Posts by Elongated Muskrat

Bluesky too opaque about user figures for Euro watchdogs

Re: Urgh

Oop, eyes down for a fully-triggered troll. Did pressing that "thumbs down" make you feel validated, little one?

Of course, you could use the "troll" icon like this -->

I think the pertinent question here, is "what data does Bluesky actually hold on EU users". My understanding is, that, once they have 45M users in the EU (which they are far off, because they currently have a little shy of 27M users in total), they will need to have a point of contact to answer this question.

There's a couple of relevant points in answering this question:

First of all, they don't actually have to answer it (yet), so they're not "in breach" of anything (yet). They have plenty of time to make sure they are compliant before they need to be, even though the recent growth has apparently surprised them, and forced them to scale out faster than anticipated.

Secondly, although I can't speak for them, I don't think they hold very much data on their users at all. I think I had to give an email address, and a date of birth, and pick a handle. Yes, there's the ability to "verify" your handle by adding a text record to the DNS entry of your domain (if you own one) to associate it with that handle. I have done so, because I have a personal blog site; no, I'm not revealing what it is, because I wish to keep my identity as a poster here separate from the name I use there, and also separate from my real identity.

So, there might be a little difficulty in answering the follow-on question of "how many EU users do you have" unless there is some way to link handles with presence in the EU, which could probably be technically done by looking at IP addresses of registrations (assuming no VPNs), or by requiring users to identify their country of residence. Again, though, rough numbers could probably be given by traffic analysis, if they were required to do so.

My main point is this, though: what data? Unlike something like Facebook, Bluesky collects very little data, and really the only even possibly sensitive datum is date of birth, which they need for age-limiting adult content for 13-17 year-olds.

Re: Urgh

What a shame, you forgot to say "woke", so you didn't win the bingo.

Musk agrees with fan that worries over orbital Starlink traffic a 'silly narrative'

Re: We all really hate Musk, right?

You're going to want to put a verb in that sentence to not get a syntax error.

The quality of trolling has really slipped since the early days of the internet.

Re: Reporting needs to stop on Musk

His ideas include "wouldn't it be l33t to make it so some cars are named S3XY", "haha, 419 jokes are funny, especially when I'm stoned", and "I really like this ketamine stuff". Oh, let's not forget "I'll challenge another billionaire to a fight, and then get a letter from my mum telling me I don't have to when it turns out the other guy is actually really into his martial arts, and I'm a flabby git, so he could knock me flat in a few seconds".

Top level genius stuff, that, no doubt about it.

The Musk simps really are the saddest sight on the internet these days.

Re: We all really hate Musk, right?

You're plumbing new depths there, if you thought the person trying to take the piss out of the majority here who think Musk is a twat, was being serious, and then you jumped in to support His Muskiness.

It's like watching two drunken idiots trying to fight in a car park, but somehow being so inept even at that, that they manage to end up in a some sort of compromising act that gets filmed on someone's phone, goes viral, and lands them on the sex offender's register.

What I'm saying, in case you hadn't quite grasped it, is that not only did the original poster manage to humiliate themselves by attempting to post a humorous pro-Musk post that fell completely flat, you then jumped in, thinking his poor attempt at irony was literal, and made a fool of yourself as well. Well done, dickhead.

Re: We all really hate Musk, right?

It's true, tights and stockings were very popular in the 1940s, so their denier rating would be of relevance.

Oh, wait, you're an AC anti-science shit-poster. As you were.

The ironic thing is that, if he has the most satellites in orbit at that altitude, then he stands to lose the most from the inevitable Kessler Syndrome from the very literal and very real consequences of "moving fast and breaking things". Collisions are generally going to result in debris mostly at the same altitude (things knocked into eccentric orbits that move above or below that plane are more likely to intersect with the atmosphere and de-orbit), so having thousands of satellites at the same altitude suddenly doesn't seem like a great idea if you have no plan to deal with clouds of debris moving at many thousands of miles per hour.

