I think after the bans of certain, negative communities on Reddit
fatpeoplehate, incels, thedonald
They would go out into other parts of the site and be spread their pessimism with unnecessary arguments. It made the site more of an echo chamber, less diverse, and less supportive of free speech, but it did make many places less tedious
I mean, whatever the problem with proprietary AWS, it seems like it would be the case with GCP, Azure, Cloudflare.
I don't really see the benefits of putting eggs in multiple baskets. If one basket is down (e.g. images) the site is practically down in many cases. Plus you have to deal with fragmented billing, etc.
I thought this paragraph was super weasely. He is specifically saying that they don't buy directly from internet advertising sources, but there are private intel firms[1] that act as middle-men. They offer an interface and tooling that is geared for national security purposes.
The wording of this comment specifically excludes a conclusion on private intel firms. Private Intel middle men would still evade application of the Carpenter decision, and it is obviously superior for the government to work with an agency like that do to human rights and what-not.
“What I wanted to see is if you could give me a yes or no answer to the question ‘Does the N.S.A. collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?’ ”
[. . .]
“Not wittingly,” Clapper replied. He started scratching his forehead and looked away from Wyden. “There are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect, but not wittingly.”
What's worse is that Clapper was using the NSA's definition of "Collect", which is what everyone else calls "Read and Analyze". What everyone else would call "Collection" the NSA calls something like "Interception".
Here's DNI Clapper in a 2013 interview, talking about that very question:
> First, as I said, I have great respect for Senator Wyden. I thought though in retrospect I was asked when are you going to start--stop beating your wife kind of question which is, meaning not answerable necessarily, by a simple yes or no. So I responded in what I thought was the most truthful or least most untruthful manner, by saying, “No.” And again, going back to my metaphor, what I was thinking of is looking at the Dewey Decimal numbers of those books in the metaphorical library. To me collection of U.S. Persons data would mean taking the books off the shelf, opening it up and reading it.
Again, according to DNI Clapper, wiretapping and recording the results isn't collection. It's only collection when someone pulls the information out of storage and reads it.
You can claim whatever you'd like. In the real world Clapper apologized for his response.
After telling Congress that the National Security Agency does not collect data on millions of Americans, National Intelligence Director James Clapper has issued an apology, telling Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein that his statement was "clearly erroneous."
And in the real world nearly every major telecommunications company in the US was granted (by Congress) retroactive, blanket immunity for the years and years and years they spent actively participating in the domestic wiretapping that the NSA was performing that was clearly prohibited by FISA.
> Section 215 has been reviewed and renewed by Congress twice since 2006. The Supreme Court has held that phone records are not considered private or privileged information for Fourth Amendment purposes because they are voluntarily provided to telecommunications carriers for billing purposes. As of July 31, 2013, the FISC had reauthorized the program 34 times under 14 different judges. More recently, however, two federal judges came down on opposite sides of the issue. Judge Richard K. Leon of the District of Columbia District Court ruled the 215 collection program illegal, while Judge William H. Pauley of the Southern District of New York upheld the legality of the programs.
Starting with "to my knowledge" gets him off the hook, then he names a very specific type of data and a very specific source, he doesn't describe what kind of "court authorized process", and he only says the unspecified pilot project has been inactive for "some time" (decades? years? days?)
It's fascinating to watch him learning in real time as he is experiments and bring his own experience to it. He has been a successful executive for a tech company before, Tesla is just a tech company that sells cars. Now social media
He came in shook it up and innovated. Facebook copied his subscription idea. Other social media companies are likely to follow. He has already changed the industry, and where it goes, he probably doesn't even know
Facebook copying his questionable subscription model is hardly evidence for "innovation". If anything it's the opposite -- it shows big corps just copy each other as a safety mechanism -- something we've already seen with the large rounds of lay-offs.
It’s an interesting turning point for social media. It’s not like Meta is doing any better and among smart people I know, no one is excited about social media and most have stopped using it in favor of smaller group communications
The anti-china sentiment is completely over the top. Especially in the last couple months.
It is disinformation to say "both sides", but it is in some extent true. The real way to stop disinformation is teach information literacy, but that would stop propaganda being effective for everyone.
I am waiting for someone to connect these technologies. ChatGPT choosing the words for a DeepFake that can search the internet for examples of the voices of loved ones. Maybe then the FTC will start to regulate spam callers
There are many genuinely insane conspiracy theories, but there are many that start as a seed then are investigated and found to be true.
NSA's prism project was regarded as complete bullshit until it wasn't. US Gov adding poison to alcohol not meant for drinking. MKUltra was confirmed. Epstein's island. Surveillance of John Lennon and Hemmingway. Climate change. Tobacco causes cancer. Vietnam war was started by a false flag.
To completely disregard that powerful people conspire to hide the truth is also disregarding meaningful opportunities to make the world a better place. Looking further back in history, it is easy to find many examples of people doing horrible things for money and power.
Investigative journalism is alive and well, though funding sources for it have been changing now that there are less traditional newspapers who can afford to invest heavily in it.
https://www.propublica.org/ is one great example of the non-profit model applied successfully to investigative reporting.
This disregards the business model behind the companies. There are no transactions for wikipedia or hacker news.
Both AirBnB and Reddit are incentived to collect a massive amount of data on their users and to maximize the experience in any way possible. They need the data to understand user behavior and feed it back into the recommendation algorithms. For both hospitality and social media, users look for images/video content since it is much more powerful than text for most people. All of their competitors have equally bad performance for similar reasons, so they don't lose a competitive edge.
Hacker news specifically goes for a retro look with an interface that has not changed significantly in decades. Wikipedia simply doesn't have the money or engineering capacity to support a more robust platform like airbnb or reddit.
fatpeoplehate, incels, thedonald
They would go out into other parts of the site and be spread their pessimism with unnecessary arguments. It made the site more of an echo chamber, less diverse, and less supportive of free speech, but it did make many places less tedious