Soshul meedja.

[Raphael]

I deleted my Facebook account years ago, after reading one too many articles about their aggressive data tracking. Nothing I've heard since has made it more attractive.

Cory Doctorow recently described social media "enshittification":

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.

He discusses Facebook later on in the article. tl;dr: you can't even count on your point (1) any more. Facebook doesn't want to show you posts from people you care about any more. As for (2), if that hasn't happened yet, why would it now? And if you absolutely had to, you could create a new account.

Thank you, zompist, that might have been the nudge I needed. I've deleted it now. I'm not sure how much I should worry about Facebook tracking me, though - I've almost never logged in to my account, and I've long set my browser to delete cookies when I close it.

Edit: I'm not sure how much I buy Doctorow's claim that platforms eventually die, though. I mean, even Myspace technically still exists.

[zompist]

I'm not sure how much I should worry about Facebook tracking me, though - I've almost never logged in to my account, and I've long set my browser to delete cookies when I close it.

I'm no security expert, but this may or may not be enough. Things may be different in Europe, for one thing. Data is sent back to Facebook, so deleting cookies does not stop tracking; and the insidious part is that other sites will send data to Facebook too. But you should be safe with no account. (Though it's likely that Facebook doesn't actually delete your data.)

FYI, a very basic article. (And a vent: Google is really getting enshittificated. In the early days it was very good at giving you the most relevant sites for a query first. Now the top-listed sites are often shilling products, crowdsourcing people's vague notions, or low-quality clickbait.)

[Raphael]

I'm no security expert, but this may or may not be enough. Things may be different in Europe, for one thing. Data is sent back to Facebook, so deleting cookies does not stop tracking; and the insidious part is that other sites will send data to Facebook too. But you should be safe with no account. (Though it's likely that Facebook doesn't actually delete your data.)

FYI, a very basic article.

Thank you!


***************



Only somewhat related: Does anyone else have the impression that really a lot of Youtube ads are targeting people with minor medical issues that are typical for people from a certain age onwards? If so, I'd say that's an interesting sign of the times: 15 years ago I wouldn't have assumed that people that age even know what Youtube is.

[Moose-tache]

a relevant difference is that the decisions being made by the god Market benefits the decisionmakers and that's why they foster it: "market" just means "owners of businesses" after all: It's not clear to me that putting things in the hands of this or that AI does the same.

Sorry for the late reply, but I'm not sure this is a real difference.

First, Huitzilopochtli worship is an exceedingly ineffective way to enrich the ruling class. It benefits them much less than, say, public investment. If the government builds a bunch of wind turbines, it might make the energy moguls nervous, but it would stimulate every other part of the economy by providing cheap energy. Perpetual growth is essential for reliable return on investment, so any Capital class that stifles growth industries stifles itself. I'm not saying the elites would never be stupid enough to shoot themselves in the foot. I'm just saying it's not clear that the elites are making blood sacrifice to Huitzilopochtli because it is good for them to do so.

Second, if it's not clear to you how AI benefits the elites, I can clarify this for you with a question: who owns AI? The answer is: rich people. AIs are investments. Somebody puts a bunch of VC into a new AI, and if it generates confidence the value will go up. To any investor stupid, sorry I mean brave enough to invest their money in AnimeTittyBot9000, putting AnimeTittyBot9000 in charge of nuclear codes is an obvious way to increase the value of their holdings, holdings that would otherwise have very little use value. It's a boondoggle, basically, just like every other aspect of Huitzilopochtli worship. The harder it is to achieve reliable growth, the more desperate people will become for magical solutions like crypto or AI. In other words, faith begets faith. If you're concerned about the harvest, you didn't disembowel enough people. If the harvest fails because you disemboweled your farmers, well then you really need to be doing more disembowling, don't you?

[Torco]

Only somewhat related: Does anyone else have the impression that really a lot of Youtube ads are targeting people with minor medical issues that are typical for people from a certain age onwards? If so, I'd say that's an interesting sign of the times: 15 years ago I wouldn't have assumed that people that age even know what Youtube is.

absolutely so: the great event of our times was the introduction of the smartphone not because it was such a great technology, but because it made the internet a) highly centralized, where it was decentralized, and b) full of normies. it has been enough time by now so that every platform now has, I think, a broad range of ages amidst its userbase.

