflakes would develop differently in containers labeled with negative or positive emotions.

Naturally, this turned out to be a complete lie, but many people, such as those in the original post, still believe that words can somehow influence things like mold development on food.

I love this approach, balances user freedom & privacy with moderation & voting pattern analysis by the public.

ActivityPub might mean some data is slightly less private, but that doesn’t mean it has to be.

I feel like this says more about these students’ schools, rather than the students themselves.

How have I never heard of this before!? I’ve been looking for exactly this for ages now.

Already spinning up a docker container!

You will eat here, and you will be happy about it! 😡

It’s because they’ve conditioned their audience to believe a few key things:

1. “Voting” with your wallet is what matters over all other forms of action.
2. Giving money to “woke” companies harms you as an individual.
3. Buying products is the best way to signal your value as a person.

Let’s break that down.

They want money to be more important than voting, because they understand that their political demographic does not win the popular vote in most cases, and their policies are inherently not popular with the majority. But when they can get money instead, then use that to influence votes and policy, well, that just might get them the policies they want without substantial votes from the public.

They want people to fear giving money to “woke” corporations because it makes them seem like the only source of real truth, and objectivity. They’re the voices of reason in a world that’s all against you. Then, you’ll be willing to pay for their subscription streaming service, and their subscription streaming service for kids, and their merch, and their chocolate, and their razors, et cetera et cetera.

They want you to associate buying products as the way to define yourself, because when you so strongly identify with their politics, you’ll spend as much money as you can signaling to those around you that you don’t support the “woke” agenda through your wallet, you only support those who truly embody your cause. Giving them money becomes a symbol of your values.

And of course, they wouldn’t get any sales without this as a selling point. If they just start a razor brand, not affiliated with their political ventures, who’s gonna buy? Their razors are effectively the same price as Gilette’s, just without the likely higher standard of quality and availability in physical retail locations.

But when they combine all three of those tactics I mentioned to make their target demographic believe they need these razors to display their values, stop a perceived evil agenda, and make their voice heard… well, then you’ve got a good revenue stream.