Re: We all really hate Musk, right?

4chan is that way -->

Judges not impressed by Amazon, SpaceX's attempt to have NLRB declared unconstitutional

Re: Actually objectional content

So, what you are saying is that objectionable material isn't on Bluesky, because it gets removed by admins? But hold, on, didn't you just say it was on there. Better get your story straight, there, buddy.

And the word you were looking for there was "decent"; "descent" is what you are doing, into anonymous shitposting. This nonsensical drivel whereby you are trying to take the meaning of a word out of context, and over-literalising it is absolutely pathetic. You probably think you are being very smart and that you are playing clever word games, but that sort of twaddle only works with people who aren't very bright, and sadly for you, those are the people who sit at the extremes of political ideologies. Not some mythical "the left", but your fellow uninformed populists.

Re: Speech and consequences

The judiciary is one of the three branches of government (along with the legislature and law enforcement). Unfortunately, in the US, all three branches have been politicised (senior police are politically elected positions, supreme court judges are political appointees), so the separation of concerns, which should be there for very good reasons, has already been corrupted.

Just a little bit of political theory there for you. Let the downvotes I'll inevitably get for posting some facts commence...

Re: Actually objectional content

I think you misspelled "post" as "take" there.

The only things I have experienced as posts on Bluesky are people being generally decent humans to each other, and no far right trolls, because the block-lists remove them. of course the RWNJs are quick to cry, "echo chamber", but I'd prefer not to be in a chamber filled with shouting angry right-wing trolls rage-baiting everyone, and to be in the alternative "echo chamber" of many millions of other posters agreeing to be nice to each other. YMMV. I suspect you'd have to go looking for it, and go looking quite hard to find CSAM (and if you do, you should report it immediately). Have you been looking for it quite hard, AC?

Re: Oh, our favorite free speech proponent with so many fans and followers is again ...

I suspect your evidence and citations for that assertion are about as real as your willingness to post this non-anonymously.

Re: Oh, our favorite free speech proponent with so many fans and followers is again ...

Yeah, anti-union twonks always seem to miss the point that if you withdraw your labour (as you have the right to do), you don't expect to get paid for the time you are on strike. Unions are more about collective bargaining and evening the power imbalance between employers and workers. It's just some employers don't like being made to acknowledge that their workers are humans who deserve to be treated as equals. We call those "bad employers".

Work is (or should be) a transactional contract - I do something for you, and you pay me for it. Some employers seem to think that contract is one of ownership.

Study suggests X turned right just in time for election season

Re: Move along here, nothing to see

The reasons for this, are, sadly, simple. Alphabet, Youtube's parent company, is an advertiser. They make more money on more advertising impressions. They promote videos that get the most engagement, be it positive, or negative, because this makes more money for them. Extremism gets more engagement. Unless there's a feedback to prevent this, content that is disturbing or controversial, but not so disturbing or controversial to be illegal, or trigger total revulsion, is naturally the most profitable for them, and they are driven by profit and not ethics. The answer would, it seems, be to put control of the algorithms that choose what content to display in the hands of the consumer, not the host. Again, that's a problem of public good vs capitalism, and any sensible discussion of public goods inevitably quickly degenerates into accusations of Marxism, which itself has a chilling effect and moves the Overton Window to the right. Looking at it dispassionately, these feedback mechanisms are obvious.

Re: made platform-level algorithm changes that increased the visibility of posts made by Elon Musk

Because, despite the ability to block users, Elmo has made it so that those same users that you have blocked can still see your tweets and interact with them. That might not bother you, but for anyone who has ever had a stalker, this is terrifying.

Also, (and I'm going from what I've been told here, as I was never a big user of Twitter even before it was owned by Musk), rather than a chronological timeline of people you follow, it algorithmically promotes "sponsored" and paid-for "blue-tick" accounts over those you actually follow, and doesn't necessarily show you tweets from people you do follow, dramatically reducing its usefulness in terms of seeing the content you want, over political posts, paid-for spam, and rage-bait.

