William Pietri

Bay area writer, software developer, runner, and nerd wrangler. Creator of @sfships. Formerly on Twitter at https://twitter.com/williampietri

Public Key

npub13upkkmn8znwh048kvsl9cmhd3ucjk5wl0246xy5hmxp5wjlp5a4swrndnc

NIP-05 Address

williampietri_at_sfba.social@mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsg7qmtden3fhth6nmxg0judmkc7vft280h42arz2tanq68f0s6w6cvqds7n

Author Public Key

npub13upkkmn8znwh048kvsl9cmhd3ucjk5wl0246xy5hmxp5wjlp5a4swrndnc

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Last Notes

2024-07-31 17:12:06

https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/112/882/216/084/101/108/original/932e5f10b71add38.jpeg

2024-07-21 18:15:00

I've been staying out of the discussion over Biden's candidacy, and I probably still will. But I wanted to express my gratitude for him defeating Trump last time, and for a term that was more productive than many, me included, expected. His deep contrast as a person and a leader to Trump was a huge relief, and I'm thankful for it.

2024-07-19 12:03:17

I'm sure a lot of neurotypicals will soon be on the hunt for The Person at Crowdstrike who just broke the world. It's important to remember that things like this are systemic failures. Many individual mistakes are required for failures like this. The solution isn't to find and punish The Person; it's to make systemic changes so this can't happen again.
For more, read Sidney Dekker's incredibly insightful book, "The Field Guide to Understanding 'Human Error'": https://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Understanding-Human-Error-dp-1472439058/dp/1472439058/

2024-06-21 21:39:57

Well this is a kick in the teeth. I followed her on Twitter and loved her writing and her spirit. I just donated to help cover her care and hope others will too. https://www.npr.org/2024/06/21/nx-s1-5015030/linda-tirado-journalist-shot-police-2020-george-floyd-protests-hospice-care

2024-06-16 18:08:50

Another example of Western superiority. While China's top down political control results in a plague of research misconduct, we have an elaborate system of organizational and individual incentives that results in a plague of research misconduct.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01697-y

2024-05-22 17:34:50

This is a really good look at AI hype cycles with details on key factors and a number of historical examples: https://blog.glyph.im/2024/05/grand-unified-ai-hype.html

2024-05-12 20:21:44

A study comes along to confirm something obvious to everybody except tech execs: if you make working conditions worse, some will leave. And who's most able to leave? Your best employees. (gift link) https://wapo.st/4btMo8Z

2024-05-10 14:32:57

So I'm moving permanently across the country. I could happily keep my 415 phone number, or I could switch and get a local one. For people who have tried either path in the last few years, any thoughts?

2024-05-09 01:55:52

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@npub1y4p…vsfq Ah, that's great. And it got me rummaging, where I found this: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/clay-tablet-0903925c9bbd4f55abf00571196f98e4

2024-05-08 17:31:29

I am soon moving to Chicago, which is generally great, but it looks like my only ISP option is Comcast, which is not. Do people have tips on what plan to choose and tricks to wrangle what seems like an adversarial relationship? I'll be working from home doing programmer things.

2024-05-03 11:07:57

Private equity is a plague upon humanity. People who are only in it for the money make things worse for everybody else. https://www.statnews.com/2024/05/01/wheelchair-repair-delay-numotion-national-seating-mobility/

2024-04-28 15:08:11

This is such a great example of why corporations shouldn't ever have "privacy".
https://blockclubchicago.org/2024/04/26/city-of-chicago-amps-up-its-legal-battle-against-citys-worst-landowner/

2024-04-23 22:01:14

Wow, this is excellent! Non-competes are both anti-worker and anti-free-market. Getting rid of them is something people of many political stripes should agree on.
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/04/ftc-announces-rule-banning-noncompetes

2024-04-21 20:20:26

https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/112/311/050/254/909/049/original/9884e13cb4f8a0b5.jpg

2024-04-16 18:28:53

I'm very pleased to announce that a project I'm working on has just launched a proof of concept. We're tackling safety testing for large language models: https://mlcommons.org/2024/04/mlc-aisafety-v0-5-poc/ 🧵

2024-04-09 19:23:10

https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/112/242/890/368/343/736/original/64da68ddde90ea4a.png

2024-04-04 16:01:58

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@npub1ua7…rrg3 People were once afraid that computers would suck all the magic and mystery from the world, so good news?

