Facebook, Instagram, and Threads are ditching third-party fact-checkers in favor of a Community Notes program inspired by X, according to an announcement penned by Meta's new Trump-friendly policy chief Joel Kaplan. Meta is also moving its trust and safety teams from California to Texas:
"We've seen this approach work on X – where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context, and people across a diverse range of perspectives decide what sort of context is helpful for other users to see." Meta said. "We think this could be a better way of achieving our original intention of providing people with information about what they're seeing – and one that's less prone to bias."
The Community Notes feature will first be rolled out in the US "over the next couple of months" according to Meta, and will display an unobtrusive label indicating that there is additional information available on a post in place of full-screen warnings that users have to click through. Like the X feature, Meta says its own Community Notes will "require agreement between people with a range of perspectives to help prevent biased ratings."
The moderation changes aim to address complaints that Meta censors "too much harmless content" on its platforms, and is slow to respond to users who have their accounts restricted. Meta is also moving its trust and safety teams responsible for its content policies and content reviews content out of California to Texas and other US locations, instead of wholesale moving its California headquarters like Elon Musk did with SpaceX and X.
(Score: 5, Funny) by shrewdsheep on Thursday January 09, @08:48AM (5 children)
In other words, they will become like SN! We will be bleeding members left and right.
Wait, let's sue them for patent infringement for a gazillion dollars.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mcgrew on Thursday January 09, @08:05PM (3 children)
Wait, let's sue them for patent infringement for a gazillion dollars.
I think you meant SLASHDOT? S/N code is slightly modified slash code. And even if they had filed for a patent, it would have expired in 2017 since patents, unlike copyright, actually follow the Constitution's mandate of "limited times."
Art, like technology, is built on what has come before. Imagine how technology would suffer if a patent lasted for the inventor's life plus ninety five years! That's how the arts are suffering under the evil Bono act. How is that "95 years after death" going to persuade Jimi Hendrix or The Doors to make any more albums, or for Isaac Asimov to write any more science fiction or fact?
A man legally forbidden from possessing a firearm is in charge of America's nuclear arsenal. Have a nice day.
(Score: 3, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 09, @10:27PM (2 children)
> How is that "95 years after death" going to persuade Jimi Hendrix or The Doors to make any more albums, or for Isaac Asimov to write any more science fiction or fact?
Because, obviously, that bleeding heart liberal artsy fartsy bunch cares about their children, and grandchildren - much more so than the quarterly bottom line oriented set.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday January 11, @07:20PM (1 child)
In America, the Constitution gives a valid reason for patent and copyright, quote: "The Congress shall have power: To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
Unlike British copyright (Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture is an excellent tome on the subject), American copyright is about progress, not leaving money to your kids.
A patent only lasts for twenty years. Imagine how far back technological progress would be stifled with a century-long monopoly on the technology. That's how the Bono act is stifling artistic creativity.
The first US copyright was fourteen years. The current copyright is a constitutional crime.
A man legally forbidden from possessing a firearm is in charge of America's nuclear arsenal. Have a nice day.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday January 11, @07:29PM
>The current copyright is a constitutional crime.
Agreed. What is remarkable to me is how easily it was extended in clear violation of the language and clear intent of the Constitution, and how hard it seems to be to put it right again.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday January 09, @08:27PM
This is a small community that can effectively self-police.
Every Meta property is a giant bot farm with an attached captive audience.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by janrinok on Thursday January 09, @09:24AM (31 children)
This appears to me to be an end run around demands to control the dissemination of fake news and misinformation.
The judgement will be made by the community - which is good. But if you look at the social media sites very often there is a preponderance of one political bias over another. So the majority of people could quite easily, and most likely will, vote to keep the fake news and misinformation if it is what they want to hear rather than have it removed. However, Meta and Facebook et al can say that they are moderating their content according to the community views, and Trump will be able to sit back and say that he is satisfied with the way things are being managed. His views, however bizarre, are guaranteed to be front and centre. Additionally, it will remove a significant running cost from all social media companies.
Rather than limit the prevalence of misinformation it will actually guarantee that it will stay viewable. Two of the most popular social media sites will have just become another political tool.
