MetaFilter

It's award season

In non-fic I am in the acknowledgments for I am the Law by Mike Molcher, which if you are at all interested in politics, policing, dystopian British SF of Judge Dredd you should totally check out.

I may be eligible for some actual comics too but hold your fire on that for next year, will hopefully have something pretty special.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 3:25 PM on February 2, 2024

Any word on narrator? Might hold out if it’s going to be a good reading.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 8:57 AM on February 3, 2024

Nice!
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 9:27 AM on February 3, 2024

MetaFilter: The Quickening

As a person who has run into the 24hr limit quite a bit I guess this sounds good… for me. Bit worried about what it might do to the variety of the homepage if it’s lots of frequent posters posting more frequently - are we hard up enough for posts that we need to do that?

Upping it to infinity posts sounds a terrible idea FWIW.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 7:16 AM on October 11, 2023

Note that we already have one meta open about how the mods cannot screen for far right content in long form video.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 8:01 AM on October 11, 2023

Can’t or don’t, there are a LOT of problems with the mods right now. I can see infinity posting devolving into a stream of posts like the one in the meta and the mods only having time for rite routine stuff which means squatting in the comments threads deleting anyone who is rude about the posts.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 8:11 AM on October 11, 2023

Mod problems.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 8:35 AM on October 11, 2023

MetaFilter: Nazi bar problem.

Full comment

Yeah, nobody should have to extend benefit of the doubt towards that. I’m certainly not.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 9:30 PM on September 28, 2023

MetaFilter has a real problem with voicing class genocidal attitudes

Mods, please calm the fuck down in that thread.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 5:25 PM on June 22, 2023

please consider content warnings for AI interaction

Am fir noting links to AI driven tools in FPOs and comments and avoiding AI generated text in comments except if necessary for example. And people trying that shit in Ask absolutely need to knock it on the head.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 8:14 AM on May 14, 2023

Nobody is using the marketing term “AI” for an expert system these days.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 7:02 PM on May 14, 2023

Actually adults navigate participating in a society and having societal conventions all the time.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 7:43 AM on May 15, 2023

Yes, and that is a problem, but on a broader societal level that MeFi is not particularly equipped to deal with, unlike “please stop posting chatGPT shit unannounced”.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 9:27 AM on May 15, 2023

Posting chat generated content would probably just come under existing spamming rules.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 9:44 AM on May 15, 2023

Ehh… that’s Mefi’s weird history setting them up for a fall there. IIRC when seeing them on the homepage was made an option it was absolutely the understanding that the body text would remain a complete description of the post contents.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 11:33 AM on May 15, 2023

The difference between an LLM and an expert system is a smaller and better tuned set of data on the expert system side of things. I don't know of any scholar of AI that has disclaimed expert systems as no longer being AI, but if you know of any, please inform me.

Scholars of AI are irrelevant to hype cycles. The present hype cycle does not apply to anything that doesn’t roam the web ripping everyone off for a massive dataset, so your expert systems can safely sit this one out.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 12:24 PM on May 15, 2023

Everyone being weird about the OP is grossing me out a little.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 4:10 PM on May 15, 2023

Will Musk's defense of Scott Adams make you leave?

Stopped posting and deleted my previous tweets when the board accepted the offer, because I know Musk is a fascist dip shit and his given reason for buying the site was to unban actual real Nazis.

Resumed a bit when it looked.like the sauce might not go through and frankly that was a mistake: the fun was gone knowing it was a platform that might be bought by some other Nazi at any time.

And then the sake went through and musk continued to be a… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 8:01 AM on March 7, 2023

Handily all the “verified” Elon supporters get sorted up to the top of replies too Haraldur, so you can see what kind of people Twitter is for now.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 9:13 AM on March 7, 2023

"Mental gymnastics: "leave twitter” vs "stay and fight"
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 12:07 PM on March 7, 2023

That and he wants it to be illegal for you not to like him.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 4:42 PM on March 7, 2023

Mastodon not yet at full Fennec Fox parity, but closing in.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 5:46 PM on March 7, 2023

I would urge any minority voices remaining on Twitter to devote their energies to finding an alternative rather defending why it’s okay to stay, tbh. Best time to do it was 2022 second best is 2023. 2024 hopefully the thing won’t exist and if it does it won’t be worth being on.

And you’re right about the implication: there is a moral trade off in remaining on Twitter - one that becomes a worse deal as Twitter becomes less useful and the community more fascism… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 6:49 AM on March 8, 2023

Engaging with Twitter is tacit support for fascism because it makes a fascist site more attractive to advertisers to show activity and the non fascist users provide a sheen of legitimacy. Also the reason fascists wanted to be on Twitter so bad and not just hang out on Gab or Parler is because they want to hang out with normies, either to fight them or to convert them. Negative engagement helps as much as positive engagement so don't think it makes a difference.… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 12:43 PM on March 8, 2023

There certainly have been some moderation choices, for sure.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 3:40 PM on March 8, 2023

this is entirely absurd.

