They have to have a human respond to each and every complaint about that ad. Seems more sensible to automate and flag suspicious ads before the complaints happen.

There are other considerations here though. Google suffers reputational harm if users become victims through their platform. It becomes news, it creates distrust in users, it generates friction with regulators and law enforcement. Users may be trained to be ad averse or install ad blockers. In addition, these ads generate reports which costs time to process even if the complaints are rejected.

At the end of the day these scammers are not high profile advertisers and they’re not valuable. They’re burner accounts that pay cents to deliver their ads. They’re ephemeral, get zapped, reappear and constantly waste time and resources. Given that YouTube can easily transcribe content and watermark it, it makes no sense to me that they wouldn’t put some triggers in, e.g. a new advertiser places an ad that says “Elon Musk”, or “Quantum AI” or other such markers, flag it for review.

I’ve disabled personalised ads on YouTube and I see this sort of shit all the time. I’ve given up reporting them because 90% of the time the report is rejected. I don’t even understand the rationale for rejecting it because it’s an obvious a scam as a scam can be - ai impersonation, fake endorsement, illegal advertising category. It’s a scam YouTube.

I don’t even get why these ads even appear. YouTube has transcription & voice / music recognition capabilities. How hard would it be to flag a suspicious ad and require a human to review it? Or search for duplicates under other burner accounts and zap them at the same time? Or having some kind of randomized audit based on trust where new accounts get reviewed more frequently by experienced reviewers.

Because they are. Groups like PETA, or Just Stop Oil are clowns who hurt their own cause. Performative protesting might win people a participation prize but to everyone else it’s just “look at meeeeee!”. At a certain point it actually becomes toxic to the cause. I know if I wanted to harm environmental campaigning then I’d invent Just Stop Oil.

Meanwhile big business are sending lobbiests in to change politician’s minds, to make arguments that appeal to their rationality, or self-interest. THAT is what environmental campaigners should be doing - lobbying, extoling the benefits of environmental action, changing minds. Getting arrested in front of cameras over and over just becomes pathetic and performative.

No change doesn’t happen by asking nicely, but I think some joined up thinking by these groups would get them further than performative protesting and getting arrested. If you want change then you lobby politicians on the positive benefits of change, and businesses on the potential profits to be had from implementing it.

I think climate activists would just be better off doing what everyone else does - lobbying. Identify politicians who represent areas who would benefit from pollution controls, or green investment or whatever and push the message. Performative acts in front of cameras might feel good but it’s a blunt tool to change policy. Some protestors such as “just stop oil” campaigners are so stupid that they actually help the causes they supposedly oppose.

I think they need to be super explicit to stop the likes of Tesla weaseling out or doing the bare minimum:

• Wipers, speed settings, auto on/off should be on a stalk for front and rear wipers
• Indicators should be on a stalk with
• Hazard lights must be a physical button
• Horn may be on the wheel or a button
• Lights on/off/full beam/dip/auto must be a dial or a stalk
• Demister / heated window must be physical buttons
• Gears must be a physical rocker, lever or dial

And button / dial etc here means an actual push up/down button not some haptic / touch sensitive shit.

Because at the moment Tesla are basically cheaping out of providing physical controls to save money. It doesn’t matter if someone crashes their car fiddling to set the wiper speed because Tesla saved $20 on a stalk and that’s all that matters.

The EFF has some info about the practice - https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-display-tracking-dots.

I imagine there are ways and means of obfuscating / anonymizing the dots such as blocking the printer from emitting them (e.g. an empty yellow cartridge that the printer perceives as full), modifying the firmware, using a burner printer, or using a mono laser jet.

As a side issue, most modern bank notes have a bunch of yellow circles integrated into the design on each side. They look random but they’re in a recognisable pattern called a constellation that enables devices like copiers / scanners to recognize when people are trying to copy money or other financial instruments like checks.

It’s still possible to open it before the car submerges. It’s also possible to open it if you have the wherewithal to wait until the inside is nearly full. That’s providing you know where the damned release lever is. But if you’re panicking and pushing the electronic release and nothing happens then you’re going to die no matter what. Same too if the car is on fire or whatever.

