onfocus

As Doctorow observes, these products and apps are often created with good intentions—or, at the least, designed to deliver something of value both to users and to business customers (advertisers, for example). But as the impulse to boost the bottom line becomes irresistible, the companies slowly, and then with alacrity, implement strategies to increase profits. This invariably worsens the users’ experience while benefiting business customers. And then, once all avenues for wresting value from users have been exhausted, the company proceeds to, put frankly, screw their business customers. Eventually, the platform becomes little more than a money-extraction machine—a hellscape for users and a barely profitable but inescapable black hole for business customers. In short: a “giant pile of shit” for everyone involved.

The Aristocrats!

We may never fully know the cost of MIDWAY BLITZ, which lasted just about two months, but it was surely tens of millions of dollars — probably millions of dollars a day, in fact — and in the most concentrated and violent set of raids over the better part of two months, the Trump administration managed to arrest roughly the number of people it hopes to arrest and deport every single day across the nation. These are PR stunts — not a serious strategy. The terror is real; the impact is a rounding error.

Losing in the courts, losing on the streets, losing at their stated mission while inflicting terror on communities. For what?

The US state department has announced that it will designate four European self-described anti-fascist groups as Foreign Terrorist Organisations, as the Trump administration broadens its campaign against what it portrays as an international wave of leftist violence.

They should come up with a clever name for anti-anti-fascist groups. Also "portrays" is an interesting replacement for "fabricated".

I do know quite a bit about Mastodon’s trust-and-safety mechanisms, having been a moderator on CoSocial.ca for a couple of years now. So I’m going to walk through how the same story might have unfolded on Mastodon, assuming Ms Kendzior had made the same post about the WSJ article.

Interesting look at how a more distributed moderation model might have handled a controversial Bluesky banning.

“ICE is currently deploying armed, masked agents to take people from daycares, street corners, parking lots, and even their own homes, often based on paper thin suspicion and frequently with unjustifiable use of force. It is the mothers, fathers, children, friends, neighbors and coworkers being targeted by ICE who are most vulnerable in this situation.”

Google labeling the secret police force with the power and resources of the federal government a "vulnerable group” is particularly galling.

“All uses of force have been more than exemplary,” Bovino stated in a recent deposition. He is, as Judge Ellis has stated, lying. Bovino personally threw a tear gas canister in Little Village. He claimed in a sworn deposition that he was struck in the head by a rock before throwing the canister, and when videos showed no rock, admitted that he lied about the event. When shown video of himself tackling peaceful protestor Scott Blackburn, Bovino refused to acknowledge that he tackled the man. Instead, he claimed, “That’s not a reportable use of force. The use of force was against me.”

“I find the government’s evidence to be simply not credible,” said Judge Ellis in her November 6th ruling. “The use of force shocks the conscience.”

The US secret police invasion of Chicago has been a tragedy that we should all be ashamed of. We should be trying to stop it any way we can.

If the far-right succeeds in its project, when your wife gets sick you won’t be able to afford a doctor. Your kids or grandkids won’t be able to get an education. Should you become successful in business they will force you to pay bribes. These people believe in extraction, not growth. Their goal is to subjugate, to dominate, to force everyone beneath them into a life of precarious insecurity.

If you can make it past the title, this is an excellent picture of where the tech industry and tech culture were in the past compared with where it is now.

The German lender is looking at options including shorting a basket of AI-related stocks that would help mitigate downside risk by betting against companies in the sector.

That’s probably ok when your backers start mitigating their upcoming losses. I think they teach that’s a healthy economy signal in business school.

“The sandwich kind of exploded all over my uniform,” Lairmore said. “It smelled of onions and mustard.”

This horror show did not move this stone cold jury.

Meta internally projected late last year that it would earn about 10% of its overall annual revenue – or $16 billion – from running advertising for scams and banned goods, internal company documents show.

This is Facebook just squeezing as much as possible out of their audience that they think will stick around forever. Please get yourself a new place to share updates online so your friends and family won't get roped into this garbage while they're trying to see pictures of your cats or whatever. Yes, it's a hassle but we all have to walk away from this dumpster fire.

The Trump administration immediately appealed that order and earlier court decisions that required it to make at least partial payments to the SNAP program.

Just your regular reminder that this Republican administration works tirelessly to make people suffer.

Federal Reserve quietly pumped $125 billion into the U.S. banking system over five days, marking its largest short-term liquidity move since the 2020 COVID-19 crisis. On October 31 alone, the Fed injected $29.4 billion through overnight repurchase agreements (repos), allowing banks to trade U.S. Treasuries for cash to ease funding stress.

That's probably fine. This is the only reporting I've seen on this beyond folks chatting on social media. Nothing to worry about I suppose.