Off topic, but I was amused by the section on dating apps:
The market for dating apps has been cited as an example of enshittification due to the conflict between the dating apps’ ostensible goal of matchmaking, and their operators’ desire to convert users to the paid version of the app and retaining them as paying users indefinitely by keeping them single, creating a perverse incentive that leads performance to decline over time as efforts at monetization begin to dominate. Mathematical modeling has suggested that it is in the financial interests of app operators to offer their user base a sub-optimal experience.
I’d never given it much thought, but successful dating apps are their own worse enemies. Interestingly, our local newspaper still has a lonely hearts section which, due to the pervasiveness of the internet, tends to only attract more senior people. It’s an endless source of amusement for my wife, because elderly amorous Germans are in to some seriously weird shit.
I would ban transfer rumours from twitter as 99.99% of them are chancers just looking for attention.
@Magnus’ use of twitter highlighting the warcrimes committed by Russia following their invasion of Ukraine is something that no other social media platform as successfully managed to replicate. I have lernt so much from his posts in that thread, but looking through the bullshit that gets posted on twatter transfer rumours thread makes me feel like I am getting dumber and dumber each time I visit the thread.
Exactly, it can be used by propagandists from both sides… Which defines the modern information space as nothing more than a venal battleground for imbeciles.
I see RAWK are now using XCancel, which means you can view posts without ever having to visit X or login, because of Musk and the state of the platform. Just wondering if that could be an alternative way of still using it without the platform getting any of the benefits? Not sure how it would impact the website wise in terms of loading.
Do any reading on the background of any of the early work in genetics or statistics and you see one motivation - the search for the validation of theories on the white man’s supremacy.
So, I think XCancel is an instance of Nitter being used (source: looks like X/twitter(?) broke something again · Issue #983 · zedeus/nitter · GitHub) though I am not 100% sure how reliable the instances themselves are (as in whether there are any vulnerabilities or anything that use XCancel as a honeypot for luring unsuspecting users for nefarious purposes).
As I said up there, the only downside of using a working Nitter instance is that there’s no preview.
In worst case scenario, an instance will stop working and then we’ll need to use another. There’s always the possibility to host one ourselves (I’m willing to do it if needed).
Depending on how Nitter works, haven’t looked into it thoroughly, but I think we can somehow use the iframe embeds to do this? And if so, then perhaps there’s a way to spin up a custom instance that loads the minimal amount of data required to render the preview to minimise selfhosting costs?