I think rather than China just doing it, Xi will contact Trump and offer him some token concession that Trump can sell as victory on tariffs, in exchange for the US not helping Taiwan. I’ll give myself a bonus point if that “major” concession is something we already have or had prior to Trump’s tariffs.

I understand the sentiment and agree with the diagnosis. I just worry that the proposed cure won’t address the illness. Decentralization is a band-aid at best.

I think the traditional journalism business model is just a proxy for “truth” in the sense that fact-checking and reliability is really what’s at stake versus social media “news.” And the substituted point is still valid - truth as a business model is no longer financially viable - but the cure I feel should be to make truth financially viable. One way to do that is to depress demand for misinformation (laws prohibiting misinformation and enforcement, creating boycott campaigns against platforms that algorithmically incentivize misinformation like Facebook and X). The other is to reward truth (educate the populace to support it, sure, but also keep funding as a social good journalism like NPR, PBS).

It’s not great, but I don’t feel just pushing into decentralized media will do anything except create even more competing “truths” and hasten information exhaustion. That path leads to Russia, where the populace seems mostly nihilistic and too jaded to act.

In itself, the answer is really simple, at least for the remaining democracies, and a solution would be entirely possible: people would have to switch to decentralized media apps, such as those provided by the Fediverse, and stop attributing so much credibility to legacy media. This would significantly reduce the scope for concerted disinformation, which is the main reason for any autocratic form of government being possible, which is of course never in the interests of citizens.

Sorry, but I don’t think this will do it. We got into this situation because social media in general allows for fine-tuning manipulation and propaganda to specific audiences, not because they’re centralized. Facebook and Cambridge Analytica were probably a but-for cause (and there are many) of Trump’s first win. But it wasn’t because Facebook was actively trying to help Trump, as much as it was because social media both democratized and bastardized journalism.

If everyone switched to Lemmy, Russia and others would now just focus (as I think they already have here in election years, but to a larger extent) their resources on Lemmy disinformation campaigns instead of X and Facebook. If the userbase splintered to 100 different apps instead of any centralized one, likewise targeted misinformation would follow. And viral misinformation would cross platforms, just like it already does.

Yes, education is the long-term answer.

A disproportionate number of them are likely true psychopaths, without functional empathy or conscience. That is certainly my theory about the dead eyes.

Fascinating. Definitely still prefer the Go for retro futurism, though.

He’s mentally impaired. A malignant and grandiose narcissist wants more money, attention, fame, and so on for themselves no matter what they have.

Yeah, it’s such a simple psychological judo move to force them not to wear masks. I really think it would be extremely effective in preventing a lot of violence.

Beautiful! Love those billboards. Also reminds me to check out a PSP Go, I bet the slide-out design is cool in person.

PSP is peak retro tech. The disk drive mechanism is so satisfying to open and close, popping out the UMD cartridge…

But yes, Japan preserves their old tech, books and games by default. Used items are almost always immaculately kept and sent cleaned up. It’s pretty reliable to buy used in Japan.

I’m sorry. Recently laid off myself and management avoided directly saying AI was the reason, but other statements (C-suite talking about whether AI can do other work months before the layoffs, in front of me) convince me that was the reasoning.

The alternative prediction is that this is in fact sustainable and AI companies will in fact have revenue to keep the bubble inflated for a lot longer, just in the worst way - by extracting the value of human-created reliability and trust from the market:

CEOs have also bought into AI almost to a person, and are using it to replace workers, results be damned. AI can’t do the things they believe it can, but to them, if they can fake satisfying a need with AI for $5, that is preferable to actually satisfying a need with a real employee for $10.

The CEO is happy because his company saved $5 and he’s met his stock option incentive target, the AI companies are happy to pocket that $5 instead of the employee getting $10. Maybe they even raise the customer’s price to $12 as AI rent-seeking starts rising, and both companies get $6 each. Win-win, life will go on, just worse for everyone else.

Per the local government’s ordinance summary, this is a criminal ordinance and it’s effective 30 days after passage, signature by mayor and publication in the City’s newspaper. So soonest will be late March.

I agree the question is whether the cops will enforce, but regardless, it should be done. And it gives a clear tool to local leaders to (hopefully, finally) flip the switch and start arresting ICE for criminal acts, since whatever Stephen Miller says, ICE does not have “absolute immunity” to break the law, much less violate the Constitution.

PC costs certainly aren’t helping, but there’s an entire cross-section of income and age demographics whose only computing device is and has always only been their phones.

I was curious so I looked it up. This site suggests 1 in 7 households in the US “either lack a computer at home or rely solely on a smartphone for internet access”, heavily weighted to lower-income states like Mississippi, West Virginia, Arkansas and Louisiana: https://www.benton.org/blog/computer-ownership-and-digital-divide

Yes, that’s the biggest hypocrisy that can’t really be explained without partisan intent. Talk radio is almost entirely right-wing and always has been. AM signals - too low quality for profitable music stations, but far-reaching and the natural home of low-cost talk networks - have always been heavily weighted to right-wing content.

That wide reach is the chief reason why, despite the GOP always favoring the rich in their actual politics, they started heavily gaining support in all rural areas around the country from the 90s onward. In many rural areas, the AM station with Rush Limbaugh was the only - or one of only a few - they could tune into.