2024-03-28 13:42:20

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@npub1uw8…88kr This is far from my world, but the error message strikes me as odd. Is this unusual for academics? I thought "many irons in the fire, and I'm avoiding half those irons right now" was the professorial norm.

2024-03-23 18:59:02

Bilingual people: have you seen a translation that's better than the original? Anything from a sign to a novel to a poem.

2024-02-28 16:57:40

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@npub1mdk…aptk See, this is the kind of thing where I want to be able to follow a post. Also: congrats! They're fun, aren't they?

2024-02-19 19:48:09

Does anybody understand 1960s conceptions of electricity? I'm working on a 1965 Teacher's Pet. Step 1 is what I'd call grounding it; I'm adding a 3-prong cord and grounding the exposed metal. But back then they didn't seem to distinguish between hot and neutral, and didn't have a ground at all, but had something else they called ground. I'm trying to figure out which side of this this should now be the hot side and which the neutral. If it even matters.
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/111/959/834/910/793/768/original/a21ed48fdec22d72.jpg
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/111/959/837/240/428/256/original/2eddce14fe334020.jpg
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2024-02-18 15:17:25

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@npub1lwu…6w4j And if anybody cared to, this could be easily solved: They only charge if you're using the subscription, otherwise it gets suspended until you do.
It seems like a really obvious regulation to me. And also a business practice that builds goodwill. But it's pretty rare!

2024-02-14 16:41:15

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@npub1ulm…hweg Is Truck Nutz branching out into goofy frankenstein popsicle molds?

2024-02-09 15:55:04

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@npub1lsl…9c2x Glad to hear it, but I think that pivot is too quick. I think it's an open question whether protocols can solve for systemic harms. Looking at the history of email, the web, and the cryptocurrency world, I'd say the track record is at best decidedly mixed.

2024-02-08 22:02:33

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@npub1zsx…zcfs You might find this handy:
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/111/898/116/154/414/366/original/aff4c527a2899fb1.jpeg

2024-02-08 16:52:29

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There are plenty of examples. Child porn is exhibit A, of course. But the same is true for scams; propaganda; promotion of hate along racial, gender, and religious lines; doxing; glorification of violence (especially hate-based violence); promoting targeted abuse; and disinformation. 2/

2024-02-08 16:51:11

I think people are missing something with Bluesky's "consumer choice" model of moderation. A lot of harmful content has harm beyond *you* seeing it. 1/

2024-02-08 01:20:34

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@npub1cxc…akj4 @npub1g8e…qdqf Wow, super exciting! I love following journalists, and didn't realize how many were already here. Thanks for doing the work!

2024-02-06 20:50:09

I have real trouble getting my head around the way we nearly eliminated flu season for a year and now we're right back to accepting tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths per year. Same with Covid, of course. How many other lives could we save with modest change?
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/111/886/506/944/585/957/original/81996585f67f012c.png

2024-02-01 22:16:22

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@npub1psd…9sr7 My sympathies! This is a pernicious problem in tech. For years I volunteered helping people learn methods where they would pay attention to actual people and actual needs. But as things like WeWork and FTX show, doing it right is often not only beside the point, but an obstacle to getting stupid rich. It's like expecting a prosperity gospel preacher to care about being a good person. @npub1enf…qnda

2024-01-31 02:30:50

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@npub129h…y2hs I count at least 5 waves of "stereoscopic 3D is a game changer" innovation going back to the 1850s. Every time so far it evaporates.
My theory is that it's a combination of the wow/novelty factor plus the idea that 3D has to be lots better. Always ignoring that it's cumbersome and that human brains don't need to use two eyes to reconstruct depth.
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/111/848/203/291/823/376/original/40278cabfbea7acb.mp4

2024-01-25 14:35:42

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@npub1psd…9sr7 As a fellow middle-aged cis white male, I have a theory. I've been wondering how the "ZOMG GAI is almost here" crowd sees things so differently than me. I suspect many of them, mostly cis white men, pay no attention to the actual humanity of the people around them, especially those they see as lesser/subordinate. So when they see ChatGPT as nearly human, that's because it's about as complex as their understanding of their wives, girlfriends, and employees.