I think that Europe in general will not be satisfied with this effort. What action they will take I cannot say but I can envisage the possibility of both sites being banned from Europe.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by corey on Thursday January 09, @09:57AM (9 children)
Agree with all your points. I think there are a few motivations here, some are what you said. I also think it's financial. Becuase almost everything always is with corps. I haven't looked at their financials (not remotely interested), but I assume that by now their advertising revenue is topping out (flattening) and not much growth in sight given they know everything about their users (so can do micro-advertising) and their user numbers are dropping. If so, this is a cost cutting exercise -- I imagine the cost of all the content moderation (teams of people plus the algorithms and AI-backed detection systems) would be around an arm and a leg. So this is a win for the investors. Moving forward, it also absolves them of responsibility in litigation where they should have removed some content (in line with their policy) but didn't, and it hurt someone. Now they can say, 'yeah, we host it but it's not our responsibility, and the community accepted that content'. Or something.
Given the timing, I think it's convenient to write it off as political manouvering (getting closer to Musk/Trump), and I reckon it is a fair bit, but it probably has been on the cards a while to reign in the costs. Now Zuck doesn't need to fight Musk, and they can enjoy beers together in their MAGA jacuzzi at Uncle Don's joint.
I read a few comments on the Verge article, it was interesting. People saying stuff like, taking cues from X is hitting rock bottom, FB is in decline and only used by 50+ anyway so it doesn't matter, free speech is everyone having a say with no algorithms, etc, etc.
Agree that Europe will have something to say about this. I thought FB were already in the shitbin/sinbin for their lack of controlling/removing harmful content. This will turbo-charge that and possibly end their time in Europe. Wish I lived there!
Personally, I couldn't care -- I have a non-personal (as in obvuscated details) FB account which I only use for Marketplace, otherwise I never use it. So they can do as they like, but it's good for the popcorn.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by drussell on Thursday January 09, @10:48AM (7 children)
I think it is mostly the simplest explanation... Zuck was on the "wrong side of Trump" and his authoritarian playbook.
Trump literally just publicly threatened a few days ago to throw Zuckerberg in jail if he didn't start amplifying his insane positions. Zuck flew to Mar-a-Lago to kiss Trump's ring, bow down to him, apologize and pledge loyalty to the incoming king. He then announced that META is changing its moderation, getting rid of fact checkers, etc... It all comes as no surprise.
The scary problem with all of this nonsense is that it is facts and truth which are the casualties of these recent trends...
The major problem with all this, and what the people complaining in recent years (especially the vocal right-wingers) don't seem to grasp is that it is NOT their political ideology which is being "censored" because "others" don't like their political views... It is the fact that those ideological differences have morphed into a place devoid of truth, facts and reality! Nobody has a problem with a proper, healthy debate about actual policy positions, but that is NOT what the public discourse has become!! 😧
For example, Trump and his followers are still harping on about how the 2020 US election was rigged, rife with problems, it was stolen from him, etc. but without providing any actual facts to back up this position. YEARS later, and they STILL haven't presented any actual evidence to back up their claims!! Sure, some people now believe there were problems, because they keep going out there and saying it, but it is NOT TRUE! This is not a political stance on an issue, in the proper, historical sense. It is brainwashed bullshit propaganda, lies repeated over and over until people begin to just take it as normal and some internalize it as fact.
This is a major, MAJOR problem and is actually quite scary that the Overton window has shifted so far, on what is considered normal, on demanding actual facts to find the actual truth, has fallen by the wayside! 🙄
I'm a fiscal conservative, but I cannot get behind all the other nonsense that so called "conservative" governments and parties worldwide seem to be hell bent on pushing! It is utter insanity!!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by zocalo on Thursday January 09, @11:35AM
Unlike those forums however, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, et al are demonstrably highly scriptable and rife with bots as a result - most probably down to scale and widespread use by kiddies that wouldn't have a clue how to write their own script, which isn't likely to be an issue on smaller sites like this one where the return wouldn't justify the effort, even though it could almost certainly be done. Expect to see rampant abuse of the moderation system once those Mod-Bots get to work, which basically means it'll boil down to which side has the better coders. Pretty much the same kind of whack-a-mole game played out by the ad providers and ad-blockers (amongst others), basically, so it'll be ugly, a huge waste of resources that could be better spent elsewhere and, as usual, it's the people looking to browse the site that'll suffer, regardless of their personal views or susceptibility to accept conspiracy theories and propaganda as fact.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mcgrew on Thursday January 09, @08:43PM (2 children)
Zuck flew to Mar-a-Lago to kiss Trump's ring
Ring? Odd spelling of "ass" or "arse". And here I thought being a billionaire made one so he doesn't have to kiss anybody's ass!
