Category: internet culture

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Bubbles?

I’ve been reading some blogs this morning. A lot of posts about the effects of social media. A couple of ideas keep coming up, which I will list and comment on below.

We are retreating into our own information bubbles that tend to isolate and radicalize us.

Gonna have to disagree with this. At least for me. Curating your intake of information is not retreating. It is the Enterprise raising the shields. There are way too many graduates of YouTube/FaceBook/Twitter University out there, many of them not even actual humans, blabbering 24/7 to propagate lies about vaccines, support Trump, and tell you raw milk is good for you. No one needs that shit, but there it is. Shields – fucking – UP Mr. Sulu!

People are losing critical thinking skills

I’m not sure most people ever had them, but this is more of a comment than anything else. Every single one of the Trumpbots, Q-nuts, and other wackos believe their own ability to think critically is unmatched. So when I hear someone complain about the “critical thinking skills” of others I immediately question that person’s own intellect.

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Google – Is – Shit

Today @fromjason shared this article.

I’ve been playing with DuckDuckGo for a few months now.

Today I did a comparison search.

My friend Jeff and I run the world’s only talk podcast about the Traveller RPG. The only one. There are no other talk podcasts in the world dedicated to Traveller. It is called SAFCOcast (SAFCO stands for Super Adventure Friends Co.)

I searched DuckDuckGo for “Traveller RPG talk podcast”.

Our podcast was the first thing to show up. As it should be. It is the single best answer to the fucking query.

DuckDuckGo search results -- they are good
DuckDuckGo, doing what a fucking search engine should do.

Then I searched Google. Our podcast was not even above the fold. The first thing that came up were videos on the Google-owned YouTube and links to threads from Reddit, who Google has a “deal” with.

Google's shitty crooked search results
Google’s shitty crooked search results. They are shit.

It’s not really a surprise that Google now sucks. I’m a reference librarian. I have known this for a long time. The thing is, it is getting worse and worse.

My new project for the remainder of the year, which I’ve been meaning to do and not gotten around to, is to gradually remove myself from using any Google-owned products, at least in my personal life. For the time being we still use Chrome at work. I deleted all my videos from YouTube earlier this year.

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AI Content Theft

When Midjourney came out a few years ago I used the 5 free “prompts” or whatever to create some weird looking aliens for my Traveller RPG game.

Then I found out it was scraping real artists sites without permission, stealing their art, and using that to “create” art.

I never used it again.

I’m not patting myself on the back. Just saying – it wasn’t a complex ethical decision.

LLMs scraping websites without permission is just stealing. Not complicated. It is just theft.

It’s no different than if I stole a truck from the guy down the street and my excuse was “I needed it.”

Everyone involved in this should be prosecuted, convicted, fined, and incarcerated.

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Blog More

A blogger I followed shared this post, Your words are wasted, this morning. It’s a 13-year old blog post about why you should own your own content, mostly likely on your own blog, with your own domain name and all that. Basically all the IndieWeb principles.

I know I go on about this topic a lot. I’m sure my friends are tired of hearing me talk about it, but this is my blog and so, well, here I go again.

Edit: I wrote a bunch of boring paragraphs under this line, which I just deleted, because good God they were just not needed.

OK, now that my edit is out of the way, here is what I have to say.

If you want a web presence, have a blog. If you don’t know how to do that, ask me. It’s really that simple. If you must use social media, use it sparingly. If you must use social media, consider using Mastodon, Pixelfed, and other Fediverse stuff and bringing your friends along. As soon as advertising, MAGAs or other kooks, or AI bots show up on a social media silo, stop participating.

That is all.

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Banning the TikToks…

This article from starbreaker.org came across my radar today. It expresses what I think about the TikTok ban pretty completely. Now it looks like Trumpistan may try turn it into some form of state media. How fitting.

I’ve never used TikTok. As soon as someone showed it to me and I saw videos of teenagers dancing I formed a negative opinion of it, because I can be a dick that way.

The  ability to create your own website is what democratizes the internet. The ability to run your own email list, using your own software democratizes it, just like owning your own data and creative output that you can move around and shield from AI thieves (as best you can) democratizes the web.

What would REALLY democratize it would be the ability to fully and completely OWN your own domain name, rather than renting it. But that’s how it works.

I’ve read opinions that having your own site should be easier. I don’t really believe this. It is already just so easy. It’s easier than it’s ever been. What is missing is the awareness in the general population that it’s possible. Awareness and desire. Not everyone wants to have a website. They just want to share stuff. The Fediverse answers that need quite well, but it requires a tiny amount of effort to understand. Tiny. Frankly the ability to text a group of friends and include an image or short video pretty much covers the sharing part as well.

But there is nothing like having your own domain name and website. Or even just a page. Hosted on space that YOU rent or own. Nice and portable. Make yours site such that if one host closes are begins to suck you can just move it. Easy.

Problem solved. You’re welcome, America.