2024-01-24 15:39:10

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@npub1ac8…9576 It's always a good day to quote MLK. https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html @StillIRise1963@mastodon.worldd
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/111/811/667/145/929/456/original/e4af69275c4a16bb.png

2024-01-22 20:47:56

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@npub1wkx…jlrc Yes! Some years back I gave a talk called, "Why You Should Do Support" advocating for every person in tech to take the occasional support shift. A key part was a call I did circa 1990 with someone who had gotten their first Mac and was struggling to figure out how to plug in the monitor. I had her describe the ports she could find, and one was "dinner plate" or "place setting". It blew mind mind; it was a place setting!
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/111/801/538/128/080/798/original/9e6ae90dce42a3fe.png
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/111/801/541/300/377/981/original/dde3bce8057ab26a.png
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2024-01-15 15:50:01

Happy MLK Day! Today I'll be rereading Letter From a Birmingham Jail. If you haven't read it recently, I recommend you join me. It's a gold mine of insights that are still fresh 60 years later. https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
Also, I give you my favorite MLK-related reply GIF. I haven't needed it since I quit Twitter, but perhaps you'll find a use for it.
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/111/760/725/413/081/599/original/a41929012fee59c3.mp4

2024-01-14 14:56:38

I think this, a discussion of the parallels between "AI" and "crypto", is a good take. I want to dig into the bit on "AI" being different because it has practical use.
"AI" is a marketing term. There's the stuff that was mainly called "ML" up until 2021 or so, which definitely has practical uses. E.g., if you're running a social network and need to help humans find the toxic stuff, ML can help.
But in the last few years there's a wave of hype mainly around the large language models, LLMs, and the large text-to-image models. So things like ChatGPT and DALL-E. It's really not clear to me those have much more practical use than crypto. Certainly not over their costs. 1/
https://sfba.social/@misc@mastodon.social/111754701923644674

2024-01-12 21:53:20

A very informative post with behind-the-scenes details on Substack's implosion. The wild thing to me is not how things ended up, but how long people were willing to overlook the many signs that Substack's "neutrality" was always a cover. https://katz.beehiiv.com/p/off-stack

2024-01-04 17:04:16

"The danger was not machines becoming more like humans but humans being treated like machines." -- Freeman Dyson

2024-01-03 18:14:28

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And just so people know where I'm coming from: I have been in the tech scene a long time. I was one of Twitter's first 500 users. I've co-founded a venture-backed startup. I worked at Twitter 2016-17 fighting abuse, and met Jack and other key players then. After that, I worked for 2 non-profits tracking large social media companies. And I've followed Musk's takeover of Twitter closely, both through the media and through my friends who worked there.
Musk's purchase of Twitter was a half-assed lark that he only completed because a court forced him to. His takeover was, even by the standards of corporate takeovers, wildly incompetent. He's spent the time since flailing around, never really understanding Twitter as a business. He is significantly damaging his other businesses and ruining his (undeserved) Henry-Ford-meets-Thomas-Edison public image.
This is not a mega-competent brain genius in action. It's somebody surrounded with yes men, slowly dissolving into a narcissistic puddle.

2024-01-03 18:03:37

There's this cult of billionaire competence that extends even to their critics. I regularly see people saying that Musk's destruction of Twitter must have been intentional, that he and his rich backers were trying to ruin it. Nope! Musk's just an out-of-control narcissist who's not half as bright as he thinks.