Re: "social media as it should be"

Touché, good sir.

Re: "social media as it should be"

And by the way, just to put on the grammar-Nazi hat, ironically, "inexistant" is a non-existent word. Perhaps you meant to use the archaism, "inexistent"?

Re: Where will the Nazi firehose algorithm be turned on next?

There's a reason certain 20th century populist regimes had big old rallies where they burned books. History is in serious danger of repeating itself on the next continent to the left.

Re: There is nothing illegal about...

Yes, in response to someone complaining that if they don't post anonymously, they get down-voted. My point, and it still stands, is that the up/down votes don't matter, beyond a vague indication of what other people think, and the self-selecting small group of people hitting that down-vote button can easily be gamed. For example, I get far more down-votes for my comments on any article concerning Musk, which naturally attracts more of his simps.

Here's the thing, I don't care if you down-vote me, when I post anonymously, which, on the rare occasion I do, it's to actually protect my identity, because in those cases, I might be posting something that, in conjunction with other things I post, might help reveal my real-world identity, and I don't really fancy being doxxed by some basement-dwelling man-child.

So, to make it clear, I was taking the piss out of you, and you specifically, assuming you're the same AC who has been posting throughout. If your regular handle reveals your IRL identity, I suggest you change it, but don't pretend you're posting anonymously to protect yourself, when those posts don't reveal anything about your identity, just your personality. I suspect the irony of complaining about being down-voted in the voice of Gollum sailed over your head, which pretty much goes to solidify my previous suggestion that you might be a bit of a thicko.

Re: "social media as it should be"

If two paragraphs is too long for your poor little brain, then I suppose the hope of you gaining education is pretty vainglorious.

Re: There is nothing illegal about...

Karl Popper wrote about this very eloquently almost 80 years ago. Nobody has to tolerate the intolerant, and indeed, it only promotes intolerance to do so, so fuck off.

Re: Hmm

Who is this "the left" you speak of, anonymous shitposter? Left of whom? You, Trump? Musk? Mussolini? Hitler?

I'm getting very tired of hearing this false left/right dichotomy, because at this point this mysterious cabal of "the left" appears to consist of 98% of humanity.

The insult is directed at you, for your cowardly shitposting, not for your political stance, although that, too, is clearly worthy of ridicule.

Re: "social media as it should be"

Well, since your reaction seems to have been to instinctively jab at that down-vote button, rather than to go off and educate yourself, here is a link to the Wikipedia article on Hate Speech. I'd advise reading past the first sentence, and digesting the entire article (and not cherry-picking, if you can resist your seemingly innate urge to do so), because it has some interesting points to make. Perhaps it is time for the US to bring back the concept of "group libel"? Of course, that was a response to the rising threat of overseas fascism the first time round, it might be too close to home now.

Most countries have a more nuanced approach to the limits of free speech than the US, in that in most cases, free speech is the freedom to say things that are not actively harmful to others (hence the existence of "incitement to..." laws). The free speech absolutists like Musk would like there to be no limits on hate speech in this way, but are seemingly always very sensitive if people expressing their opinions openly threatens them in any way (see also: you can't post the word "cisgendered" on Twitter), and the laws governing harmful speech in the US are clearly not strong enough when there are openly fascist groups with swastika tattoos marching around with flaming torches, inciting violence against other groups.

Re: Hmm

It's great, isn't it? Judging from the voting ratios, the Musk fanboys are her in force as well, like moths to a flame, in addition to the two usual pro-far-right shitposters.

Re: "social media as it should be"

Self-policing doesn't scale.

Well, so far, as of today, it has scaled to (checks counter) 20,556,120 accounts (and currently rising at 7.13 a second). Where's this phase change where it stops scaling? Do you have a crystal ball, or is that just unsubstantiated bollocks from you again?

Re: "social media as it should be"

I've not seen anyone even use the "N" word there, but you do you.

