I’m excited for the future, but not as excited for the transition period.

I have similar feelings.

I discovered LLMs before the hype ever began (used GPT-2 well before ChatGPT even existed) and the same with image generation models barely before the hype really took off. (I was an early closed beta tester of DALL-E)

And as my initial fascination grew, along with the interest of my peers, the hype began to take off, and suddenly, instead of being an interesting technology with some novel use cases, it became yet another technology for companies to show to investors (after slapping it in a product in a way no user would ever enjoy) to increase stock prices.

Just as you mentioned with the dotcom bubble, I think this will definitely do a lot of good. LLMs have been great for asking specialized questions about things where I need a better explanation, or rewording/reformatting my notes, but I’ve never once felt the need to have my email client generate every email for me, as Google seems to think I’d want.

If we can just get all the over-hyped corporate garbage out, and replace it with more common-sense development, maybe we’ll actually see it being used in a way that’s beneficial for us.

IPFS seems similar to what you’re looking for.

(See: A copy of Wikipedia on IPFS being censorship-resistant, and globally distributed)

I like ArchiveBox, but in my experience, it kept on running into issues saving pages, and stopped functioning after it worked the first few times. I really wish there was a more streamlined application that did a similar thing somewhere out there.

I’ve been looking at Linkwarden’s page archiving solution, but it crashes whenever I try importing any large number of links, so that’s a bust too.

Just like how the moment their videotape rental history was exposed, that was when privacy became an absolute must in the case of video rental services.

I completely get your point, and to an extent I agree, but I do think there’s still an argument to be made.

For instance, if a theme park was charging an ungodly amount for admission, or maybe, say, charged you on a per-ride basis after you paid admission, slowly adding more and more charges to every activity until half your time was spent just handing over the money to do things, if everyone were to stop going in, the theme park would close down, because they did something that turned users away.

Websites have continually added more and more ads, to the point that reading a news article feels like reading 50% ads, and 50% content. If they never see any pushback, then they’ll just keep heaping on more and more ads until it’s physically impossible to cram any more in.

I feel like this is less of a dunk on the site by not using it in that moment, and more a justifiable way to show that you won’t tolerate the rapidly enshittified landscape of digital advertising, and so these sites will never even have a chance of getting your business in the future.

If something like this happens enough, advertisers might start finding alternative ways to fund their content, (i.e. donation model, subscription, limited free articles then paywall) or ad networks might actually engage with user demands and make their systems less intrusive, or more private. (which can be seen to some degree with, for instance, Mozilla’s acquisition of Anonym)

Even citing Google’s own research, 63% of users use ad blockers because of too many ads, and 48% use it because of annoying ads. The majority of these sites that instantly hit you with a block are often using highly intrusive ads that keep popping up, getting in the way, and taking up way too much space. The exact thing we know makes users not want to come back. It’s their fault users don’t want to see their deliberately maliciously placed ads.

A lot of users (myself most definitely included) use ad blockers primarily for privacy reasons. Ad networks bundle massive amounts of surveillance technology with their ads, which isn’t just intrusive, but it also slows down every single site you go to, across the entire internet. Refusing that practice increases the chance that sites more broadly could shift to more privacy-focused advertising methods.

Google recommends to “Treat your visitors with respect,” but these sites that just instantly slap up an ad blocker removal request before you’ve even seen the content don’t actually respect you, they just hope you’re willing to sacrifice your privacy, and overwhelm yourself with ads, to see content you don’t even know anything about yet. Why should I watch your ads and give up my privacy if you haven’t given me good reason to even care about your content yet?

This is why sites with soft paywalls, those that say you have “x number of free articles remaining,” or those that say “you’ve read x articles this month, would you consider supporting us?” get a higher rate of users disabling adblockers or paying than those that just slap these popups in your face the moment you open the site.

I mean, there are definitely people in the government working on it, but those often require much more substantial reforms and systemic changes before the changes could functionally work. (i.e. banning data brokers would kill off most free services, or banning targeted ads would kill most ad-funded news networks)

If you haven’t already, I recommend using the EFF’s Action Center to let your representatives know about specific changes you would and would not want made to our laws to protect privacy, free speech, and digital innovation, according to what they’ve found to be the most pressing issues at the moment.

People keep making more people, so who builds their houses?

Developers. If there is more demand in a market, they will build property, then sell it to whoever is willing to buy, or, will seek funding from an existing institution, which if it’s not landlords, will be housing cooperatives, then use that funding to finance new buildings. Traditionally, when we’re talking high-density housing, the buyer of these properties is a landlord. Without that landlord, the demand still exists, and someone, or some group of people, will inevitably fund the cost of the housing. In a world with no for-profit landlords, housing cooperatives fill in the gaps. (primarily for high-density housing specifically)

Either existing cooperative members come to an agreement to pay slightly higher rents in order to build up a fund used to later purchase and expand their pool of housing, (which later increases the benefit they receive from economies of scale, and reduces risk of a major issue in one building causing a lack of revenue altogether) or a new cooperative is formed with money pooled from members, and once a specific threshold is met, they collectively purchase the property.

