Twitter is not a utility. We really need to stop treating techbro services like utilities. If we feel they actually are utilities, the government can step in and make that claim and the appropriate changes.
I’m not on tiktok, but I’ll admit to using YouTube as a search engine a lot. Also googling something and immediately hitting the video tab before reading any of the results.
I must be a dinosaur because for most things I am looking up I want concise textual information. I’ll look for videos to explain larger complicated concepts
I only find videos useful if I’m trying to figure out something that’s procedural. Seeing the procedures and steps done in front of me helps me grasp the concept much faster than text.
For just information though, text is golden and video is a waste of time.
PDFs break my brain. It’s 2024. Unless you truly intend for something to be primarily and only read in print why use PDF? And I know everybody is able to host HTML because usually everyone is grabbing these PDFs from a webpage.
Edit: down voters, convince me on valid uses of PDFs for things that aren’t meant to be printed. At least list some. I’m aware this is an extreme opinion. It’s one I’ve thought about a lot, but I just can’t think of any. For things that are meant to be printed then I agree they’re the best. Everything else I think HTML is better for because it can be resized arbitrarily and isn’t bound to a specific layout. Also copying text from PDFs is bonkers.
I liken using groogle for finding factual information to using the yellowpages for doing the same. YT isn’t much better but it suffers many of the conflicts of interest traditional media outlets also had, depending on the corporation. In this case the almighty algorithm is the conflict of interest, though there are clever content creators out there making some good stuff, they’ll always be beholden to the owners of the platform and the true customers - the advertisers. As an advertising platform which can direct punters to actual long form content directly supported by watchers via patreon or similar, I understand why it is used : the sheer numbers using it.
If it’s a private company that con do what it wants, like blocking political opponents, it should not be under safe harbor protections.
That’s the point in yelling about this. If Elon wants a private forum for him and his mates, he should also be fully responsible when his mates posts child porn on his servers.
The EU has declared Twitter and a few others to be gate-keepers and they will now be held to a higher standard. But I don’t think the EU is going to use this power to save US democracy.
Twitter is not a utility. We really need to stop treating techbro services like utilities. If we feel they actually are utilities, the government can step in and make that claim and the appropriate changes.
You would be shocked to know how many people use TikTok as a search engine
I’m not on tiktok, but I’ll admit to using YouTube as a search engine a lot. Also googling something and immediately hitting the video tab before reading any of the results.
You video guys work different.
I must be a dinosaur because for most things I am looking up I want concise textual information. I’ll look for videos to explain larger complicated concepts
If it’s something like taking apart hardware, videos are great because there are a lot of little details that it’s hard to capture in even a picture.
I only find videos useful if I’m trying to figure out something that’s procedural. Seeing the procedures and steps done in front of me helps me grasp the concept much faster than text.
For just information though, text is golden and video is a waste of time.
deleted by creator
Depends on field. Some
methmath and programming stuff exists only in PDF. Try find videos on Bounding Interval Hierarchy.PDFs break my brain. It’s 2024. Unless you truly intend for something to be primarily and only read in print why use PDF? And I know everybody is able to host HTML because usually everyone is grabbing these PDFs from a webpage.
Edit: down voters, convince me on valid uses of PDFs for things that aren’t meant to be printed. At least list some. I’m aware this is an extreme opinion. It’s one I’ve thought about a lot, but I just can’t think of any. For things that are meant to be printed then I agree they’re the best. Everything else I think HTML is better for because it can be resized arbitrarily and isn’t bound to a specific layout. Also copying text from PDFs is bonkers.
Unless you want to force readers into reading in browser, you should use PDF.
If it’s not something I expect people to read in a print format I’m absolutely willing to do that.
I liken using groogle for finding factual information to using the yellowpages for doing the same. YT isn’t much better but it suffers many of the conflicts of interest traditional media outlets also had, depending on the corporation. In this case the almighty algorithm is the conflict of interest, though there are clever content creators out there making some good stuff, they’ll always be beholden to the owners of the platform and the true customers - the advertisers. As an advertising platform which can direct punters to actual long form content directly supported by watchers via patreon or similar, I understand why it is used : the sheer numbers using it.
That’s how I use Bing. 😻
I just ask chatGPT…
Why? All it’s going to do is output some words that have a statistical correlation to your input words
If it’s a private company that con do what it wants, like blocking political opponents, it should not be under safe harbor protections.
That’s the point in yelling about this. If Elon wants a private forum for him and his mates, he should also be fully responsible when his mates posts child porn on his servers.
Which safe harbor protections?
Section 230 of the CDA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230
And the EFF has a primer on Section 230, and several opinion pieces about why nerfing 230 would be a terrible idea:
Wanna Make Big Tech Monopolies Even Worse? Kill Section 230 by Cory Doctorow
Holy Unholy, this is written by The Enshittification Guy!
Show a little repsect, “The Enshittification Guy” is Cory Doctorow a very well known author and activist.
I know, but he is most famous for his talk on enshittification.
The EU has declared Twitter and a few others to be gate-keepers and they will now be held to a higher standard. But I don’t think the EU is going to use this power to save US democracy.
I disagree. We should nationalize it.