First, Huitzilopochtli worship is an exceedingly ineffective way to enrich the ruling class[...]

I'm not sure. you may be right, I start with this, but I can't help but think that the plan is to, sure, transition to renewables because they're not dumb, they know they'll "run out" for a certain definition of run out, but not a second before they do run out. This is because not all technologies, and not all economic growth, are the same: fossil fuels are necessarily a centralized technology, and thus, its preeminence benefits the center, whereas renewables are more localized and a lot more decentralized: decentralization of power, both in the watt-hours sense and in the get-people-to-do-what-you-want sense, is bad for the overlords even if it makes the line go up. The same happens with AI, to a degree: like, sure, they're gonna own the AI, but IT in general is a technology that's liable to get out of the hands of the capitalists because, well, its not that dependent on capital: like, sure, The Cloud(tm) is totally a way to make IT run according to the logic of capital cause datacenters are capital, but it won't take much for some open source alternative to chatgpt, say, to emerge, if it hasn't already. That being said, AI is totally going to benefit the ruling class in many applications, I was just talking about giving AI control over the nukes: what benefit does Murdoch or whoever get from that? But yeah, huitzilopochtli worship could go the way of tulipmania for sure.

[zompist]

The same happens with AI, to a degree: like, sure, they're gonna own the AI, but IT in general is a technology that's liable to get out of the hands of the capitalists because, well, its not that dependent on capital: like, sure, The Cloud(tm) is totally a way to make IT run according to the logic of capital cause datacenters are capital, but it won't take much for some open source alternative to chatgpt, say, to emerge, if it hasn't already.

FWIW, most technologies start out decentralized, and then the mergers begin. You're right that open-source chatbots will appear soon enough, but that's not likely to change the world much, any more than Linux has ended Big Software.

[hwhatting]

FWIW, most technologies start out decentralized, and then the mergers begin. You're right that open-source chatbots will appear soon enough, but that's not likely to change the world much, any more than Linux has ended Big Software.

This. Economies of scale are economies of scale; the future of renewables is not so much an ecoystem of individually operated solar panels on individuals' rooftops or wind turbines in the garden, but megaparks of solar panels in deserts and wind parks, onshore and offshore. And even the "decentral" ones will more and more become part of bigger operations; I regularly get offers from my local utility to get a solar panel and a heat pump, operated by them.

While corporations / capitalists do have common interests, those mostly concern some broad principles, like protection of private property. Otherwise, their interests compete and clash. While some oil majors want to keep fossil fuels being guzzeled as long as possible, there are others who have bet on renewables and are not amused by attempts to keep coal and petrol alive. When here in Germany, the Free Democrats recently torpedoed the EU agreement on phasing out combustion engines in cars, several big carmakers actually criticized that, because it messed with their time lines for switching production to electric cars. For many corporations, clear planning horizons are more important than temporary gimmicks that people might assume they'd like.

[Torco]

True, but I think some technologies are more inherently centralizing than others: for example the printing press. sure, the rich will always be in a better position to avail themselves of any technology, the holy roman emperor could just buy presses by the dozen, and this cycle of centralization of tech does happen, but nevertheless the printing press did make it so it became possible for more people to print, say, translations of the bible, or pamphlets against the ancien regime, where doing so before would have been preposterously difficult: where are you going to hide your communist monastery full of communists hand-copying das kapital ?

