Eji1700's recent activity
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Comment on TV series suggestions in ~tv
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Comment on The bot situation on the internet is actually worse than you could imagine. Here's why. in ~tech
Eji1700 (edited )Link ParentIt is, but I'm wary of the overhead (especially if you're already trying to do minimal or no JS), the long term effectiveness (i suspect part of it's success is due to it's lack of deployment),...It is, but I'm wary of the overhead (especially if you're already trying to do minimal or no JS), the long term effectiveness (i suspect part of it's success is due to it's lack of deployment), and possible knock on effects (not sure how much it's going to change things if EVERY site is jamming PoW)
Edit:
Coincidentally I accidentally clicked the link again when going to see the topic on hacker news and it gave me a difficulty 8 pow. After about a minute my phone still hadn’t made any progress.
Edit 2 -
Oh and now that I’m actually in the comments section seems like I’m far from the only one with this experience.
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Comment on The bot situation on the internet is actually worse than you could imagine. Here's why. in ~tech
Eji1700 Link ParentThe answer is likely "yes". There's TONS of bot farms all over the world because they're somewhat easy to run. You need the capital to get the devices you need/want and all the required...The answer is likely "yes".
There's TONS of bot farms all over the world because they're somewhat easy to run. You need the capital to get the devices you need/want and all the required infrastructure, but then it just...does the thing with some minimal maintenance by a local (who may or may not even be good at troubleshooting and just given basic instructions or having it handled remote.)
As for the botnets, well naturally? The whole point of a botnet is to do something that requires a lot of devices, and a good way to get a lot of devices is to just run in the background of someone else's system (obviously, seldom legally). Scrapping is probably a hell of a lot more lucrative and less risk than a DDOS or whatever, and as with any resource like this you're probably looking to prevent idle/downtime. You've got the "machine" so you want it running as much as possible to generate revenue to cover costs.
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Comment on The bot situation on the internet is actually worse than you could imagine. Here's why. in ~tech
Eji1700 LinkYeah scrapers are a wonderful example of all sorts of holes in our current infrastructure, standards, and legislation. "Please don't scrape my site" is basically all the teeth you've ever really...Yeah scrapers are a wonderful example of all sorts of holes in our current infrastructure, standards, and legislation.
"Please don't scrape my site" is basically all the teeth you've ever really had unless you're behind something like cloudflare. The way traffic is handled makes it very hard to identify bad actors, and the laws mean that these AI companies can just pay Asian nations for these vast swaths of data that are totally definitely legally acquired.
Its going to be a very tricky thing to handle because while it COULD be done right, it could also be used as yet another excuse to jam horrible practices into place for future control.
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Comment on I think Tildes moderators and admins may need to make a decision regarding how to handle Harry Potter related posts in ~tildes
Eji1700 Link ParentWhy can’t the same advice of “ignore it and move on” apply here? To be clear I know you’re not the one suggesting that, but would it bother you if you never saw it?Why can’t the same advice of “ignore it and move on” apply here? To be clear I know you’re not the one suggesting that, but would it bother you if you never saw it?
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Comment on I think Tildes moderators and admins may need to make a decision regarding how to handle Harry Potter related posts in ~tildes
Eji1700 Link ParentThat post is intended to be insulting to anyone who might disagree with you. Just because it wasn’t removed doesn’t mean it’s not insulting. Hell I don’t even know if it was tagged or worth Deimos...That post is intended to be insulting to anyone who might disagree with you.
Just because it wasn’t removed doesn’t mean it’s not insulting. Hell I don’t even know if it was tagged or worth Deimos time to review if it was but I don’t really see how you can claim no insults were thrown around just because you didn’t throw them directly at someone
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Comment on I think Tildes moderators and admins may need to make a decision regarding how to handle Harry Potter related posts in ~tildes
Eji1700 Link ParentI see I misunderstood what you meant by thread.I see I misunderstood what you meant by thread.