There are plenty of good descriptions of what hate speech is, you don't need me to google it for you, or to post engagement bait asking me to define it for you. It's your job to educate yourself, and nobody else's.

Re: "social media as it should be"

Exactly why people are fleeing Twitter for a platform that doesn't have algorithmic moderation, and where the blocklists are managed by the community.

Fucking Communists, eh?

Seriously though, I think this might be one of those rare occasions where you've made a valid point, although probably inadvertently. "The algorithm" is what is wrong with most of the social media platforms - opaque filtering and promotion of one piece of content over another, over which the user has no control.

At the moment, Bluesky doesn't have this, or at least, not in the same way. It has a feed containing content from people you follow, in chronological order, a "suggested" feed that is based on the network of people you are already following, and your declared interests (and which you don't have to look at), user-created "starter lists" of accounts you might like to follow, and user created "block-lists" of accounts you might like to block. You can subscribe to these in their entirety, or pick individuals from them. You can also add additional feeds based on user-added algorithms, for example, feeds for certain topics or interests. None of these things are under any sort of centralised control as far as I can tell.

So, not so much "burn the witch" like on Twitter, but more "ignore the people going round burning witches". Oh, and accounts that post hate-speech get banned. Like they should. I think that's about the only bit of centralised moderation. Apparently Yaxley-Lennon got his account banned in just one day; one of the big problems with Twitter is that Musk let all the banned hate-speech accounts back on, like that particular serial-grifter, and scum like Andrew Tate. I've no problem with never seeing anything from those people.

Re: There is nothing illegal about...

Ow! No! It hurts!

Re: Hmm

You see, this is why I wish I could block your stream-of-consciousness bollocks, CJ.

But then again, it's so fun to trigger you.

Re: "social media as it should be"

And you should only be able to talk to people within walking distance of your hovel. I don't trust these newly domesticated "horse" things, and that guy in the next valley has definitely been looking at your mud funny.

Re: Where will the Nazi firehose algorithm be turned on next?

This is very true. I'm seeing a lot of writers, comedians and artists on there. If being engaged with creative people is a "left-wing echo chamber", then more of this, please. I have to say, although the trolls here are desperately trying to make out that the platform is filled with hate, I have seen none whatsoever (and the only hate I see is coming from the people claiming this "left-wing hate" exists). Classic projection propaganda there. Again, Joe Goebbels would be proud.

Re: There is nothing illegal about...

But, those downvoteses, they stings us they doesss. Nasty downvoteses.

Re: Hmm

*And no I wont create an account just so you can bother me on another platform

No need to fear, if you were on there, you'd be instantly onto a block list. I doubt you'd find you got very much engagement with anyone at all there, to be honest, the ethos is to block trolls immediately.

Nice "playing the victim" there, though, right out of the Joe Goebbels play book.

Re: There is nothing illegal about...

Guess what, anonymous troll, my real name isn't Elongated Muskrat, and I don't use that handle anywhere else. How on Earth would someone "stalk me to another forum"?

Perhaps the actual reason you get downvotes is that what you write is industrial-grade bollocks?

Re: There is nothing illegal about...

I don't have any issue with "opposing ideas", I have issues with pages and pages of counterfactual bollocks from certain posters drowning everything else out, and anonymous shitposters pretending that 50 posts containing demonstrably-false right-wing propaganda should be given the same weight as one single sensible post, that's actually about the topic of the article, and not rage-bait.

Sometimes I enjoy baiting those posters, and systematically sitting down and pointing out how each of the things they have said is drivel, so that others can have the counterpoint to it, and sometimes, I'd like to be able to scroll past, because, let's face it, I'm not paid to correct bullshit, and I doubt anyone else here is either.

There is a fundamental "balance" issue here, as well. Phrasing propaganda and lies as "opposing ideas" in order to cast them as a genuine plurality of opinions polarises people. I know that's what you're after, because when you do that, you can present everything as a false dichotomy and control the narrative, but really, I'd rather you just fucked off. I think most other people here are intelligent enough to have a similar opinion.