I hope 3D printing, for example, is one of those technologies: sure, 3D printers are made and sold by capitalists, but the tech itself makes it easier to fabricate relatively complex parts without a factory: though mostly out of sort of shitty materials (PLA high carbon steel isn't, though metal 3D printing is coming around). Another example is the horse, or perhaps the stirrup, or even the horse-stirrup-recurve bow combo: it allowed relatively materially poorer people with not as much hierarchy, the xiongnu etcetera, to challenge highly structured and sophisticated 'civilized' groups. By contrast, say, industrial production of textiles was so centralizing that cotton travelled throughout the whole world for decades, centuries perhaps, to be spun in britain etcetera (fostering the the atlantic slave trade in the meantime). another example, I don't think the fall of the european military aristocracy, the knight/chevalier/etc, came at about the same time as the maturity of the musket out of cahnce: having a military class, each of them wearing expensive armor on expensive warhorses, each of them trained for their whole lives, fed well so they develop good muscles, reflexes, battle sense etcetera... that only works as long as you havn't unlocked the counter of spamming peasants with boomsticks. This isn't deterministic or the only factor, of course, technological determinist I am not, but I do lean towards technology very much influencing the social structure. infrastructure superstructure and sho on and sho on (sniff).

[Ares Land]

FWIW, most technologies start out decentralized, and then the mergers begin. You're right that open-source chatbots will appear soon enough, but that's not likely to change the world much, any more than Linux has ended Big Software.

It did hurt Big Software quite a bit though, at least in some areas. Most of the Internet is open source frameworks running on Linux boxes. Microsoft and IBM are present though not dominant.

[hwhatting]

Another example is the horse, or perhaps the stirrup, or even the horse-stirrup-recurve bow combo: it allowed relatively materially poorer people with not as much hierarchy, the xiongnu etcetera, to challenge highly structured and sophisticated 'civilized' groups.

People tend to underestimate how structured and hierarchical cattle nomadic societies are, just because they don't put up a lot of buildings. And don't forget that nomadic empires tended to be the biggest area-wise in pre-modern times, with possibilities to quickly send information and react that were often superior to those of agricultural empires. Although nomadic empires tended to be more fragile.

another example, I don't think the fall of the european military aristocracy, the knight/chevalier/etc, came at about the same time as the maturity of the musket out of cahnce: having a military class, each of them wearing expensive armor on expensive warhorses, each of them trained for their whole lives, fed well so they develop good muscles, reflexes, battle sense etcetera... that only works as long as you havn't unlocked the counter of spamming peasants with boomsticks.

Well, muskets (and gunpowder weapons) led to the replacement of the feudal levy on horseback to professional armies and to the emergence of the modern centralised state; rifles made it possible to create mass citizen armies, so they contributed to the democratisation of society and to the emergence of states that at least proclaimed to have the people's interest at heart, but that mass mobilisation also favoured big, centralised, industrialised states - the modern nation state.
And while industrialisation centralised production in certain locations, it also gave billions of people a chance to escape rural pverty and dependency on landowners, so it gave them more choices of where and how to live. We tend to look at the situation in 19th century Dickensian and contemporary 3rd-world slums and to shudder, but for a lot of people that was / is actually a step up compared to life back in the village, of which we tend to have an overly romanticized view.
So what I'm trying to say is that it's never clear what the result of new technologies will be, in which areas it will lead to centralisation and in which to decentralisation, whom it ill empower, etc., until much later.

[Torco]

Hmmmm... I don't know, man, enclosure -and other things- really did a number of peasants in order to get them to become urban proletariat. But yeah, there's probably a fair amount of emergence to the whole thing. I don't know that I buy that it can't be foreseen whether a tech will cause centralization or decentralization... even without the benefit of hindsight, there are possible indications:

Medieval military operations revolved strongly around a military class, after all: sure, most of the soldiers were probable peasant levies, but the officers, the cavalry (which at the time performed the roles of recon, communications *and* assault), they were extremely elite: the prototypical shape of medieval military operations, as I understand them, is that the bulk of them consisted on small-scale affairs: raids and the like. Pitches battles, it is generally understood, were rare, but warfare wasn't and so we must assume that knights engaged in a lot of killing and dying other than outright Agincourt like battles, so the bulk of military *labour*, so to speak, was provided by a highly specialized elite: the petty nobility... you know, knights sworn to a lord who get sent to fight brigands and the knights of some other lord. And these guys were able to do their jobs, which was basically to be soooo much better at fighting than anyone else, as well as to be a fearsome force on the battlefield. Even before practical guns there was the crossbow, and indeed the not-nobility used them to fight the nobility often, later on even professionally: we figure this because the church banned crossbows sometimes, and because they were considered, well, a brigand's weapon. A brigand was probably anyone who opposed the rule of the local lord the knight would have sworn fealty to, no? and lo and behold! when they invent what are chemically-powered, armour piercing crossbows, boom! no more knights. (in reality the demise of the heavy cavalry in european warfare is more complicated: advances in the crossbow, in fortifications, and in another anti-cavalry technology, the pike, all contributed, but it firearms still market the end of the age where knights were the dominant force on the battlefield. and cavalry was actually quite pioneering in the military use of primitive firearms, but it was, relevantly, mercenary cavalry, 'light' cavalry, i.e. not ruling class and a lot closer to working class)

