The title of this piece is clickbait as all hell, but I viewed it as more of an anti-Google piece rather than an anti-AI piece. Like, I do think AI has some merits, but those are massively outweighed by the nefarious Silicon Valley ghouls(like Google) abusing it to make all of our lives worse.

But I think this begs the question of whether search was any good before. It wasn’t. It isn’t.

Yeah, I agree. Google had such a stranglehold on search for so long that they could make their product worse and not lose any meaningful marketshare. They knew damn well that people weren’t going to switch to Bing or anything, so they could enshittify the hell out of search to wring as much profit out of it as possible.

I’m really hopeful that federation continues to grow and bandwidth and storage costs can allow a simple hobbyist to maintain a site/node for minimal cost while contributing to the greater ecosystem. Smaller communities where reputation actually matters instead of being gamified into upvotes and downvotes as some sort of facsimile of trustworthiness or quality. I think with a more personal internet, AI becomes less of a threat anyway.

Absolutely. We’ve got to start cutting back on our use of corpo-internet, if possible. Especially considering that many of these companies are either collaborating with a fascist government or are enthusiastically supporting and influencing said fascist government.

Yeah, I think the last time I went was a couple years ago. Went to the one in Downtown Seattle and most things were locked up and there were more armed guards than customers. Can’t say I had much inclination to come back, and this only cements that feeling.

Lovely. More goons for the American Gestapo.

Real nice of him to sneak this in while people are distracted with the Signal chat leak. While I do think that incident happened due to sheer incompetence and not anything like 4D chess or whatever, the administration is savvy enough to take advantage of the chaos to attempt to consolidate more power. So if you see something completely outrageous, keep your eye out for some bullshit.

This is a blatant attempt to expand red state style voter disenfranchisement nationwide. Except it’s worse than that, because apparently the Department of Homeland Security and DOGE are going to work together to find “fraud” in the voter rolls. And DOGE has access to the private information of virtually every American. Considering that there’s another recent EO trying to end the siloing of information between federal agencies, they’ll be able to do targeted disenfranchisement to the point where there’s won’t even be blue states anymore. It’ll be like Russia, with maybe a token “opposition” but the dictator gets 95% of the vote. That’s where we are at. We’re in a dictatorship.

Is this legal? Fuck no. States control elections, per the Constitution. Will it matter? The courts would need to actually enforce this, something they don’t really have any way to do. They could direct the U.S. Marshals to enforce their rulings, but they report to the Attorney General and are apparently quite Trumpy themselves, being cops and all that.

I wonder, will blue states roll over and accept this? I hope not, but we should prepare as though they’ll capitulate to the threat of having federal funding pulled. I don’t know how much federal funds figure into state governments, but I imagine it’s a substantial amount. And guess who lives in a state with a budget crunch right now?

I’m not trying to fearmonger or anything, but anyone continuing to talk about the 2026 midterms has lost the plot. We have to take action ourselves, and do so now. Our institutions will not save us, because they’re based on a document nearly a quarter of a millennium old that’s had 26 modifications tacked on(24 if you don’t count the Prohibition amendments that cancel each other out).

Bullshit. I actually did apparently have a bad reaction to the MMR vaccine when I was a kid, so I’m not sure if I still have immunity from measles. I would really prefer not risking it, you know? Anti-vaxxers are idiots.

Zelenskyy knows damn well he can’t trust Russia to uphold their side of the bargain. Taking this deal would only grant them a short reprieve while Russia recovers their strength and comes back to finish the job. Ukraine is in a terrible position(and honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Russia ended forcing them to reinstall Viktor Yanukovych), but, as long as Ukraine has the will to fight, they should do what they feel is best. If they choose to fight a losing war to make it as painful as possible for the Russians rather than sign a “peace” negotiated by two hostile powers in which Ukraine was not even consulted, that is their right.

