CoderKat @ CoderKat @lemm.ee

I write bugs and sometimes features! I'm also @CoderKat@kbin.social.

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2 yr. ago

I think the big deciding factor is how they're approaching the questions and what the questions are. Like, if someone is "just asking questions" where the questions just so happen to be a common bad faith talking point, yeah, I'm gonna assume they're also acting in bad faith.

Eg, leading questions are a particularly common example here. The amount of lean towards their already-decided viewpoint can vary. They might word their question to be convinced away from their viewpoint as the default ("why isn't the moon landing fake?"), or maybe they'll provide a statement that obviously gives more weight to their side ("the government is so untrustworthy, so how can we trust the moon landing was real?").

But often, they even do word the questions in a perfectly valid way, because they're not trying to get an answer. They're not gonna be convinced and they're trying to get an answer. What they want to do is make someone else mistake being stumped for "this person might be right". Eg, if someone asks you "is the moon landing real?" and you don't actually know how to prove that it's real, that can make you think that perhaps it wasn't real. After all, you can't explain how it is. But that's a fallacy. You not being able to explain it has nothing to do with whether or not it's real. Asking questions is cheap and easy. It takes no time investment compared to answering or understanding an answer. That makes it effective for planting seeds of doubt. And of course, people should think critically, but many folks aren't going to or aren't don't have the time. So they'll retain this low effort seed of doubt and that's it.

Plus of course, searching for these questions, especially leading ones, can get you to fall into conspiracy theory or alt right echo chambers, which will have the leading question included in multiple times and technically is a better match from a pure SEO point of view. Search engines do try and train themselves against the common leading questions, but they often have to do that explicitly. This is actually an area where search engines like DuckDuckGo do worse at. You're more likely to have a leading question in the top results because, again, it really is the most accurate match for that question. Should search engines direct you to the correct results or should they direct you to the results that are most accurate for what you searched for? Nobody really agrees and it'll be criticized either way (personally, I think that correctness is far more important because otherwise the search engines propagates misinformation).

Closely related is someone who's just a bit to the point with their responses. I don't mean the "I'm just saying" people; those people are assholes. I mean stuff like when someone skips the pleasantries and dives right into their question or comment. Instead of saying "hi", they'll dive right into saying "I have an issue with X". Or when they see something wrong when reviewing your work, they'll just outright say "this isn't right" without trying to sugarcoat it.

Personally, I like when people do that, particularly from people I know have good intentions. I don't want to waste time doing some "hi, how are you / I'm good, yourself?" sort of handshake when someone has a question for me. And reviews are a constant, daily thing in my job (software dev), so I don't want time wasting flowery language in review comments, nor do I want to waste time typing such up myself.

Feels like a tragedy of the commons sorta thing. Most people would use air tags responsibly, but a small number of people abuse them and thus kinda ruin them for everyone. We can't have nice things because people suck.

The part of the post that stood out to me was this quote:

“Please note that this period could be extended by up to 14 days if you are requested to provide additional information or documentation, or up to 30 days if you are invited to an interview,” the EU has warned on the official ETIAS website.

Even if most people can do it in hours (not sure how much most is -- 99.9%? 60%?), that still reads to me like it makes it a case where you can't count on it for last minute trips or if you forget to do it.

Just finished that! It was fun, but also really stressful, especially earlier on. The map was also super confusing at times.

Me too! I've already had to search for some very specific things so far. I've been trying to avoid a guide, but I'm not sure how much longer I can put it off. It's just very boring to have to head back to places if I get something time sensitive wrong. I'll probably stick with it, but it hasn't been keeping my interest as well as I hoped. It just feels like I'm repeating myself a lot and that's really boring.

What's also weird is that Twitter does in fact contain a lot of porn. When Tumblr banned porn, Twitter was one of the top choices that people were recommending.

Well, he's a complicated guy! He has layers!

Yeah. I love Google Maps and don't have any plans to stop using it, but it's always good for consumers to have competition. Monopolies lead to stagnation.

But income tax on paper is already higher for the $100k tax bracket than what the ultra rich pay. The ultra rich do everything in their power to not have an "income". Hence why there's this effort of taxing wealth instead.

