this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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I get that this is a contentious topic and I agree that Musk gets too much coverage, but....I strongly believe that people should be able to post whatever they want as long as it adheres to the community's topic (technology) and adheres to the rules.
The arguement of, "I don't wanna see {topic here} so stop posting about {topic here}" is a really slippery slope. Clearly there are quiet users here that DO actually want to hear about X news and DO want to dicuss it. What about topics that appeal to you, or like 20% of the community, but 80% couldn't give a shit? Where is the line?
Realistically, this is on you. You don't like it? Downvote and scroll past it. Want a perfectly curated source of news you care about? Use an RSS reader that offers topic filters. This is a community of diverse interests that may not always reflect yours. Deal with it, or go elsewhere.
Your point is absolutely valid, but what's happening at Twitter really is only relevant to social media news. There's no tech changing or advancing, just a really bad marketing decision. I personally do not believe that this is tech news or relevant to it.
To be fair it's a tech company though so it can impact those in the tech space. Generally it doesn't but you know what I mean.
I agree. It's more political than technology related.
Its either Business or Political not tech
So what's odd here is that this is tech devolving. X is a software services and technology company that pioneered a field. We are watching that fall apart in real time.
Technology doesn't exist in a vacuum it is entwined in society. Business decisions are undoing years of a societies integration into daily lives. This is like witnessing the fall of Rome in fast forward. So oddly enough this is an live use case in the convergence of society and tech., which is technology.
It seems a lot of people here think that anyone who runs a Web site is a tech company.
Go to any tech site, publication, podcast YouTuber, etc. All of them are talking about Twitter. Mainstream tech has agreed that Twitter / Facebook are tech.
Im not saying I agree. I'm not saying even that I care about these topics. I don't. I think Musk is an idiot and actively avoid news about his BS. But clearly a lot of people do care and a lot of people agree that Twitter is tech.
If this community wants to specify a definition of tech that differs from the mainstream, then they need to put it in the rules and accept that we need to control the acceptable conversation because certain members of the community are getting triggered by having to scroll past posts related to Musk or his properties.
This statement indicates that what is technology is decided by popular opinion, not by any inherent meaning in words. Certainly the meaning of words change with time and they have no inherent meaning, so in a very real sense, definitions are decided by popular vote. However, if Twitter is a tech company, then so is every newspaper, magazine, bank, credit card company, any business with a data base for inventory management. It's a useless definition. Let's go with the actual mainstream definition of a tech company, a company that develops, produces, licenses or sells technology or technology services, and Twitter doesn't do any of that. It sells ad space and subscriptions, the business model of a media company.
Friendo....
That's how language works. Language evolves and adapts over time via social pressure. Nobody uses words exactly as they are defined in the Oxford English Dictionary. Words are given meaning by people and inevitably those meanings shift and change as people use them in new and different ways.
Just because you adopted pedantry in order to push out topics you hate hearing about doesn't mean everyone else has to adopt your constructed definitions.
Yes, I've just said that languages evolve. I'm saying that "technology companies" has not yet and will not ever evolve to mean "companies that develop, produce, license or sell technology or technology services, and also Twitter". When Twitter starts getting involved in tech, it will be a tech company.
This argument is kind of saying "/c/technology should contain any topics which are interesting to people subscribed to /c/technology".
We're not a publication, podcast, or youtuber. This is a community aggregating posts about the topic of choice. We're not trying to gather up users by posting things that are interesting to our existing users.
they... do? it's like the "what is art" debate. the answer is "whatever you want it to mean in that moment and it can be different in the next moment"
So news of an online store doing shady shit constitutes as "tech news" because they run a web site? Strictly speaking the wheel is also technology, so a post about the history of the wheel seems like a worthy post in a tech community? We might as well post anything here because almost everything you use in your daily life is either technology or related to technology. While I do understand the philosophical aspect of the answer it has no practical value when it comes to defining what kind of content should be posted here.
There needs to be a more practical understanding of what the community considers "tech" so that wrong kind of posts don't get spammed here. For me personally the internet has been around for most of my life. It's not some new a shiny thing, it's as common as the wheel. Therefor I don't consider just running a bog standard website "tech". Similarly I don't consider Twitter / X a tech company, they're a social media company that uses software as a tool. I haven't considered anything about Twitter, except firing the engineers, as tech news since Musk wanted to buy Twitter. Maybe even before Musk tried to buy it, but who remembers things from eons ago. If there was news about some kind of exploit on Twitter or a data breach, that I could consider tech news because that is generally related to the actual tech they are using for their business. But a Twitter rebrand? Has literally nothing to do with tech beyond the tools they used constituting as "tech". But then we're back to square one where I could post about a new bicycle coming out, because the wheels bicycles use are "tech" and the frame material being used is produced by "tech" and there's a lot of "tech" that goes into a bicycle. But somehow I doubt this is what the community cares about.
So writing "R MUTT 1917" on a urinal and putting it in an art gallery constitutes as "art" just because they said it is?
etc etc
According to you it definitely does, that was literally your argument for having anything remotely tech related as tech news.
My argument was that it needs to be actually related to tech/art to considered that. If we want to be super critical of art then just writing that at an urinal may or may not be art. For the sake of argument let's say it's not. But if someone takes a picture of it (or turns the entire thing into a composition) and puts it in an art gallery then it is art. It has to contextualized somehow as art to be in a gallery and that contextualization defines it as art. Similarly tech news should be in in the context of tech, which is why something like rebranding a company is not necessarily tech news.
yes, I was using the famous example that broke the Fin De Ciele -era snobbery about art and the distinction between artist and artisan to make a point.
my point is that you can't define it. So you say "should posts about the wheel be included?"
and the answer is if you exclude all things about wheels where do you draw the line? someone creates a new type of ball bearing that revolutionizes manufacturing, but thats not allowed because it's a wheel? Someone uses a new archeological discovery about an ancient device to invent a modern one? No posts about cars, trains etc? No posts about waterwheel generated activity?
