Buttons
@Buttons@programming.dev
- Comment on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sues Meta, citing chatbot’s reply as evidence of shadowban 1 day ago:
I’m okay with algorithms not recommending certain posts. I just don’t like shadowbans because the platform is lying to the user, the user interface is essentially telling the user “your post is available for viewing” when it really isn’t.
- Comment on Images leak of Valve's next game, and it's an Overwatch-style hero shooter 1 day ago:
Speaking of Valve games, why did I ever stop playing Left 4 Dead? I need to play that again.
- Comment on Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone Can’t Let Go Of Stardew Valley 2 days ago:
I don’t appreciate being called out like that!
- Comment on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sues Meta, citing chatbot’s reply as evidence of shadowban 2 days ago:
Yet another tool that uses “freedom of speech” incorrectly
Often freedom of speech is a moral ideal, a moral aspiration, and dismissing it on legal grounds is missing the point.
If I say “people should have a right to healthcare”, and you respond “people do not have a legal right to healthcare”, you are correct, but you have missed the point. If I say people should have freedom of speech and you respond that the first amendment doesn’t apply to Facebook, you are right, but have again missed the point.
In general, when people advocate for any change, they can be countered with “well, that law doesn’t require that”. Yes, society currently works the way the law says it should. But what we’re talking about is how society should work and how the law should change.
- Comment on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sues Meta, citing chatbot’s reply as evidence of shadowban 2 days ago:
A problem is that social media websites are simultaneously open platforms with Section 230 protections, and also publishers who have free speech rights. Those are contradictory, so which is it?
Perhaps @rottingleaf was speaking morally rather than legally. For example, I might say “I believe everyone in America should have access to healthcare”; if you respond “no, there is no right to healthcare” you would be right, but you missed my point. I was expressing an moral aspiration.
I think shadowbans are a bad mix of censorship and hard to detect. Morally, I believe they should be illegal. If a company wants to ban someone, they can be up front about someone and ban them; make it clear what you are doing. To implement this legally, we could alter Section 230 protections so that they don’t apply to companies performing shadowbans.
- Comment on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sues Meta, citing chatbot’s reply as evidence of shadowban 2 days ago:
Yes, because Americans would never consider electing a President with health issues.
- Comment on Marvels Rivals requires creators to sign a contract that removes your right to give a negative review to access the playtest 1 week ago:
This is so stupid. Isn’t this a free-to-play game? With one-time-purchase games you can try to fool people, then take your money and leave while people complain about the game behind you.
But this is a free-to-play game, they intend to make money by gradual ongoing revenue from in-game purchases, etc. You can’t fool people who are actively playing the game.
The contract hurts their image, and prevents them from receiving critical feedback.
- Comment on Marvels Rivals requires creators to sign a contract that removes your right to give a negative review to access the playtest 1 week ago:
“Good game, but the company behind it is shit and required me to sign this contract. <Insert contract clause>. Remember this whenever your reading the honest reviews about how good the game is.”
- Comment on US to impose tariffs on Chinese EVs next week 1 week ago:
US auto makers were like “we love the free market”, then people bought cheaper cars from China and they said “wait, not that free!”
They want to be the one to buy the $10,000 car from China, and then sell it to us for $50,000.
- Comment on Dell responds to return-to-office resistance with VPN, badge tracking, and color-coding of employees 1 week ago:
You can tell how important working from the office is by the fact that they can’t tell whether or not people are working from the office.
Maybe people need to start talking about unionizing while in the office.
- Comment on TikTok sues the US government over ban 1 week ago:
The government certainly does have the right to protect citizens and make whatever laws are necessary. In this case, the government can do so by amending the constitution. Until then, the 1st Amendment applies to all citizens, non-citizens, and business entities operating in the United States.
- Comment on Is Boeing in big trouble? World's largest aerospace firm faces 10 more whistleblowers after sudden death of two 2 weeks ago:
Criticizing the Israel government is okay (until our government outlaws it at least). Suggesting the people of Israel are some special kind of corrupt is not okay. Our corruption is our own.
- Comment on China unveils video of its moon base plans, which weirdly includes a NASA space shuttle 2 weeks ago:
Not always. As John Carmack said:
The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying.
Many people have created things entirely from their own mind, and then find that they’re violating IP law.
- Comment on China unveils video of its moon base plans, which weirdly includes a NASA space shuttle 2 weeks ago:
And blackjack?
- Comment on China unveils video of its moon base plans, which weirdly includes a NASA space shuttle 2 weeks ago:
IP law is all about telling people what they can’t create.
- Comment on 30% of Children Ages 5-7 Are on TikTok 2 weeks ago:
Yeah, parents are getting ruined by social media algorithms too.
Our government seems to be moving towards an “we only care about the children, but everyone, including adults, upload your government papers” approach.
Y’all got any of those protections for adults? I remember reading regulations that companies couldn’t show children advertisements. Can I have some of that regulation too?
I just can’t stop being cynical that there is little focus on homeless or underpaid adults, or other adult issues, but the one problem we’re focused on just so happens to include everyone giving up anonymity on the Internet.
We do need to help kids with social media, but there’s a lot of other challenges they will soon face as adults that were ignoring.
- Comment on For 'Cheap' Labour, Google Fires Its Entire Python Team: Report 2 weeks ago:
Birds aren’t real according to sources that make claims that birds aren’t real.
- Comment on 30% of Children Ages 5-7 Are on TikTok 2 weeks ago:
Karma.