I'm a fiscal conservative
The meaning of the word "conservative" has been greatly twisted to mean nothing but "greedy and selfish." It used to be about waste, now it's about keeping the minimum wage WAY below a living wage and encouraging inflation. Today, "conservative" means "heartless bastard." I used to think of myself as conservative, but I'm neither greedy nor stingy. Both are required of today's conservatives.
Conservatives used to conserve the constitution and rule of law. Trumps hates both, calling them "the deep state".
A man legally forbidden from possessing a firearm is in charge of America's nuclear arsenal. Have a nice day.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Nobuddy on Friday January 10, @01:16PM (1 child)
"Conservative" has always been about protecting power and resisting progress that might threaten it. Conservatives have been on the wrong side of history every time an evil is addressed. The only difference between then and now is they have dropped all pretenses.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday January 11, @07:47PM
There are two kinds of conservatives, the monetary conservatives who are the definition of "conservative" that is a synonym for "Greedy and stingy", and one that wants to conserve values, whether good or bad.
Conservatives were in charge between the flu pandemic and the Great Depression. The Roaring Twenties started with high inflation after the pandemic, and crashed after a decade of Republican rule.
My Grandma, who was twenty in 1923, said the Roaring Twenties (Only Yesterday, FL Allen) [mcgrewbooks.com] only roared for the rich, much like the twenty twenties. I foresee great trouble ahead.
A man legally forbidden from possessing a firearm is in charge of America's nuclear arsenal. Have a nice day.
(Score: 2) by corey on Thursday January 09, @09:34PM (2 children)
Good points, I didn’t know that Trump threatened Zuck. Do you have any refs to read more into it? That makes it more clear cut then it’s political. I guess they see it as a win-win on the cost savings then too.
Man, the world is going so 1984.
(Score: 3, Informative) by drussell on Thursday January 09, @11:13PM (1 child)
There is no secret about the threats of jail. It is literally even in "Trump's" (who knows who ghostwrote it) most recent book called "Save America" that came out back in August.
In the past few days, Trump has even publicly said the he believes that Zuckerberg changed the rules specifically because of his threats of life in prison!
See it: Trump says Mark Zuckerberg surrendered to his jail threat (Melber breakdown) [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by corey on Sunday January 12, @08:56PM
Thanks. Yeah the fact that trump thinks that his threats worked will just embolden his fascism.
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Thursday January 09, @04:30PM
Moderation is labor intensive for sure.
Litigation risk is a less likely explanation given their protection under section 230, unless you were thinking of non-US jurisdictions.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday January 09, @11:07AM (4 children)
Why is it good?
Let's assume Trump is out of the picture. Would you have no other objections?
On what grounds?
Note: all the above a pure (ie not loaded) questions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Interesting) by janrinok on Thursday January 09, @11:30AM (2 children)
In answer to your first question: in a balanced community where all types are represented then having the community decide how a site is run is usually beneficial. The problem in this instance is that in many peoples' eyes the the sites have become polarised and therefore do not represent a balanced real-world view.
As for Trump's involvement, I was looking at the reasons for this sudden change in 2 different organisations that historically have been quite opposed to each other. One reason, but I am sure that there are others, is that I believe they are both looking for an easy (or easier) time under Trump. It would be the same whoever was going to be the next President if he held similar extreme views, but we needn't speculate because we know the name of the President Elect. And whoever is in the big seat will want to ensure that he/she benefits as much as possible. With Trump we already have experience of how he works to further his own aims (and wealth) rather than those of the country.
Europe will be unhappy because, although we don't really give a damn about the 'intelligence' of the average American, the spread of misinformation and false news is a form of propaganda which is also affecting many people in Europe who believe such garbage. Honest statements that are true are perfectly acceptable even if they are not what someone wants to hear, but foreign influence via propaganda is unacceptable. To Europe, the USA is foreign.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2) by owl on Thursday January 09, @04:13PM
Do note that "Community Notes" on Twitter/X is not a "sudden change". From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
So the concept, so far as Twitter/X is concerned, is up to four years old.