2023-11-25 19:15:40

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@npub1802…5ky5 I'm not defending her, I'm pointing out what looks to me like typical reply-guy white nonsense. As somebody or other recently wrote, "Racism is a white person problem".
It's possible to see a discussion of racism and not center yourself, bub. Consider trying it.

2023-11-25 18:57:26

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@npub1802…5ky5
What makes you think she isn't receptive to constructive comments? And why did you think it important to bring the focus back to the experience of white people, rather than the things she chose to talk about?

2023-10-24 19:29:49

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@npub1psd…9sr7 I'm sure you've tried many things, possibly including this. But just in case: My SAD got way better when I put in a bunch of automated lights. Lumens and color temperature vary gradually over the day in a cycle designed to mimic late spring. It took an unreasonable number of Hue bulbs to fool my brain, but it has been worth it.
The code here is ancient, but it might serve as inspiration: https://github.com/wpietri/sunrise

2023-10-04 14:49:24

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@npub1ulm…hweg I hate to give them any cover, as I think a lot of IP enforcement is similar to what Beckert called "war capitalism". But I do think that happens when it's widespread or diffuse. E.g., we expect regulators to go after those exploiting labor, even though in theory each worker could sue. Or we could look at the whole cryptocurrency swamp, which in theory could just be seen as one zillion contract failures, where individuals could sue to fix it, but which regulators are (belatedly) starting to clean up.

2023-10-03 16:07:43

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@npub1ulm…hweg Ooh, do you think we could get people talking about the SMC segment (small and medium-sized criminals)?

2023-09-24 15:17:34

I have somebody in my mentions literally playing "jerk's advocate" in response to a post helping people recognize abusive behavior. Just a thought, just putting it out there, just noodling: maybe jerks don't need any extra help in this particular era? 🙄🤪🙄

2023-09-23 14:41:15

If you see somebody described as "he's just like that" or "he can't help himself", ask if he's like that when he might be held accountable. E.g., in front of his boss, his mom, at church, when a video camera is recording.
Occasionally, he really can't help himself. But it usually turns out that he can, and that there's a pattern to when he can't. E.g., he's a jerk to juniors and peer women, but perfectly controlled in front of his male boss. That's when you know it's not illness, it's abuse.

2023-09-14 21:23:01

I thought about dropping my HBO subscription during the Max merger, but I thought I'd let it play out. I just cancelled it now, though, as it's both worse and more expensive, and because the arrogant, greedy CFO made it clear that "worse and more expensive" is the plan: https://gizmodo.com/warner-bros-cfo-thinks-streaming-prices-need-to-go-up-1850839302

2023-09-02 01:42:20

It amazes me how often technology requires empathy. Here I am trying to fix a wiring problem and I'm trying to get inside the heads of designers long dead. How did they think? What's the language they used to express their intent? What can I learn from them?
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/110/993/010/808/465/818/original/8be81dc2bf3f04d1.jpg

2023-08-30 21:30:15

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@npub1kk5…e0ds Thank you for saying so. I lost both my parents to brain tumors. There are plenty of ways to joke about McConnell, and plenty of non-jokey things to say too, that don't involve making fun of people for things out of their control.

2023-08-30 14:03:08

I see the EFF is wrongly defending KiwiFarms again. Sorry, but ISPs have freedom of association like everybody else. If they don't want to host racist abusers, they don't have to. And they shouldn't. Except for protected classes, ISPs not only can choose their customers, they should. That has always been the case; look at how spam and spammers are treated, for example.
If there is a separate problem here that the US has too few "Tier 1" ISPs such that Hurricaine Electric has excessive market power (which I think isn't the case), then that's an anti-trust problem, not a give-up-your-moral-standards problem.

2023-08-28 17:19:06

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@npub1psd…9sr7 Could you say a bit more about being tired of a character you created? I could imagine a bunch of different things going on, but it's so far outside of my experience I'm not sure I could even hazard a guess.