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Comment on I think Tildes moderators and admins may need to make a decision regarding how to handle Harry Potter related posts in ~tildes
Eji1700 Link ParentI've read your quote a few times in context and I really can't quite understand exactly what you're trying to get across, but I'm having a hard time coming up with a read that isn't meant as an...I've read your quote a few times in context and I really can't quite understand exactly what you're trying to get across, but I'm having a hard time coming up with a read that isn't meant as an insult when you add "but don't pretend to", since accusing someone of pretending to stand for something is very much an insult.
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Comment on I think Tildes moderators and admins may need to make a decision regarding how to handle Harry Potter related posts in ~tildes
Eji1700 Link ParentMaybe we're thinking of different topics? There's very much a ton of discussion about exactly that and what a terrible person she is following the FYI link.No one commented about Rowling's views in the other threads in that topic, though,
Maybe we're thinking of different topics? There's very much a ton of discussion about exactly that and what a terrible person she is following the FYI link.
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Comment on I think Tildes moderators and admins may need to make a decision regarding how to handle Harry Potter related posts in ~tildes
Eji1700 Link ParentI am not at all recommending people be banned for bringing up JKR's transphobia. I am pointing out that people have been banned for a variety of topics that I'm sure most if not all here would...I am not at all recommending people be banned for bringing up JKR's transphobia.
I am pointing out that people have been banned for a variety of topics that I'm sure most if not all here would agree on because they could not discuss them maturely
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Comment on I think Tildes moderators and admins may need to make a decision regarding how to handle Harry Potter related posts in ~tildes
Eji1700 Link ParentYour first comment is about how someone is arguably violating don't be an asshole, but you should just ignore them and move on. Your second comment says that you should report the message....Your first comment is about how someone is arguably violating don't be an asshole, but you should just ignore them and move on.
Your second comment says that you should report the message.
Obviously, in your second point, they are WELL BEYOND the don't be an asshole, but there's an issue where one person can feel like someone else is being an asshole but you don't bother to report it because "just deal with it" is the acceptable outcome due to a mixture of differences of opinions/pressure/previous outcomes/whatever.
In one post you're telling someone to just ignore possible rule violations and report others.
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Comment on I think Tildes moderators and admins may need to make a decision regarding how to handle Harry Potter related posts in ~tildes
Eji1700 Link ParentI'm sorry but I categorically disagree its suppression to say "can we stay on topic". Again, no one is saying you can't make your own topic, nor that you shouldn't. I get that HP is in a weird..., but that's very different from trying to suppress others from speaking up about horrible things an author has done when they come up.
I'm sorry but I categorically disagree its suppression to say "can we stay on topic". Again, no one is saying you can't make your own topic, nor that you shouldn't. I get that HP is in a weird spot because there's not a lot of easy analogues that have current media coming out and a strong association to outright evil behavior, but I see no reason that something people can't seem to discuss without locking a topic should always be allowed as that just prevents an entire area of discussion because it instantly turns into a PSA about Rowling.
But I also feel empathy for people who like us, grew up loving these stories, but who are harmed by these authors actions. That's a lot more of a "real issue" to me than if people feel bad for a bit when they're reminded that an author they like is causing real harm.
Sure, so do I. I disagree that requiring signal boosting in every discussion that might be tangential helps anything though. If this movie charts shall we also allow someone to do a "Just so you know..." Rowling link on the "top grossing films" discussion? How far out do we have to drag this?
This would be less of a problem if it didn't also quickly devolve into full on discussion of Rowling. If your goal is "here's a Rowling resource" okay I guess, but if you're going to go back and forth discussing her actions beyond that, or have other people pile in and bring up all the horrible things she's done, why shouldn't you move that to its own thread?
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Comment on I think Tildes moderators and admins may need to make a decision regarding how to handle Harry Potter related posts in ~tildes
Eji1700 Link ParentThe post led to the entire topic being derailed and the topic being locked. It reminds me of the old forum topics that started with "who do you like in Star Wars" or some other thing that wound up...The post led to the entire topic being derailed and the topic being locked. It reminds me of the old forum topics that started with "who do you like in Star Wars" or some other thing that wound up with people banned because they had to go off on each other about something most people in the original topic didn't want to discuss.
I get that this is a totally different level of issue because its not just people who can't be mature about fiction, but real world implications, but if you want to discuss if this new show is going to be good, or what you hope they might fix or change, well good luck because that's going to be a verbal blood bath.