The suddenness is all on Facebook making this change here mere weeks away from the next administration inauguration. That timing looks both sudden, and suspicious, to those who want to view it as such. I've seen other posts where people point out that zero orgs. the size of Facebook/Meta can make a decision and turn on a dime, and that this change would have been in the works for months (or more) internally before the announcement (which is where the suspicious public begins measuring "age of plan" from). So yes, the timing of the public reveal looks suspicious, but that very well may be because these types (the C suite) almost always seem to ignore the calendar and what else is going on on the calendar when picking "ok, lets have this done by here....".
Case in point for the above: $job scheduling a week of mandatory training that is also the same week as (for US folks) Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Years. Note, the training division literally did this, except it was the week containing the US 4th of July holiday (not as big a travel week as the others, but still a time-frame that a lot of folks decide to 'get away to the beach').
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Friday January 10, @06:42AM
Yes, and on larger sites, there's more of an incentive for bad actors to involve themselves in inserting misinformation to bury the good information. I haven't seen much of that here as it tends to get a lot of pushback.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by quietus on Thursday January 09, @07:39PM
I'm watching the news on France2, and there's an item where a journalist creates an account on X, than just waits. Within an hour, her account has received tweets of, first, Musk, second Trump (anybody remember @realdonaldtrump around here?) and third, a French politician. Apart from the moderation issues mentioned, this feels a bit like Microsoft pushing its browser upon users of its operating system.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday January 09, @01:14PM (11 children)
Or by a hoard of bots pretending to be "the community". The bots could be run by politicians, government intel agencies, major corporations, terrorist groups, etc, but if they're seen as a method of influencing what a significant number of people see as the truth they are guaranteed to exist.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday January 09, @01:35PM
Well that was the point that I was making with the rest of that paragraph, but perhaps I did not express it very well.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by digitalaudiorock on Thursday January 09, @06:24PM (9 children)
And even if "the community" isn't bots, no way does this go well. If you want an illustration of how well stuff goes when "the community" decides what "the truth" is, you don't have to look further than our last election. I really never thought I'd ever have this little hope for my country.
(Score: -1, Troll) by DadaDoofy on Thursday January 09, @08:38PM (8 children)
Oh yeah, it's much better when "fact checkers" with a hard left political bias decide what "the truth" is. Heh heh. Thankfully, and not a moment too soon, that became too bitter a pill for even Mark Zuckerberg to swallow.
(Score: 5, Informative) by mcgrew on Thursday January 09, @08:52PM (6 children)
Facts have no political bias. If it has political bias, it isn't a fact. Here's a dictionary [merriam-webster.com] for you, learn the language, alien!
There is no such thing as an "alternate fact" outside the far right wing make-believe world.
You remiond me of a Dilbert cartoon where the PHB wants someone to "massage the numbers". A lie is a lie, and Donald Trump is a liar.
That's a proven FACT.
A man legally forbidden from possessing a firearm is in charge of America's nuclear arsenal. Have a nice day.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DadaDoofy on Thursday January 09, @09:26PM (4 children)
"Facts have no political bias"
Correct, but "fact checkers" granted the power to censor facts that are inconvenient to the political narratives they advance sure do.
"Donald Trump is a liar. That's a proven FACT."
Given that every person who's ever lived is a liar, I don't think that's too big a stretch. "It's in our nature", to paraphrase the scorpion.
https://storymuseum.s3-assets.com/Frog_and_Scorpion_story_text.pdf [s3-assets.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 10, @12:06AM
Playing the "everyone sins", versus Trumps level of sin is being stupid on purpose. In other words, weak.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 10, @12:39AM (1 child)
I would sure like to get to the bottom of this damm COVID charade. I have lots of text backing up the notion that we are all just being manipulated to self-destruct in such a way our assets are legally transferred to the ruling classes.
Not that much different than the techniques the "settlers" used to get the indigenous population to give up their land in North America.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nobuddy on Friday January 10, @01:22PM
The irony is your wording indicates you are a covid denier. One of the manipulated. One of those deceived to self-destruct for the benefit of the powerful. You are SO CLOSE to becoming self aware.
(Score: 2, Informative) by PiMuNu on Friday January 10, @11:09AM
> > "Donald Trump is a liar. That's a proven FACT."
> Given that every person who's ever lived is a liar,
There are liars, and then there are liars...
