This is so satisfying.

Well, from a technical standpoint I am more prepared as an instance admin compared to Summer 2023. We’re running on powerful dedicated hardware after all.

Just read that he was a Trump-supporting Republican, I understand why you called him an asshole.

And here in Finland this guy is all ears when he hears that Iran needs a new Ayatollah.

“Aave” is “ghost” in Finnish.

Tobacco industry boss: smoking two packs a day is not addiction.

Germany’s user count is nice.

Who would have anything against British cuisine? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVHbWHGVYaU

That’s true, there’s enough porn and shock content found elsewhere.

Exactly!

There is some innocence and optimism regarding the Internet.

EDIT: And the most important of them all: sincerity. Not everything was wrapped in over 9000 layers of irony.

From a Finnish perspective, the 2010s were a rather peaceful time, world events didn’t really affect my day-to-day life. But from 2020 onward every year has felt like survival.

There was an open petition for the WHO to change their guidance regarding respirators, good to see that it has gotten into the news!

And the modern game has no yellow paint, unlike the old one. How can you know where to go???

For those interested, this is a still from Ryan the Leader’s video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxnJcZvuRK8

Oh, who could have guessed???

Good that they got their differences solved and the band can be finally laid to rest with no drama whatsoever. There’s a proper closure now. It’s however sad how they lost any momentum and chance for new material because of the onstage fight in Boston. Regardless, it’s interesting to see what kind of stuff Dave Navarro & co will put out without Perry Farrell.

If I remember right, Mastodon and the Fediverse in general isn’t included in this ban. Therefore it’s interesting to see if Australian teens somehow find the Fediverse, starting a rush of new users.

Similar discussion is happening also here in Finland. However, if something is to be banned from kids, it has to be clearly defined. What is considered “social media”? Is it platforms like Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat? Does it include messaging apps like WhatsApp or Signal? Most of this discourse is also based on works of Jonathan Haidt, Greg Lukianoff and Jennifer Twente, all of which have received a fair share of criticism. There is also a considerable amount of a classic moral panic sprinkled in.

Alice Marwick, an academic that has extensively studied kids, technology and social media, was on Taylor Lorenz’s podcast earlier this year. Her organization published a report, where the following is stated:

We strongly believe that reform of social platforms and regulation of technology is needed. We need comprehensive privacy legislation, limits on data collection, interoperability, more granular individual and parental guidance tools, and advertising regulation, among other changes. Offline, young people need spaces to socialize without adults, better mental health care, and funding for parks, libraries, and extracurriculars. But rather than focusing on such solutions, KOSA and similar state bills empower parents rather than young people, do little to curb the worst abuses of technology corporations, and enable an expansion of the rhetoric that is currently used to ban books, eliminate diversity efforts in education, and limit gender affirming and reproductive care. They will eliminate important sources of information for vulnerable teenagers and wipe out anonymity on the social web. While we recognize the regulatory impulse, the forms of child safety legislation currently circulating will not solve the problems they claim to remedy.

Dr. Candice Odgers is also a vocal critic of Haidt, accusing him of cherry picking with a pre-made agenda in mind:

The cross-country comparisons, you know, they’re they’re often a starting point to see whether there might be something interesting correlationally going on, but it’s a very slippery place to start and I think you know, unless you start with the pretty clear hypothesis about what should explain those differences, if you’re just looking at trend lines and then going backwards and starting to fill in an explanation, it’s hard to follow where it goes and whether or not we’re just fitting these lines to our existing theories, but I’ll leave it.