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Comment on I think Tildes moderators and admins may need to make a decision regarding how to handle Harry Potter related posts in ~tildes
Eji1700 Link ParentNo, the request is to not do that when its not what the topic is about because if you want to discuss that it should be its own topic, as with basically every other topic on this site. There is...The request is "Please don't discuss what a bigot JKR is (and how it relates to where she is directing her largest expenditure) when discussing the new adaptation, as that makes HP fans uncomfortable"
No, the request is to not do that when its not what the topic is about because if you want to discuss that it should be its own topic, as with basically every other topic on this site. There is absolutely nothing stopping you from bringing up your own topics on the subject to discuss.
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Comment on I think Tildes moderators and admins may need to make a decision regarding how to handle Harry Potter related posts in ~tildes
Eji1700 Link ParentNot really. There are plenty of people who have been banned for not properly discussing and engaging on plenty of topics. If every time I bring up cooking beef two people who can't get along...If you insist that something needs to be done on a moderation front to prevent people from bringing up JKR's transphobia because you're scared people arguing about it will get the thread locked, you're proposing some sort of restriction on people's ability to post about it.
Not really. There are plenty of people who have been banned for not properly discussing and engaging on plenty of topics. If every time I bring up cooking beef two people who can't get along launch into a vegetarian tirade that gets old fast.
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Comment on I think Tildes moderators and admins may need to make a decision regarding how to handle Harry Potter related posts in ~tildes
Eji1700 Link ParentYou see the mixed messaging problem right? Obviously the severity of your examples are different, but there's a point where it feels like its been made clear you just have to "deal with it"that arguably violates the don’t be an asshole
If it gets to that point, then report the message.
You see the mixed messaging problem right? Obviously the severity of your examples are different, but there's a point where it feels like its been made clear you just have to "deal with it"
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Comment on I think Tildes moderators and admins may need to make a decision regarding how to handle Harry Potter related posts in ~tildes
Eji1700 Link ParentWhat exclusion? What rule is there that you can't make your own topic to discuss Rowlings real world damage? Why is it that the same people who feel the need to bring it up on any topic with her...- Exemplary
Especially to the exclusion of
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What exclusion? What rule is there that you can't make your own topic to discuss Rowlings real world damage? Why is it that the same people who feel the need to bring it up on any topic with her aren't requesting a weekly topic then? Tildes is for discussion, but that's clearly not the goal if you're going to veer off topic every single time. Further its not as if posting it every single time changes literally anything. The odds anyone here isn't well aware of the issues with Rowling are slim, and bluntly, it would probably be better severed to HAVE a dedicated topic on the issue if you think there are.
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By extension, how much research do I need to do on every other piece of media we discuss? I can certainly think of plenty of other topics and discussions about media with problematic peoples (still living and profiting) that we suddenly don't feel the need to derail immediately. Will every discussion of media now require researching someone's position on Israel/Palestine followed by a further Segway into how some nations treat basically anyone who isn't a man? Hell if we extend it to dead people we're going to need an auto wiki link for Disney for everything they make.
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Personally I don't much care what side the decision falls on. I do think from what was witnessed last time this site can't have a reasonable discussion on the issue without a ruling from Deimos . It will certainly save a lot of headache to either say "No we don't discuss her works here" or "You can discuss her works here and if so please stay on topic and create a separate topic about her behaviors". As it is now I feel like even posting this i'm risking malice tags and a ban, and just stayed away from the last topic for the same reason because "disagreement" and "malice" seem to be easily comingled in my tone.
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I find it sad for the people who I know who grew up with Harry Potter that they're literally told "you can never discuss something that made a huge impact on your life because your creator sucks". As already mentioned it's hardly the first problematic piece of media, even with a living person attached. You brought up Gaiman, I grew up on Card. I do not support ANYTHING Orson Scott Card has ever said but it would also be lying to say that Ender's Game had a tremendous impact on my life in middle school. I am glad I was able to discuss his works, and his failures as a human, without it instantly devolving to lines in the sand.