Trump and Vance are a fucking disgrace. They were trying to discredit Zelenskyy in the eyes of Ukraine and the world. It’s important to remember that this is one of the least ambiguous conflicts in recent years. Russia literally declared a war of conquest using one of the flimsiest casus bellis ever. And here comes this asshole Trump, who is like “maybe we should try to do that might makes right stuff”. Now Canada, Mexico, and Greenland are getting threatened with invasion and forcible annexation. That’s why Ukraine must be supported if they choose to continue fighting; not only are they the unambiguous victim in the conflict, but the more painful things get for Russia, the less likely they will be able to wage further wars in the short term, and maybe it might make belligerent countries think twice about stealing land and subjugating people they have no right to.

You might want to give a member of a minority currently directly targeted by the regime a little grace, yeah?

Yes, what’s done is done, and there’s not much point in re-litigating the election at this point. Let’s not turn this into another neverending argument about Gaza, because I guarantee that’s just going to drive a further wedge between all of us.

In a virtual speech at the World Economic Forum, Trump suggested Canada could become a U.S. state to avoid his proposed tariffs on imports.

The remark elicited gasps from the audience.

yeah, so, rich people, perhaps pushing the “they’re eating the dawgs” guy so that you can continue to make late stage capitalism even worse was a bit of a mistake. he’s sundowning hard and completely off the rails.

And they won’t stop until it turns into Conservapedia. Can’t have all those inconvenient facts contradicting the fascist regime or anything. You’ll have your firehose of misinformation and you’ll like it. Seriously, I could see January 6th becoming a federal holiday down the line. They’ll call it Patriot Day or something.

Fortunately, you apparently can download a compressed version of all of Wikipedia for ~25GB.

this isn’t just dropping fact-checking. per the article:

Beyond the end of the facet-checking program, Zuckerberg said the company will be eliminating some content policies around hot-button issues including immigration and gender, and refocus the company’s automated moderation systems on what he called “high severity violations” and rely on users to report other violations.

Facebook will also be moving its trust and safety and content moderation team from California to Texas.

This is full bore capitulation to fascism, as capital will always do. soon, zuckerberg’s social media sites will be indistinguishable from musk’s x. everybody needs to defederate from threads if they haven’t already.

Yep, the moment you have to explain it, you’ve already lost; the normies will check out. That’s the thing, these sites depend on having a huge userbase and people just aren’t going to go to a site with “nobody on it”. I maintain an account on both Mastodon and Bluesky… they’re both pretty neat in their own way. But Mastodon isn’t ever going to be the virtual town square. I kinda like it quiet there, tbh.

yeah, I live in Washington state, so I’m covered there. though, I’m not exactly enthused about my life depending on politicians deciding not to capitulate. thankfully, we bucked the trend this election and actually went more left.

I got an ADHD diagnosis and started on adderall a few months ago. I fucking hate these people so much.

so i guess even if they manage to forcibly detransition me and not just kill me, I have this to look forward to? fuuuuuuck.

I saw that. I’m very glad we got one of our own in Congress, but it’s likely too little, too late.

I don’t think I’ll be able to go anywhere, realistically, anyway. I’m going to hold down the fort in my blue state and hope they shield me from the worst.

thank you. I really appreciate that.

Had my name change hearing a couple days ago, I’m now legally Audrey! Going to the office for the first time in girl mode and I’m terrified. I’m honestly kinda concerned that the timing of this might prevent me from voting. I live in Seattle, though, so it won’t affect the Presidential election

yeah, I’m done here. Zero effort is being put in to justify most of your positions, which makes sense because you can’t. There’s some hilariously bad faith arguments here that’s I’m not even going to address because honestly, this post has been superseded by others and we’re only ones reading it at this point.

please stop wasting people’s time with obviously false arguments like “trump and harris are the same”. not only is it wrong, it’s painfully simplistic and reductive. no nuance, just black and white thinking so that you never have to think critically. like, you just drop that nonsense so that you don’t have to do the hard work of arguing why we should risk a trump presidency.