[zompist]

Medieval military operations revolved strongly around a military class, after all: sure, most of the soldiers were probable peasant levies, but the officers, the cavalry (which at the time performed the roles of recon, communications *and* assault), they were extremely elite: the prototypical shape of medieval military operations, as I understand them, is that the bulk of them consisted on small-scale affairs: raids and the like. Pitches battles, it is generally understood, were rare, but warfare wasn't and so we must assume that knights engaged in a lot of killing and dying other than outright Agincourt like battles, so the bulk of military *labour*, so to speak, was provided by a highly specialized elite: the petty nobility...

You're right that a military class of cavalry existed, but wrong, I think, that that was the bulk of warfare.

You mention Agincourt: the English army was almost all longbowmen, while on the French side infantry outnumbered cavalry. It's also worth looking at the
Norman campaign in England: the English could call up 14,000 men, all infantry.

[hwhatting]

@Torco: I didn't argue that gunpowder did not replace knights; what I was saying is that what looked like a decentralizing technology, putting power to kill in the hands of low-trained people, actually was one of the factors that gave us the centralized modern nation state.

[Torco]

Oh... hmmm... this is true, though the tendency of states to get bigger and bigger came from before gunpowder. but yeah, it's not as clear-cut as it initially looked to me.

[rotting bones]

This would require someone to put an AI in charge of whether or not to set off nukes. You'll get similar results if you put your cat in charge of that.

My cat would never do that! Look at him!

More: show

But to the point, it's exactly that kind of abdication of responsibility that I'm afraid of - that people will put an AI in charge of systems that can destroy life, and then lose the will or the ability to override it when that leads to catastrophic outcomes, not because the AI has gained consciousness and decided to stick it to mankind, but because of programming that was not thought through well enough or because of bugs.

What makes you think the non-existence of AI will prevent people from abdicating responsibility if that's what they want to do? In Russia, they let loads of Soviet weaponry be taken by anyone who wanted them.

[hwhatting]

But to the point, it's exactly that kind of abdication of responsibility that I'm afraid of - that people will put an AI in charge of systems that can destroy life, and then lose the will or the ability to override it when that leads to catastrophic outcomes, not because the AI has gained consciousness and decided to stick it to mankind, but because of programming that was not thought through well enough or because of bugs.

What makes you think the non-existence of AI will prevent people from abdicating responsibility if that's what they want to do? In Russia, they let loads of Soviet weaponry be taken by anyone who wanted them.

People abdicating responsibility to other people is a whole 'nother can of worms; but becasue that exists is exactly why I'm afraid that this may happen with AI.

[Ares Land]

I'm really not sure AI significantly changes the problem.
A lot of the nuclear launching process is already automated. This was already a problem back in the 80s -- as the story of Stanislas Petrov shows.

[WeepingElf]

High-frequency trading already destabilizes stock markets.

[hwhatting]

A lot more thinks will be able to be automated with AI, so I do think the problem will get worse.
People have been killing each other with bare hands, sticks, and stones since the dawn of humanity; nevertheless, new technologies have made wars potentially more destructive by magnitudes over time.

[rotting bones]

People abdicating responsibility to other people is a whole 'nother can of worms; but becasue that exists is exactly why I'm afraid that this may happen with AI.

And how is it worse for responsibility to be abdicated to random AI than to random humans?