Trump and his team stole political campaign funds and used them to pay off a sex worker so that she wouldn't tell the world (and Trump's wife) about his extra-marital sex acts. Trump then lied about the sex and the theft.
I'm not quite a follower of these stories, (it is another country from my own after all), but that is my understanding. It was proved in court despite Trump's no doubt excellent legal team.
You can get lower than that - but not much lower. I think the world outside America is still shocked that the American public voted for such a person.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Friday January 10, @03:42PM
Facts Have a Well-Known Liberal Bias [nytimes.com]
Reality has a well known liberal bias [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nobuddy on Friday January 10, @01:19PM
The reason facts seem biased is because the majority of the lies are coming from the right. The bias in inherent.
Remember: you disliking something does not make it untrue.
(Score: 3, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 09, @07:14PM
So, I have been informed by some circles that this is fantasy fiction:
https://worldwar3.substack.com/p/russian-trolls-offered-to-pay-me [substack.com]
And, I can see how that may be the case... but, as fiction goes, it's far more believable to me than some of what passes for mainstream news lately.
In the "I know you are, but what am I?" self-projection corner of the ring, we have the "you can't believe all that fake news you hear out there" team, currently nominating several executives from the "professional wrestling" industry as cabinet members - because we all know that professional wrestling is totally real, right? Right down to the heroes bleeding when they hit the mats after a big blow, and getting back up with a fist pump into the air for the crowd, you bet it's real - in the minds of a lot of the viewers.
There was an old curse: May you live in interesting times. Somehow, I feel like the nonstop absurdity has made all of it less interesting than ever. And, I'm afraid that's a calculated manipulation.
By the way: I totally saw a post saying that Zuck has a transplanted rat penis - it had tons more upvotes than downvotes, so it must be true, right?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Touché) by DadaDoofy on Thursday January 09, @10:16PM (2 children)
"Rather than limit the prevalence of misinformation it will actually guarantee that it will stay viewable"
Why do you feel so threatened if "misinformation" stays viewable? I know you are from Europe, but are you really so arrogant to think individuals should not be given the basic respect to determine for themselves what is or isn't true?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday January 10, @07:06AM (1 child)
misinformation is, by definition, wrong or untrue. How does anyone benefit from having such information distributed more widely? Intentionally doing so is a malicious action.
Most people, if they do not know a subject, listen and learn rather than make things up a spread falsehoods.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2) by corey on Sunday January 12, @09:03PM
I’m with you on that point. People only take in so much information in a day, so if that information is predominantly false, they will tend to take that and reject the reality (I don’t like to use the word Truth because it’s been so badly bastardised and politicised).
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday January 09, @12:28PM
I trusted Lt. Mitch Buchannon so I trust Mark Zuckerberg.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Thursday January 09, @02:27PM
What he thinks of the kerfluffle [scalzi.com]
I put a "Warning: Contains scenes that may be disturbing to some viewers" label on my bathroom mirror.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Thursday January 09, @04:42PM (2 children)
From Heinlein, a character who came into a huge unexpected inheritance. The judge in the case warned him that the bigger something is, the less one person owns it.
We are in a situation where a single person can control the discourse of millions. This is fundamentally unhealthy and risky however s/he manages it. https://xkcd.com/743/ [xkcd.com]
Notice I'm failing to propose a solution. Federated or user-controlled social media is interesting but IMO still unproven.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 09, @08:17PM
> Notice I'm failing to propose a solution.
The problem demonstrates that any real solution will be more social / legal / financial than technical in terms of innovations and paradigm shifts.
> Federated or user-controlled social media is interesting but IMO still unproven.
Socially, I'm weird - like out on the 1% fringe in several dimensions, so when I say "I have no problem with the LGBQT+ orientation of most of the public faces of the Mastodon / ActivityPub / Spritely development and technical team" - I genuinely mean that, and that I believe what follows is simply a pragmatic analysis of why they're not experiencing the kind of growth that Twitter / Facebook / even Reddit did upon initial launch. However socially unjust, wrong, and in need of improvement the following may be, it is also "how it is" in the world from my perspective.
The self proclaimed "Queen of Mastodon" and her crew are a bunch of uncomfortably self-assured tranny nerds, and that puts off a LOT of people, including people with serious money who could 125x fund their current quaint little $80K fundraising goal at the stroke of a check on a whim, just to see what happens. If you appeal to "that crowd" they will fund projects in $10M increments if their tech advisors assure them of something approaching a 5% chance of success. Having known two projects funded by that crowd over the past 20ish years, I wouldn't want that money, but the reality is: if you're not taking that money, you're competing against people who do.
