EmberJS is probably the most stable of the frontend frameworks in that it's very internally consistent and opinionated. As far as the back-end goes, I think PHP, Rails and Django are all pretty stable, but I'm not familiar with the microsoft stack.
I highly doubt it - what are you basing this on? I personally don't know a single person who actually pays for discord. Most people I know who use Teamspeak pay for it. That being said, Discord is way more popular than Teamspeak, it does remain to be seen if they can heavily monetize.
I don't know a single person who uses Teamspeak, and every discord server I'm on has at least one person boosting it. I was paying for discord for a while until I did a trim of my budget - but it gets you a shiny icon, you get to use more emojis, and other little things. You may call me a chump, but Discord is a product I value (like public radio ;) ) and so I tossed a coin to them.
Go to any public discord server with hundreds of users and you'll see them. I got my friends to pitch in to boost the server so that we can stream to each other in 60 fps but turns out our internet connections cannot handle it
I have no particular comment about Parler specifically, but in the general case:
Suppose you're a single-person startup of an app called "Speak!". Speak! is pretty niche, but one day, a group of the X-People are ostracized on all the popular forums: Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Because Speak! is the only remaining bastion for the X-People all of them flock to Speak!. Let's say the X-People say things that aren't exactly popular among those who are not X-People.
BigCo claims that Speak! is not properly moderated. You say that you're only a single person and a certain level of moderation cannot be expected given N number of employees.
If BigCo bans Speak! on the grounds that Speak! is not sufficiently moderated, would that mean that any small person operation who operates a surprisingly large userbase cannot operate?
I think there should be objective quantitative measures that any company can use that's applied evenly across companies. Should a company with 10,000 moderators be held to the same standard of moderation as an extremely popular forum with only a single moderator? You decide.
This isn't "things that aren't exactly popular". This is organizing an insurrection against the government and advocating for violence against groups and individuals.
I understand, but that doesn't really have to do with the point I'm trying to make. Even if you use "organizing an insurrection against the government" as your baseline - is a single post on Facebook/Twitter enough to justify banning? Obviously not - the question is what metrics are acceptable given a certain level of capability by the forum/company.
Only so much moderation is possible given a certain amount of moderators and company resources. Are these rules inherently biased against smaller companies?
If you want to operate a social network (and can spin up to arbitrary user loads thanks to the magic of containers and cloud services), then you need to consider the possibility that your site might get jacked by a set of very difficult users.
Unfair to smaller firms? Maybe, but the phrase 'don't bite off more than you can chew' comes to mind.
Out of curiosity how much time for remediation is generally allowed before service is pulled? Surely the precedent is not "you do something bad and we ban you immediately"?
In FTA it says AWS generally gives 30 days per their contract with Parler, but I mean in general, if there is a general precedent. Even if Parler wanted to do the right thing here, they were pretty much banned everywhere immediately.
If @realDonaldTrump said all the same things through, let's say, White House press releases, but through Twitter it was relatively "clean" do you think Twitter would've banned it regardless?
I'm honestly curious - where is the line drawn between a service being used to do "questionable" things and it being removed?
We can all agree, for example, that the internet at large enables many bad things, but I doubt any of us would ban the internet (though in other countries this happens).
What about reddit? A specific subreddit? A specific post? A specific user? A specific post by a specific user at a specific time? Obviously Reddit isn't going to be banned, but is the mere existence of moderation enough? Or is it the outcome of the moderation, aka, certain content never being present, that is what's desired?
I'm curious how nuanced these things are for Apple and other companies. Is there some sort of algorithm that says: if this app has a news feed, if X% of items in the newsfeed in a 24hr period are objectionable then it will be banned? Or perhaps Y number of days that fulfill the previous criteria before it is banned?
Parler is (or was) the #1 downloaded app on the App Store, according to some metrics. You don't need an algorithm to see that. It's a PR nightmare, and this is the common sense thing for any global brand to do
I don't understand - obviously being #1 will not inherently result in being banned, so the implication is that Parler is bad. If that's the case, doesn't it basically just beg the question I posed in the parent post?
You’d be accused of creating a platform for nazis and pedophiles unless you remove that content. And rightly so. Allowing everything isn’t a shield from that accusation, nor should it be. Good faith moderation is.
Since there are platforms without that content, the effect of starting a new platform allowing it is that you get a disproportionate amount of the most extreme content. You become the gab or parler or t_d.win.