Re: Where will the Nazi firehose algorithm be turned on next?

The main problem with leaving Twitter, is the one of "where to go". Some of those platforms have their own issues.

Threads, for example, is owned and controlled by Meta, and still curates feeds, and collects data (hence why it's not available in the EU) so metaphorically that's a bit like swapping Hitler for Stalin. I mean, I'm on there, but I don't post a lot, and certainly nothing that might be useful for Zuck. I can't see it becoming the Twitter-killer, more of an extension to Facebook.

Mastodon has a bit of a technical barrier to adoption, in that it is instanced, and that confuses people enough that they avoid it.

Bluesky seems to have hit the sweet spot: it's enough like Twitter used to be before it got shit, it doesn't have ads, and it has an open framework where you can manage your own feed algorithms if you really want to. By default, as the article says, it shows you things from people you follow, in chronological order. It also has block lists and "starter packs". This is why it's currently gaining about 1M users a day, and people who have moved from Twitter are reporting much more engagement from smaller follower counts. Time will tell whether it reaches "critical mass" (or whether it has already done so), or whether issues become apparent as it grows. At the time of writing this, it has 20.5M users, which is a fraction of the "250M active daily users" that Musk claims for Twitter, but the crux is whether the network those users form is widely spread; for example, if all the tweets you're seeing on Twitter come from a few hundred accounts, and ones from a certain political group are heavily promoted over others, the rest of those 250M users are moot because you'll never see or interact with them (making that platform the real echo chamber). I'm already seeing posts on Bluesky from people I'd never have otherwise interacted with, or heard of, and being followed by the same, this seems like the antithesis of the purported echo chamber that RWNJs are furiously claiming it is. Most of these are completely non-political stuff as well, which is the way it should be. I have no idea about whether all those people on there are "the left" because, unlike the far right shouty-men on Twitter who won't shut up about politics, and their culture war agenda, the rest of humanity has a plurality of opinions and interests.

edit - I'll also add, that those "250M daily active users" are the figure given by Musk. Since he fired the team responsible for moderation as one of the first things he did, there's no reason to suspect that a large portion of those accounts are not bots, scammers, spammers, and trolls. The number of "real" users is almost certainly less than that, and falling rapidly.

Re: Where will the Nazi firehose algorithm be turned on next?

"Don't leave the echo chamber of far-right hate speech, that's an echo chamber over there! No, please don't leave! Mummy, nooooo!"

Re: There is nothing illegal about...

This is why we need the facility to block accounts on El Reg's forums. Even Facebook can manage this, it's only Musk who has decided that he'll still allow users you've blocked to interact with your tweets, and Bluesky's implementation of subscription blocklists seems to work quite well (although has potential openings for abuse if you're not careful with which lists you subscribe to).

Here's the thing; the loud right-wing voices on Twitter that drown everything else out (and are algorithmically promoted to do exactly this) shout about how Bluesky is an echo chamber, but Twitter has become exactly that; all you can hear there are the loud echoes of far-right speech. On Bluesky, blocking the minority of people who shout the loudest has actually allowed the plurality of quieter voices to be heard, which is pretty much the opposite of an echo chamber. As always, the impact of social media comes down to how you use it, and the main problem with Twitter is that its owner has decided to control the way in which everyone uses it, to promote his favoured content to everyone. That sort of monoculture is deeply harmful, and is verging on propaganda.

Re: Hmm

Are you on bluesky yet, CJ? If so, what's your handle, so we can add it to a block list?

Here's how a Trump presidency could change the tech industry

Re: next Trumplestitskin appointments will be...

You're saying the don't already? A durrr hurrr hurrr.

Re: Demo crasis

Oh, there's a whole bunch of problems with peer-review, and the scientific press in general (a good old bunch of it being owned by Elsevier, for example). That doesn't discredit it, though, and turning away from evidence-led arguments because of issues with peer-review would be throwing the baby out with the bath water.