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Comment on Interesting material types for fantasy resources/macguffins other than crystals or metals? in ~creative
Eji1700 Link ParentHeh. I'm aware of it, although I didn't know that. I preferred Blame! since it had the atmosphere going for it, but I bounced of Sidonia. I might try it again.Sidonia No Kishi
Heh. I'm aware of it, although I didn't know that. I preferred Blame! since it had the atmosphere going for it, but I bounced of Sidonia. I might try it again.
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Comment on Reddit will implement human verification to tag and combat bots in ~tech
Eji1700 Link ParentI'm aware of such reports, and my problem is that they're from the advertisement point of view. EVERY interaction on these platforms gets served ads. Two bots on full private mode blasting...Looking at this report from 2023, it looks like ~24% of the ad traffic on Twitter/X was invalid/bot traffic.
I'm aware of such reports, and my problem is that they're from the advertisement point of view. EVERY interaction on these platforms gets served ads. Two bots on full private mode blasting messages back and forth get served ads. The % of bots in content average users interact with is the relevant number, and it is almost certainly a much smaller fraction of that %.
While I agree that Dead Internet Theory may have started as an online joke, I think there’s some truth to it when a quarter of one of the largest social media sites was bots.
To be clear, it says a quarter of the ad's severed were to bots. That is does NOT mean a quarter of the users are bots.
More importantly its mixed data of ad impressions and clickthroughs, and it segments by region. To quote:
North America had by far the lowest IVT rate, at 7.5%, followed by EMEA (17.4%, including 18.8% in the U.K.) and LATAM (18.2%).
Worth noting that this is a weird categorization because NA is Canada, US, Mexico, while EMEA is basically the entire stripe from England to South Africa including the middle east. This makes sense when you're looking at reporting by time zone, but not when you're trying to identify regions with more bot activity, as I suspect if you separate Europe it'll have a MUCH lower IVT rate for a variety of reasons (basically cheaper to run bot farms in countries with cheaper costs).
Now, there are a lot of reasons why there could be bots, and surely not all of them are posting content, but the ones that do can generate more in an hour than a single human can in a day. Now with the rise of AI agents and Clawdbots, the barriers for creating bots are getting lowered every day. Paired with such large financial incentives to create engagement and steer public discourse, I can only imagine the number of bots has gone up in recent years.
You're underrating the barriers and overrating the numbers needed to push an agenda. If you want to inflate views, bots are great in mass. If you want to steer an agenda, well one of the things psyops figured out centuries ago is that people are very willing to believe and signal boost as is. A couple of coordinated pieces in the right place with a few "i assent" voices goes a LOT farther than a shotgun approach. "couple" and "few" being %'s of the millions of real people on these platforms.
To your point about low effort content getting signal boosted, the bots don’t need to be producing high effort content either to attract upvotes. Bots can dominate conversation simply by generating superfluous content to drown out the genuine humans.
I'm not really arguing that? I'm saying that humans gravitate towards low effort content and will gladly create low effort content. You're ascribing a lot of effort to what's more than likely just the average person suddenly getting on reddit and the average redditor realizing the average person is willing to post "lol nice" every time 420 69 comes up. Plenty of companies (hell musk) MAKE MONEY selling to this very very large slice of the population. Contrary I think most people don't realize how sheltered and isolated their communities were until they became popular and trended towards lower effort.
It’s a commonly recognized phenomena for new bots to make reposts on Reddit (particularly in r/aww and r/todayilearned) to farm karma, thereby establishing a false legitimacy before moving on to more nefarious astroturfing. When you look at the comments on these reposts they are carbon copies of the top comments on the original posts. These aren’t just low effort jokes either, they can be word-for-word anecdotes. The bots commenting on bot reposts could be fueled by bot farms looking to quickly karma farm multiple new accounts.
I'm aware of it, i've seen it, i still doubt it's nearly as much content as people think it is. Much like how people are very bad at guessing the speed of a moving vehicle from a stand still, I find that most people will jump all over things they don't like as bot activity when it can just be pointless nonsense. Hell literal people enjoy "copy pasta" which is the SOLE ACT of copy pasting some other (likely false) moment.