2023-08-23 21:17:47

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@npub189n…satx
Yup. I can't find it now, but I remember reading the story of a courtier who visited his exiled friend, who was in a rough hut preparing his meager dinner.
The courtier said, "If you would do as simple a thing as flatter the king, you wouldn't have to shell lentils." His friend responded, "If you would do as simple a thing as shell lentils, you wouldn't have to flatter the king."

2023-08-18 17:46:40

So ex-Twitter is removing blocking at Musk's order. He believes the feature "makes no sense." And I think I know why.
A consistent theme in Prof Manne's "Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny" is entitlement. Men feeling entitled to women's care and love and deference. Men acting entitled to feelings of competence and prominence and correctness, making successful, knowledgeable women a threat.
From a Trust and Safety perspective, that male entitlement is the number one reason blocking exists. 1/
https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/elon-musk-x-twitter-block-feature-delete-1235699759/amp/

2023-08-17 23:04:44

I'm a big fan of SorryWatch. I was rummaging through some archives when I came across an 1890 letter to the editor where the writer offered something not as an excuse, but just an explanation. I passed it along, and they really took it and ran!
https://sorrywatch.com/an-astronomically-good-apology/

2023-08-17 16:57:38

Weird Al continues to be the literal best.
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/110/906/012/960/954/386/original/05e0ba744eaea363.jpeg

2023-08-11 02:14:27

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@npub1yl3…323t
For me it's bad with large documents.
@npub1lyy…t3qm

2023-08-07 21:22:46

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@npub189n…satx
For sure. It is so rare these people are held to account. I would pay good money to see him answer questions where there were consequences attached to his answers.

2023-08-07 21:05:19

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@npub189n…satx
Yeah, I have to wonder what judge would be convinced by, "please let me keep being a lawyer for a few more years until we find out whether I'm going to jail for trying to overthrow the Constitution I swore to uphold."

2023-08-07 14:09:07

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@npub1hd2…zm0u
I've followe Kim for years because she's a sharp observer who speaks frankly, especially about race in the US. She gets a lot of reply-guy hostility from white people. I don't know if you meant to be a part of that pattern or not. But you're part of it.
If you don't like what people have to say, you can just not reply and not follow them. Take your own advice: if you hate something so much, stop talking about it. Because what looks shitty to me here is your behavior.

2023-08-04 23:20:46

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@npub1u27…3qfq Are you planning to go into the business? Or is this more general curiosity?

2023-08-04 22:34:07

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@npub1u27…3qfq
I've never tried it, but typically there are dummy/safe values for testing. Although I think a common approach for CSAM is just to feed all images to an API provider who gives you back a conclusion, in which case you test differently.

2023-08-04 22:12:35

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@npub1u27…3qfq I think the short answer is "hashing". See, e.g.:
https://www.missingkids.org/ourwork/ncmecdata
https://www.thorn.org/reporting-child-sexual-abuse-content-shared-hash/
https://www.thorn.org/blog/hashing-detect-child-sex-abuse-imagery/
https://safety.google/stories/hash-matching-to-help-ncmec/

2023-07-16 18:18:52

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@npub189n…satx If you'd like to be even more horrified, for a long time Russia's most popular soft drink machines used shared glasses: https://www.rbth.com/history/332037-ussr-vending-machines-virus

2023-07-07 15:13:12

Putting my prediction on the record: Twitter's reign as the "global town square" is over and there will not be another one in, say, the next 20 years.

2023-07-06 00:31:53

On the one hand, I don't expect much, as taking the Twitter CEO job was a negative intelligence test. But how can people who run a business not understand the fundamentals of a business?
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/110/664/319/815/331/168/original/b7fecf19c1064e3c.png

2023-06-30 15:26:47

Reading Kagan's dissent in the student loan case is a grim pleasure. "The majority does not over-expend itself in defending that action." ✊✊✊

2023-06-25 13:33:13

It's great to see journalists still holding Twitter to civilized norms like this:
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/110/605/106/729/376/575/original/6b2516800bb8e009.png

2023-06-19 17:24:39

As best I can tell, the main upside of federated social media is that instead of one giant Elon wrecking everything, you have smaller, more frequent Elons with more contained fuckery. E.g.: mstdn.social blocking all of mastodon.art. https://alaskan.social/@seachanger/110572015006710614

2023-06-12 04:17:21

One of the fascinating things to me about the HN discussion on the Reddit strike is the extent to which a community that's normally extremely pro-capital can suddenly see not only the problems with worker exploitation but the validity of collective action to fight against executive greed.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36283249

2023-06-06 17:19:02

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@npub16fw…pec4 I was delighted to see the article and rooting for you the whole way through. Have you written about your time there?

