@rms over fourty years ago started warning that software should not have owners, because non-free software leads to non-free humans.
@pluralistic gave us a term for the degradation of the digital commons we've all experienced over the past two decades.
And I think they add up to: social networks should not have owners. They need to be public property because non-free social networks leads to non-free humans.
PS. and I am certainly not the first person to think this, I'm just expressing my understanding of what smarter people than me have explained many times.
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The history of the past 2 decades of history includes empirical proof that the standard economic claim: "privatising a resource leads to it being well managed because the owner wants to keep making money from it tomorrow" doesn't actually hold true in the real world.
The best way to make money tomorrow, especially to make more money tomorrow, may not be to preserve the resource well. It could well be to strip it off as much value as you possible can before people give up on it entirely, to the detriment of everyone who relies on it.
This can be hard to see or quantify with physical resources, but it's very visible in digital resources like social networks
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If the "tragedy of the commons" is when somebody abuses a commons leaving too little for everyone else, then I guess #enshittification is (one form off) the "tragedy of private property".
Contrary to what some would argue - the answer to the tragedy of the commons is NOT to give up on having a commons, it's simply to have rules and social contracts that govern access to the commons in an equitable and sustainable manner.
But what answer is there to the tragedy of private property ? The inevitable urge of owners to place their interests in a resource ahead of the community that relies on that resource ?
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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/picks-and-shovels-marty-hench-at-the-dawn-of-enshittification?ref=thanks-copy @pluralistic I have been loving the series so far, can hardly wait for the next one.
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@pluralistic so get this... it seems my employer's "internet security proxy" has blocked martinhench.com as a threat. I'm certain this is a technical error in the automatic categorisation system (what with the books dealing with cybersecurity) and not a deliberate attempt at censoring an anti-enshittfiication message.
Yeah, that MUST be it.... right ?
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Dear Canada,
When you burn down the White House again, please ensure Trump, Vance and Musk are still inside.
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Today's theme for @Kitty 's #TuneTuesday is basically made for me. #CanisLupus my favourite band sings about this topic in almost every song.
So I submit: Powerwolf with Wolves against the world
https://song.link/nl/i/318500949
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Slumdog hundredaire
[#]MakeACharacterBoring
[#]HashTagGames
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[#]thursdayfivelist #themachine
Judas Priest - Electric Eye
https://song.link/nl/i/207178158
Radiohead - Paranoid Android
https://song.link/nl/i/1097861770
The Terminator Theme - Brad Fiedel
https://song.link/nl/i/1484988414
Computer God - Black Sabbath
https://song.link/nl/i/723622920
And for a complete different take on the theme:
James Brown - Sex Machine
https://song.link/nl/i/466747159
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@pluralistic Access to the vast US market was the one positive trade-off for scrapping regulations against negligently unsafe products and practises. It was a high price to pay for that one little reward.
So... with Donald Trump promising a tariff war, ending the era of getting access to the vast US market: why should any country persist in these policies ?
Why should any country CARE what the US Trade Representative says if the ONLY thing they ever offered in return is no longer on the table ?
I think it's time for some serious lobbying to get rid of policies and laws like that. There is literally NO reason to have them anymore.
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What @pluralistic said about Canada in his latest comment, is globally true.
Throughout my lifetime the US has used free trade to pressure countries into making otherwise objectively bad policies. "If you get rid of good regulations we won't put tarriffs on your exports". Access to the vast US market was the only reward for terrible policies like criminalising "circumvention" devices, even when used to perform completely legal activities like backing up a movie, fixing a minor breakage on your tractor or car or converting an ebook for a braille-reader.
1/?
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@pluralistic which I think adds yet another reason I support your view that we should treat the question of AI training as a labour rights discussion rather than a copyright discussion.
It's not at all clear to me that training AI is a copyrightable activity anymore than training humans is - or should be.
But labour doesn't have that question at all. Labour is first and foremost about human needs.
