I would like to remind you of two things. The first is that reddit used to have a mod tool called “BotDefense”. Its shutdown in July of 2023 directly lead to a major uptick in Spam Bots.

The second is that part of the ad revenue is “impressions”. Impressions are just an account (bot or human) “viewing” the ad and they do not require a click-through. The platform hosting the ad still gets paid for those.

Ah. That no upvote rule. I’ve heard tell the corporate overlords don’t like Luigi.

What “don’t upvote” rule?

Rofl… Oh. They’re serious. Well. In that case. Rotflmfao.

At one point the IT department where I work were asking questions about why I tether my phone to my work laptop when I’m out of the office (working from home). I told them very specifically that I would not connect any device I didn’t have administrator control over to my home network. They didn’t ask anymore questions after that. I have a work phone and work laptop for work things. I use both only for work things. I have two personal computers, and two personal phones (one for messing with roms). I don’t need their hardware for anything in my personal life. Nope. Not even a Google search.

They also asked me if I wanted my personal phone logged into the wifi and I gave them serious side eye before saying no thanks.

It seems that he made claims in court that Apple the company did not knowingly engage in practices that would be considered anti-competitive under the law.

“For a year and a half, Apple has engaged in bad faith, levying a variety of different and new fees to app developers to get around the spirit of the judicial order. It put up scare screens, engaged in sleazy privilege claims, and lied under oath to the judge about its decision-making. Normally these kinds of tactics happen without consequence for important business executives. But this time, the judge accused Apple Vice-President of Finance, Alex Roman, of having “outright lied under oath,” and referred the matter to the U.S. Attorney for a criminal contempt investigation. She also went out of her way to blame Apple CEO Tim Cook directly.” - From the article.

I sometimes wonder if I’m the only person who remembers top sites. Like sites where you went to get straight up pirated material for the purposes of making bootlegs etc.

Yeah. My entire windows machine is locked down specifically to combat the copilot ms365 plague. I’m also using Bazzite and generally loving it. But I have a work machine for work things and some of my programs require windows to work.

It’s only playing dead. Its eyes are open.

I for one will not be putting any gibberish into Google’s AI for any reason. I don’t find it fun. I find it annoying and have taken steps to avoid it completely on purpose. I don’t understand these articles that want to throw shade at AI LLM’s by suggesting their viewers go use the LLM’s which only helps the companies that own the LLM’s.

Like. Yes. We have established that LLM’s will give misinformation and create slop because all their data sets are tainted. Do we need to continue to further this nonsense?

Long term/ extended stay hotels exist that will provide these things. But the vast majority of people don’t even consider those. They rely on what they can search up on Google for the area and algorithms don’t take into account that you need to bring your dog, want a separate set of bedrooms in the same suite, or that you’re looking for a kitchen.

I see this every time AirBnB is mentioned and every time I wonder if people even know extended stay hotels exist.

I believe at least one of the anti-trust lawsuits Google lost was brought by the previous Trump Administration.

This is largely the problem with most social media, and generative AI has made this problem worse just like it has made other pretty terrible facets of human interactions worse.

Anyone who was paying attention on reddit the last couple years (even pre-pandemic) could see that bots were taking over. The main difference (love mods or hate them) was that mods who’s subreddits didn’t rely on bot content to stay active were moderating the bot problem as best they could.

Now, most of those mods aren’t mods anymore and the vast majority only really want the engagement anyway so of course they’ll let bots basically take over.

Reddit the corp never cared about keeping bots off the platform and they care even less now. Bot engagement counts. Bot views of ads count. Removing bots actively hurts their bottom line in the short term so of course they aren’t going to do anything with that.

The actual human users on Reddit don’t care because they’re there to consume. It doesn’t matter to them if the posts they engage with are made by bots or not.

That’s honestly hilarious though. They made Marvin and don’t see the problem with that.

Buy things up in the fallout. The power vacuum the collapse will create will be ripe for anyone who comes out financially ahead in such a situation.

Tech giants welcomed Trump because they thought he would enable two things. A roll-back of regulations, and to increase profits. The thing is, the monkey wrench in this situation is twofold. The first problem is Elon Musk being placed in a position of power that enables him to detrimentally effect the profits and regulations of these industries to benefit his companies first and foremost while also being detrimental to these other tech companies. We see that a lot with the data he’s been stealing from all kinds of government agencies under the guise of saving the government money.

This means that even regulations that are removed that pave the way for these companies to enact policy or even just products to enrich themselves are hindered by Musk being a direct competitor to a lot of them. Facebook/Instagram vs Twitter, Tesla vs Ford, SpaceX vs Blue origin.

The second problem is the tariff situation. It cuts off a majority of tech companies from the cheap manufacture of components, devices, and even just consumer electronics that a lot of tech companies rely on in order to get their products into the hands of users so they can siphon up user data.

A third problem is that Musk has his hands in so much stuff that he’s pressuring the government to place his companies first in the running for. SpaceX and Tesla especially for things like bullet proof vehicles (where previously the government had contracts with other automotive manufacturers), and SpaceX being used for missions that NASA might have previously handled using Boeing products etc.

All these tech companies went to Washington DC to “Kiss the Ring” with the intention not just of avoiding a lot of legislation being leveled at them by previous administrations, but also in the hopes that they could position themselves as Musk had. For further government contracts. Because long after Trump is dead and buried, the contracts would be lucrative.

But that assumes they survive all the upheaval his administration is causing (and not just survive it, but come out largely economically and financially unharmed).

Anything may be possible, but the market has to survive in order for these companies to remain supreme.

Trump’s first administration filed the lawsuit that led to the court determination that Google held a search monopoly. The result of that is the DOJ filed a proposal that Google sell chrome web browser to another entity. Google has been fighting this proposal tooth and nail.

So the answer is, I’ll believe Meta gets broken up when I see it.

That’s true. But that doesn’t mean they don’t get to choose a better option than Facebook or Google or Amazon. Amazon at the very least isn’t a main competitor of theirs because Amazon doesn’t have a short form video product that’s mainstream. And they can afford to buy Tik Tok. So there’s that at least.

Oh the third hand, Google fomented the scam ads that then took over that they are now using their AI tool to solve, and it’s come very late to the table to do so. They shouldn’t have to rely on AI to clean up their mess. They should have been facilitating protocols to vet ads long before now. At best the AI might be faster, but those results will still more than likely need to be checked by people (at the very least, appeals will be, but perhaps most of these scam ad companies won’t try to appeal).

With the use of AI to deny or approve healthcare insurance claims etc, this is exactly why we should be pushing for legislation that regulates AI. There’s too many people who are all “cats out of the bag” and not enough people going, we should be regulating this.

They haven’t “won” until Meta has to pay damages. And even then, that win is hollow because not only will Meta try this again if the penalty isn’t high enough, but they’ll use the advantages of our weak leadership to further avoid any serious repercussions.

This article assumes Tik Tok wants to sell or that they are going to sell to a company that’s basically a direct competitor. I don’t understand this assumption.