AnonStoleMyPants @ AnonStoleMyPants @sopuli.xyz

Posts

4

Comments

334

Joined

2 yr. ago

I wonder why jerboa isn't showing this pic.

It's open source?

Oh okay yeah that makes sense.

Wait what does dns have to do with censoring? I though censoring would come from your internet provider and changing dns provider would not actually circumvent anything because the connection is still going through them. Am I completely mistaken?

I've had the cheapest Hetzner server for a couple of years. Zero complaints, it's like 3e/month or something.

What? You can subscribe and post to all of them from any instance just fine.

Ooh that's a neat way to work around this.

I feel like this is a big thing that Lemmy needs quite soon. Lemmy system makes things more fragmented than in reddit for instance, so it would be great to combat this a bit. Sooner rather than later.

Something like when you go to a community there would be a checkmark that would also include posts from a list of communities curated by the mods of the community (or creator). Then when subscribing you would have this list of communities with checkmarks next to them to and being asked "want to sub to these communities as well?" and the user can un-tick some if they want to. Then later they can add their own communities to it should they choose to.

I've always felt like data gathering is kind of like lobbying. It is not directed toward you in person. It is used to shift the way people think and their opinions on topics.

A company / non-profit / movement / whatever lobbying towards a goal might be buying lunches or making seminars and talking about their point with selected group of people who have a say in a topic. Or they might not but they are in the vicinity of the topic or perhaps they are a group that a the company feels like they do not know what the fuck they are talking about and that needs to change.

These are not directed toward you but to a group of people whom you most likely have nothing to do with. This group has power to change something. Whether for good or for bad, that depends who doing the lobbying and for what purpose and how you think about the topic.

Data gathering is similar. This data that is being gathered is not identifiable to you (or it can be but this is not what I am talking about) but it gets clumped together with a buuuuunch of people. This bunch might be people from country x or Christians or people who like Mc Donald's or who are against gun-rights or pro abortion or people whom think that companies should not be pushing climate change responsibility to the consumer. This clump of people are the same bunch that the lobbyists are targeting. But they do not have direct power over a subject, in general. Point being that even if most of the people have no power over a topic, some of them might (they might hold power oma person company deciding whether to do more against climate change). And even if they do not, they will converse about the topic and this will shift the general consensus around a topic.

And this bunch of people can be very accurately targeted. People in their 20-30s, who graduated (or will soon) from a university that are most likely to go work in high-tech companies in or in the government who have people around them (family, friends) that are against gun-rights but still own guns and do hunting? Ezpz. Or perhaps own a car and drive a lot and have relatives far enough that car is a necessity but have shifted their thinking being more against cars? Np.

The problem is that this does not easily be used against you in particular. But it can be used against a group of people that you are a part of. It is used to shift the way we think as a community. It is used to push ads and news articles (or just the topics of articles because glancing it also works) to you, comments in twitter, posts in Facebook, and change the search results that you might see. Kind of like ads as well; ads work really well even though lots (most?) people would say that ads don't make them buy a product and only annoy them. Advertisers aren't dumb, they know exactly what people think and how they function, and ads work.

And again to reiterate, it has nothing to do with you. You are a blip. But you are a part of a larger community and in order to shift that community toward something all of its little bits and pieces need to be moved toward that target. Not all of them need to move toward that target. Just enough.

This got a bit rambly I think but anyhooo it's kinda how I see it.

• New bed for me and fiancée. Locally made and great quality.
• My first coffee grinder. Got me into coffee and it has been amazing.
• Latest pc upgrade was great, getting so much more out of it now.
• e-reader (kobo) though I still read often from phone screen.
• Our two cats. Cost basically nothing because both are rescue cats but they give so much.
• First batch of liquid fertilisers and a bucket got me into hydroponics. So much fun to grow stuff!

Next big thing is probably going to be 3D printer. I know I'll love it (been doing some at work) but haven't pulled the plug yet.

God dammit I guess I'll make an exception for /r/pics.

Dope. Redeemed!

No "total karma" for accounts.

Thanks for the post! Been thinking of spinning my own instance as well because my Hetzner server doesn't get used that much. Though then I would have to actually make sure it stays up and that I won't just dip out one day lol.

Afaik there has been talk of making a "server migration" procedure for an account. So if an instance is getting the axe in a month, everyone has time to migrate their stuff to another instance. Though this is not the case as of now.