And making art is definitely a human need.
Making art is what made us who we are as a species.
Most human endeavours we do to survive. But not art: we don't make art to survive, we survive to make art.
if we no longer make art, will we really exist at all ?
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@pluralistic so I fully expect them to argue that, for an AI to be trained on your book is no different than for a kid in a creative writing class to read your book and learn techniques they will later use in their own writing.
Now, of course, AI isn't actually intelligent. I don't know if true AI is possible but we both agree that we definitely haven't achieved anything close to it yet.
One could therefore argue that "training AI' is not like learning because it's not a real intelligence and isn't capable of real creative development on top of what it learned.
But do we really want governments deciding who or what is sentient ? What could go wrong, eh ?
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@pluralistic your latest collumn had me thinking. We use books to train inteligences now - it's one of their main uses and always has been. Nobody has ever suggested that, if you're going to use a book to teach people with, you need to pay for more than buying them a copy of the book.
I fully expect AI companies to raise that argument in their lawsuits: that using a book to learn is definitely not a copyrightable activity since they've always been used that way. Indeed, one of the groups of people who MOST rely on books to learn: is future authors.
Great readers make great writers after all.
As writers, we learn from other writers, by reading their books.
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@Kitty mmm, wikipedia informs me that my one year of German 23 years ago has let me down.
Feurschwanz does NOT mean "fire swan" as I had thought, but rather ... "Fire tail".
Which could have multiple meanings but I'm choosing to assume they mean somebody with a very hot ass. :p
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Thanks @Kitty for the new #tunetuesday theme #FireAndBurn
One of the first to spring to my mind is a song about fire, by a band named after a bird whose on fire.
Feurschwanz with their cover of Ed Sheeran's "I see fire" from the Hobbit OST
https://song.link/nl/i/1567434182
(I chose the Angus McFife collab version of the song)
And I'll immediately follow it up with #FooFighters and their song Burn Away: https://song.link/nl/i/538257314
And you simply cannot do this topic without multiple Rammstein's Feuer Frei
https://song.link/nl/i/1440771498
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So thanks to @pluralistic I just learned about @calyxinstitute and while I understand their operation is very much based on US laws and thus US networks - I really, really wish I could get their OS on my #fairphone
The #FairPhone is the best hardware proposal for environmental, and financial considerations - but the OS is still google spying on everything you do and only so much you can do to limit that.
Surely we can get a mobile OS that is NOT spied on by google but still lets my banking app work ?
Hint @bunq: being spied on by google actually makes my banking LESS secure, not more.
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For @Kitty's #tunetuesday @inanedirk asks us for #MusiciansWhoLoveOtherMusicians
I think this is my time to introduce many of you for the first time to Koos Kombuis. One of the true legends of Afrikaans rock music, he was an anti apartheid activist in the 1980s who got banned off the radio - a lot - under that censorious regime.
In the late 1990s he wrote this sweet ballad in English about #Nirvana's late great frontman Kurt Cobain.
Koos Kombuis: Who killed Kurt Cobain?
https://song.link/nl/i/603982474
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For #tunetuesday @Kitty and @SimoRavens19 wants to know #arewethereyet
Songs about transportation.
So let's kick things off with some classic metal on an airplane:
Iron Maiden: Aces High
https://song.link/nl/i/980112278
And let's add some 90s nostalgia rock on a train.
Soul Asylum: Runaway train
https://song.link/us/i/394943368
We gotta have a boat:
Feuerschwanz: untot im drachenboot
https://song.link/nl/i/1589279855
How about the very first use of the phrase "heavy metal" in this song about motorbikes:
Steppenwolf - Born to be wild
https://song.link/nl/i/1425253292
And we can finish with a fantastic cover if a song about long haul trucks:
https://song.link/nl/i/1440857349
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The most annoying thing about being in your forties is, you are young enough to remember shrugging of a minor injury and being fine after a few hours.
But your old enough that a minor injury now takes days to heal
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