I'll even go one step further to say that in places like aww and todayilearned:
- I'm not sure how different bots are from the "old fashioned artisanal" karma farmers who posted the same 5 facts every day non stop to farm karma.
- I'm not sure how different the actual CONTENT is between bots in users in those cases. More often than not they're popular bot spawning grounds because the comments, bots or not, are going to be the same 100 jokes we've seen in every other topic. Again I don't think it takes bots for people to be uncreative while trying to be creative (can't just say it's a nice dog, that's a "goodo pupper" or whatever...and i'm not judging..just a weird observation about people).
It’s very telling when you look at Reddit’s auto-generated username format (e.g. Adjective-Noun-XXXX, where X is a number). The bots don’t even need to generate their own username and avoid collisions anymore, Reddit does it for them! Once you see it you’ll notice it everywhere, particularly in comment threads, and that’s why I feel Dead Internet Theory may not be such a joke after all.
I find things like this especially concerning as logic.
- I've heard basically every naming convention type as possible bot fodder (because as a bare minimum coder let me tell you it is NOT hard to get a list of stupid usernames based around possible sex acts or PM ME YOUR XXXXXX templates).
- I know people who, especially on social media sites, are more than fine with the auto generated tags. They're not using them for serious discourse and don't want them easily tied back to them or their other accounts anyways.
So again I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but I'd bet decent money that if you had to identify randomly which comments you thought were bots and which weren't you'd vastly overshoot.
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Comment on Reddit will implement human verification to tag and combat bots in ~tech
Eji1700 Link ParentI think dead internet theory is mostly massively overblown. We're a species that has been commenting "first" or repeating the same damn jokes in comment chains since we got the internet moving. It...I was initially intrigued by the idea that bots can effectively be labeled and filtered out on a site I’ve long suspected has been succumbing to Dead Internet Theory.
I think dead internet theory is mostly massively overblown.
We're a species that has been commenting "first" or repeating the same damn jokes in comment chains since we got the internet moving. It just turns out most people aren't very creative, and people are perfectly willing to signal boost the low effort noise rather than the higher effort content.
To throw some others on the pile, all of these are 5/5 for me personally:
Easy recs:
30 Rock - Awesome comedy starring Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin
Coloumbo - Everyone could use more Coloumbo. More seriously I find these to be fun to just throw one on because there's no stakes/overarching plot.
Fargo - Each season is different, some are better than others, they're all good, and all akin to the movie they pull their name from (weird small town crimes going wrong/right?)
Mr Robot - A very wild ride with Rami Malek
True Detective - Like Fargo every season is different. Season 1 is probably one of my favorite shows full stop. The other 3 are still quite good and, imo, get treated harshly for just "not being season 1" when they're still better than the vast majority of shows out there.
Weirder/Harder recs.
Some mixture of very niche, very dark, very offensive so depending on your tolerances i'd skip it.
Archer - starts slow and you either love it or hate it. Animated office spy comedy.
Bojack Horseman - Animated DARK comedy. One of the best shows ever made in my eyes and legit art but also not only a love it or hate it AND a starts slow, but just jaw dropping brutal at times.
Brockmire - Hank Azaria as a washed up Baseball announcer. It's hilarious and actually a shockingly ambitious show given it's starting point. Along with Shoresy and Ted Lasso has led me to believe that sports shows are 100x better than sports films.
Succession - show was "good" for it's first few seasons and "amazing" for its last season. Bunch of hyper wealthy nepo babies vying for dad's throne.
The Venture Bros - Animated Adult Swim comedy that took FOREVER for everything to come out. Starts rough but if you can tough out the first season (dear GOD skip the pilot) it only gets better. Absolutely starts as just dumb raunchy jokes/references and grows into best in its (hyper specific) class dumb raunchy jokes/references while adding lots of really clever jokes and references and legit great storytelling. It feels like the kind of show my friends and I wish we could write lampooning and nerding out about our various likes. It's basically constantly making fun of everything from every era of comic book to things like Johnny Quest.
Veep - Hilarious, and disturbingly accurate, political comedy starring Tina Fey's totally not clone Julia Louis-Dreyfuss. Willing to go just about anywhere for the punchline though.