2023-05-03 18:19:50

A very interesting set of stats on startup funding. An 80% year-on-year drop, and peak-to-trough looks worse. https://carta.com/blog/state-of-private-markets-q1-2023/

2023-05-03 17:33:15

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@npub1zx7…dnyw
"Daddy, why are you crying?"

2023-05-03 16:43:55

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@npub13u0…0awz It's a good question. I see that the blocklist concept has been vigorously taken up: https://writer.oliphant.social/oliphant/the-oliphant-social-blocklist

2023-05-03 16:34:28

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Another big issue: What about inbound posts?
I see a ton of concerns. Which end is supposed to score? Sending, receiving, both? Can you ensure any inbound scoring is trustworthy? What about different standards on different instances? Who pays? How do you prevent hostile accounts from massively driving up the costs to run small nodes? How do you deal with bad actors starting new instances?

2023-05-03 16:03:29

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@npub1n2s…hkx2 Oh, interesting! I am not big on authority and also not much of a centrist, but I had never connected the two. Thanks for mentioning this.

2023-05-03 16:00:22

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@npub12md…c2vp Right? Such promise. I happened to find it streaming in a dark point in my life and it was just what I needed.

2023-05-03 15:53:25

David Gerard just pointed to some #bluesky code showing that they use a proprietary vendor, Hive, for ML of content analysis to deal with porn, spam, hate, and the like: https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/110303972798576262
I tried their demo out with some basics and quickly got false positives and false negatives. At first glance, I expect they are not suitable for an adversarial situation like a popular social network. Which is true of all the APIs like this I've looked at.
And then there's the cost. Want to use Hive for your own Bluesky instance? You'll have to talk to a salesperson, meaning that it's expensive. Just at a guess, paying for AI moderation could easily double the cost of running a node. And let's hope your users are ok with you giving all their posts, DMs included, to a third party.

2023-05-03 14:48:23

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@npub1q2r…mzyp That is still a lot of whisky! For me that would be a lifetime supply and more.

2023-05-03 14:36:18

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@npub1q2r…mzyp Holy moly! So we're talking 500+ bottles here?

2023-05-03 01:28:18

Ooh, this is fun! It's a library of camera/video techniques. https://eycndy.com/
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/110/302/152/124/785/076/original/10511fa52a5e8397.mp4

2023-05-03 00:04:12

Interesting article on #bluesky https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/02/bluesky-black-twitter-sex-workers-culture/
A few initial thoughts:
* It's easy to love shitposting from a selected group of elite users. As you scale, you rapidly slide down the quality scale.
* That can easily become a vicious cycle, where worsening content drives off the better posters and makes worse ones feel more comfortable. Endpoint: 4chan.
* I totally agree that "If Bluesky wants to be a genuine rival to Twitter, it needs to protect vulnerable communities".
* The fundamental question for anybody trying to rival Twitter is: can they afford to give a good user experience? Twitter's revenue is ~$0.01/tweet. That does not buy a lot of safety.

2023-05-02 23:56:53

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@npub13f7…jva0 For white people, yes. For others, I think it's usually enforcing the political contract, in that under white supremacy one of the privileges of white people is to always be addressed with respect.

2023-05-02 23:36:22

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@npub10uy…ghgl Well, fair point. I think they will react when forced to confront their existence or something they've said.
E.g., some of the recent discussion about Mastodon. When open racism is pointed out, they'll condemn, not defend. They'll be uncomfortable, upset. But it's not like they're going to do anything about the problem. And as I've experienced, plenty seem just as uncomfortable when the problem gets brought up from other angles.

