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   mhoye (mhoye@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 16-Nov-2025 11:08:21 JST mhoye

   If something has a lot of very bad externalities, and just the ones we know about cause major damage to important physical, social and informational ecosystems, then “lots of people want it” just isn’t a compelling argument.

   • Steve's Place repeated this.
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     mhoye (mhoye@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 16-Nov-2025 11:08:20 JST mhoye

     in reply to

     Millions of people in a contracting job market have had their livelihoods threatened if they don't use it. Millions of people are being measured by how much they use it whether it benefits them or works or not, millions use it to generate material to appease algorithms controlled by the same companies controlling the AI, and even these numbers are reported by the companies invested in their going up forever, who cannot be trusted at all to tell us a real truth.

     Where is the human want, here?

     Rich Felker repeated this.
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     mhoye (mhoye@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 16-Nov-2025 11:40:03 JST mhoye

     in reply to

     Sometimes I like to remember that in 2013 Larry Page said that over 300 million people were using Google+ [300 million people were _clearly_not_ using Google+] and when that whole clownshow was over we all learned that 'using' meant 'what does that button do?' and the average duration of a Google+ session was exactly as long as it took people to see what that button did and then find the back button.

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     FoolishOwl (foolishowl@social.coop)'s status on Sunday, 16-Nov-2025 11:40:24 JST FoolishOwl

     in reply to

     @mhoye I'd also point out that if hundreds of millions of people get nagged repeatedly to push the red button, then some people will push the red button. That doesn't take strong desire.