Would you want to be responsible for checking IDs over the internet? No sane company would want to be responsible for getting it wrong.

Also, would you be willing to send a scan of your drivers license to a porn website? Any website?

I have been writing to my county school board to ask them to abandon twitter. It is used by principals, coaches, and others in the county system all the time. I explain that the values of the school system do not align with the values demonstrated by the platform. So far I've heard crickets back. :-(

I'm a fan of his so I'd be double-delighted if he did an episode of LWT about Reddit. I'd be triple delighted if he worked in ActivityPub.

I've been chipping in for my mastodon server for over a year. The admin there posts the finances so we all know when it's time to kick in again, but if we went to a paid rather than donated set-up, then I'd be OK with that. If my admin decided that he needed to run ads that were like printed newspaper ads then I wouldn't mind so much. But ads that track me, ads that change size, ads that show up and block some or all of the screen, ads that play video and audio, pretend to be content etc are the ads I dislike and I would flee.

It doesn't have to be impeccable. It doesn't need corporations to buy ads. It just has to keep getting better and not die. Look at Linux. It never did overtake MacOS & Windows on desktops. But it keeps getting better and it didn't die and it took over server rooms. Look at Mastodon. It's nowhere near as popular as Twitter and maybe never will be, but it's 5 years old and is steadily growing. I like hanging out there. Oak trees start as acorns.

I don't care for Karma-farming, but I liked having some way to tell if someone was a real community member or a throw-away account. I liked that there were some subreddits that wouldn't let you post if you had low karma because it helped hold back the trolls.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrox
"Oreo was created in 1912 as an imitation of Hydrox."

Oh, I would TOTALLY buy some US Senators. You think I could afford both Sinema & Manchin?

I've been on Mastodon for little more than a year. People here have been generally polite and give each other the benefit of the doubt. I have yet to see a "flame war" as we used to call it on USENET. But Mastodon (and Kbin and Lemmy) instances will have to decide if they will federate with Meta's new platform. I'm pretty vehemently opposed, but my Mastodon admin seems to think we should wait and see. So here we have Meta, which hasn't joined the fediverse, has already begun fragmenting us. Is that our fault? Maybe. But I don't think we're the problem.

I can't stand searching for a product on Amazon anymore. If I really want to use Amazon, it's much more efficient to find the amazon link using duck duck go.

I'm sorry, but I CANNOT agree. Coffee smells MUCH BETTER than weed. In fact, I think weed smells terrible. It reminds me of skunks. I would much rather smell coffee.

I don't want to see ad-supported instances. If you like using an instance (pixelfed, mastodon, bookwyrm, kbin, lemmy etc.), chip in. Keep the fediverse free from ads.

Here's the first paragraph from Cory's post:

"Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die." Reddit is in step 4.

She's doing shows in Seattle and Detroit. Detroit is practically across the street from Canada. British Columbia is 2.5 hours from Seattle, which is the same time it took my wife and daughter to get to the Philadelphia show from the Washington, DC area. Get over it, Canadian MP.

Ehh, if Reddit is getting traffic from people going to see the trolling, then Reddit is still making money.

You made me chuckle.

Knot tying is a handy skill and easy to acquire. All you need is a short length of rope and watch a few videos. There may be thousands of knots you can learn, but most people should take the trouble to learn a few tried and true knots. Maybe you want to move a mattress on the roof of your car. Maybe you want to tie a pen to a clipboard. Maybe you want to tie back the legs when roasting a turkey. Maybe you need an impromptu collar & leash for a stray dog. Maybe you have to move a huge bundle of brush you've cut. Maybe you want to tie neat looking stopper knots on your hoodie's drawstring. Knowing how to tie a few different knots will give you options when you're trying to get stuff done.

You're completely right from a user's perspective. I think this post from Cory Doctorow helps explain what we're seeing. He doesn't talk about Reddit specifically, but it should be easy to infer the implications for Reddit from what he writes: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/

What? Haven't you heard about trickle-down economics? Are you saying trickle-down doesn't work?!?!

I also like Tusky for Mastodon because you can also use it to open up your Pixelfed account.