Why?
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 5:15 PM on March 8, 2023

Elon Musk calls U.S. media and schools 'racist against whites & Asians'

Elon Brings One of America’s Most Prominent Nazis Back to Twitter

Elon Musk’s Growing Purge of His Twitter Critics — At the Behest of the Far Right

Here’s who Elon Musk likes to talk to on Twitter — including Catturd

Elon Musk defends racist tirade by Dilbert creator Scott Adams

Elon… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 9:57 PM on March 8, 2023

Elon Musk just brought an infamous neo-Nazi back to Twitter

Conspiracy theorists, homophobes, neo-Nazis: Ten accounts that embody Twitter's change under Musk

Twitter sees surge in Gen-Z neo-Nazi antisemitism since Musk takeover

Elon Musk has welcomed another neo-Nazi group back to Twitter

Opinion: Elon Musk’s Twitter is helping to normalize a neo-Nazi

Elon Musk’s Twitter… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 11:26 PM on March 8, 2023

Apologies, apparently I have some kind of onus to demonstrate plausibility and all my replies to that got deleted, so link dumps it is.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 12:10 AM on March 9, 2023

Giving clicks and attention to Twitter helping sustain it absolutely isn’t a thing that requires BEING a fasicst, FIWIW. Adverting metrics just care about impressions and usage, it can’t see into your heart. As a propaganda and sentiment directing machine it’d be useless if it was just people who were onside already. There’s a reason that before the nazis got restored they didn’t just happily hang out on Gab or Parler.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 7:12 AM on March 9, 2023

Pretty sure he’s dead.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 8:12 AM on March 9, 2023

Note that I'm probably agreeing with you about how Volkswagen shouldn't be pilloried for that part of its history, but I think I have come to that conclusion for somewhat different reasons; just curious about yours, since it strikes me there's a disconnect between that and what you've been saying about Musk and Twitter.

Volkswagen simply isn’t a focus for me because Volkswagen is not an active threat RIGHT NOW.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 9:34 AM on March 9, 2023

DSG Snapshot of the Twitter Migration March 2023
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 10:02 AM on March 9, 2023

I like that we are moving the discussion towards solution finding around the problem, at least, rather aggressive shooting-the-messenger or denying the problem could possibly exist.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 11:55 AM on March 9, 2023

CPAnarchist - Kind of amazing to me hoe much of that I agree with and how little of it I agree with in peoples imaginations here.

The things I would not agree with basically come down to

1) Twitter is not a special case

Yes there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, and the problems with engaging with twitter are in some ways the same and have been since long before musk. And Twitter has *always* had a far right… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 11:06 AM on March 11, 2023

Antisemitic tweets soared on Twitter after Musk took over, study finds
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 1:42 PM on March 20, 2023

Masto and other accounts

@arthurwyatt@mastodon.social - will probably feature a lot of pictures of cats.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 8:43 AM on April 26, 2022

Roll, Truck, Roll

.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 8:26 AM on November 1, 2021

"In this story I think that the helicopter is a closet."

I stand by my comments in the original thread.

Also this should have been an FPP and the people pushed off about the logging are RIGHT to be pissed off about it.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 3:53 PM on July 14, 2021

RIP HuronBob

.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 5:08 PM on October 26, 2020

Twitter harassment from Mefi Outsider & Go Mefi

I’m seeing no reason not to make all meta comments viewable to logged in accounts only,

From my observation of trolls of various stripes they will abuse every last thing they can but throwing extra steps in their way can be effective way of tripping them up. Make it an effort for them.

Locking down the text of the metas themselves is trickier as some of them are announcements that should be public, but that seems handleable with a flag (or by… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 11:05 AM on July 13, 2020

It is very, very hard to get Twitter to do anything. The two things that seem to work are celebrities getting upset (not really a thing here) and sufficient reports being made on a bad acting account that a human actually ends up looking at it and bans it. Anything that increases the chances of the later is good.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 12:27 PM on July 13, 2020

Coronavirus check-in thread 2.0

A lot of comics people on my timeline agonizing over whether to do ECCC in Seattle and a lot have pulled out already. I think ReedPOP probably needs to just cancel or postpone it but they are reluctant because of money and do are fence sitting. If the county or state does step in that may give them that may be the push they need.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 11:27 AM on March 4, 2020

How about an update conversation on the post megathread era?

Probably not returning as an active contributor to the site any time soon, and suspect that a lot of what they broke in terms of my trust in the site *can't* be fixed, but from the outside it does seem like the site has done better as a whole.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 12:21 PM on December 19, 2019

Decommissioning the US politics megathreads

The changes to moderation (which for the mods seems to have amounted to “take all your worst instincts and go for it”) were the thing that made them truly toxic instead of a bit unwieldy and crap. Getting rid of them is a good move but late and leaves a lot of damage - good luck to you guys repairing that (and not finding odd new ways to double down on it), though I think I’m still done with the site for now.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 9:52 AM on July 25, 2019

State of the Site, July 2019 update

Sorry, why am I supposed to be wanting to start a MeTa thread about LobsterMitten? Am I an idiot? I know exactly how that would go.

Not sure there’s anything much to discuss - when I see mod comments that are petty and vindictive and seem to be tailored towards creating as much upset as possible in the name of making things “less contentious” (whatever that is) LMs the name that is there more often than not.

Given that it’s a moderator and… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 7:14 PM on July 13, 2019

Maybe everyone should just move on then.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 7:26 PM on July 13, 2019

People on this site always shit on Reddit, but I've seen way more radical left politics there than I've ever seen here.

Left wing politics are considered “contentious” and therefore fair game for deletion. MeFi is more that guy from Get Out who would have voted for Obama a third time if he could.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 12:54 PM on July 15, 2019

Also worth pointing out that though people talk about deletions in discussions in terms of maintaining the site’s wokeness it’s just as often if more so some bullshit like the royal wedding business mentioned above, or weird attempts to police conversations in particular directions, or the removal of “contentiousness”, etc... etc...
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 1:29 PM on July 15, 2019

Oh everywhere else is having a racist freak out right now too, don’t worry about it.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 1:59 PM on July 15, 2019