I know that I haven’t been very charitable to you, but you led off this discussion by basically calling me “privileged” and saying I’m pretty much a trumper, and then you drop dumb argument after dumb argument(and I have noticed that you threw my “parroting” and “idealism” criticisms back at me… you’re not very original, which tracks for someone who isn’t thinking for themselves). It’s pretty telling that your most effective arguments are those nitpicking something I’ve said.

your position is dangerous. that is why i have indulged you this long. trump CANNOT be allowed in, and we must do whatever we must to prevent that. trump will send my trans ass to a camp. harris WILL NOT. this is life and death and i need you to stop making stupid arguments that you obviously haven’t thought through

I watched some of the video, and holy shit was it awkward. You could tell that everyone else was completely confused as to why Trump was doing this. They played some music to fill time after a couple people fainted, and then Trump just abruptly decided that he was going to “dance” to his playlist instead of continuing with the Q&A. Kristi Noem actually rolled with it initially before trying to interrupt, but Trump insisted on playing more music and weakly swaying from side to side some more. I didn’t think Trump could really surprise me anymore… but what the hell was that!? He isn’t exactly beating the “weird” allegations, that’s for sure.

continued from the last comment

I would be curious to know what the “effective difference” between, historically, Trump and Biden is because the functional difference has been negligible. I’m also old enough to recall the Obama vs Romney and old enough to recall they were also marketed as polar opposites. The only major difference between then and now is the faces and increased normalization.

This is such a ridiculously bad argument that I’m absolutely stunned that someone would actually think this would work. You’re wrong on this, full stop. I am begging you to step out of your bubble and compare and contrast Harris’s proposed policy agenda and Trump’s Agenda 47/Project 2025 and tell me that they’re the same. Like, this take is so atrociously foolish that it must have been formed by uncritically parroting the Russian propaganda promoting apathy and despair that is infesting leftist corners of the internet. Like, if you can’t agree that Republicans have gotten massively worse over the last few years somehow, if you somehow view even Trump and Romney as the same, then your view is so skewed that it becomes functionally useless.

Have you not been paying attention to the attempts at organizing under the current Biden administration?

Yeah, the reaction to the student protests about Gaza definitely disturbs me. There are few things at play here, first off, it’s easy for unscrupulous Israel supporters to dupe people into believing that criticism of the Israeli government is inherently antisemitic. Add in some right wing provocateurs exploiting the situation by attacking the heads of these universities, and you get what’s happened so far. Also, Israel itself has a weird amount of influence throughout the government to the point where it’s actually illegal for U.S. companies to boycott them(I work in the logistics industry, and we have to do training every year to recognize signs of a boycott of Israel. If we find some, we literally cannot legally do business with them.) Israel is actually particularly difficult to protest against. I don’t think that leftist organizing will face quite that amount of pushback. Even if it does, repression under Biden is going to be much easier to deal with than repression under Trump(the man sent goons in unmarked vans to harass, detain, and intimidate BLM protesters in Portland. He’ll do much worse next time, when the guardrails have been removed).

As well as nationalistic propaganda which I am desperately trying to help you see past. The actual workings of the us government are significantly different than what was taught in your AP high school history class and I need you to have more intellectual curiosity and less parroting.

This is basically what I’ve been trying to argue to you(though the propaganda source in your case would be different).

Yes, the only difference is that Trump will actively encourage vigilantism while being largely ineffective whereas Harris will do the ‘I promise we are doing everything in our power to prevent these gross mischarges of justice!!! But we need to build more prisons in order to effectively combat attacks against our democracy.’ song and dance. See the “kids in cages”, Roe v Wade, war on the homeless, Iran escalation etc. comparing Trump Vs. Biden.

What a lousy, bad faith argument. I don’t pretend that things are going well, but for you to suggest that trans people are in danger from Harris is insane. I have replied to you not out of any conviction that I’ll change your mind, but to convince everyone else that you aren’t particularly worth listening to. You have proved that point. Like I said, the fact that you can’t discern the painfully obvious difference between the mediocre status quo Harris and the absolutely fascist Donald Trump means that we’re in an impasse here.