Nothing cares whether you present yourself as being nice or not. Information has no feelings.

But the Lemmy devs clearly pushed that responsibility downstream under the contractual terms of using the software. Maybe that made the agreement a bad deal, but nobody else had to ever agree to the bad terms. It seems you did agree to it. Why?

What the contract also allowed, however, was the ability for you to modify the software as you see fit. That part is a good deal. It seems the solution is staring you right in the face. Since you’re already committed, why spend your typing here and not in your favourite code editor?

if you added up all of developers at the FAANG companies you still would not have an appreciable percentage of the developers in the US workforce let alone the world.

Hmm. I’ve never taken “lots” to be a proportional term before. The dictionary uses “a lot of people at the gala last night” as an example of how “lots” is often used.

What kind of gala is attended by an appreciable percentage of the world’s population? Words can mean whatever want them to mean, of course, but in terms of common usage, surely it implies something like hundreds of people at best?

The theory behind why CSAM is illegal is that if someone is willing to pay for CSAM it incentivizes production of even more CSAM content to receive more payment. That incentivized additional production means even more abuse. A perfectly reasonable take and something that I think can be demonstrated.

But why would you accidentally seeing CSAM prompt you to give payment to create that incentivization? Are you worried that you’re a closeted pedophile that will be ready to shower those who record such content to see more and more as soon as you get your first taste?

The comment’s math would mean developers are making roughly 306,000/year.

Yes, developers at places like Google are making that much. Not the average developer, but nobody said the average developer.

Take a look at their liberapay page if you don’t believe me.

I took a look. “Lemmy receives US$392.03 per week from 287 patrons.”

enough to likely make a solid monthly income.

Approximately $850 per month each. Is that a solid income? Lots of developers are making $850 per day!

When they are actively ignoring safety features

The license agreement clearly places this onus on the instance operators. If they cannot commit to those terms, why did they accept the agreement? It is not like someone holds a gun to your back and forces you to start a Lemmy instance.

and you are trying to convince me it’s right.

I’m not sure I see the logic in that. Of what value would there be in convincing you that it is right? I have no agency over your brain. It means nothing to me. I wouldn’t try to convince a stone that I am right and the only difference between you and a stone is that you can speak back, hopefully offering knowledge when you do.

It’s okay for people to believe what they say.

It’s okay, but what’s the value proposition? It takes work to say things. The brain expects payment for the work it does. Knowledge can be sufficient payment, but if you have a belief no more knowledge can be acquired. It is final. I’m not receiving cash, a hug, anything. So, what is it that I have overlooked?

deleted by creator

Well, no, I’m not settled on it. It is an idea, but it has not made it to belief status. I’m talking about it, after all. If it were a belief, what value proposition would there be in such an exchange?

They genuinely believe the dumb shit they say.

It is unlikely that anyone believes what they say, as why would you waste time talking about something you believe in? You already believe it. Your mind has been made. There is absolutely nothing more that can be said. Discussion is only interesting when you can learn something new, which means exploring the things you don’t (yet) believe in.

There is good reason why every comment isn’t: “Hay guys, did you know that 1+1=2!?!?” – something you no doubt believe in. What are you going to learn by bringing it up again and again? Not much. There is no value in exploring what you believe.

When someone says something, they are seeking more information to validate an idea they have. With sufficient validation the idea brought forward may transform into a belief, but that transition requires exploration. Talk is how we explore ideas.

If you watch people, the pattern becomes quite apparent: Once something becomes a belief, interest is lost, and the talk about that subject will fade. They move on to something new that they want to find validation in. Sometimes people will get stuck on an idea that isn’t believable. This is where you find conspiracy theorists and the like, where people build up a whole persona around an idea that they keep failing to validate.

My argument has always rested on the question of why someone might buy an account.

And that is because the good names are already taken. People are also paying stupid amounts of money to secure an already registered <desirable name>.com and it is clearly for reasons of vanity, not malicious activity.

Technically speaking, jfkldajflkdnalkmfq3u409ijaeklfja0ui3qjaklfa.tires works just as well as any other domain name. Cheap bastards like me would unquestionably choose that over paying millions for something that looks nicer, but those with millions to burn clearly have other ideas.

I’d say it’s not even a problem of someone sweeping things under the rug, but an intruder throwing dust and trash all around.

The disabled and people with other life challenges will always exist. Call them swept under the rug or trash thrown around, but either way, why do you believe that is the right approach to dealing with them as opposed to accommodating them? Just because it is easier for you?

I think we’re just two people exchanging views on a certain question.

Wouldn’t you say that writing comments on forums is a solitary activity? I mean, there is good reason to believe you exist out there as another person, but is that not just an implementation detail of the software? Would it make any difference if the software quietly replaced you with something akin to ChatGPT? The answer is no. If done well, I’d never notice. The value is not in the exchange with another person either.

Don’t get me wrong. I do believe there can be value in exchange with other people. But when one seeks that they go outside. This environment is quite different; it is very much designed around the individual.

But in certain cases, where persuasion leads to action, it’s different.

