Social Media is Dead, Long Live Social Media
Posted inPolitics and News

Social Media is Dead, Long Live Social Media

And other Hyperbolic click baity headlines. Two articles today. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/mastodon-becomes-nonprofit-to-make-sure-its-never-ruined-by-billionaire-ceo/ And https://www.heise.de/en/news/Unprecedented-growth-Facebook-blocks-links-to-Instagram-alternative-Pixelfed-10237928.html Basically, Mastodon, the Federated Open Source client for microblogging is shifting itself to be a not for profit company. John Mastodon os no longer in control. Or, he won't be. These things apparently take a few months to do. Tangentially related, its picture centric counterpart Pixelfed, has experienced unprecedented growth. I saw one post where a Pixelfed instance was no longer allowing Instagram importing and Facebook is apparently blocking links to Pixelfed. Both of these moves are very good for the internet as a whole, but they also…
The Dead Internet Reality
Posted inPolitics and News

The Dead Internet Reality

Facebook and Instagram introduce AI bot ‘user’ accounts Hey Facebook, you ok there? Meta plans to roll out generative AI (genAI) characters on Facebook and Instagram this year in an effort to boost user engagement. Also, they apparently also deleted these accounts after the backlash, with some excuse about it being a "test product" and that it was run by humans on the backend. You know it will come back though. These companies have wasted too much time and money on this AI garbage to turn back now. But one, I don't know why they need to do this, these…
Vote By Mail Should Be Standard
Posted inPolitics and News

Vote By Mail Should Be Standard

Something I feel like I take for granted a bit is just how good my state handles everything election wise. And it's politics in general, for the most part. I mean, like everywhere it's full of nuts in the rural areas, but overall, it's traditionally just been a "safe" state. One thing that I love that is newer is vote by mail. This started back in 2020 because of COVID of course. I mean, maybe it was an option before, but it was made extremely easy in the 2020 election. Previously, like many others, I would go down to my…
AI Music and the Dead Internet Theory
Posted inPolitics and News

AI Music and the Dead Internet Theory

A man was arrested for creating AI music and using bots to stream it, netting 10 million dollars from Spotify. https://www.forbes.com/sites/lesliekatz/2024/09/08/man-charged-with-10-million-streaming-scam-using-ai-generated-songs A few things to note here, and some thoughts on it in general. He was doing this for a while, since 2017 according to the article, so it wasn't like he made it in a month. Apparently, he was a music maker, he just wasn't getting anywhere with his produced music. As he has been doing it since 2017, this predates even ChatGPT by about 5 years. He was not using the current crop of "AI" tools. My guess,…
Thoughts on Twitter, Musk, and Alternatives…
Posted inPolitics and News

Thoughts on Twitter, Musk, and Alternatives…

I have really really tried to mostly avoid discussing Twitter and Musk and everything that has happened over the past, year and a half to two years there. I do occasionally share news in the link blog posts, but even there, I mostly just avoid it. I am pretty outspoken about my dislike of Musk and Twitter on other forums but not on my own forums. Watching this death spiral is really entertaining though. And it is a death spiral. It may not actually result in the death of Twitter, god knows we won't get that lucky, but it's just…