Dmitry Borodaenko @angdraug@mastodon.social

Whether you're looking for a way out of the Gulag or just a plan B for the next time you land in Facebook jail, moving from one centralized social network to another won't do you much good. Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, MeWe—they all have the same fundamental flaw. A for-profit corporation sustained by ads will always put growth and engagement above all else, from privacy and mental health of individual users to social cohesion and political stability of entire countries.

Last year, I ran a $2000 birthday fundraiser for Mother Jones. This year, they disappointed me with increasingly clickbaity headlines. Then David Corn decided to criticize Pelosi's handling of impeachment on account of her not using the damning but weakly substantiated revelations in his and Isikoff's "Russian Roulette". And now they join The Intercept and The Nation on my "allies that do more harm than good" shitlist.

While the outcome is different, the ranked poll in SC shows the same affinity between the three candidates favored by Russian bots: Yang, Tulsi, and Sanders. Good news is that only a small fraction of Sanders supporters have the other two in their second choice, most prefer Warren or Biden. Bad news is that it still puts my estimate of Democratic voters swayed by bots more than by policies at 5.3%.

Whether you like the outcome or not, ranked poll gives a more accurate estimate of what voters really want. In South Carolina, it's Joe Biden. Elizabeth Warren, a clear winner of the September national ranked poll, in SC fell back to fourth place behind Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg.

https://www.vox.com/2019/12/9/20993498/joe-biden-south-carolina-primary-african-american-voters-bernie-sanders-elizabeth-warren

Turns out that when #bloomberg barred his journalists from covering the 2020 elections, he meant only the coverage that is detrimental to him. Naturally, an op-ed in defense of corporate NDAs is not detrimental to a billionaire vanity candidate buying his way into the most consequential election of our time. #CancelBillionaires

You know what could reduce #tesla's data charges? Ability to download offline maps. It is seriously annoying having to fall back to phone for navigation because you've lost cell signal and your car can't look up addresses anymore. #openstreetmap apps could do this for years now, even Google has figured it out and tells you to download an offline map. Why is it that car manufacturers, even the one created in Silicon Valley, are so bad at using what already exists?

https://www.engadget.com/2019/12/07/tesla-starts-charging-for-premium-connectivity/

A more accessible coverage of the problem by Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/12/keybase-moves-to-deal-with-crypto-chat-spam-as-users-face-scammer-onslaught/ They mention that Keybase is promising easier reporting and, maybe at some point, rules for incoming contact requests.

The corporate incentives problem makes me sceptical of their ability to fix this, we'll have to see.

In the meanwhile, I am going to recommend the Mastodon's built-in rel=me links suggested by @wiktor as a simpler even if a more limited way to certify external accounts.

40 hours work week made sense in 1840, at the dawn of industrialization. Over the past 180 years progress has increased labor productivity 60x (annual 2.3%; 1.023^180 = 60). A fraction of the labor force working 8 hours per week should be enough to support a decent standard of living for everyone. Whether we get there through universal basic income, increased minimum wage, or some combination of these and other soft redistribution of wealth measures, it is well within our grasp.

No, manufacturing electric cars is not creating more CO2 than driving gas cars. And when I charge my car, I get clean electricity from Monterey Bay Community Power.

"This new study puts the emissions at 61-106kg, depending on the energy sources and efficiencies of different manufacturing plants. That cuts the estimate in half and puts it much more in line with other studies."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/12/study-that-argued-evs-arent-cleaner-gets-an-update/

I underestimated the problems with #Keybase. This article by Normcore Tech explains why Keybase got overrun by fakes and harassers and how come the company isn't doing anything to address that: https://vicki.substack.com/p/keybase-and-the-chaos-of-crypto

Tl;dr: Their incentive system is compromised by the growth demands of venture capital and cryptocurrency, which means these problems are only going to get worse. I should have listened to my own advice about centralized corporate-owned social networks.