S
Horrible idea: Use AI slop to devalue platforms directly instead of trying to extract revenue.
Play a game of Cards Against Humanity. Feed the winning combinations into the AI slop machines with the preamble: "Turn this into a cringey LinkedIn post." Flood LinkedIn and Meta properties with the output.
Accelerate model collapse.
Make corporate social media unusable.
Keep this crap far away from Fedi.
I'm going to reiterate my positions on End-to-End Encryption since they seem to have been ignored or overlooked:
The difference between weak encryption and security theater is how the product is marketed to end users.
Security theater is bullshit like, "This tech is private because our datacenters are in Switzerland," or, "We can recover your private keys, silently, whenever we want."
Security theater gives people the illusion of security, while they're actually vulnerable. This is the worst outcome.
Regardless of how flawed your approach is, as long as you're humble about it, it's better than not trying anything to begin with (just shoveling plaintext).
But the moment you let an ounce of arrogance or pride infect your marketing copy? The moment you're not just underdelivering on privacy, but also overselling on it?
That is when you cause harm.
@a1ba IETF's MLS and MIMI might make it possible someday. Until then, we suffer.
@a1ba We refer to this as the mud puddle test, btw
I genuinely do not understand people who have deep fried opinions about Signal needing a goddamn phone number in 2025.
Many privacy nerds were outraged when you needed to give out a phone number to other people in order to talk with them. I was one of those nerds. They fixed that with the usernames rollout.
As a mobile phone app, Signal uses your phone number to bootstrap your enrollment into the protocol. This is literally the path of least resistance as an SMS replacement app, for most users.
If you want to know whether Signal can obtain enough metadata to target users that have enrolled, the answer is complicated.
The way profiles are encrypted, and how sealed sender works, makes any targeting seem infeasible. (Your profile key rotates, at mininum, when you block someone.)
Signal currently does not have IP addresses, etc. stored. If this changes in the future, it will not be retroactive. If you're worried about that, Molly boasts Tor support. Maybe that's fine. I haven't audited Molly, and won't.
When I was in high school, Mythbusters was the only notable example I could point to of nerds being "cool".
(This was a time when you were made fun of for liking anime or being more into books than gossip.)
You can hear Adam hold back tears of joy at several moments in the video.
Watching Adam Savage unbox his fursuit head is an emotional gut punch I didn't need tonight. (But, like, in a wholesome way.)
Show me something cute.
Especially if it's furry art, fursuits, or related cuteness.
(NSFW is fine.)