davehtaylor

You seem to not understand the scale at which these things operate. We’re not talking about niche tools that only incels and creeps will use to jerk off to CP, we’re talking about tools that can be used to manipulate, spread mis- and disinformation, and imitate actual people doing things they wouldn’t normally do, and can do so at a scale that is exponentially greater than anything we’ve ever seen.

Go take a look at Facebook. Log out of YouTube and look at the front page. Try to do a Google search. Look at the absolute flood of AI generated shit. I know a lot of authors of short fiction, and the publications that they submit to that normally see a couple hundred to a couple thousands of submission per month have been flooded with hundreds of thousands of submissions per month, all AI garbage.

Now imagine it becomes so good that it’s indistinguishable from the real. Pics, vids, articles. The scale and speed at which people can create society-level harm and destroy lives is incomprehensible. This is not a “think of the children” thing. This is an inflection point where you will never know if the video you just saw of a political candidate calling for the extermination of X group is real or not. But the harms and consequences will be real. You will see revenge porn not just of nudes, but of videos of people seemingly doing horrific acts, and having their lives ruined because of it. And it will happen so fast and in such a flood that nothing will be able to stop it or counter it, because no one will see the truth buried in the inundation.

Again, we could do some of this now, but not at the unimaginable scale or speed that AI generation allows for.

This is not a good thing. And if this is the world you want, then there is no reasoning with you. You are truly lost.

Hang on. Are you actually saying that making fake porn of teenagers without their consent is a good thing because it teaches valuable skills?!

This right here.

I’m so fucking sick of the “it’s just a tool” or “sO YoU wANna BAn EvErYthiNG?!” bullshit. It’s all bad faith garbage that people hide behind because they want the results of these “tools.” They want the AI porn fakes of teenagers and celebrities (because they’re pathetic creeps and incels with no concept of dignity or consent). They want to be able to rip off actual artists so they can pretend like they’ve done something “creative” so they can get social media clout. They’re completely unserious people who can’t be reasoned with. They need to be shunned and shamed.

I think one of the big things that would be great is having a shared space between 2 or more people who can all be in, and interact with, a virtual/augmented environment. Say you and I are working on a prototype of some sort. We can put a model of it in our shared space, and manipulate it together. we can see what it looks like in the real world, touch it, move it, change it, shape it, etc. Tony Stark kinda stuff. Lots of people in maker space, or engineering, design, etc. would go nuts for this I’d imagine. But I think one of the things we lack right now is physical feedback. It’s really hard to wave your hands around in the air trying to manipulate something but having no feedback at all. And I don’t know what it would even take to make that work. Having gloves with some sort of haptics is a start, but it’s not enough.

Otherwise, why do I gaf about my spreadsheets floating in front of me? Watching a movie could be fun, but I can just watch a regular tv and not have a massive headache and feel like my eyes are being ripped out 20 mins into it. If it’s just going to be another monitor, then I don’t see how you’re going to drive mass adoption with that

On a policy level, if we are to bring about a more harmonious Internet (and civil society), we will likely have to tackle wealth inequality and make our political institutions more democratic.

Really burying the lede there.

Another big factor is a lack of moderation, as well as the things that get platformed. People sit and stew in a broth of violent, hateful rhetoric all day long because platforms not only allow that kind of content, but massively profit from it. We seriously need social media companies, podcast apps, YouTube and other video hosting sites, etc. to step the fuck up and deplatform misinformation, disinformation, bigotry, hatemongering, and ragebait. Do not give it light. Do not give it oxygen. Smother it. Ban it. And be extremely aggressive about it. You wanna cry about censorship? Go ahead. But the first amendment doesn’t apply to private companies, and you are also free to setup your own website/service/app/whatever and spew your own bile there.

We further need social media companies to change their algorithms to prevent them from rewarding inflammatory posts. People want to have millions of followers and be big stars on the web, and ragebait, lies, and misinformation are perfect ways to do that. It’s gets you to the top of the heap because there’s no such thing as a “bad” click. You still watched it. You still replied (even if to refute it). And that gave it a boost. That shit has to stop. The entire social landscape is built on top of this inflammatory foundation.

I definitely agree Bluesky is the best alternative right now. It feels like twitter used to, but with much better moderation and no Dorsey (or Musk). And I love things like Aegis, and Feeds.

Threads’ algorithm is extremely aggressive and just viewing a single post will send your entire feed into reccs for that kind of thing. It constantly refreshes, making discovery and finding things extremely difficult. And it’s just Instagram-y. It’s not about building community, it’s just there for throwaway “content.”

But I do agree that Bluesky is doing federation in a way that simplifies it for the users. Non-tech users can just be there and don’t even have to think about it. In fact, most people there (at least across my feeds) have no idea what Federation even is or means. If others want to federate or hang somewhere else and have the knowledge to do that, they can. So they make it much more frictionless.

Because federation is a mess, and doesn’t really solve the problem. There’s no quick elevator pitch that non-technical people can understand, on-boarding is painful, and even if you as the publisher understand it, your audience may not.

Exactly.

Gods this whole “if we outlaw AI only outlaws will have AI” bullshit is so so tiresome and naive

You mean to tell me that the purpose-built disinformation machine that you developed has been used by malicious actors to spread disinformation?!

Exactly.

SCOTUS justices need to be elected and have term limits. Give them three total 4 year terms max.

