Whenever you see the words “ads”, “cryptocurrency”, “blockchain”, “web 3”, or “AI”, just replace them with “farts” and you’ll know whether you want them or not.
“Can the fediverse survive without farts?”
Yes, perfectly well.
“Will farts replace people?”
I hope not.
“The European Commission embraces farts.”
That’s unfortunate.
“This new startup wants to improve your life with farts.”
Review: In "Read Write Own", the Andreessen Horowitz general partner and web3 superfan Chris Dixon lays out an unconvincing argument that blockchains are what it will take to fix the web.
Wow. The Tor Project is doing the whole "#web3#crypto funding" drive in 2023. 2023. As if that was a normal thing that did not totally taint your reputation.
In the recently resurfaced debate about #solarpunk (or lunarpunk) aspects of #web3 and #blockchain I'm intrigued by one aspect:
Why do we accept being given a solution without outlining the problem in the first place?
Why don't we listen to #DAO pitches instead of asking ourselves how we want to run our communities, how do we want to make decisions, vote, discuss things?
Just stating the problem first would make it very clear that there are multiple technical solutions, not just the Web3.
“Crypto researcher Molly White skewered [Chris Dixon’s Read Write Own] with the delight of Pete Wells after downing an Almond Joy cocktail at Guy Fieri’s Flavortown.”
This piece by Chris Stokel-Walker in the Guardian gives a good overview of the environmental footprint of #AI - and argues that it’s just as bad as that of #crypto / #web3.
“Technology analysts Gartner believe that by 2025, unless a radical rethink takes place in how we develop AI systems to better account for their environmental impact, the energy consumption of AI tools will be greater than that of the entire human workforce”.
So it’s interesting that this gets so much less attention than the environmental impact of Web3.
Side note: Chris highlights the work done by Sasha Luccioni at Hugging Face, calling the company the “de facto conscience of the AI industry”, which is correct.
#Introduction I am Dakota V Adams, born Dakota Stewart Rhodes and eldest son of #oathkeepers militia leader and Jan. 6th Insurrectionist Elmer Stewart Rhodes. I write a Substack newsletter about my childhood in the militia movement and local politics, and my for Raw Story essay on leaving the far right and getting my family away from Stewart won an online journalism award. I really hope the Fediverse takes off, because #Web3 is a dystopia nightmare run by crypto-fascist millionaires.
Just listened to the podcast where Mike Masnick (@mmasnick) and Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) discuss moderation in a distributed environment. Fascinating discussion and well worth a listen. I've been diving into this topic lately as I've designed a collaboration tool based on #web3 technologies and want to avoid unleashing something toxic. Anyway, this is a great discussion about how hard it is to design and implement moderation practices in any environment, and the unique challenges in a distributed environment like ActivityPub/Mastodon.
Just an initial two takeaways for me personally:
Studying moderation eventually brings you directly to the need to study and understand human psychology. The really good parts and the really bad parts. Moderating social media takes a special strength to look into the abyss and wrestle with demons. Mike and Yoel touch on this in the podcast.
In this discussion I was also reminded of the anthropological and historical work studying the dynamics of family and tribal groups. The distributed Fediverse reminds me a bit of tribal organizations. I need to dig out some of that older work.
So many folks here on Mastodon are studying this topic in a serious way. Refreshing and exciting to experience the quality of discussion.
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Unsurprisingly, #Web3 has an astronomical failure rate. 65% of crypto projects have died in 2023, according to this report. It also says that 72% of crypto projects "born in the 2020-2021 (bull run) have died." Not so much 'to the moon' as 'to the morgue'! https://alphaquest.io/blog/dead-coins-report-2024/
Weil #Worldcoin gerade in aller Munde ist, ist mir dieser Bericht wieder eingefallen. Solche Blockchain-Technik wird häufig an Geflüchteten und Menschen mit wenig Geld getestet. Das ist riskant:
Eine Forscherin findet wenig Gutes an Feldversuchen in aller Welt, bei denen #Blockchain-Technik die Lage von Geflüchteten verbessern soll. Sie fordert ein Ende.
I believe this is the best place for this question: does anybody have a reference to a case study of a successful #web3 or #DAO that is currently self sustaining and is providing a real service to their customer/follower base?
It's just out of curiosity, I've been searching for quite a while, but all the blockchain influencers have disappeared.
“[The use of ‘community’ in Web3] obscures the idea that these are, first and foremost, financial relationships, that there’s a lot of risk involved, and that the power relations may not be as egalitarian as the word ‘community’ implies.” –Jacob Silverman
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