Notices by Peter (peter@thepit.social), page 3

i'm happy to place the principle blame on Meta, Alphabet, X, and TikTok, but anti-western states are 100% stoking and taking advantage of this dynamic. i mean, i would if i were them.

like, i'm gonna be An Old Man Yelling at Clouds and say it is **bad** that this kind of thing is what "everyone" is talking about. people on algorithmic social media now spend all their time looking for a villain they can dogpile and it is profoundly antisocial and undermining western civilization.

i feel like if your goal is to just pull apart western democracies by making everyone mad and afraid, algorithmic social media gives you most of the tools and generative AI provides the remaining piece. now you can post 100% fluent English-language rage bait in comment sections all across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and X. just stir the pot and nudge up everyone's cortisol levels by a few points.

if some dumbass PR agency can do this kind of sophisticated manipulation of public opinion behind the scenes over some random celebrity beef, what do you think Russia and China and Israel are doing? https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/21/business/media/blake-lively-justin-baldoni-it-ends-with-us.html?unlocked_article_code=1.jU4.dqrm.eV9mB5sjJy-L&smid=url-share

and who knows, maybe the FBI, but i genuinely think American security forces are too stupid to do this stuff and/or people with these skills get paid way better by the private sector.

i don't agree with the reasons for banning TikTok, but you gotta be a real credulous moron to think China isn't at least considering using it to manipulate the American public.

i'm not talking about stealing an election or something, just make people not trust the authorities. make them suspicious of each other. spread lies and conspiracy theories and superstition until no one knows what anything is anymore.

@Infoseepage i don't believe you can use the legal system to hold rich/powerful interests accountable anymore, so i won't hold my breath on that one. the main hope for me is that they simply cannot figure out any actual product that 1) people want, and 2) will pay for. they tried consumer with ChatGPT and Copilot, but that's pretty much maxed out, now everyone is trying to dupe enterprise into signing fat contracts. i remain dubious, but corporate execs are pretty dumb, so.

@Infoseepage i hope it DOES burst. i'm worried they're just gonna keep this shitshow limping along for years.

does anyone even care about what new thing OpenAI is announcing? i feel like it's all pretty ho-hum at this point, unless you're one of those people on X who is already a true believer.

cool spot in Geneva where an anarchist murdered an empress, they should put a plaque like this in midtown Manhattan.

found out that one of my best clients that quiet-fired me and replaced me with machine translation is now trying to hire a reviser to do twice the work at a 10th of the rate. that’s how it works, folks: they fire you and replace you with a miracle AI app, then they try to rehire you at a huge pay cut to clean up the mess.

wow the conservative insane-o-sphere is **super** mad about @taylorlorenz holy cow. i guess they've decided they can rally conservative outrage around the tragic loss of an innocent health insurance CEO and i am betting that's not really gonna work.

here's her response. it's good! i am not surprised that corporate media is misreading this moment. https://www.usermag.co/p/yes-we-want-insurance-executives

@inthehands this is a great thread, and i think you're right: companies care about making money, not giving users a pleasant experience. but your original example has mediocre software saving companies millions. whereas LLMs are mediocre software that is basically a money pit, with no indication that they will ever become profitable.

infinite resources for protecting the rich. https://thepit.social/@stevenbodzin/113600102653210508

you think they do a city-wide manhunt when someone kills a black teenager? they do not.

(this is another reason I don’t think I could ever move to Bluesky, there’s just TOO MUCH OF EVERYTHING. something I have always appreciated about Mastodon is how you can get to the end of your feed and that’s it! nothing else to scroll, go outside.)

Mastodon: not enough quote-posting

Bluesky: that’s **too much** quote-posting, oh my god help, the post-ception must stop, we are 9 layers in and will never make it out.

one thing I appreciate about Trump is that he’s the only mainstream politician willing to kill sacred cows. this would be less salient if the Democrats ever, in their lives, could admit that some institution or practice were bad and did something about it.

I am coming around to the idea that, long-term, the US becomes something more like the EU. shared defense and a few other things, but state identity becoming stronger over time as the federal mechanisms break down and national political coalitions like the Democrats decline to fix them.