How these new chatbots are like TV psychics. Long article, but worth it. TL;DR: it has nothing to do with intelligence, either in the computer or in front of it. It’s basic machine learning and cognitive biases found in every human.
I honestly find it a little refreshing when one of the bloggers I admire has a genuinely bad take; it means I still have my own opinions.
To wit: I don’t see why Meta can’t launch Threads in the EU except they insist on it being its own app.
Yes I signed up for an account on the sewing app. Mostly to
- get my name (though it turns out it’s just Instagram handles anyway so 🤷🏻♂️) and
- have another way to test federation on Smolblog 😇
Let's talk ownership
There’s a gentle tension underpinning sites for user-generated content.
User-generated content is kind of an archaic term now, I guess. I remember when it all started with Flickr, Digg, Delicious… (nostalgic sigh) Nowadays it’s “social media,” but the idea is still the same: websites whose purpose is to show things made by its users. Artwork on DeviantArt, photos on Instagram, blog posts on Tumblr, random thoughts on Twitter, et cetera.
Now, the user agreements very explicitly say that the sites do not own the content. That right, both legally and morally, remains with the actual author/artist. What the platform owns is the experience: who gets to see the content and under what circumstances. Sometimes users will chafe against this. Sometimes this is the value proposition; YouTube, for example, gives its creators a level of control over the advertisements and shares the resulting revenue. Patreon’s entire purpose is controlling access to content and providing a reliable experience for managing that control.
Users own the content, and platforms own the experience. As long as both parties know their roles in this dance, it can work beautifully. And when it doesn’t…
A content creator getting their own website is nothing new. (A lot of people—us?—in the indie web think it should happen more often, in fact.) It’s not for the faint of heart, but it’s not rocket science. I’d even say, at this point, it’s not even computer science; you can make a good website with several different tools now, none of which involve code.
But woe upon the platform that thinks it owns the content. The love of money is the root of all kinds of evils, and we’re seeing several of them right now.
So let’s talk about Twitter and Reddit.
At first glance, Twitter and Reddit’s decisions to charge for their API seems solidly in their wheelhouse. The API is part of the experience, right? It’s all about access, right?
Except look at the attitude expressed by Elon Musk and Steve Huffman (emphasis mine):
It costs a lot of money to run an app like Reddit. We support ours through ads. And what we can’t do is subsidize other people’s businesses to run a competitive app for free. [source]
Several hundred organizations (maybe more) were scraping Twitter data extremely aggressively… [source]
The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable… But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free. [source]
You will not… use or access the Licensed Materials to create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications. [source]
And this is just what I could find. Go back through the interviews with these companies, and you’ll see a particular attitude start to emerge: “This is our content.”
- It’s our content, so we can sell access to AI models.
- It’s our content, so we should block access to it.
- It’s our content, so why should app makers freeload?
- It’s our content, so why should app makers freeload?
- It’s our platform, so why should app makers freeload? (If the shoe fits…)
The answer, of course, is that it’s not their content.
To be clear: I don’t envy the level of scale Twitter has to operate at, and I appreciate the very difficult problems that brings.
But I have no sympathy when all of the infrastructure and people set up to deal with said problems were deemed unnecessary.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
(inhale)
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
As someone who’s followed them since 1992, I feel a particular thrill knowing Apple’s worth three trillion dollars now. I’d love to see them just… solve a problem. Housing, child poverty, something real and big.
Been isolating the data layer from the core domain model, largely because I know I’ll have to redo it post WordPress. But it’s starting to feel like there’s too many implicit assumptions.
So I’m just going to go ahead and use Laravel’s DB library. Worst case, I have to redo everything anyway.
No, I didn’t dependency-inject a microformats parser into the class just so I could call it $this->mf.
That was one of the reasons, yes, but not the only reason.
Ok, so ADD-brain resurrected the “Beef: it’s what’s for dinner” ads a month ago in my brain.
And then I just saw a new one during the baseball broadcast.
What.
Looks like Tumblr is selling domains now to the exclusion of external domains. I’m about 50/50 on whether this goes well or not.
OK, Internet, you have very rarely disappointed me. So now I ask:
Did anyone manage to save the Newsboys' Live From the Airdome concert from the year 2000? It was a live broadcast and on-demand for about a month after in Real Player.
Y’know, I was afraid I was going to miss the Twitter cross-posting, but three out of four likes on my latest post are spam.
Anyway, I’m @oddevan on micro.blog which will stop cross-posting in a month.
Is there a Mastodon server out there that people use for testing federation? Or do I just grab a docker image and spin one up?
Gotta say, thoughts about constant advertising aside, I love when it takes advantage of the medium. Case in point: Duracell sponsoring Williams Racing in Formula 1. 🏎️
If there’s one thing the internet has taught me, it’s that there’s always someone else. Knowing we aren’t alone in whatever thing is such a powerful feeling.
Anyway, happy Pride Month to all who celebrate.
If I had any doubts about making the Smolblog app a Progressive Web App, they’re gone now.
(via @cassidoo@notacult.social’s weekly newsletter)
I know this is the 1% of First World Problems… but I really don’t get recruiters that send solicitations to my work email. Like, y’all know my bosses could read that, right?
And we are officially at the stage of ruthlessly cutting anything that can be cut for a Minimally Viable Product.
Latest deferment is custom permalinks.
I’ve got time off in a week and a half and I want to be able to work on implementing ActivityPub then!
I really hope these plants turn out well. We just planted a lemon tree, a poblano, and a mint.
I also hope the Organic Fertilizer we got washes out. 💩
No, you’re writing a form builder because the thought of all that boilerplate is more daunting than writing a DSL and the components to go with it. 🫠
Bookmarking this older Mastodon blog post as an example of how an AGPL-licensed project can handle someone using the code in an undesirable way.
Pour one out.
First world problem here: my Jeni’s Pint Koozie kept slipping off my ice cream. Started to wonder if the elastic was finally giving out.
Finally realized the koozie is fine; Häagen-Dazs skimped out on their “pints” and made them 14oz instead of 16oz. 😡
Feels like I’m getting close to what I would call an MVP for Smolblog. Currently wiring up some projections and trying to event-source my way into making WordPress do what I want.
This is either madness or brilliance…