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Re: Fook Google and its fookin' sheet
bici wrote #329103:
i installed Brave.. then it abruptly pissed me right off… i get prompts about bitcoin. F$%K BITCOIN!
I use brave for my social media and ff for the rest of my browsing. I never received a bitcoin prompt after I customised the splash page to show nothing.
Yiannis
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Re: Fook Google and its fookin' sheet
I saw this article on my social media which gives step by step details on how to set up the Searx search engine on Linux. You would need self-hosting or full access to the server but the author links to his own and a list of other publicly available versions ready to use.
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Re: Fook Google and its fookin' sheet
From DuckDuckGo:
After months of stalling, Google finally revealed how much personal data they collect in Chrome and the Google app. No wonder they wanted to hide it.
…. texted postive
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Re: Fook Google and its fookin' sheet
At the risk of being a complete boor and disagreeable ass…
Had I known that was a Twit link, I would not have clicked it. Share them if you want, but there should be indicators on those (is that possible to automate?), or at least provide the links using an alternate interface that does not promote the vile platforms. Nitter in this case. (They also exist for YouTube, Medium, etc.) I quite recommend the Invidition plugin for FF. Unfortunately I used my phone this time.
I don’t know if it’s just my dumb luck (or stupidity for looking), but all of the tweets under that one shared, under the ‘More Tweets’ area, are from right wing nationalist Trump supporters who are still pissed their repeat coup didn’t work out. I mean, every tweet. As if the world doesn’t have bigger problems.
I killed my shitter account in 2017 and have never looked back to that cesspool once, so I don’t know what’s going on there. Is that just the saturated state of it now? Such that the algorithms can only churn up the seething rantings of verified orange worshippers and Qononimists?
Good people should no more use Twitter than they should Facebook, it’s just a different format of the same poisonous practices. Capitalism is no excuse anymore.
I hope Russia follows through and turns Twitter off, even if it is for the laughably obvious hypocritical reason it is. Twitter’s problem now is Americans, though, as it always is for the rest of the world, too. I wish France would turn Twitter off, but its politicos, journos, and economos are as addicted to the filthy teet as every other country.
</::wednesday_rant>
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Re: Fook Google and its fookin' sheet
Destry wrote #329316:
Had I known that was a Twit link, I would not have clicked it. Share them if you want, but there should be indicators on those (is that possible to automate?), or at least provide the links using an alternate interface that does not promote the vile platforms. Nitter in this case.
I am not sure how using an alternative interface to reach Twitter actually discourages the use of Twitter but here you are:
And while I have given up on Twitter, I still find Facebook useful.
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Re: Fook Google and its fookin' sheet
michaelkpate wrote #329318:
I am not sure how using an alternative interface to reach Twitter actually discourages the use of Twitter
Heh. Well, the idea is that in the rare times you might look at something there, or share a link there, as the case is here, you at least deny Twitter any tracking benefit. As Nitter says:
- No JavaScript or ads
- All requests go through the backend, client never talks to Twitter
- Prevents Twitter from tracking your IP or JavaScript fingerprint
Just curious, are there tracking strings on that twitter url in bici’s post? Or did they at least get removed? Overlooking those strings is usually the second mistake people make.
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Re: Fook Google and its fookin' sheet
my apologies
…. texted postive
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Re: Fook Google and its fookin' sheet
It’s never personal, bici. I know that in the interest of giving goog another deserving knock you didn’t think twice about slippery Twitter.
But sometimes these things make for a good reminder about how much more (or less) people can do to not play into the hands of big tech, and especially not subject other people that try hard not to be played.
(Seeing all those tweets from right-wing nuts is what got to me. That’s the kind of thing that put me off shitter to begin with, but not only. Even the average person openly whining and crying all the time about every fricken thing to nobody in particular; or all the self-promoting humble-bragging that goes on constantly in the tech circles. Ugh. It just got to the point where I was questioning my self-respect and sanity for tolerating it. That’s when I killed the blue bird account, and have not missed it at all.)
Stay cool, rider!
Last edited by Destry (2021-03-18 07:42:53)
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Re: Fook Google and its fookin' sheet
How Facebook got addicted to spreading misinformation.
…. texted postive
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Re: Fook Google and its fookin' sheet
For your edification: The End of AMP
(No affiliation, I read it last night.)
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Re: Fook Google and its fookin' sheet
That’s a great article, bici, thanks for sharing. Among all the gumph about advocating being more heavy-handed towards what the author sees as “good” reasons to censor content (e.g. Holocaust, vaccination, conspiracies) there are some important points raised about the role of AI when it’s used for monetization fueled by engagement.
Especially interesting to me – as a once-every-four-months-or-so-Facebook user – are how machine learning can almost be too good:
Facebook was not only hosting a large number of extremist groups but also promoting them to its users: “64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools,” the presentation said, predominantly thanks to the models behind the “Groups You Should Join” and “Discover” features.
And when constantly recommending the same stuff to people based on their interests is the dichotomy:
reducing polarization would mean taking a hit on engagement… models that maximize engagement increase polarization.
It’s the same the world over. If you have a particular political bias, you read a newspaper that supports your views. Why read something that’s pro-the-other-guys when you don’t like them? Unless there’s a catastrophic scandal that shakes your worldview foundations, nothing’s going to change your viewpoint.
What we read – the content we consume – can alter our perception, it’s just that with Facebook et al, the information spreads far more rapidly, which people seem to think makes them culpable if it’s “wrong”. In which case, we’d better rally to get rid of Wikipedia since what’s there now might be deemed wrong tomorrow by someone else.
This for me, from the article bici posted, sums up the productization of a person’s views:
Teams train up a new machine-learning model on FBLearner, whether to change the ranking order of posts or to better catch content that violates Facebook’s community standards… Then they test the new model on a small subset of Facebook’s users to measure how it changes engagement metrics… If a model reduces engagement too much, it’s discarded. Otherwise, it’s deployed and continually monitored.
Back in 2014 I likened this to magic supermarket shelves that only showed products you’d bought before. In the time since, things haven’t changed much. It’s just that the people behind the algorithms have at least acknowledged that tinkering with people’s choices shaped solely on their interests does have negative consequences.
Whether they learn from that, or whether they continue to toe the corporate party line and gun for growth above all costs, remains to be seen.
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Re: Fook Google and its fookin' sheet
Bloke wrote #329423:
[…] whether they continue to toe the corporate party line and gun for growth above all costs, remains to be seen.
Do you have any doubt about what will happen? A minor change in wording, a period changed into a semi-column, etc. some Orwellian wordsmithing and everything changed in order not to change anything.
I am sur a lot of people will believe that brave new world.
Same thing with that Google AMP change Gaekwad links above.
Where is that emoji for a solar powered submarine when you need it ?
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