If people don't like your product, sales are down, and there's negative press almost daily describing it as bloated, convoluted, and filled with ads, just increase the price in order to make up the difference.

I'm sure it'll work great, and I can't see how this could possibly backfire spectacularly.

*gets popcorn*

That's not what Freenet does. It's a decentralised platform on which anyone can build and publish applications.

Nobody's talking about designing a social network, although you can certainly do that on Freenet.

The entire point of Social Media is to amplify and monetise people's social and parasocial connections. It's not a bug or even a feature, it's the systems entire raison d'etre. As Zuckerberg famously said when his friend asked him why celebrities would just upload their photos and details to his new Facebook site, "people are idiots," and capitalising on that has made him one of the richest men alive.

Why on Earth would I hate Reddit moderators? They moderate a private site that someone who's not me, owns. I have no problem with that, I simply choose not to participate.

What I would like, is the opportunity to create my own space with my own rules, or be able to join the space of someone who's values align more with mine and/or moderates in such a way that all the off-topic drivel actually gets filtered out, or even better than all of that, join a space that provides me with the tools to be my own moderator by letting me choose exactly what I'd like to see.

On Freenet the barrier to entry is sufficiently low that anyone can launch an application or a site. You "pay" by volunteering some bandwidth, CPU, and storage space. Provided they can make it work, how is that not a vast improvement over the regular web?

As I said, the entire point of Social Media is to monetise its users. There is no other point, and if Reddit is able to make money by operating in the way you describe, then they'll obviously keep doing it. You may not like it, but the person who pays the bills gets to make the rules.

A framework where anyone can create a space, and be the moderator of their own space if they so wish. That's how BBS'es worked before the Internet came along, and it worked great.

How many times haven't we heard "if you don't like the rules, make your own ," typically said by people who've hijacked an existing community, and who know perfectly well that the barrier to entry is too high for most to create something from scratch. Well, with Freenet it isn't, and good luck trying to hijack a site when the owner is also the operator and gatekeeper, or try to get someone deplatformed when the entire platform is fully decentralised.

Wikipedia is not a trusted source, which is why quoting it in any journalistic, scientific, or educational setting will result in an instant fail.

So it's worth exactly nothing, as you well know.

A little over 15 years ago, an acquaintance confided in me that he had been struggling with serious depression for years, and that he had decided to try psilocybin in a "recreational setting," as in not supervised by a doctor or other health professionals (which was not an option at the time anyway).

This is the only case I know of where somebody has tried this, and let's just say that it didn't go well.

I'm not a health professional, and I am not qualified to speak on the potential of psilocybin to treat mental health issues. I'm also not a statistician, and I only have a single data point. But it is still reasonable to conclude from this one instance that in some cases, though uncertain how many, using psilocybin may in fact cause a drastic deterioration of the patient's mental health.

Nonsense. I was pointing out what I believe to be a well-known fact, and just like I wouldn't be providing external sources when pointing out that the Earth is round or that theft is illegal, I didn't provide a source in this instance.

But now I have, and you're still not engaging with the facts, but instead resort to name-calling. That's your right, but in no way does it affect me or refute any of my arguments. It just wastes everyone's time and makes you appear unserious.

No, they can't.

First, incitement to violence is already illegal. That's not what we're talking about in the context of "hate speech."

Second, if no actual incitement occurred but someone commited an act of violence, then the person commiting that act is solely responsible.

You cannot break windows by hurling words, nor can they be strung together to make a noose.

We do not have the right not to be inconvenienced. Period.

If someone's arguments or angry words cause discomfort, that's a "you" problem.

Excellent argumentation. I especially liked your sources.

But let me return the favour and provide one: https://www.hoover.org/researc...

I don't know how this is relevant. I'm not an American, and I don't live in the U.S.

(As a European, I do know our history and consider Communism to have proven itself beyond any doubt to be one of the great, truly evil ideologies.)

Do you read minds? I don't, so I cannot state with any degree of certainty that a statement is motivated by "hatred," unless the person speaking specifically says that it is.

Even then, hatred towards some actions or attitudes are entirely justified. For instance, I'm not very fond of greed, warmongering, torture, oppression, or murder. You might even say that I "hate" those things.

If an utterance constitutes defamation or libel/slander, it's covered by existing laws. On the other hand, if someone's simply being uncouth or uses slurs, it can and should simply be ignored, as it probably well within the boundaries of free speech. After all, we do not have a right not to be offended.

So no, "hate speech" does not actually exist. It is a fundamentally flawed concept, and as a political tool it's used to villify a speaker in order to avoid having to engage with the actual content of the speech.

It would certainly solve the problem of users being subject to the whims of massive, multi-billion dollar corporations that are essentially accountable to no-one, which is a huge problem (the main problem, in fact) for this particular user.

Social media platforms with moderation are hellscapes of spam. A significant portion of it is called "advertisements."

Fraud is everywhere, and also illegal. "Moderating" away crime seems neither practical nor desirable, it should be handled by law enforcement.

As for "hate speech," that's a construct invented by Soviet Russia (yes, really) to give them a way to censor media while still pretending to be in favour of free speech. As far as I'm concerned, "hate speech" is not a problem since it doesn't actually exist, but is rather a label for censoring speech that someone hates for one reason or another. I'm more of a "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" kinda guy.

No, he's creating infrastructure. You can then run applications on top of that, moderated or otherwise. If unmoderated platforms can't be profitable, then surely the market will take care of the issue.

