I, for one, think we should still be measuring data transfer speeds in CD-ROM Xes.

Just moved some files from one drive to another at 2,400X speed!

The state of identity verification in the UK:

1. "You need a utility bill with your full name and address".
2. Of course these are all online now, and even if you try to get paper ones for this very purpose the companies keep pushing you to online instead.
3. Go download a PDF of the bill.
4. "We cannot accept online bills, it must have been posted to your address"
5. Print out the PDF
6. Take a photo of it
7. Email it to them
8. Accepted

So you may have noticed that the Twitter login of https://movetodon.org/ is not working at the moment.

According to twitter, the app “has violated Twitter Rules and policies”. I can’t tell much more at the moment since the email they mention never arrived in my inbox.

I'll be honest here, as a humble instance admin receiving all kinds of DMs and emails...

The abuse, excessive reports... folks our instance grew from 60 users to 22000 in the span of two weeks. I didn't expect to suddenly commit 6-8 hours of my day to this. Knowing I have other commitments like a day job and other things.

I'm burning the candle on both ends here. Look at this toot timestamp. Please save space for some patience.

Y'all clearly don't remember this image:

#mastoadmin #mstdnca

I see repeated claims that content moderation isn't that big a problem, that it "can be done with AI", etc. Anyone who says this is unlikely in the extreme to have worked with UGC (User Generated Content) at scale.

While AI/ML is getting better, and can be useful as a first level filtering mechanism, the false positive and false negative error rates tend to be quite high. It's pretty obvious why. Without a human understanding of context, sarcasm, and the constantly evolving tricky ways of authoring a post, etc., it's easy to mischaracterize a post.

Major social media firms who care about the quality of their content utilize the services of large numbers of humans in conjunction with automated systems. They work not only to deal with posts those systems find confusing, but also to deal with flagged posts and user appeals.

Find a large social media firm that doesn't employ enough human moderators working from a set of ethical rules, and you've found a social media firm whose content is likely full of toxic posts.

#Twitter