Next, if your content has an extremely high ratio of content that must be moderated to be allowed in a “parent service” (App Store, cloud provider, credit card company) then your moderation burden is higher than your competition. Your ad revenue is also likely smaller. So basically, it’s simply very difficult economically to create such a platform.
>You’d be accused of creating a platform for nazis and pedophiles unless you remove that content. And rightly so.
I don't agree with this at all. You realize 70+ million people are not nazis, right? They're normal people like you or me who's voice just happens to not be amplified by the media/movies.
Platform would ideally provide controls for you to hide things you don't want to see. Hide nazis, hide perverts, hide furries, hide gun nuts, hide whatever you want to hide.
This is the future and what we should be aiming for.
> You realize 70+ million people are not nazis, right?
(not the OP) Sure, but that's just a strawman, as nobody is saying they are. Twitter, Facebook, and Apple are specifically trying NOT to deplatform all of the 70 mil "alright" people, but only those few who go against the laws, right? Nobody's banning r/concervative, only the T_D got taken down.
> Platform would ideally provide controls for you to hide things you don't want to see. [...] This is the future and what we should be aiming for.
I like this idea very much! This already happens to some level, by following only certain accounts, being part of certain subreddits, or by switching to certain platforms, but I think a "physical" explicit checkmark to hide specific themes might make people think more about what they're actually doing — closing their eyes and ears and hiding themselves in echo chambers.
With that said, I'm sure we both can agree that most companies wouldn't want to provide a platform for nazis and pedophiles (...to discuss their nazi and pedophile things), even if the other users could hide their posts. Because, why would you do that? F*ck them.
I can't believe this amazing comment was removed, because it's true. Where is the line? No one knows.
"I think a seriously dangerous and underreported factor in these issues is the widespread use of the English language. I think it's time to hold accountable the Oxford English Dictionary company ("Big Word") and their agents, English teachers, for their role in enabling this ghastly event."
The comment was in no way "removed". Please don't feed this sort of perception. People are all too ready to leap to it as it is.
If you're not seeing it in the thread it's probably because the thread has been paginated for performance reasons. In that case you have to click More at the bottom to get to the rest.
I've never understood this take. Suppose in the far future some super corporation owns all property on Earth and facilitates all communication through any channel.
Would you still believe "you don't have to interact with Supercorp?" If so, the same is true trivially with a government as well. It's very easy to leave the United States if you want. Even if you couldn't leave, you don't have to speak. After all, you have the right to remain silent.
That aside, you would think a sensible government would prevent a private entity from reaching the heights of its abilities in any area.
People love to blame the President or their Governor or whatever, but the reality is that American culture made COVID much worse than it needed to be.
In general I see zero evidence that Americans at large would’ve followed a “proper lockdown”, by any definition. If you look at travel rates for each American airport this holiday season it’s pretty much confirmed. A company called StreetLight data put it at about 5% to 20% less.
If anyone has data suggesting otherwise please, by all means, reply and let’s see.
While I don't entirely disagree with your premise...
You've cherry-picked specifically the numbers for "vehicle travel" which isn't even defined but is differentiated even by that article from air travel -- I'd read that as people driving in their own cars. Which is still concerning, but perhaps less so. Some places have even actively encouraged people w/ cars to get out on a drive as a safe way to get out of the house during lockdowns while minimizing social contacts.
Even your link calls out that the drop in air travel this year was far greater. A quick google turns up some estimates that air travel generally accounts for more than half of normal Thanksgiving travel[1], and that there was ~%50 reduction in air travel this year[2]. So that seems like closer to a 30-40% overall reduction -- still not great, but nothing like 5%.
Looking at total air travel is meaningless because a huge amount is for business - I use holiday travel as an example because it is the most discretionary.
My point is that air travel (along with vehicular) was highest during this thanksgiving despite Covid being the worse during this thanksgiving and people having a good understanding of the risk. This is also shown in your link.
If people are traveling at such numbers (again thanksgiving was highest at any point between now and last March) given what we know now, there’s no way they would follow a lockdown when the effect is unknown like a hypothetical lockdown being done last February.
There’s just no evidence that Americans would’ve obeyed a lockdown at the levels necessary to stop spread.
Like I said, I'm not disagreeing with your premise... but you presented the numbers as something other than they actually were. And I agree that there was way more travel than was necessary.
