Cory Doctorow

Long thread/29

That's why content moderation algorithms are a #labor issue, and why projects like Tracking Exposed, which reverse-engineer those algorithms to give creative workers and their audiences control over what they see, are fighting for labor rights:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/05/tracking-exposed-demanding-gods-explain-themselves

We're at the tail end of a ghastly, 15-year experiment in neo-Bellheadism, with the big platforms treating end-to-end as a relic of a simpler time, rather than as "an elegant weapon from a more civilized age."

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Like 10 Dec 2022 at 15:27 | Open on mamot.fr

11 comments

Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

Long thread/30

The post-Twitter platforms like #Mastodon and #Tumblr are E2E platforms, designed around the idea that if someone asks to hear what you have to say, they should hear it. Rather than developing algorithms to override your decisions, these platforms have extensive tooling to let you fine-tune what you see.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/08/locus-of-individuation/#publish-then-filter

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10 Dec 2022 at 15:27 | Open on mamot.fr

Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

Long thread/31

This tooling was once the subject of intense development and innovation, but all that research fell by the wayside with the rise of platforms, who are actively hostile to third party mods that gave users more control over their feeds:

https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/27/og-app-promises-you-an-ad-free-instagram-feed/

Alas, lawmakers are way behind the curve on this, demanding new "online safety" rules that *require* firms to break E2E *and* block third-party de-enshittification tools:

https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/online-safety-made-dangerous/

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https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/27/og-app-promises-you-an-ad-free-instagram-feed/

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10 Dec 2022 at 15:27 | Open on mamot.fr

Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

Long thread/32

The online free speech debate is stupid because it has all the wrong focuses:

* Focusing on improving algorithms, not whether you can even *get* a feed of things you asked to see;

* Focusing on whether unsolicited messages are delivered, not whether *solicited* messages reach their readers;

* Focusing on algorithmic transparency rather, not whether you can opt out of the behavioral tracking that produces training data for algorithms;

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10 Dec 2022 at 15:27 | Open on mamot.fr

Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

Long thread/33

* Focusing on whether platforms are policing their users well enough, not whether we can leave a platform without losing our important social, professional and personal ties;

* Focusing on whether the limits on our speech violate the First Amendment, rather than whether they are unfair:

https://doctorow.medium.com/yes-its-censorship-2026c9edc0fd

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10 Dec 2022 at 15:27 | Open on mamot.fr

Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

Long thread/34

The wholly artificial distinction between "freedom of speech" and "freedom of reach" is just more self-serving nonsense and the only reason we're talking about it is that a billionaire dilettante would like to create chokepoints so he can extract payola from his users and meet his debt obligations to the Saudi royal family.

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10 Dec 2022 at 15:28 | Open on mamot.fr

Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

Long thread/eof

Billionaire dilettantes have their own stupid definitions of all kinds of important words like "freedom" and "discrimination" and "free speech." Remember: these definitions have *nothing* to do with how the world's 7,999,997,332 non-billionaires experience these concepts.

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CC BY 3.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

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https://www.macleans.ca/history/this-canadian-private-wrote-and-saved-hundreds-of-letters-during-the-first-world-war/

Public domain
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10 Dec 2022 at 15:28 | Open on mamot.fr

javitel replied to Cory

Long thread/eof

@pluralistic is there a tool for this app that puts together a thread that you can then share outside the app? Sort of like threadreaderapp.com did for the bird site?