Who are these "we" who seem to need less free platforms? And who gets to censor your speech? Can I get that job?

Myself, I don't need others to moderate neither my speech nor the speech of others that I may get exposed to, as I can simply filter my own feeds and supervise the minors in my care. Someone being wrong on the Internet isn't something I lose sleep over.

Incidentally, there has never been a large, productive, legal, and profitable platform that's been moderated, spam-free, and financed by subscriptions. You're of course welcome to create one, either on Freenet or the regular web. You wouldn't be the first to try, but should you succeed you would be the first not to end up going bankrupt.

Infrastructure operators aren't legally liable for content on the current web today, so why should it be different for Freenet operators?

Decentralisation intends to solve one particular problem, that of (surprise, surprise) centralisation, where a few actors can act as single points of failure for an entire service. Of course, censors and tyrants have a huge problem with this, as decentralisation means there's no one entity to put pressure on to remove "undesirable" content.

(And before anyone says "think of the children," I'd like to point out that while censorship of political, philosophical, and religious speech happens on a regular basis on essentially every popular platform on the web today, CSAM still exists on the very same platforms. Quite the conundrum.)

Since I would like to use it, the claim that "no one needs" it is clearly incorrect. But again, should it turn out that there aren't sufficiently many users to fund it, the project will simply fail.

The cells must be erased and rewritten, as no-one has (yet) made a NAND cell with refresh functionality similar to that of DRAM.

Powering on an SSD will cause the controller to start managing the flash memory. Or not, as the case may be, if the controller is simple and cheap. More expensive controllers do indeed move data around to avoid data loss, but in doing so they consume valuable write cycles.

In other words, plugging a USB stick into a charger will certainly not do you any good, but powering on a high-end SSD might.

DO. NOT. TRUST. FLASH. MEMORY. WITH. YOUR. DATA.

(See also: BIOS chips that suddenly fail, seemingly for no reason, bricking devices like motherboards and controllers.)

Check the citations on the Wikipedia article. They go in circles back to one, single source of questionable credibility. Then check the logs, they clearly show that this was a highly controversial article that was eventually locked without any real resolution. The fact that this Wikipedia article is now being cited as fact shows the power of propaganda.

The notion that a black man, or even any non-Japanese man could rise to the rank of Samurai is beyond preposterous to anyone even vaguely acquainted with Japanese history. The country is well-known for having an almost ridiculously ethno-nationalist culture well into the 20th century, and even today anyone of non-Japanese heritage moving to Japan will forever be regarded as a foreigner by the native population.

Would it have been interesting if there had been a real black Samurai, and would it have made for a good story? Sure, but there absolutely, definitely wasn't, so why would one claim that one existed instead of just making up a story and be honest about it? It may have something to do with the current cultural climate, where there's exists this Western phenomenon where one bends over backwards to insert people of some ethnicities into places and periods where they don't historically belong. It's the kind of fixation on ethnicity and superficial features that one used to consider a sure sign of racism.

(No, Cleopatra wasn't black, and neither was Anne Boleyn. It wouldn't really matter if they were, it's just that they simply weren't, just like Martin Luther King wasn't Italian, and Shaka kaSenzangakhona wasn't Irish. And while we're at it, Snow White got her name from the paleness of her skin, and the Little Mermaid is redheaded character from a Danish fairytale.)

Really? Are there literally millions of rules and regulations that all have to be dealt with specifically by the program code?

Or could it be that the size of the codebase reflects decades of tinkering and changes being made by scores of different individuals, none of which could possibly know the entire codebase or its history?

Perhaps a total rewrite is in order. And perhaps it really should have been done many, many years ago, except there's never been the political will to do it.

One way to avoid people doing that would be to completely undermine any goodwill associated with the Wordle brand. By aggressively suing anyone and everyone who's created a vaguely similar game, for instance.

So, when the public pays for research, the public should be allowed to access it and benefit from it? What a preposterous idea!

(But really, good on you, Japan.)

Here's my suggestion to Google/Alphabet/YouTube for handling adblock users:

- make sure to pre-load lots of irrelevant content (AI-narrated video listicles or movie trailers will do), thereby sucking up bandwidth and wasting the user's time
- before the actual video, play a 45-second mix of white noise and "Daisy, Daisy" played on a badly tuned piano, at full volume
- pause the video every 15 seconds or so and when the user tries to resume, show an "experiencing interruptions?" pop-up

If this is implemented properly, the user experience will at least start to approach that of a non-adblock user, and perhaps those using adblockers will finally reconsider their choices and go to Rumble, Bitchute, or Odysee instead.

Oh, you wanted to force them to PAY you for the privilege of watching uninterrupted videos? Sorry, I've got nothing.

Certainly. Even though the environment it different, you'd expect to see some effect. Instead, you see none.

It would seem you haven't read even the headline.

If the drivers are the main issue here, or even an issue at all, how come these pedestrians aren't being hit by petrol cars, which presumably drive at the same speed, in the same environment? Do petrol fumes make drivers more attentive?

Here's a hypothesis that happens to fit the data: Urban environments are to a much greater degree than rural areas filled with terminally-online people who walk around with their face glued to their phones, oblivious to their surroundings. As they are used to cars making certain noises, they will wade into a busy street if they don't hear that familiar sound.

This also fits perfectly with the data from Japan, where authorities in some cities have gone so far as to put traffic lights in the actual pavement at pedestrian crossings, because people staring at their phones kept walking into the streets on a red light and getting hit by cars.