I didn’t mean to suggest that argument cannot happen, but I don’t see the value in it. I don’t find enjoyment in changing random interest stranger’s (or ChatGPT model’s) minds. And when I’m spending my precious free time, it had better be enjoyably spent. If they are “wrong”, that’s their problem. One needs to take some relaxing downtime just for themselves now and again.

that the responsibility lies in the person imbibing information.

Well, I suggest that the responsibility lies on us to create a world where people struggling with misinformation is not an impediment. I get the appeal of trying to sweep them under the rug. It unquestionably makes things easier, like not needing to accommodate those in wheelchairs makes things easier. But must we take the easy road?

arguing in good faith.

Well, I don’t know if I’d go that far. By common definition, argument implies that one wants to persuade another to share in their views. Truthfully, I have no care as to what kind of views you hold. There is no value proposition in trying to persuade you. That is not the value of discussion.

moderators and admins are two separate things

Yes, it is true that you can metaphorically “shovel the parking lot at Walmart” on Lemmy, but my assumption was that anyone who has an interest in moderating would also take ownership of an instance. That said, it seems we are moving past the question of: Who cares if they have to work like a dog? One does not become a volunteer moderator if they don’t like the work. Perhaps providing more moderator duties is actually providing them a service?

I agree, in principle, but in practice?

I took that you already suggested that some people just aren’t capable of understanding the seperation, and I acknowledged that as being a real, possible scenario. But I also questioned how far you can really go by babysitting them. At some point you have to accept the lost cause, no?

If the likes of you and I are doing our jobs properly, our world should be robust enough to handle those with such disabilities and other life challenges. Are you suggesting that you and I have failed?

I hate to say this, but are you willing to extend this reasoning to moderators here in Lemmy? They’re also giving their free labor here, right?

Sure. Although presumably they also own the instance, so it is free labour like clearing your own laneway of snow is free labour, being the benefactor of the capital ownership. That is different to volunteering to clear the snow in the Walmart parking lot.

Selling accounts feeds the misinformation machine.

Only if the moderators can’t keep up due to the aforementioned volume problem. The “trustworthiness” of the account has no bearing on the “trustworthiness” of the message that gets delivered. A professional surgeon exclaiming that the world is flat wouldn’t make it any more believable than a homeless person standing on the street corner. The person delivering the message is irrelevant, hence why it is a logical fallacy to try and ascribe value to a person’s character in this regard.

My apologies if I have been combative in my tone

No need to apologize. Tone has no bearing on the content you are delivering. If I cannot separate the two, I have failed as a human and can be lumped among the braindead.

I agree. It is always good to remind that you’re dealing with crazies on the street corner. Although it is understandable why Reddit wants to silently walk back on telling the world that they are trying to profit off crazies rambling on about nothing. There is good reason why the real street corner is only viable through government agency. Throwing up some billboards for the crazies to look at isn’t enough for a sustainable business.

Why would anyone buy a Reddit account anyways?

Presumably because all the good usernames are already taken.

Because karma points and account age has been used as a proxy measure for an account’s trustworthiness.

For the sake of moderation effort, that is pertinent, yes. It is true that a new account is more likely to spam than an old, active account, so some moderators will choose to only allow the latter to post to make their lives easier, and this circumvents that. But if someone is foolish enough to give their free labour for Reddit’s gain, let them work like dogs. Why should anyone else care?

is a valuable thing for misinformation and/or campaigns.

Only if moderators stop doing their job. However, Reddit has made it pretty clear if moderators stop doing their job they will be kicked to the curb. It is doubtful that there is any material difference here.

Perhaps you are implying that the Reddit crowd doesn’t have the wherewithal to avoid the fallacy of authority, but if you truly think they can’t even work through a simple logic exercise, there is no hope no matter how hard you try to babysit them. At that point they are already certifiably braindead. Let them go.

Gold was introduced as a way to help sustain server costs

Surely it was to reenforce the idea that Reddit is the online equivalent of the street corner where crazy people ramble on about nothing, with gold replicating the bystanders who toss coins into their cardboard boxes/hats out of pity?

Real names were common on Usenet.

It is true that the finger camp often went by their Unix usernames, and that culture often carried over to newer communication platforms. I don’t think that parallel culture ever went away, though. It is seen here, for example.

Did anything change? I don’t see any apparent difference between thing we see today and the things posted to Usenet in the 80s.

The population of the internet has grown substantially since those early Usenet days. Perhaps it seems like there is more being shared because there are many more people doing it?

You come to write comments on an Internet forum when you could be doing literally anything else with your life and you only just now realized you were wasting your time?

This verbal rape is poorly considered. There is no reason not to use rape as a metaphor when it works. This is like saying I wouldn’t butter my toast with a knife because some people have been unwelcomely stabbed. Except I would, because there is no connection between someone being stabbed and me buttering my toast. Words are just a tool. Ascribing emotions to a tool may be something people do, but it does not make sense to.

No doubt there are stabbing victims who are affected by someone buttering toast with a knife, but at some point it has to be their problem to sort out. Society would stop functioning if we had to consider everyone’s irrational idiosyncrasies. But we have chosen to live in a functioning society, so that means only problems shared by the collective as a whole are to be considered by the whole. Individual concerns are on the individual to figure out. Like it or not, that is what living in a society entails.