EDIT: I know this would take a Constitutional amendment to change, which given our current political climate, is functionally impossible

WTF are you talking about, “trapping” you?

If you can’t give a full-throated condemnation of a company using slave labor, then I don’t know what your position is supposed to be.

Wait. We’re talking about making sure a company isn’t using slave labor in their supply chain, and creating consequences for them doing so. And that’s a problem for you? You think it’s fucked up that a company forced to abide by rules preventing them from using slave labor?

Yeah I think I agree. The law should be: if you can’t positively confirm it’s clean, you can’t use it.

We should have standards for the treatment of people, and strive not to participate in or reward those who treat people in unacceptable ways.

Totally agree.

It’s not good for a country to create an unfair marketplace. And it is an unfair marketplace when rules which acutely affect only certain people drastically for the good of all, are implemented too quickly to adapt to without major setbacks.

Just saying it should be phased in, to minimize local economic tearing.

Totally disagree.

Fines/tariffs/etc. are just cost of doing business for big business. Slowly enforcing regulation gives companies time to hedge, shuffle, and deflect without actually doing anything. Consequences should be hard and fast. Economies be damned. If an economy can’t stand on its own without companies acting ethically, or with them being punished for it, then it shouldn’t stand at all.

Yes, that’s exactly what I expect. If you can’t verify with 100% certainty that your supply chain isn’t using slave labor, then you stop using that supply chain. And if that costs the company an entire market, or even causes the company to fail, then so be it.

Not really a fan of republicanism. I don’t like the idea that the people we elect can just ignore their constituents, or that those people can then make appointments that are not something the general public want. I do however like the idea of a unicameral legislature. I think our bicameral legislature creates more problems than it solves. On top of the Senate being wildly unequal in its representation.

We need a strict representative democracy, where representatives are legally beholden to act according to the wishes of their constituents. And we need to reform or eliminate positions where unelected persons are appointed without any input from the public. For example, SCOTUS needs to be expanded, given term limits, and the justices need to stand for public election, not appointment by whichever president is in power at the time. Currently, SCOTUS can be entirely stacked and controlled by a given administration, nullifying any semblance of checks and balances, giving functional control of the government to that president long after their term has ended. Further, SCOTUS can simply act of their own will, with literally no recourse for anyone to stop them. Same reforms should apply to all court appointments (federal/circuit/district/etc.)

• Abolish the Senate
• Abolish the electoral college
• Establish ranked choice voting
• Term limits top to bottom

Of course, part of this would take constitutional amendment(s), which given our political climate, is functionally impossible, on top of legislation that no one in power would ever be willing to put forward nor support. The people in power aren’t going to willingly surrender any of that power. So I don’t really know how we fix it.

As someone who enjoyed skateboarding in the 90s, there were very, very, very few women in the scene. There was a skatepark I frequented that would be super packed on the weekends, and I think I only ever saw one or two women in several years time.

Regardless of gender is was an extremely insular scene that was majorly actively hostile to anyone starting out overall. But if you weren’t male, everyone was either gross af trying to hit on you, or they just assumed you were shit and couldn’t be otherwise.

The area I was in, the skate scene also had a large number of Straight Edge folk, who I think were using it as a sort of appeasement tactic, like “Look Police Guy/Parents/School officials, etc, we make sure we’re substance free. We not satanist trying to menaces” but used fucking militant tactics against people in the scene. They were fucking terrifying.

It was so off-putting for me that I completely lost any interest in skateboarding. I didn’t want to be part of a scene that treated people that way.

Exactly.

“I want a woman who is submissive, and respects ‘traditional’ gender roles”

No, you want a servant you can fuck, and then get violent with if she ever refuses to comply.

These people don’t want partners or relationships. They want power fantasies.

I can certainly see why there would be appeal but you need to be very cautious of who you want to be a tradwife to. You create a lot of dependence on your partner, You sacrifice a lot of power, and once you start doing this it becomes increasingly difficult taking it back.

Hear hear.

I’ve seen so many older couples where the woman was 100% dependent on the man. He never allowed her to manage finances, have access to the bank accounts, pay bills, etc. and then after 30-40 years he leaves or dies, and then she’s left without any life experience whatsoever and has no idea how to manage her own life.

Or, he’s abusive, shitty, and terrible, but since she has no agency of her own or any idea of how to have that agency, she’s trapped and can’t even conceive of the idea of leaving him.

It’s a horrifying experience.

“We need to return to a time when women had no agency, no real personhood, were essentially slaves in their homes, treated as property, and bore literally all the work of the home and family.”

…

“Wow, this is oppressive.”

These people have no thought that the situation women were in 50+ years ago was forced. They didn’t have a choice. They couldn’t even open a bank account on their own. But want to paint that time as some sort of heyday that we need to return to.

Further, I’m convinced that the tradwife movement isn’t in any way genuine, that it’s entirely white supremacist, patriarchal propaganda. Maybe there’s a handful out there that genuinely want this. But otherwise I think it’s entirely a pushback against modernity, and bigots and white cishet men trying to claw back their cultural hegemony.

“We want to protect our cattle and our ranches,” said Arizona representative Michael Carbone. Speaking at the Hardee County Cattleman’s Arena, DeSantis said that cultivated meat would “wipe the people sitting here out of business,” and that “we will not let that happen,”

Funny* how these chuds all about the “free market” unless their products can’t compete, and they have to have subsidies and monopolies to protect their profits.