The alternative is believing any old shit people say without evidence to back it up; relying on anecdote, and hearsay, voting for the appealing nationalism of Adolf Hitler, that sort of thing.

Re: Demo crasis

Have you tried Bluesky yet? I'm not so sure about following accounts that promote religion, though. Most people's beliefs are a private thing, and those who actively go around promoting theirs, tend to have at least a toe in the water with the RWNJs. Proselytising and propaganda have a lot in common.

Re: "We could REALLY use one of those here."

I like to see what the rats are scurrying around saying.

This is well and good, but I'd rather not have them shout it in my face, when I'm more interested in literally anyone or anything else. This is the problem with how social media algorithms, in particular Twitter's, amplify certain voices, on top of the age-old adage that those with the least to say shout it out the loudest.

Re: "We could REALLY use one of those here."

El Reg already has it.

It has a "report abuse" button (which I have had occasion to use in the past, when certain prolific posters have posted misogyny), but I have yet to find a way of blocking them. Bluesky is nice so far, because the shitposters don't even show up if you subscribe to, for instance, far-right troll blocklists.

Re: Cutting $2 trillion

Your parent damaged you, one person, Trump is out to damage the whole world. Putting narcissists in charge is incredibly dangerous.

Re: Demo crasis

You do subscribe to the school of thought that higher IQ people tend to lean more left.

That's a very wordy way of saying, "do you think the peer-reviewed studies that show this aren't lying"

Here's the thing about evidence-led science, it doesn't require belief. Belief is the thing you have when you want to think something that contradicts facts.

Again, you start going on about US politics. I couldn't care less about either of your mainstream political parties; at the moment, you have a far-right one and a centre-right one that the far-right one calls communism. It's all such a total load of bollocks, and your political system is broken. You have never had any real mainstream left-wing politics in the US. That's why getting ill bankrupts you.

Re: Demo crasis

And then you blither on about having an educated populace but you are happy to support a system where the requirements to 'become educated' are raised or lowered depending on the colour of your skin or who you choose to sleep with.

I'm sorry, what? Can you point me to the post where I suggested any of that, or is it some industrial-grade projection on your part?

Also, "thick" isn't the same as "uneducated". If you weren't thick, you'd know that.

I know people who voted for brexit who did so because they were not blessed with intelligence, sure, but I also know people who voted for brexit because they were deceived, and felt very aggrieved about it afterwards. I also know people who aren't that bright who still voted against it. Don't try to turn the wholesale propaganda war fought by the pro-brexit right-wing lobby into a "brexiters are on the side of the little people" argument, because anyone with half an ounce of sense can see that as a far-right "divide and rule" tactic right out of the Joseph Goebbels playbook.

Re: Demo crasis

The problem is that the vote of an easily influenced and uneducated person is worth exactly the same as that of someone who pays attention to all the candidates and weighs up all of their policies and personal history. The solution is to make sure the populace is well-educated. Oddly enough, the teaching of political theory and history is notably absent, or vastly simplified in many large "democracies", which calls into question how democratic they actually are.

For example, how many of my fellow British citizens have ever had any teaching of Irish history, and the place Britain has in it? We might have been made vaguely aware of "the Irish famine" and possibly the formation of the Irish Republic, but there's a whole load of history, directly involving Britain that is taught, and is well-known in Ireland, but not here. My point here, is that if you are selectively taught only the bits of history that support a certain view, you are overwhelmingly inclined to end up supporting that view yourself. We have the same problem with mass-media, and social media empires with algorithms that are controlled by far-right leaning multibillionaires.

EU stings Meta for nearly a billion bucks over competition-trampling Facebook Marketplace

Re: "This case entirely distorts" . .

So you think the example I gave was perfectly fine? A cartoon about pushing people you don't like off a roof isn't hate speech?

No, I don't happen to agree with hateful people. Karl Popper's paradox of tolerance explains why nobody should put up with that sort of shit.

So, yes, you're right, you "dunno".