Housing is a good with inelastic demand. Everyone needs housing. There will always be someone, or some group of people willing to buy. And if you don’t have landlords to artificially increase the price of housing, which only goes up so quickly because of its commodification, and further purchasing by for-profit landlords, then the overall cost for a cooperative to outright buy a new property, or for a new cooperative to raise the funds required, is substantially lowered.

Owning a house involves paying out of pocket for maintenance whereas when renting, you can have the landlord take care of that for you

Your rent is quite literally paying for the maintenance. You think landlords are just losing money on maintenance out of the good of their own hearts? Of course not, it’s just all bundled up and averaged out into one price with your rent.

owning a house would basically anchor me to one location, which gives me less flexibility as a digital nomad.

Cool, that’s one of many benefits of housing cooperatives. They can act similarly to a landlord in terms of you sharing the cost of repairs with the whole building, which reduces risk, and they don’t have a profit motive, since they’re non-profits, so rent is lower than with a landlord. Some even let your rent buy you equity in your unit, which you can then sell later to get some of your money back if you decide to move, much better than the for-profit landlord that will give you nothing. The only issue is, these cooperatives are repeatedly outbid by corporate landlords, which means there’s far fewer of them than would be ideal.

Additionally, I’ve seen some startups like Cohere that seem like they’ll eventually be able to give you even more flexibility, allowing you to move between units in various locations without having to sell the old one or file annoying paperwork to start a new lease, with at least somewhat cooperative ownership. (although, of course, this is a for profit company, which isn’t as ideal)

I can definitely understand wanting flexibility, but there are ways to get that which don’t involve overpaying to a for-profit landlord. I can understand not caring much about equity, but of course, that’s why non-ownership housing cooperatives exist.

But to actually make those things more widely available, you need to reduce the market power held by for-profit landlords. If they did not exist, these alternatives, primarily the cooperatives, could fill back in the gaps, but provide lower prices, better service, actual equity for those who want it, and still keep the flexibility you get from renting.

And the main factor driving down payments is housing prices, which are driven by landlords. Less landlords > less scarcity > lower prices > lower down payments.

On top of that, housing cooperatives exist, which can provide the benefits of renting (lower monthly payments than a mortgage, economy of scale for repairs & construction, less financial liability for the individual) without the negative effects of a for-profit landlord. (you progressively own more of your unit over time instead of never owning any of it, you pay lower monthly rates than you would to a for-profit entity)

They even have different ownership models, which could give more choice for pricing. For instance, the non-ownership model means you pay a lower rate, just the cost of continuing the providing and upkeep of the housing, with no additional profit margin, but you don’t end up owning any of the unit you live in. But the ownership model means often paying a bit higher pricing, but in turn, getting to actually own the unit you live in, and later sell it off if you wish to move. (some cooperatives have caps on how much higher you can sell it for compared to your purchase price, others do not)

But in the end, the one thing that makes housing more expensive, that outbids cooperatives for housing, and that increases the scarcity of the market, is for-profit landlords.

The only way you get any true positive change on down payments, housing prices, or housing availability, is to completely ban all for-profit landlording.

The main issue for a lot of people is a lack of good third places.

Combine less and less free time outside of work, with higher nationwide costs affecting access to third places that you would otherwise congregate with people in, (i.e. cafes, bars, clubs, etc) and you get people who, while probably somewhat outgoing, are unable to actually be outgoing, since there’s not a good place to express that in.

“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.”

The same way you do it digitally: add a thin layer of DRM that gives you legal protection, but doesn’t actually do much on a technical level. Check a license key from the game drive in the same way you’d check the key of software someone paid you for, then let the code run on their machine.

DRM itself isn’t a very good way of protecting media. The functional protections are almost nonexistent due to the nature of it. If you want to let someone play/watch/read content, you can’t also make it magically impossible for them to just take the code/video/text, and copy paste it somewhere else. The only thing DRM does is give you the legal right to invoke the state as a way of enforcing copyright law against anyone who ‘pirates’ your work.

Any fraud that could happen likely wouldn’t be stopped no matter what they tried. (or rather, if they did nothing protection-wise)

Just because an LLM sounds smart and human-like doesn’t mean it will magically solve climate change after being directly implicated in resource consumption we know from actual scientists, today, will make the problem worse.

They don’t believe it.

They just think their investors will.

I’m 100% in favor of requiring models to be open source. That’s been my belief for a while now, because clearly, if someone wants to make an AI model off the backs of other people’s work, they shouldn’t be allowed to restrict or charge access to those models to the same people who had their work used, let alone other people more broadly.

It’s mildly effective in the sense that it will decimate click-through rates, but if enough people did it, they would start filtering by IP, and you’d need to change how many ads it clicks on so it looks more human.

It also still gives advertisers your data, since it still has to load the ads on your system to click them, so it’s not as privacy-preserving as a full-on adblocker that outright blocks every advertisement and tracker related network request in the first place.

This can actually be true, depending on how the system is configured.

For instance, if you and someone else use the same locally-hosted Stable Diffusion UI, both put the exact same prompt, and are using the same seed, # of steps, and dimensions, you’ll get an identical result.

The only reason outputs are different between prompts is because of the noise from the seed, normally randomly set between generations, which can be easily set to the same value as someone else’s generation, and will yield an identical result unless the prompt is changed.