Yup. Now Trump will blame Musk for anything that went wrong in the last 5 months - including the fallout from musk’s random vandalism of government agencies.

I wonder when Musk will realize that he is probably going to die in a Salvadoran prison.

Lol. Like corporate social media isn’t creepy.

But why? Like, I know the reason, but has Trump completely dropped any pretence that Rule of Law exists in the US? Kidnapping is now protected speech, but only if your target is a liberal?

If he pardons these guys, then it is not hyperbole to say that democracy is over in the United States and Americans no longer inhabit a free country.

If i feel that way in Canada, I can only imagine your frustration. Mumbai is huge!

Almost every kid has felt that they were missing out on something because of parental rules at some point. The kids who had no rules were not necessarily the lucky ones, since good parenting always involves setting boundaries. i’m really not making the “in my time” argument because if we fixed the problems with social media i would have no problem letting my kids use something i didn’t have access to. to me it’s about balancing risks: make it safer, then let kids use it! after all, op is opening the door by making this post. she is directly responding to the expressed desire of her kids and trying to find a safe way to let her daughters access the tools they think they need.

For my part, i don’t consider forums social media. I may be in the minority, but im not as worried about stranger danger or cyber bullying as much as corporate control over content and privacy. i have never used snapchat, but i assume part of their revenue stream involves advertising and selling private data. maybe snapchat is very responsible about these things, but there is no oversight. take facebook, for example: a whistleblower just alleged that facebook targeted teen girls with weight loss and beauty products when it detected that the girls were feeling bad about themselves (say, when they had deleted a bunch of selfies). these exploitative and predatory decisions (to target an individual) are not approved by an ethics board. they are not subject to scrutiny. the only time we become aware of them is when some executive gets laid off and has a sudden crisis of conscience/lucrative book deal. maybe a ban on individualized ads and content feeds for young people would be enough to fix big problems. forums mostly don’t suffer from those problems.

You are right. But if things have changed, they can change again. Many countries are in the process of banning smart phones in schools and are legislating age minimums for social media. In such environments, access to social media becomes much less important. I think a better long-term approach would be to mitigate the risks of social media, and the fediverse is already addressing some of the big problems like corporate control of information and algorithmic curation of content. I like the idea of social media, but i hate the (prevalent) implementation.

True, using a defederated mastodon server as a group chat is “off label”, but i think it could work. I am not a fediverse expert, though.

With her friends, presumably. Why would she want strangers or mere acquaintances on her group chat?

There are more and more kids who aren’t allowed on social media because of its multifarious harms. Don’t forget that 20 years ago, no kids had social media. By all accounts, kids were doing fine back then. Also, OP said that her eldest daughter, at least, has a friend group, so your concern about their social isolation is probably misplaced.

Ah, crap. I forgot about that. Ok, new idea: Canada pays for the whole thing, on condition that the US becomes our cherished 4th territory.

I recently read that LLMs are effective for improving learning outcomes. When I read one of the meta studies, however, it seemed that many of the benefits were indirect: LLMs improved accessibility by allowing teachers to quickly tailor lessons to individual students, for example. It also seems that some students ask questions more freely and without embarrassment when chatting with an LLM, which can improve learning for those students - and this aligns with what you mention in your post. I personally have withheld follow-up questions in lectures because I didn’t want to look foolish or reveal my imperfect understanding of the topic, so I can see how an LLM could help me that way.

What the studies did not (yet) examine was whether the speed and ease of learning with LLMs were somehow detrimental to, say, retention. Sure, I can save time studying for an exam/technical interview with an LLM, but will I remember what I learned in 6 months? For some learning tasks, the long struggle is essential to a good understanding and retention (for example, writing your own code implementation of an algorithm vs. reading someone else’s). Will my reliance on AI somehow damage my ability to learn in some circumstances? I think that LLMs might be like powered exoskeletons for the mind - the operator slowly wastes away from lack of exercise.

It seems like a paradox, but learning “more, faster” might be worse in the long run.

Also, the only country that is openly threatening our sovereignty is the US. Will the system stop American missiles, I wonder?

haha i love it. we can leverage our dysfunction for good!

Edit: changed a word for style.

I guess you could force people to do firmware updates. Otherwise, your censorship parameters will get out-of-date. For example, criticism of Musk may go from forbidden to mandatory as he falls out of favor with the MAGA regime.

“Please restart your device for a required political update”

I need to feel some level of attraction for it to work, but i try not to care about what others think. I also find that people i like/love grow more attractive over time.

Israel is deliberately starving Gaza to ‘defend’ itself from Hamas. They are blocking humanitarian aid shipments.

Israel is deliberately starving Gaza to ‘defend’ itself from Hamas. They are blocking humanitarian aid shipments. Edit: i made this comment in the wrong place.

Jury nullification for Luigi. Anything else is injustice.

Truly, the replayability is staggering.