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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • This is a major problem for all democracies, and LLM driven troll accounts probably do exist. But this xitter post is a fake error message. It’s clearly a troll.

    Blocking fake accounts would help with the misinformation problem, but it’s a cat and mouse game. It could ultimately give additional credence to the trolls who slip through if the platform is assumed to be safe. The reality is that there will always be ways for fake accounts to avoid detection and to spoof account verification. Making it harder would help, but it’s not a comprehensive solution. Not to mention the fact that the platform itself has the power to manipulate public opinion, amplify their preferred narrative, etc.

    The solution I’ve always preferred is the mentality the 4chan community had when I was younger and frequented it. Basically, and I’m paraphrasing:

    Everyone here needs to grow up and understand that no post should ever be presumed to be true or legitimate. This is an anonymous forum. Assume that everything was written by a bot or a troll in the absence of proof that it wasn’t.

    I think people put too much trust in social media precisely because they assume that there’s a real person behind every post. They assume that a face and a few photos gives an account legitimacy, despite the fact that it’s trivial to copy photos from a random account (2015/16 pro-Trump Facebook style) or just generate all of the content from scratch with AI (to avoid duplicate detection).

    Trust itself is driver of misinformation. On social media, people should only fully trust posts made by people they know. That is the simplest and most comprehensive solution to the problem.












  • I don’t think anyone in this thread thinks it’s good for any government to be spying on everyone. But if we can cut off that flow of data to at least one government, great. Especially since that government is oppressive and authoritarian.

    Maybe one day the US government will be cut off from mass surveillance as well.

    In terms of reciprocity, the TikTok ban is long overdue. The US government’s most valuable mass surveillance tools – Google, WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, etc – aren’t allowed there.


  • Hah, I would assume they mean not beholden to a government that tracks its citizens with facial recognition, data mines its citizens’ personal communications to arrest them before they can even organize a protest, and is run by a dictator who literally made it illegal to call him Pooh Bear.

    The sphere that America exerts control over is not without its issues and is surely corrupt. But it is nowhere near as corrupt, oppressive, and lacking in individual freedom as China and the other contender for world domination. Unlike China, America has no social credit score enforced by an all-seeing mass surveillance mechanism where VPN’s and other attempts to hide from it are strictly illegal. And while many Americans might be racist toward Muslims, the American government does not dehumanize them and force them into labor camps.

    Your whataboutism is clearly just a Chinese troll, but I’ll leave this comment as a reminder to others reading that there is zero equivalence.


  • The best part is that this whole thing is about having the “opportunity” to purchase reddit stock at its IPO price. This user generated content farm wouldn’t dare give away equity for free to users responsible for the site having any past, present, or future value.

    I’m not a finance person, but the only gambling I’d do on this company is hope that Wall Street pumps the price post-IPO so I can short it.

    My understanding is that the value of each reddit user is priced roughly at $2. A Facebook user is priced at roughly $40. Their only options to maybe be profitable are more enshittification, more users, or both. Or, you know, not paying hundreds of millions of dollars to the execs of an RSS feed with voting and comments.