And Tesla, being the helpful sort, also makes it hard to open the doors in an emergency. The front might have manual door release mechanism somewhere - good luck finding it when the car is on fire or sinking. The rear… not so much.

EuroNCAP is changing its testing regime to negatively score manufacturers who remove critical physical controls and it should probably include door handles in that regime.

If a server were an obvious conduit for disinfo then other servers could defederate from it. But if it was different accounts on different servers mixed in with authentic users then it’s almost impossible to remove. What tools does mastodon / lemmy even provide to spot inauthentic behaviour? And because we’re talking different servers run in different ways there is no clear picture from above that can be formed in the same way that a centralized social media platform might have - identifying suspicious clusters of nodes or traffic.

As for federation’s future we’ll wait and see. Both bluesky and threads are talking of providing federation protocols - threads using activitypub and bluesky it’s own API. As for Mastodon & Lemmy I see a lot of positive interest in these things. The fact we’re commenting on Lemmy instead of Reddit says a lot.

I do fear that as federation grows, then so too will potentially the same threats that happen on centralised social media. The fediverse is going to have a lot of vulnerable servers who won’t moderate or detect trolls & bots and over time the issue could become extremely onerous.

All large news orgs and NGOs need to do the same - federate their server which becomes the source of truth, and then mirror the content over other social media which is not federated. This may or may not include Twitter. I imagine that over time having news and reporting across social media will diminish any advantage Twitter possesses and then news orgs / NGOs might decide if they want their content on a platform like Twitter that cannot be bothered with things like stamping out bots, trolls, inauthentic actors, or supporting a free and fair press.

He’s really gunning for that Hero of Russia medal

You could find out when there wasn’t housing demand simply by looking house prices in an area over time. If it flattens or falls in an area, then demand has fallen. And instead of sobbing that people richer than you can afford to buy a particular house at the market rate, you should instead be lobbying state & city governments to change the absurd building codes that prevent more affordable urban housing to be built that the suburban sprawl that afflicts most US cities.

Hardly the same comparison. People buy houses when there isn’t demand and sell when there is.

Well obviously it was a failure and always was going to be a failure. Whereas before there was frictionless trade, travel, employment, living, there is now an ever expanding wall of bullshit and red tape. Getting goods to and from Europe is subject to import duties and delays that just kills trade - why would a Spanish company buy widgets from the UK when a supplier in Germany can supply them faster and reliably without any customs redtape?

It will take the UK years to form other trade deals, none of which will be remotely as favourable as they would get with negotiating power of the entire EU behind them. There have already been noises in the UK press about having to take food from the US which would fail EU standards - bleached chicken, GM crops, growth hormones etc. And that’s because when the US comes to the negotiating table they’re going to bend the UK over and screw them. And China, India and the rest of the world will be lining up for some sloppy seconds.

Chiropractors and osteopaths only exist in such large numbers because they bill less to insurers than actual doctors & hospitals. So of course insurers are going to promote these quacks because it’s cheaper than somebody going to an actual physiotherapist for treatment.

There should really be legislation that requires insurers to cover science & evidence based treatments. If someone wants woo it should be at additional expense to them, not part of a standard policy.

I live in Europe where trucks are fairly rare but you still see large SUVs, 4x4s and vans around. My own feeling is that certain classes of vehicles should be considered commercial for the purposes of insurance, taxation, VAT, inspection, tolls, permitted usage and everything else. The legislation already exists for commercial vehicles so extend it to these kind of vehicles.

So is someone must have a stupidly oversized vehicle purely for personal reasons they can enjoy all the bullshit and restrictions that goes with it. Doesn’t stop them complying but making it more onerous to do it will take demand for these vehicles off the market entirely.

Most of not-North-America drive around in manual vehicles. Have to wonder what the allure is of something which is kind of mundane and boring. When I’m driving a manual I’m not thinking I’m Steve McQueen, just constantly shifting gears between sets of traffic lights. If people really want to connect with a car, then buy an EV. Instant torque and responsiveness without screwing around with extra sticks and pedals or suffering the rubber banding in some automatics.