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  • 29 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • twitter is where most people are

    Twitter is gone. There is only X.

    According to Musk, there are 556m monthly active “users”. A year ago Musk commissioned a study that found at least 11% of active users on Twitter were bot accounts. There’s plenty of reason to believe that that percentage has only gone up, especially in light of the fact that there’s been a significant exodus of users due to Musk’s handling of the platform, and that at the time of the study there were about 368m users. So either 200m people who were previously uninterested in Twitter were so impressed by how Musk systematically made X less functional and more expensive, or bot accounts became massively more prevalant.

    Regardless, with a global adult population of 8+ billion, in no world is 556m “most people”, even ignoring the bots. Facebook has 3b monthly active users. Tiktok 1b. Instagram 2b.

    As for the rest of the argument, the idea that the only way for extremist voices can be held in check is to politely engage them in rational discussion is sadly nonsense. They’re extremists. They aren’t interested in rational discussion. The only way to hold them in check is to deplatform them, whether literally or just by the old fashioned method of social ostracism.



  • Manuel Vonau

    From his bio on that site (https://www.androidpolice.com/author/manuel-vonau/):

    Manuel studied Media and Culture studies in Düsseldorf, finishing his university career with a master’s thesis titled “The Aesthetics of Tech YouTube Channels: Production of Proximity and Authenticity.” His background gives him a unique perspective on the ever-evolving world of technology and its implications on society. He isn’t shy to dig into technical backgrounds and the nitty-gritty developer details, either.

    So he’s a marketing guy with possibly zero tech background beyond watching YouTube videos, who isn’t afraid to discuss “nitty-gritty developer details” despite apparently not actually understanding them.







  • That’s correct. The indicator light was pretty obvious.

    I always found it fascinating how upset people get about the idea of a novel device recording them without permission, but it is a complete non-issue that a familiar device (the common smart phone) could also record them without permission with less of a chance of them noticing.





  • We advocate for freedom of speech, and not just the limited one currently granted by the 1st amendment of the constitution of the USA.

    “People should be able to say whatever they want without having to fear consequences” is a garbage take on “freedom of speech”. Even if you clarify it as “people be able to say whatever they want without having to fear consequences from large organizations”, it is still a garbage take.



  • I’m just arguing that, for certain very large monopolistic corporations, maybe it should apply as well.

    Instead of treating huge corporations that actively suppress competition like they’re a de facto form of government, we should instead… prevent them from getting to the point where their size and market share grants them power over the lives of citizens comparable to that of the government.



  • Do you understand how much effort you’re putting into being “right” rather than having an actual discussion?

    For context, you started with “EV is bad because it uses coal”, implying that it is worse than ICE vehicles (somehow).

    Then you had to change it to “EV is bad because it uses non-renewable energy.”

    Then you had to change it to “EV is bad because it uses non-renewable energy and renewable energy, but not really much renewable energy.”

    Then you had to change it to “EV is bad because outside of California, which doesn’t count (for some reason), it uses non-renewable energy and renewable energy, but not really much renewable energy.”

    Now that someone is pointing out that other places besides California use significant amounts of renewable energy, your argument has become “I only will accept arguments that provide citations, even though my own various, shifting arguments, have provided none.”

    This is in no way a good look for you.