The videos too. Geopolitical commentators cannot show e.g. an explosion in Ukraine caused by a drone, and they say "T" instead of "terrorist", and "kaboomed" instead of "killed", etc. Doing so may see the vid demonetized or even taken down.
OTOH deep fake gepolitical commentators are all over the place, and it is allowed (sometimes Youtube shows a label, sometimes the channel itself describes itself as a "fan channel" of the commentator, and not the real deal. Sometimes e.g. for Shorts you can see in the info whether things are AI generated).
Isn't is similar to Carter being depicted as a 'weak president' because he had more progressive ideas than an average US president, which make similar amount of sense.. and hence best ridiculed as a threat to "greed is good" prevailing ethos.
He was depicted as weak because during his time an entire US embassy was held hostage in Iran for more than a year. Couple that with inflation reaching 14.8% and now you understand why.
> I saw a video I wanted to share with someone, but it was part of a compilation. So you just search for it, right?
There's something with these compilations. Almost as if deliberately AI slop is mixed in to numb the public to it, or for some AI startup to testdrive on an unaware public how good their stuff is.
Take compilations of lightning strikes for instance. There's always a couple that are just too spectacular or just unbelievably. Like a ball lightning going across the street.
It’s mostly content farms based out of Asia - Vietnam, India, Bangladesh etc pumping out these stuff to make a quick buck. It’s like 5 min crafts but now easier and faster due to AI and no personal overheads.
Cats getting totally excited to see their owner, because they dearly missed them. Cats filmed in night cam dropping weird animals from the forest on sleeping boss. Olympic athletes, gorgeous, but not real. Countless disasters where people die, generated. Youtube shorts is a pile of steaming garbage. As long as it sells, your brain may rot.
Worst are imho on the regular long vids side, the geopolitical advisor deep fakes, giving background to the news. Some with well over a million followers. Many of those have the same "we are a fan of the real person" disclaimer, many have no disclaimer.
And no one in the comments, of which many look fake too, notices it is AI. That is the most scary part.
> And no one in the comments, of which many look fake too, notices it is AI. That is the most scary part.
Many who notice won't bother commenting, because most who notice know how pointless that is (counterproductive in fact: a comment is an interaction, any interaction is a positive for the "content"). Those that do notice and comment are either drowned out by
• those too numbed on the brain to care, let alone notice, who lap it up, and praise it
• bots (either those being used to interact with the clip to drive it's interactions counters, or more general spam bots)
or if there is anyone/anybot monitoring the negative comments are removed.
Unrelated to this conference I've often heard the "everything is political" argument, and mostly with a passive-aggressive "or else.." (you're up for a political fight) undertone. I once enquired on very mundane things in life, and yes "those too are political act". Well, if everything is bleakly political in that sense, we may make it universal, just call it Newspeak.
Definition of politics: whenever two agents have conflicting goals and a resolution is reached (peacefully or otherwise). Or more succinctly, multi-agent dynamics. Yes, almost everything is politics, and this is not diluting the word, any more than saying that almost everything is made of atoms is diluting the meaning of the word "atoms".
(Parent comment was edited to remove the part about diluting meaning)
Fun fact, in my student group at university of twente two people claimed to have developed the first web server for Windows. They called it W4Server and at fist thought of erecting a company called Antelope Software, but later prioritised their studies and let it drop. Another fun fact is that on a web search the first result is a CVE relating to their work. But it was quite exciting at the time, all this brand new web that was emerging.
Launching in early 2026, Eurosky Social [0] is coming.
> The next era of social media: built and run in Europe, ruled by our laws.
> Eurosky is building a European alternative to Big Tech social media and web services that is focused on innovation, user choice and open standards. Eurosky develops foundational software and services that enable entrepreneurs and startups to launch their products faster, cheaper and ready to scale.
Thanks for the link. Seems like they want to be a European identity (and maybe more) provider for the AT protocol.
> We’re launching @eurosky.social, a European identity that works across the entire open social web. Get access to any app built in the AT Protocol, including Bluesky, Flashes, Tangled, and many more. Hosted in Europe, governed in Europe. [Launching January 2026]
I applaud the effort, but participating in the Fediverse I take issue with the fact that they seem to equal AT with "the entire open web". That's just BS if true.
Looks like they are ready to scoop up a bunch of EU grant money, perhaps at fediverse's cost. Esp. since it looks (not sure) that an AI company is behind the initiative: https://themodalfoundation.org/
Yes, that is my impression also. Extensively using for a couple of years, and only occasional quirks now and then, e.g. a profile verification issue (seeing the annoying red shields to each comment), but easily fixed. Or a UX update that doesn't necessary feel improvement (this is an Element thing, really).
It may not be good enough for your grandma, but certainly can support your software dev team, and there are countless of those active most probably. I really like Matrix as a daily driver. Also using Discord and Slack, and to me these look like a UX Christmas trees full of blinking lights, and far from anything you can call 'calm technology'.
Update: Seeing who I respond to, taking opportunity to mention these recent UX musings.. there used to be 'favorites' in one click in Element, now it is in a drop-down of filters not shown by default (I make distinction of 3 groups 'favorites', 'people', and 'rooms' for all/other. Not using spaces at all (except for the record)). And then there's paragraph spacing between replies given one after the other, is to small. Setting margin to 10px (think its 4px now) makes a world of improved reading already. Element web UI in firefox. Oh, I might add very long UI (re)loading times of a browser tab refresh of Element, as somewhat annoying and to avoid.
> Update: Seeing who I respond to, taking opportunity to mention these recent UX musings
Thanks - the Favourites roomlist section will be back shortly; we just hadn't re-added sections to the rewritten roomlist (and in retrospect, probably shouldn't have launched without it). In fact I think they've already landed (experimentally) on the same roomlist component but in the Element X Web playground at https://github.com/element-hq/aurora.
> And then there's paragraph spacing between replies given one after the other, is to small. Setting margin to 10px (think its 4px now) makes a world of improved reading already.
Hm, is that new? Probably something to propose for the compact layout.
> Thanks - the Favourites roomlist section will be back shortly; we just hadn't re-added sections to the rewritten roomlist (and in retrospect, probably shouldn't have launched without it). In fact I think they've already landed (experimentally) on the same roomlist component but in the Element X Web playground at https://github.com/element-hq/aurora.
That's not a complete fix though. The split between users and groups was also really important. Because the old view showed the top X chats in both categories at the same time. I'm not sure about others but for me the group chats are less important but update more frequently and when they're bunched together the individual user chats get drowned out. Favouriting them all isn't really an option either as I have too many.
There's a filter now but then you don't see group chats at all unless you turn that off again, making it very restless to have to constantly switch.
However it's great to see the favs are coming back.
Given the people / rooms section split was my idea in the first place, i can try to make a case to have it as an option. (Interestingly I haven’t missed it much)
Yes, there is a lot of affinity towards Canada in Europa, I feel. Last Bastion of Democracy on the North-American continent, and not part of the whacky Trump-Atlantian Hemisphere.
I learned that Turso apparently have plans for a rewrite of libsql [0] in Rust, and create a more 'hackable' SQLite alternative altogether. It was apparently discussed in this Developer Voices [1] video, which I haven't yet watched.
OTOH deep fake gepolitical commentators are all over the place, and it is allowed (sometimes Youtube shows a label, sometimes the channel itself describes itself as a "fan channel" of the commentator, and not the real deal. Sometimes e.g. for Shorts you can see in the info whether things are AI generated).
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