I suggest watching the video, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QkC1aK7jfLo but the article has an OK summary.
Also a Mastodon shout-out in the video.
I find the disagreement between Cohn and Stewart towards the end to be fascinating. I find it hard to agree or disagree with either. Cohn is looking out for places like the Fediverse - she knows that if the platforms are subjected to regulation that is impossible to live up to for small actors, this will only serve the capitalists. In the US the law would for sure end up serving this purpose because it would be designed by the billionaires themselves, and they would design them in a way that monopolizes the internet even more as they discuss earlier on.
On the other hand, Stewarts is also right. An Instagram feed is not free speech, it’s brain rot and propaganda and ruins society and lives. It needs to be regulated. Just letting then go on as they are while promoting alternatives misses the mark as to the threat posed by these platforms. Cohn seems to have a blind spot here.
I think the EU has reached a reasonable compromise. They regulate very large online platforms - platforms with more than 45 million users in the EU - separately from smaller platforms. So your obligations increase with your number of users. Furthermore, EU regulation has exceptions for open source not-for-profit development, to avoid regulation aimed at big tech from hurting free software.
Interesting enough I keep seeing people on the Fediverse attacking the Digital Services Act as though it’s gonna mean the end of the Fediverse, even though the Commission is actively posting about it on their own Mastodon instance and the EU is actively supporting the development of the Fediverse through NLnet. It seems to me that even in these spaces people fall for big tech propaganda.
Stewart errs on the side of intolerant liberal belief. He seems to things certain things should be banned from existence if he/liberals finds them offensive. He is also palpable ignorant about certain issues and biased toward mainstream definitions of things, than taking a more academic and broad view. He doesn’t really acknowledge the problems or contractions in many liberal beliefs, the way someone like Maher makes a point of doing. He is not a social libertarian, and Cohn was definitely more of one.
I love how Jon thinks reddit is now good. way to miss the mark there man.
I had a lot of hopes for Jon, and he’s kind of letting me down here. Not the guy we need, he lacks the killer instinct we need. To take the nomination from the dems establishment and challenge the r’s that is. He trusts the establishment too much.
He could win though, if he tried.
he’s a comedian. not a politician.
good luck, this is like trying to convince a heroin addict to quit because it’s bad for them…
social media algorithms are too good, they are too enticing. They have turned distraction into a multi-trillion dollar industry, and they are impacting every single one of our lives whether we are even on the platform or not
Problem is discipline. Reach for a book instead of doom scrolling. Get something done on the house instead of reading X shitposts. The way most people use phones is a sick addiction that needs treatment, and nobody intervenes. I mean people can’t look in front of their 2 ton steel cage while they hum down the road at 80mph without checking if some random twat added to their snap story lol.
I do those things… and social media/phone users tell me I’m an asshole for not being addicted to my phone.
It’s socially isolating for a lot of people if they aren’t doing what everyone else is doing and aren’t following social media trends that most people are freaking out about.
I’ve had to socially isolate myself a lot more the last few years because it’s so intensely pervasive. Like I meet people, they ask me what my social media handle is, and they get ANGRY when I say I don’t use it. And even ANGRIER when they ask me what I spend all my time doing and I say I read paper books, watch films from the library, etc. and they tell me that makes me anti social and a pretentious douchebag.
That’s rough man. Wise woman once told me tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are, probably just as well to loose some of that crowd. Probably the same folk that before phones would be regulars at the same bar 7 days a week, and only befriended bar mates.
Yeah, they tend to be heavy drinkers and can’t socialize without alcohol. They just get drunk at home and doom scroll and group chat now.
There was a similar post recently about Cambridge leaving twitter, and it got me thinking that universities are really the ideal organizations to host lemmy servers. They have a vested interest in truth and community building. They have a decent enough sense of free speech to stay federated with most other instances. They have pre-existing communities on topic ranging from clubs to technical subjects. Users can confirm their identities by association with the universities, which will keep things civil. Obviously I don’t think they should be the only instances - anonymity has it’s place and value - but I really think universities should be hosting instances.
Depends on the university. Some of them are still like that, some of them are totally ideologically captured such that they have encoded being anti-free speech into their conduct codes, and/or they simple would not want to deal with the fallout of bad actors would/could do to their servers.
A lot of university’s slide towards authoritarian centralizing of power post COVID along with internalizing their student bodies. Sadly. They themselves aren’t the bastions of freedom and truth they once were, because those things don’t make the bottom line go up. Many also closed off spaces and programs that were previous open to the public to further isolate themselves from the rest of the world. MIT had libraries and other facilities anyone could use, and now they shut them all off from public access post COVID.