But smart phones serve a purpose in schools and guns don't. Some school work can be done on phones. They're a reasonable thing to have between classes or when you've finished an in class assignment early. When I was in university, I frequently used my phone for further research of what the prof was talking about. I also used it for the calendar and reminders, which were so critical to me with ADHD fueled forgetfulness.

They're sometimes useful for accessibility. eg, I'm hearing impaired and my phone is the remote control for my cochlear implant. If live transcribe was a thing when I was a student, it would have been a major help. I'm sure plenty of other medical devices are using phones for that, too (I'm pretty sure glucose gauges for diabetics do this these days).

What purpose would a gun in school serve? It wouldn't even save lives like the American conservatives claim, cause it'd be way more common for students to kill each other over disagreements than to stop a school shooter.

I'm of the opinion that if something is distracting a student, they shouldn't use it in class (without a very good reason). Which means if a student brings their phone into class, they better make sure it won't distract them. If they play with it when they shouldn't be or it rings, by all means, punish them just like you would punish talking in class.

But stuff like using it right up until the teacher actually starts teaching? That's not a problem. Or if it rings for a legit emergency (do not disturb mode can allow this), that's totally fine. If some assignment actually benefits from a phone, great! If you finished an assignment early, go ahead and use it so long as you aren't disruptive.

Anyone else remember doodling, passing notes, or talking in class? I grew up with smartphones becoming popular and such things were extremely common both before and after smart phones. If anything, some of them were more common. Teachers would take away phones but they didn't do anything about doodling and couldn't do much against talking in class.

Yeah, I've made some posts trying to start discussions on a game I played or the likes. Posts that, to the extent of my knowledge, have literally never been made on Lemmy before (I searched -- though admittedly the search system makes Reddit's search look like Google). I actually did get a couple of replies to some and some were really great replies too. But it's barely a trickle compared to what I'd get from even a middling popularity post on Reddit. I want waaaay more discussion, especially for novel topics.

And there's so many niche posts that I can't make. I really enjoyed communities like AITA or Best of Legal Advice or the likes. What, should I make up scenarios? I'm happy to contribute to comments of posts in such communities, but they basically don't exist here.

Local communities are even worse. I've made several posts to my city's community and can't recall if I ever even got a reply to a single one. On Reddit that never happened.

The problem is that even if 90% of people don't need an SUV or truck, you can't tell if someone is in that 10% that does need it. You can't just look at an empty truck bed. Obviously nobody is gonna use their bed 100% of the time. They might have the truck for work purposes and also use it for personal use. They certainly shouldn't own multiple cars, cause that's even worse.

I 104% expect them to use Spez as a scapegoat at this point. Even if that wasn't their original intent, I fully expect that now they're letting the hate focus on him, then they'll fire him (don't worry, he'll still get a hefty severance package) in hopes that it will satisfy people. They want the anger many people have towards Reddit to get transferred to Spez.

After all, this is exactly how Spez ended up CEO. They pulled this with Ellen Pao.

I'm not sure how many people might have done that, but the overlays the person you're replying to mentions is not that. The overlays literally just show you what colour each pixel should be and a human must place the pixel. Those are used by tons of legit people. While I have no doubt that there is botting, large communities on Reddit can have millions of people. They only have to convince less than one percent of their most dedicated members to use an overlay and they'll be able to defend a sizable chunk of the canvas.

Yeah, the lack of many of my favorite niche communities makes me constantly wonder if I should just "suck it up" and go back to Reddit. I miss so many of them. If I wanna discuss a particular TV show or video game, often I just don't have much of an option here, cause the community specific to that TV show or game is very likely dead.

We also don't yet have many interesting text post subs that I liked to read on Reddit, like AITA, Best of Legal Advice, Best of Redditor Updates, Hobby Drama, etc.

Similarly, my local city sub is pretty dead (and never shows up on the front page cause the sorting algorithms suck). So I barely have any local interaction anymore! I met real life people on Reddit and it was great for getting advice from others who live in my city.

The sorting algorithm fixes can't come soon enough IMO. Small subs are dead because they simply can't show up on the front page with most of the sorting algorithms that Lemmy has. That limits how much you'll see in your feed and also makes Reddit a better product (due to all the niche subs it has that actually show up on the front page).

If your country was doing great, I could understand it. You'd be proud not of where you were born, but just how you and your fellow citizens have made your country great.

Problem is, America is very much not doing great.