pdt 🛸 @pdt@mastodon.sdf.org

Meta et al. outsource content moderation to the lowest bidder. It's fairly straightforward for interested parties with sufficient means (e.g. oppressive governments) to manipulate and undermine the process, to promote fake news and suppress criticism or evidence of crime, even more so in languages other than English.

Where this predominantly concerns populations other than theirs, it's a convenient problem to ignore by Western democracies that nominally regulate and oversee these companies.

The bigger the 'town hall', the more alienating it is.

Due to minimal news coverage, you may have missed the wide-spread protests in Iran triggered by the death of a young woman in the custody of the 'morality police', and their brutal suppression that has left many civilians injured and dead, among them teenagers.

And due to draconian internet restrictions, you may not hear about it from those on the ground for long.

Afghanistan's shameful handover to the Taliban reminded me that humanity has no conscience. This reminds me it's also blind.

Mr Emmanuel Macron, international statesman. His motto: "we negotiate with (all) terrorists."

What's fake (made-up) ultimately falls apart.

Most economic activity, in monetary terms, is fake.

I do kind of fine when people don't try to alleviate my disaffection by serving me the kool-aid.

if democracy was real goverments wouldn't be making *you* do all the extra work to file taxes in order to pay them money

(note this is not an objection to taxes but to tax returns)

LOL

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/09/twitter-pranksters-derail-gpt-3-bot-with-newly-discovered-prompt-injection-hack/

*www in its 4th decade*

unsuspecting link-clicker: <click>

A. Regis Tration-Wall, your web journey companion:

HELLOOOOO STRANGER!!! LET'S BE FRIENDS!!!!!!

(or if you happen to be a poor sucker who we already signed up follow this tiny link)

See the bee you want to change.

Want the change you are to see.

Change the sea you want to be.

Take heed and beware, for if you dwelled upon this feed long enough, these are but a few of the slew of words of wisdom I might inflict on you!

The prehistoric notion of a tool as something that would reduce human effort and simplify the job of its users does not extend to enterprise software.

True to form, said users have been encouraged to submit bug reports to 'improve' the product and rectify the ludicrous state of affairs that has inevitably ensued.

But how does one 'improve' something that does more things wrong than right, and has many times more bugs than the number of possible combinations of its 'features'?

Just the volume of bug reports one would need to file would far exceed that of the most detailed product specification one might have written.

(2/2)

In the mysterious depths of a fabled corporation whose connection with this individual is the subject of wild speculation, a newfangled specimen of enterprise software has emerged that stands apart from its pitiful competition by flunking even the abysmal standards of (mal)function and (un)usability its tormented users have come to expect from the association of software with the term 'enterprise'.

(1/2)

you humans are very weird

(i came across a street fair)

I wonder if part of why enterprise software is so terrible—beyond the obv fact that it is a codification of a terrible thing, namely bureaucracy—is not that its users and developers are beneath the contempt of their masters, who are the ones buying and selling it.

The only sane way to engage with a bureaucracy is to override, short-circuit, or game it.

Bad decisions, poorly implemented!

I wonder why Big Tech hasn't found a way to monetise spam yet. It's not so fundamentally different from other forms of internet advertising after all, either in purpose or in being a nuisance most users would be happier, safer, and altogether better off without.