The Intenet Slum: is abandoning the Internet the next big thing? (2004)

Spam exploded in 2003[1] to the modern experience of it. Before that, spam was somewhat infrequent, even without countermeasures.

I recall in the 2001 time period being so annoyed by each individual spam note that I would respond to the appropriate "abuse@" email. By 2004, it was a torrent and totally impractical, and I don't think it was because of my own notes to administrators.

[1] https://www.emailtray.com/blog/email-spam-trends-2001-2012/

Back to the classic imageboards? They still exist.

I think using your last name, counter intuitively makes discussion less civil.

In a form like this, if someone is insulted, it is just the idea and words that have been insulted.

When using your last name, it is the real person's identity that has been insulted. Then it goes both ways in a feedback loop involving two real people's real identity without the constraint that face to face confrontation would impose.

The only way to make that worse then would be to have ML algorithms running on top trying to nudge people to but heads for engagement.

Maybe we could design a system that is worse that in order to join you have tell someone using both real names that their newborn baby is ugly and instead of collecting a list of friends you collect a list of enemies. Short of that though we seemed to have really done a great job figuring out the worst possible form of communication.

Facebook is pretty dogshit at it.

I have 2 fake accounts, one is named, in translation, Secret Dontknow, the other got hacked at some point and after recovering it it had a nice fake attractive asian woman persona on it. I just changed the location and ran with it. Both have yet to face any issues and they are at least 10 y/o accounts. I don't use them all that often but still.. Secret Dontknow is pretty obvious..

Actually you've got that wrong - the government/establishment agrees with Pearson, it was a member of the public that complained about her characterising pro-Palestinian protestors with a hate slur.

Back to the issue of overweaning government power - if you think the above is fixed by some sort of pseudo-anonymity online which is heavily tilted towards governments ( they know who people are, it's just you that doesn't ) - then I think you are sadly mistaken.

Ultimately the sunlight of transparency is much better than the murky darkness of anonymity - as comfortable as the blanket of anonymity is ( and yep I'm using that pseudo-anonymity right now ).

Democracy must not have to kill itself to prove that it exists.

The Yookay is cooked.

Yes it would make for a good law that whenever a recommendation algorithm is used the user must be able to fully control how the results are filtered and ordered including disabling it, and the service must remember the preference.

> The main issue with social media are the recommendation algorithms, and I don't want the government or private companies to be in control of them. In fact, I don't want anyone except myself to be in control of them.

Quit being friend in real life with people who have a social media account on one of the "big" platforms (yes, I do know quite some people who do this!).

What does it make when those same "idiots" are voters?

Do not use ad networks, none of them, they are the source of all this Internet scummery. The spam, the low quality ads for fraud products, and the ads themselves are virus delivery networks. If you really need advertising to support your product, do you really have a product? Or are ya just gossip, er "social media". Social media is just gossip, monetized, what was before recognized as the lowest form of communication now monetized and washed from that dirty name "gossip", now it's "media", "social media"... what fools mass culture is composed.

Rather than "spam", the usual term I see for genAI content is "slop" (original meaning: a mixture of kitchen waste and leftovers that is barely good enough for the pigs)