I haven't had the time to fully wrap my head around ActivityPub and Spritely to get a sense of how developed it is, or isn't. ActivityPub seems to be the basis of Mastodon? And it seems to talk a good talk about what technically should be happening in such a distributed / federated system, but what I don't know is how much of that is just "should" talk in general descriptions vs "has been done as well as it needs to be for low effort deployment at global scale" stuff.
Federated Mastodon seems to work on a technical level, at least from the piece of the elephant this blind man is touching. As a 6 week user, I still feel like I'm struggling to add enough content (followees) to make it a compelling community to participate in, as if I need such a thing anyway.
I started using BlueSky about 8 weeks ago, and it (non-distributed as it is) has a very similar feel to Mastodon - but is much more developed as a quick-start engaging experience. For one thing, almost instantly upon signing up, I had been guided to follow George Takei and Mark Hamill - which was quaint. Not long after I moved George off to a list that I only look at when I'm in the mood for his mostly politically oriented stuff (which is rarely), but Mark doesn't SPAM so much downer content and so I left him on my main Following list and got his recent post about the fires... Getting past the celebrity side of things, you can preview the kind of things that people have been posting and follow them if that's the kind of thing you want to read / participate in the discussion of. Mastodon is much the same, but just a bit more techy oriented, a bit clumsier interface, and quite a bit harder to find the people you might like to follow - at least for me so far. In the end, I think I might just build up a much more interesting / valuable to me community on Mastodon, but for now I definitely see how BlueSky had the appeal to add 20 million users (including me) in such a short timespan.
Those millions of users attract people like Mark Cuban: https://globelynews.com/americas/mark-cuban-is-a-bluesky-fan-could-he-become-an-owner/ [globelynews.com]
Mastodon's nerdy DIY independently controlled federation... still in competition with the big players.
Bad analogy warning: if you look at weather underground, you'll find a lot of independently operated weather station data, there are 6 active stations in my immediate neighborhood - of probably 3000 houses. Those 6 weather nerds invested at least $100, probably closer to $300 on average, and at least an hour or two of their time, setting up and maintaining their home-run weather stations. I was contributor #7 in my neighborhood until a hurricane dropped a tree on my sensor pod, it will be a while before I get motivated to start up again.
So, for Weather Underground users around here, only 0.2% of the homes do the nerdy thing providing a community of real-time temperature, humidity, rainfall, wind speed and direction data... and most people still use The Weather Channel's website instead.
You can launch a turnkey basic Mastodon instance for $6 per month, tweak the server to your preferences - dig into the source code if that's your thing. But so far they only have 1 million active users on an estimated 4000 server instances vs Suckerberg's claimed 3 billion users... Apparently SESTA and FOSTA have chilled the legal landscape for hosting porn on privately owned servers, so that's a barrier that Reddit and others didn't have in their early growth, and at this point X seems too big to fail just because there are a bunch of hooker bots trolling for tips... BlueSky is getting a fair number of those as well lately.
And that segues into my closing observation on all of this: if I really were to "dive in" to Facebook, or BlueSky or Mastodon, I feel almost compelled to spin up multiple accounts - one to proselytize to my Followers, one to react to and debate politics, one to share cat photos, one to talk nerdy Unix tech, maybe a different one to talk car stuff, etc. etc. etc. Maybe I'm missing something about how to use # tags, but if I were to follow me I certainly wouldn't want to catch all those different subjects in my feed from me and 100 other weirdos out there.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday January 09, @09:09PM
From Heinlein
Which book? I have several. Have you read the short story Jerry was a man? Most racist piece of fiction I ever read. That didn't affect the quality of the story, though, or make him any less of a writer.
As to the cartoon, why didn't the open source guy just say "I refuse to pay good money for a thing that advertises to me after I've paid them when I can get a superior product for free"?
I had to use Word before I retired. Not a bad word processor, but I prefer both Open Office and Libre Office. Photoshop? Phuk that! GIMP FTW! Do I look like Elon Musk?? Photoshop is stupidly priced for stupid people with too much money.
