As with most digital technology: yes, people could do roughly the same thing before. The primary difference is the ease with which it can be done, and that the result can be shared infinitely and instantly.

It is totally possible school kids drew their teachers in lingerie in the 1800s, but it would require a modicum of talent and it would be really difficult to distribute without a printing press.

It would have been punished then. But the audience would have been small.

Now, any kid with unfettered internet access can do it, and distribute the result to their entire community, or make it available to the entire world with some flavour of filesharing.

People trying to avoid automated duplicate detection. Some dupe detector bots use ocr on images with similar layout. Subtle changes to where text lands in the image, plus changes in the text itself, might be enough to fool automod tools and prevent a post from being taken down.

If you can, leave your phone at home

That's it! There's the answer!

I live in a rural community. Facebook has more or less replaced the web here.

Businesses post their hours, specials, and information on Facebook. Some of them don't have websites. The rec centre has a hard time keeping their website up to date, but the Facebook group is always accurate. Newspapers have closed down, so a Facebook group keeps people apprised of what's going on (it seems to be pretty accurate, since everyone in town is part of it, people involved in events chime in). Kids and adults sports groups advertise and tell their members what's going on via Facebook groups.

It's a shitty medium, since the Facebook algorithm mixes trash advertisements with town-specific events, but it seems to suffice for the town's needs.

I suspect it isn't just my town. The network effect is strong, so I suspect there are niche communities where Facebook is verging on ubiquitous.

Kids are great. Mine spend 5-10 minutes refusing to do a two minute task.

Kind of like how I spend three or four days avoiding a ten minute phone call.

The next court date has been set for February 21.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/23/us/luigi-mangione-arraignment-new-york/index.html

As much as I'd like to believe it's a conspiracy, news organizations make money from clicks. There isn't much for them to monetize between now and February 21, so they're focusing on more immediate stuff.

If they can get good photos and text from the next court date, Luigi will get more coverage.

Edit: there have been like five plane crashes, one US inauguration, and major US wildfires since his last court date.

This is satire. Looking at ChrisJBakke's Twitter feed, his posts are jokes. You may not like them. They may not be funny. But they're jokes.

This one echoes a Lemmy post from a few days back:

I think we'd have a much better time on Lemmy if we chilled out. OP posts a lot of decent content, there's no need to shoot the messenger.

Fey with benefits

The woman's scalds were almost enough to kill her. She spent weeks in hospital and needed skin grafts. To make it worse, McDonald's had received multiple complaints about the temperature of their coffee.

Considering the lawsuits, now seems like a good time.

Intrusive thoughts are terrifying. It's a testament to our collective willpower that we haven't horrifically murdered each other.

Also, I'm really glad the phrase "intrusive thoughts" came along. It made the whole thing a lot easier to talk about.

by the screenshots it looks like I've done plenty

Voyager is a copy of the Apollo UI. He's entirely right when he says he's already contributed significantly.

I don't blame him for being grumpy, but I also think it's legit to clone a decent UI. As Voyager matures the UIs will diverge.

Time to cut some storage costs!

Sometimes being annoying is doing something wrong. If a kid is deliberately being disruptive after repeatedly being told not to, then yeah, they're doing something wrong.

Amazon probably outsourcing to a PR that specializes in union busting.

1. But the PR firm that has little technical expertise - they just know they need bots to do some astroturfing.

2. So the PR firm outsources to an IT consulting firm.

3. But the IT consulting firm only bids on contracts, they don't do the actual work, so they find a subcontractor.

4. The subcontractor may hire subcontractors. Continue this step for however many iterations the value of the contract will allow.

5. Eventually the subcontractor hires a gig worker or an underpaid staffer to do the minimal amount of work possible.

6. The gig worker avoids as much effort as possible, because they're paid by volume rather than time.

At this point the requirements may or may not be fulfilled, but the admins of each org are satisfied, so they move on to the next contract without verifying the work.

Edit: I wrote this facetiously, but u/SpaceNoodle found a news article suggesting at least some of these accounts are legit, as backed up by a Belling Cat investigation.

Let's fucking go

The Facebook Files made – and provided evidence for – multiple allegations, including that Facebook was well aware of how toxic Instagram was for many teen girls; that Facebook has a "secret elite" list of people for whom Facebook's rules don't apply; that Facebook knew its revised algorithm was fueling rage; and that Facebook didn't do enough to stop anti-vax propaganda during Covid-19. Most damningly of all, The Facebook Files reported that all of these things were well known to senior executives, including Mark Zuckerberg.

It's clear which side Sorkin is taking. "I blame Facebook for January 6," he said last year. "Facebook has been, among other things, tuning its algorithm to promote the most divisive material possible. Because that is what will increase engagement ... There’s supposed to be a constant tension at Facebook between growth and integrity. There isn’t. It’s just growth."

Imagine being an adult raised without all-you-can-stomach porn and suddenly getting access to the Internet.

SO. MANY. BLISTERS.