It becomes impossible to police.
Like I said before, I understand the philosophical aspect of this argument. Strictly philosophically I even agree with it, but the argument has no practical value because it's essentially saying "moderation is pointless". In practice most people would still want moderation because some moderation (even if it's not 100% correct) is better than no moderation.
That's an even bigger contentious debate. And the fact that there is no one mutually agreed on answer means we either need a formal definition in the rules or the people in this community need to understand that there are people that exist with a broader or narrower definition of technology than they have.
That said, like it or not, go to any major tech blog, podcast, YouTuber, and they all talking about X / Twitter. The tech communities outside of Lemmy have all agreed that Twitter / X is technology. And Lemmy doesn't live in a bubble.
This is an "appeal to authority" logical fallacy.
Personally I think an argument that "Twitter / X is technology" is a very, very difficult argument to make. It's a social media company. Is every company that has a website "tech"?
It's also a generalisation. Perhaps if twitter invented a new decentralised database that might be "tech", but marketing decisions are not.
Marketing decisions of a tech company are valid to be discussed. We discuss marketing and other business decisions of many tech companies and will continue to do so. Your argument is invalid - you're not the arbiter of what are and what aren't valid discussion subjects.
How is twitter a tech company ?
https://money.cnn.com/2014/08/22/technology/social/twitter-isis/index.html https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/is-twitter-a-technology-platform-a-media-company-or-both-3603227.html
the debate rages on. Frankly, I think you're moronic to complain about Twitter here. They are regularly influencing tech media reporting and they launched as a tech stock.
I think it would help define it or give examples of what it is or isn't intended to include. Should it include biotech, materials tech, or is it limited to computers, Internet, AI? Or...?
Technology to me includes things like papyrus and typewriters and the above and much more. But what I expect to see in a technology community is narrower than that.
....but that's what happens when you call a community "technology". Its a pretty damn broad category and these days, incredibly mainstream.
Communities like " technology" are going to be as mainstream as they were on Reddit. There is nothing you can do about it unless you convince the mods to spend 14 hours a day curating and removing posts from people with mainstream definitions.
If you want a more curated definition, or you have more niche interests, then you probably want to go to a different community. Heck, maybe start your own. Be the change you want to see.
It seems a bit silly to go to a community called "technology" and then complain that it represents what 90% of technology news sources are talking about.
Typewriters are technology, but information about what color of shoes is being worn by the guy who bought the typewriter patent from its inventor isn't technology.
anything including and beyond hitting a nut with a rock to open it
What defines "real piece of shit?"
What defines "nuts"
There are plenty of people who would call Lemmy a "real piece of shit" and all of us "nuts".
You asked
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Politely disagree, in that I suspect this is a hypocritical sentiment. Most users who get off of Elon news will agree with this position now but then cry foul when this community is spammed with a subject not to their liking. And as much as the ideology of free speech (rightly) resonates, just like with free markets, some minimal regulation is needed in practice; otherwise some fanatics could choke this feed up with, I dunno, 99% Microsoft news, all the time, and you wouldn't be able to say shit because you "strongly believe people should be able to post whatever they want". I doubt that you would stand by your lofty convictions so strongly then.
Beyond that, there is nothing wrong with expressing a desire for more or less of something—it's just an opinion. It's a bullshit argument to say, "If you don't like it, instead of articulating why, just use the limited non-descriptive tool provided to reduce your passionate sentiment into a trivial binary value and cast it into the sea of thousands just like it; or else, like, go create an entirely new community or a custom feed or whatever you want. But mainly, just fuck off."
Let me make this clear.
I don't give a FLYING FUCK about Elon. I actively ignore any posts about him or his shitty empire. Stop using the behaviors of his idiot stans to argue with me. I am not them.
What I do care about is a community telling people what they can or cannot post, not through rules changes, not through mod action, but by agreeing internally to bully every person who dares to post what every tech publication is talking about.
I think you need to evaluate why you let this shit trigger you. I mean, this is like going to a coffee shop and raising a stink because they sell pumpkin spice lattes. Don't consume it. Use Lemmy's tools to filter it out if you really need to.
Its not the community's job to cater to your specific content desires. This isn't a news site. Its a place for people to talk about whatever they think technology is. It's your job to moderate what you pay attention to.
If i could wish one ability/skill, I would wish to have this person's articulation skill
:Chefs-kiss:
I didn't see any proposals to ban them. If anything this post is about what little value they bring to the community.
But maybe it's because I'd rather this community be more about technology and less about technology as it appears in the news.
Funny enough I think it's a hypocritical sentiment but on the other foot -- users who are tired of this news are going to eventually find some news they are interested in, and then resist having it sequestered somewhere else.
What rss reader are you using? I've been using feeder and have like it so far. Also have freshRSS running but don't use it so much
I've tried so many and I'm always on the hunt for better ones. I wss on Pallabre until it went abandonware. Currently on inoreader but still hunting.
Problem is that I want something that can easily sync my feed and subscriptions across devices, but the ones that support that compromise in other areas. I might need to just settle for good import/export functionality. But Inoreader works for me for now.
But the nice thing is there are a ton of RSS apps out there. So, theres bound to be something for everyone.