Oh, and you can save an Oo or Lo to a .DOC file readable by Word; none of the periodicals will take anything but that and RTF (which Word always mangles). Microsoft produces shitty software that people who have had nothing else think is professional. Guess what? I only have to boot the Linux computer when I want to, the OS never forces me, and only asks when it updates the kernel.
Microsoft is a synonym for "shit".
A man legally forbidden from possessing a firearm is in charge of America's nuclear arsenal. Have a nice day.
(Score: 0, Troll) by DadaDoofy on Thursday January 09, @08:01PM (4 children)
How long did the left really think they could get away with their authoritarian censorship of "fake news" and "disinformation", or what the rest of know as anything the contradicts their sacred narratives?
With the left in decline across the globe, it's no accident that Zuckerberg realized that in 2025, a hard pivot away from political censorship by Orwellian "fact checkers" is a winning proposition for Meta and it's customers. The US has had a long tradition of showing its citizens the respect to decide for themselves what to believe in. Kudos to Zuckerberg for doing his part to help us, once again, enjoy that freedom.
(Score: 3, Funny) by mcgrew on Thursday January 09, @09:16PM (3 children)
Can you point to ONE SINGLE truth that Farsebook flagged as false? I was on that site for years and didn't see a single one, but I was threatened by the Mighty Meta for saying that rather than having statues erected, the traitors who fought a civil war against America should have been hung. They said it was threatening.
The battle flag of the Confederacy is the flag of losers. That's a FACT. You think Whites are superior to Blacks? That's stupid. American Blacks were bred like animals for size, strength, speed, and intelligence like any other farm animal. They are superior us, not the other way around.
A man legally forbidden from possessing a firearm is in charge of America's nuclear arsenal. Have a nice day.
(Score: 2) by DadaDoofy on Thursday January 09, @09:50PM (1 child)
"You think Whites are superior to Blacks? That's stupid. American Blacks were bred like animals for size, strength, speed, and intelligence like any other farm animal. They are superior us, not the other way around."
Wow, interesting take. I'll guess I'll have to take your word for it. I'd never quite thought about it.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday January 11, @06:58PM
Don't take my word, just look it up. Blacks were bred like animals for the same reasons that animals were bred. Nobody wants a small, slow, weak, stupid horse. A slave not smart enough to work farm machinery wasn't worth feeding and housing. Slaves, HUMAN BEINGS, were thought of as animals, inferior to whites, and bred and raised like animals.
Why do you suppose so many American professional sports players are Black compared to White American athletes, unlike the rest of the world?
Here's [wikipedia.org] an excellent example of breeding.
Unfortunately, they weren't bred for longevity, and most Blacks have environmental factors that further limit a person's health and lifespan.
A man legally forbidden from possessing a firearm is in charge of America's nuclear arsenal. Have a nice day.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 10, @11:07AM
> American Blacks were bred like animals for size, strength, speed, and intelligence like any other farm animal.
You think farm animals are bread for *intelligence*?? Tell me you've never worked a farm without telling me you've never worked a farm...
Farm animals are bred to be productive and *docile*. Intelligence in a farm animal destined for slaughter is just more trouble waiting to happen. Same with the work animals, e.g. horses. They're bred to be *useful* not smart.
What, you'd think the farmer breeds cows to do his taxes?
Pure idiocy...
BTW, I don't, of course, at all agree that there were breeding programmes that in any way shape or form had much bearing on the current makeup of african americans.
(Score: 3, Informative) by AssCork on Thursday January 09, @09:00PM (2 children)
If the platform-owner moderates the community themselves, they're a publisher, and liable for the content.
If the platform-owner has the community moderate themselves, they're a platform, and protected by Section 230.
Just popped-out of a tight spot. Came out mostly clean, too.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Whoever on Friday January 10, @04:42PM (1 child)
False. Section 230 was written to allow moderation.
https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230. [eff.org]
""No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." (47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1))."
You have been reading the lies of those who want to get rid of section 230 and impose strict liability on sites like Facebook. They want to take control of all discussions.
(Score: 2) by AssCork on Monday January 20, @08:28PM
Well pardon the fuck outta me. By the way, I haven't been 'reading the lies' - i read the fucking law when it was written and didn't realize some dumb motherfuckers would tweak it so the government could legally put their first up social media's ass and weaponize ToS against specific lists of accounts.
Just popped-out of a tight spot. Came out mostly clean, too.