I had an idea a while ago on how you could lightly regulate social media platforms.

Require them to:

• Group users into cohorts of a size greater than X. ie, individual level targeting isn’t allowed. The higher this number the better.
• make available to users the cohort they are in
• publish openly every single cohort and their size
• make it possible to view feeds as if you were in a specific cohort.

Will this stop them funnelling customers into rabbit holes? No, probably not.

But it would make “targeted indoctrination” harder as they would have to try and indoctrinate multiple people at once. And it would make it more transparent just how many people are being fed propaganda or whatever you want to call it.

Hard to say. NZ cuisine is like British cuisine, but it got stuck in the 80s.

The Flat White. But that’s not strictly food.

Or maybe a potato top pie.

But can it run a degoogled Android rom well?

Ah silly us.

We spent a decade hating on IE, it’s slowness, poor support for any standards, plugins that fuck your shit up, etc.

But it was obviously the best because it had that huge market share.

Could you imagine the enshittification cries if they did this. “Mozilla to add subscription model to your browser”.

They have other products that have subscriptions you can pay for to support the company.

Instead of using Mullvad, use Mozilla VPN (it is literally exactly the same, you just pay Mozilla not Mullvad)

If you’re a web developer, Subscribe to MDN Plus.

Hate spam? Firefox Relay.

I don’t believe Mozilla doesn’t have the best interests of the browser at heart, I believe that they do think their browser is the their number one product.

But that’s the problem. It’s free software, going up against a juggernaut whose browser is just another side project to drive engagement with their core product.

A juggernaut who just so happens to be one of Mozilla’s primary source of income. All it will take is a little bit of legislation somewhere in the world to make that deal less attractive and Mozilla could be dead in the water. And it will take all of those forks with it, paving the way for Google to become the true web Hegemony.

Mozilla needs to diversify to ensure they can continue to provide stewardship to the browser.

But trying to make money in 2025 just seems to summon the enshittification brigade.

Free software is not free. Someone has to make it.

He didn’t say anything about regulating them.

Tax revenue is small fry compared to the harm they can (and do?) cause.

Iirc, Websites can’t query addons unless those addons manipulate the DOM in a way that exposes themselves.

They can query extensions.

Addons are things installed inside the browser. Like uBlock, HTTPS Everywhere, Firefox Containerr, etc.

Extensions are installed outside the browser. Such as Flashplayer, the Gnome extensions installer, etc.

And Lenin said, “the best way to undermine society is through its music” — Bob Duvall

It’s a fake quote from Lenin, but suitably apt.

It’s obviously enough of a thing to warrant Google to crack down on it in both chrome and YouTube.

If it’s such a small problem, why spend the effort?

Weird. I’ve been thinking a lot about my aphantasia recently.

The closest I can describe what I imagined, was the feeling that those things happened.

For example. That vibe you get when you feel someone is just behind you. You can’t see them, but you know it. If I imagine someone behind me, I get the same uncomfortable feeling and an urge to look behind me.

Newzbin.

Yay!

Does NZ count as Australia too? Or are we stuck with parallel importers, or picking one up on holiday?

Not crazy, just sad.

Middle of the day, sitting at our desks working. This middle aged guy who was usually happy as Larry gets up and leaves the office leaving his stuff behind. Not a word said. I just assumed he was getting a coffee or something.

End of the day rolls around, stuff still there. Same thing the next day. Still there the next week.

People start asking what happened to him, but the agency he was working through kept telling us he’s coming back soon.

Over a month later, someone packs up his stuff and puts it in the bin. The guy was never coming back, turns out he went left and ended his own life the day he walked out. Never made it home.

The agency apparently only found out he was dead a few weeks after the incident, then strung us along so they could find a replacement. We terminated their contract and offered the handful of other employees jobs.

Imo, the term “buy” for all goods should pass some sort of litmus test. Eg:

does the product being sold have the same properties as a brick?

• can the product be resold privately?
• can the product be lent to another user temporarily?
• would the product still perform its function when the manufacturer stops supporting it?
• would the product still perform its function if the manufacturer ceased to exist.

if the product does not pass all these tests, the customer is not buying. Consider using terms such as ‘rent’ or ‘lease’ or ‘subscription’

If 2000 out of 5,000,000,000 images can be found, why couldn’t they be found before the dataset was published.

Same volume, just increased length but reduced girth.

Because that’s the way the legal system works.

“Oops, had some harmful/illegal content on there? Nobody was /really/ hurt, or at least, we weren’t directly causing harm. I’ll take it down and eat a small fine.

Vs

“Oh I’m sorry, I’ll take down the 30s clip of your 90s movie. it has caused you 3million in damages? I’m so sorry, here’s some tools that will automate detection and removal of your property. I’m so sorry”

Is there any evidence of it? The Wikipedia page says “which may include unclothed or partially clothed photos” but doesn’t necessarily mean there is any.

Is “The Algorithm” just “we stuffed all our GPT responses into a Lucene index and look for 80% matches”?

Because that’s what I’d do.