2023-05-02 23:25:48

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@npub1jpm…mc52 Maybe it was from Ernest Borgnine?
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/110/301/671/903/045/601/original/1b13f4aa62ab5a45.png

2023-05-02 23:13:42

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Which makes me wonder: does MLK's "stumbling block [...] white moderate" [1] get upset at the open racists because of the racism? Or because of the openness?
In Mills's view, the Racial Contract involves both a political component and an epistemological one. The political one is about oppression. The epistemological one is about *not seeing* the oppression. A lot of the time, it seems to me that white moderates are much more concerned with enforcing the epistemological contract than overturning the oppressive political one.
[1] https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

2023-05-02 23:08:55

I've been rereading Mills's "The Racial Contract" and one of the wild things to me is that there is in some ways more agreement between the woke and the open racists than with oblivious whites.
In the racist abuse I recently got, I was called a traitor to the white race. They believe whites have a duty of oppression. That is exactly Mills's "contract between those categorized as white *over* the nonwhites". Anti-racists and open racists both agree on how foundational white supremacy is to our society. 1/2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Racial_Contract

2023-05-02 22:01:13

Is there some way I can block somebody without losing all the posts mentioning the jerk in question? There were some good comments in reply that I'd like to still be able to see.

2023-05-02 19:06:19

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@npub1cht…jn4z Totally. More and more I'm coming around to @npub1eys…6x02's view: "Why hit Reply when the Block button is right there?" https://www.jwz.org/blog/2022/01/on-blocking-and-the-coinsplaining-cryptobros/

2023-05-02 16:05:15

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@npub1447…sghm Incredible how quickly he turned mild questioning into "why do you hate freedom and the poor?"

2023-05-02 15:40:32

Huh. Looks like crime in San Francisco is out of control, with the DA and police doing nothing: https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/san-francisco-marriott-tips-18000567.php

2023-05-02 15:32:31

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@npub1cht…jn4z Yeah, it's wild out there. I have seen stuff from at least a half-dozen toxic-waste instances.

2023-05-02 01:50:01

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@npub1cfr…8g0l Stellar metaphor!

2023-05-02 01:26:50

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@npub1zdp…vqv8 You may have hit upon a solution to tech's notorious Dave problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_rule

2023-05-02 00:34:24

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@npub1h0d…qs5p
Have I given some indication that I am a novice when it comes to abuse? Because you rolling up like I'm ignorant about the topic is annoying.

2023-05-02 00:27:32

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@npub1h0d…qs5p I'm not sure which "them" you mean, but I'm pretty sure I don't.

2023-05-02 00:14:17

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@npub16nm…v74p Yeah, I was talking with a Brit whose was visually unremarkable in an American context. But Brits would regularly ask her where she was from. She'd name a British city and they'd say, no where are you *from*. Turns out what they were fishing for was that she had a Jewish grandmother. I was gobsmacked.

2023-05-01 23:55:15

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Oh, and nobody need worry about me. I'm fine! I have a very high tolerance for this stuff. I collected screenshots, took notes, and am using it to study the problem. It's all fuel for the fire.

2023-05-01 23:53:31

Having just received a day's worth of racist abuse for writing about white supremacy, I now have seen firsthand that Mastodon can in fact be worse than Twitter in this regard.
I used to run my mouth on Twitter a fair bit about controversial stuff, so I'm no stranger to abuse waves. But for the level of exposure I got, I saw way more abuse here than I've seen there.
I have some theories as to why, and I'll be looking into them. But I should be clear it's not the server I'm on! The admins are smart and sincere and were working to get rid of it. I appreciate their trying to keep things sane and safe.

2023-05-01 23:21:17

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@npub129c…hdz5 Oh wow, thanks for this! I had been explaining a lot of the civilian reaction to ChatGPT as akin to how cold reading works, with the sucker unwittingly doing most of the work for the psychic. I didn't realize it would apply to researchers, though!