"The irony here is that their impunity to consequence has its own consequence: the dismantling of the system that protects and empowers them." ~Charles Hugh Smith charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2026/02/powe...
mirror, mirror on the wall… ht @jedgarnaut.bsky.social
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are TikTok, X, YouTube, Facebook, even BlueSky "private platforms"? certainly there are senses in which they are! they are organized under private firms. 1/
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but there are senses in which they may not be "private". for some of them, their ubiquity and reach is such that they can significantly, unilateral, affect coordination at a systemic level. i'd argue makes them inherently public in an important sense. drafts.interfluidity.com/2023/03/31/s... 2/
plus, the fact that much of the value of these platforms comes from enclosing network effects—which I'd argue should be understood normatively and ultimately legally as property of the public—undermines a claim to their merely being ordinary firms, private speakers under the constitution. 3/
does this mean that Newsom — or DeSantis or Abbott — are right or righteous in the ways they have tried or proposed to regulate these firms? absolutely not. 4/
but i do think that arguments of the form "these are private firms, we have a first amendment, therefore these firms' rights claims trump all other complaints by all other stakeholders QED" are insufficient. 5/
these are not pamphleteers. you can just distribute your own pamphlet if you don't like their speech. they present more serious problems to traditional understandings of free speech than that. /fin
Kind of a social democratic answer to "network states", @alphistia.bsky.social stinkhorn.us-west.host.bsky.network/xrpc/com.atp...
i now view nearly all digital ads and sponsored content as some mix of cheating and manipulation and treat it as an ethical gaffe to click or even offer my attention to them.
exclusive is an epithet.
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does AI mean young people should typically have more years or fewer years of education?
would it have been a capital allocation mistake had the 2024 Presidential election gone the other way?
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don’t mistake disillusionment with the status quo center for embrace of the particularities of ugly radicalisms. people are choosing from whom to disaffiliate more decisively than they are choosing with whom to affiliate.
it is good to wish. it is good to wash. but it is bad to be wishy washy.
is apple getting stingier about refunds? my wife tried a free trial of an app subscription. she says she canceled immediately after starting the trial, but was billed anyway. usually when this kind of thing happens, we’ve appealed to apple and always been refunded. this time, apple has refused. 1/
i think this means we will never use free trials of Apple-mediated subscriptions unless we are almost certain to buy. it’s not the first time what we understood to be a canceled free trial has been billed, but it is the first time we couldn’t get the billing reversed. /fin
"Recalling the decades-old Lorax Rebellion to save trees at New College as more large oaks are razed" by @kerrysheridan.bsky.social www.wusf.org/environment/... #NewCollege
Recalling the decades-old Lorax Rebellion to save trees at New College as more large oaks are razed
Link Preview: Recalling the decades-old Lorax Rebellion to save trees at New College as more large oaks are razed: The city of Sarasota typically protects grand trees, but says it can't intervene.
it’s remarkable how many strangers want to give me a grand piano.
they hate us for our freedoms.
a photo of spikes and netting intended to discourage pigeons.
it’s funny how we begin with Democrats are weak-kneed and need a more muscular, economics focused message and then all the rest is about how bad wokeness was at universities and we have to be sure not to go back to that. there’s a powerful message for the working class! fucking narcissists.
Opinion | ‘I Wouldn’t Say the Democrats Are in Good Shape’
Link Preview: Opinion | ‘I Wouldn’t Say the Democrats Are in Good Shape’
self-hosted jitsi is pretty great. jitsi.org
Free Video Conferencing Software for Web & Mobile | Jitsi
Link Preview: Free Video Conferencing Software for Web & Mobile | Jitsi: Learn more about Jitsi, a free open-source video conferencing software for web & mobile. Make a call, launch on your own servers, integrate into your app, and more.Loading quoted Bluesky post...
in the MAGA army, there is no mercy for the man who fails to win the news cycle.
does anyone else think it’s irresponsible how they dox all the actors in the credits?
i agree that people who wouldn’t bother to vote wouldn’t, for the most part, participate in a general strike, but i think a lot of people who didn’t bother to vote in November ‘24 would bother to vote now if they only had the chance.
ice is not nice.