The young treat the old however they do. But then the young grow old and get treated the same.
- Comment on Generative AI could soon decimate the call center industry, says CEO 3 weeks ago:
It’s been a couple decades since I worked in a call center (tech support).
Are they still dominated by shitty ticketing systems that employees are expected to fill out while being on the call? I don’t know if that was just an oddity of the call center I worked for or not. If I didn’t fill out a ticket correctly we wouldn’t get paid for the tech support. There were like 400 fields to fill out in this and you had to fill out about 15 of them just right.
Honestly, language models would do better filling out those tickets than they would handling the call. If an AI can’t fill out the ticket, how can it solve an actual problem? It would sure make life for the call center employees better if all they had to do was talk instead of managing a bunch of tickets and paperwork using shitty internal apps.
- Comment on Are you prepared for the ramifications of windows 10 EoL? 3 weeks ago:
My Grandma uses Arch by the way
- Comment on ByteDance won't sell TikTok, would rather pull it from the US 3 weeks ago:
It lists the foreign adversaries, they aren’t just made up on a whim. Iran, N. Korea, China, Russia.
Where is WhatsApp based?
- Comment on YouTube Tests Showing Ads When You Pause a Video, Calls it ''Pause Ads'' 3 weeks ago:
A neat programming project would be to migrate YouTube videos to PeerTube for content creators. If a YouTuber decides to put their videos on PeerTube as well, it should be as easy as possible.
- Comment on ByteDance prefers TikTok shutdown in US if legal options fail, sources say 3 weeks ago:
You’ve made the most substantive comments in this post. Especially quoting the law and this information about Facebook.
For context, Facebook’s revenue in 2019 was 70 billions dollars. So a 5 billion dollar fine isn’t nothing. Everyone can judge these bans and fines for themselves and judge whether there’s a double standard though.
You seem upset because I said TikTok stores their data in Oracle, but that’s what they said in 2022. www.cnn.com/2022/06/17/tech/…/index.html But, as you say, it appears in 2018 they were storing their data in China, and presumably that continued up until mid-2022.
I’m not a shill, but I am a cynic who believes the government is acting on behalf of their corporate friends (US media companies) rather than on general principles. I have no love for China. I wanted regulation that applied equally to all US companies. If you don’t want to talk to me, fine, I’ll discuss my opinion with others; even so, you’ve shared a lot of important and concrete information here, so thanks again.
- Comment on ByteDance prefers TikTok shutdown in US if legal options fail, sources say 3 weeks ago:
They could even own a President. Unheard of! /s
- Comment on ByteDance prefers TikTok shutdown in US if legal options fail, sources say 3 weeks ago:
I’ve also heard the data is physically stored and hosted by Oracle. So maybe China just copies it? The primary copy is in the US currently. Which doesn’t really mean much.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Meta data ended up in China too. But Congress isn’t targeting them.
- Comment on ByteDance prefers TikTok shutdown in US if legal options fail, sources say 3 weeks ago:
I see. You’re right about the text of the law. Thanks for taking the time to post that.
I would say it violates the 1st Amendment then. US Citizens is have a right to say what they want, which includes saying what China wants if that is what the person wants.
The courts will have to decide.
- Comment on ByteDance prefers TikTok shutdown in US if legal options fail, sources say 3 weeks ago:
They can’t actually ban TikTok by name, it’s unconstitutional to make laws targeted at individuals.
The current law actually says “no company can operate in the US with over 20% owned by China, Iran, N. Korea, or Russia”, or something like that.
There’s a lot of people in the US and at least of few of them would be willing to run TikTok the same way, same algorithms, same content, and sell the users data on shadowy data markets (which China can surely get their hands on), etc. I’m repeating myself now.
Again, my point is there are a lot of people in the US and surely some of them can form a company willing to do what China wants, and isn’t that their right by our laws and morals of free speech? I know if things get heated enough laws and morals will be ignored (see Japanese internment camps).
And my even broader point is that this move against TikTok has ulterior motives. We should have created regulations that apply to all companies instead of targeting TikTok specifically (which we effectively did, even if not technically).
- Comment on ByteDance prefers TikTok shutdown in US if legal options fail, sources say 3 weeks ago:
If ByteDance is a normal company they will seek profits and sell for as much as they can.
But if TikTok is a Chinese psyop, they’ll just use any of the many legal tricks we allow to change the “owner” while China still retains control. Companies do this all the time, look at shell companies and such. It’s super easy for China to mask the true owner if they decide to.
This is why we should make broadly applicable regulations instead of picking on one specific company.
- Comment on TikTok's CEO is feeling the pressure and users are freaking out 3 weeks ago:
It wont work either, there’s so many legal tricks that can change the owner of a company without actually changing who controls the company.
“TikTok was evil and controlled by China, so we banned it specifically. Oh look, here’s a total new website called TokTik owned by a US Citizen named Mr. ILoveChina who build a TikTok replacement in 15 minutes using foreign consultants.”
- Comment on ByteDance prefers TikTok shutdown in US if legal options fail, sources say 3 weeks ago:
Why don’t they just sell TikTok to a US Citizen who happens to believe TikTok should remain the same.
TikTok would remain exactly the same, with the exact same algorithms, but it would then be the free speech of a US Citizen so everyone would be happy. Maybe TikTok couldn’t send the data directly to China anymore, but they could certainly sell personal data on the shadowy data markets, just like every other US owned tech company does.
In short, why can’t China simply find a US Citizen or two to do their bidding?