But those numbers aren't about total air travel, they're about air travel at the holiday at that highest point since March was _still_ a 50% reduction (which is pretty minimally impacted by business travel, so not sure why you're bringing that up at all.) Again, from your latest link:
> The number of travelers flying Wednesday was half of what it was on the day before Thanksgiving in 2019, before the coronavirus was a threat in the United States
> But those numbers aren't about total air travel, they're about air travel at the holiday at that highest point since March was _still_ a 50% reduction (which is pretty minimally impacted by business travel, so not sure why you're bringing that up at all.) Again, from your latest link
My point in bringing up business travel is that it still happens during the holiday, almost exclusively by air, but the rate of increased travel from late number until thanksgiving is similar to last year.
Meaning if the rate of change is the same but the amount is offset, that could mean either it’s business travel during the holidays, or that there’s a group of people who were going to travel no matter what (which is my point regarding a lockdown not being followed)
Vehicular travel is also representative because it shows how the behavior people who are within driving distance was hardly affected.
In any case my point was about a lockdown not really being feasible to begin with, which we apparently agree on.
In the context of COVID it’s pretty clear collectivist countries had citizens more likely to follow a lockdown and therefore have a better response to Covid.
Just look at the countries that did best, it’s pretty clear.
That being said I wouldn’t say collectivism is superior in general, but for Covid it was helpful
We're already quite collectivist. It's just that some of us are collecting more than others. The "CARES act" gave billionaires more than it gave the 99%. [0][1][2] This was version 2 of the egregious "bailouts" concocted in 2008-9, which were already giant transfers of wealth to the already rich. Every complication in these 10,000-page monstrosities is another place for lobbyists to hide loot for their employers. This is collectivism for the rich.
A change to the sort of collectivism we're taught to fear would be a vast improvement. From the beginning of the pandemic, it was obvious that the just and effective way to "lockdown" would be to pay everyone to stay home. Give everyone who stays home money, for every week they stay home. That would have been more fair and less distorting to the economy. Unfortunately there are no lobbyists representing "everyone".
> The question is how can we change American culture to be more collectivist?
American exceptionalism is so ingrained in the culture that I feel it would take generations..
And, in my opinion, that won't start happening until America is no longer the "world leader" (for better or for worse) that it is today..
It would take humility, selflessness, self-awareness and self-reflection at a very large scale for this kind of transformation to happen.. and we (humans in general - not just Americans) aren't really good at that...
Not just time, but also demographics. Most issues today are urban vs rural. Urbanization tends to increase over time, moving us further on progressive topics. You can see this most clearly on gun rights in countries that hit 80% urbanization under similar representative governments.
I was actually going for this one. There's a lot more red than blue, but there's more people under the blue area. It's pretty fragmented, especially the blue areas. So it wouldn't divide cleanly.
Personally I have no problem with Uber drivers being contractors but I wish it were more like eBay in that you could set your own prices and routes as a driver and then as a “buyer” set your own maximum price.
For example if I’m going to New York in a month I’d love to say hey I need a ride from Penn Station to Brooklyn and I’m willing to pay $10. Ideally then the driver could, with the help of the app consolidate these requests and then pick me and maybe a few others up and complete the route.
but I wish it were more like eBay in that you could set your own prices and routes as a driver and then as a “buyer” set your own maximum price.
That's the definition of "contractor" that many companies would prefer to ignore. See also: Amazon delivery drivers, which are just employees without benefits who also have to pay for their own tools to get the job done. In other words, "contractors", except for that pesky autonomy part.
A key factor in US law is that a company can't use independent contractors for its primary business function.
Also, an independent contractor isn't bound by the clients requirements for how the job is performed, only the result of the work.
Uber requires specific cars and behavioral standards, and specific moments for the work it assigns.
> A key factor in US law is that a company can't use independent contractors for its primary business function
Uber maintains that their business function is providing a marketplace for drivers and passengers to buy/sell "chauffeur" contracts, the way eBay does for goods.
Whether this interpretation is the one the courts should accept is what's in question, as there are obvious differences with the well-established eBay example. But its not facially ridiculous, and ignoring their claim entirely just provides more heat than light.
To be clear, I don't think Uber is necessarily right here; my complaint was narrowly about the GP's /r/politics-quality comment about "companies choosing to ignore that pesky autonomy requirement" without engaging at all with the arguments being put forth by each side.
That makes sense, but wouldn’t work from a product POV as your transactions are real time with Uber vs EBay. Uber was found a nice loophole, where they get all the benefits of a contracted workforce while putting guardrails similar to an employee. But since it benefits consumers a lot, governments have struggled to regulate it and their recent victory in California puts them on a much solid footing
