GeneralInterest @ GeneralInterest @lemmy.world

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Joined

1 yr. ago

It seems though that Linus didn't make this decision for political reasons, but instead because he doesn't want to get in trouble with the US government. He indicated that he was advised by lawyers to do this:

I'm not going to go into the details that I - and other maintainers - were told by lawyers.

they’ve killed and continue to kill tens of thousands of civilians in the independent republics

Even if I assume the truth of that statement, do you not care about the deaths of Ukrainian civilians?

We couped Ukraine in 2014

My understanding is that Ukraine's parliament (Rada) removed Yanukovych from his position as president. That seems fair to me. Many countries, including the US, have legal processes for removing their leaders.

I would wager that every country has far-right elements, including Russia.

What Russia claims though is that the Ukrainian government is full of Nazis, which I don't think is true.

Certain speech is criminal like inciting violence.

Therefore I would say that there is no such thing as completely free speech, even in the US which has the First Amendment. There are always some restrictions on speech.

With the example of pro-suicide content, you could argue "making pro-suicide speech illegal would start a slippery slope". But on the other hand, if you have people committing suicide because they were encouraged to do so, then maybe it makes sense to make pro-suicide speech illegal. And it doesn't necessarily need to be a slippery slope. Other forms of speech don't have to be banned.

Maybe. I think it might be okay if the government bans those things though, because people would still have political freedom to voice whatever political view they like, as long as they're not promoting violence or harm to particular people in pursuit of political aims.

Perhaps it's not easy to decide where the line of legality should go though, which is why this topic is controversial.

it’s all good to call Twitter the public square, but that’s a lot harder to take seriously when the guy in charge of policing the square is heavily biased

I agree. A public town square is good but like you say, it should be neutral, and Xitter is not that.

On the censorship thing, maybe it is okay if an online messaging website bans certain content, like pro-suicide content, or pro-terrorism content, etc. You could call that censorship but you could also call it safety. I don't think anybody really believes in 100% free speech anyway, because if a person shouts "FIRE!" in a crowded theatre, when there is actually no fire, and it causes a stampede which kills people, should we not punish their speech because they're free to say it?

Freedom of political speech is important, but maybe there should be some fundamental rules about certain types of speech.

As Elon himself said in the early days of the Twitter takeover, “free speech does not mean free reach”.

I understood that to mean "I want to claim I'm a 'free speech absolutist' while actually only promoting things I agree with"

Businesses might pay big money for LLMs to do specific tasks. And if chip makers invest more in NPUs then maybe LLMs will become cheaper to train. But I am just speculating because I don't have any special knowledge of this area whatsoever.

Maybe it's like the dotcom bubble: there is genuinely useful tech that has recently emerged, but too many companies are trying to jump on the bandwagon.

LLMs do seem genuinely useful to me, but of course they have limitations.

I think reducing the visibility of some kinds of content can be good, especially for those under 18. E.g. when it comes to content around suicide, I think it is better if children/teenagers see "there is support for you, please speak to a charity for free on this phone number" instead of pro-suicide content.

I hate to sound so salty, but its mind boggling that they would fight this so vehemently, instead of just… filtering abusive content?

I guess it's just enshittification. Profits are their first priority.

Fuck Spez

You mean Amazon is bad to their workers?

Ah thanks those links do work. Some of that stuff is interesting, like this graph from the Cambridge link, with middle income people carrying the GOP:

Good PSA. Personally I'm not that worried because

1. I don't use Instagram
2. Firefox has an option to copy links without site tracking, which hopefully would work on Instagram links
3. I try to only write stuff online that wouldn't be massively embarrassing if anyone does happen to figure out who I am

Every one of those links gives me 404: not found... do they work for you? I am in the UK but that shouldn't be a problem because I can normally access stuff from Pew, NYT, and WaPo.

I might try uBlock Origin Lite, then if it doesn't work very well then maybe I'll just use Firefox

I guess Google are betting that only a small segment of power users will switch to Firefox, while the mass of ordinary people won't be bothered enough to switch.