this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023
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No Stupid Questions

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/2044512

I made sure to remove cookies and not sign in so I think these are the base suggestions made by youtube.

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[–] SJ0@lemmy.fbxl.net 91 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Presumably because that's what lots of people are searching for.

Otoh, Google giving insane suggestions is sort of a meme by itself so who knows what they use?

[–] meldroc@lemmy.world 36 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Algorithm's designed to promote engagement. Getting angry groups screaming and trying to murder people counts as engagement.

As long as the screaming and arguing happens on their site and drives ad revenue, they don't care about the murdering part.

[–] SJ0@lemmy.fbxl.net 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Good point!

I've written before that I think a lot of these sites intentionally do the Jerry Springer thing.

[–] meldroc@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh, no doubt.

And there are plenty of groups out there that know how to create ...engaging... videos, specifically for the purpose of getting people to hate the Other of the Week. Wouldn't want the peasants to figure out who's really screwing them...

[–] SJ0@lemmy.fbxl.net 2 points 1 year ago

That's a good point too.

Honestly, the anti-establishment left and the anti-establishment right have a lot they could agree on if there wasn't so much media pointing out the few things they disagree on (or inventing things to disagree on)

[–] Danterious@lemmy.world 35 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I wish people weren't angry at the protest but instead at the more oppressive forces of society. Also sorta unrelated but what does Otoh mean?

[–] average650@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] Danterious@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

Ah ok. Thx.

[–] ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 year ago

I thought it stood for Ordo Templi Orientis Hermeticists all this time!

[–] SJ0@lemmy.fbxl.net 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Everyone will have their personal perspective on certain protests based on a number of factors.

A lot of people wanted the BLM riots shut down with lethal force because of the senseless violence and destruction in some cities. Otoh, some people thought they didn't go far enough. Someone whose city was destroyed would have a different perspective than someone whose city was just fine. People might have different views based on their view of the black community and their relationship with the rest of American society.

A lot of people thought the trucker convoy in Canada was a just fight against oppression, but many people thought they were just a bunch of antivaxx confederate Nazis and thought the use of any level of violence was justified because they were disrupting people's lives and they were secretly trying to clone Hitler. There was a broad spectrum of views and they only represented a piece of that spectrum.

Real politics is usually more complicated than just good vs. evil, it's really hard having one set of rules that apply equally and equitably to diverse people.

[–] Danterious@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah real politics is complicated and messy but that doesn't mean we should demonize the act of fighting for our rights. And that is the thing that I am worried about. That people are starting to see fighting for your rights as a bad thing.

[–] Zorque@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They don't see it as fighting for your rights, is the thing, though. They see it as petulant children whining about not getting dessert*.

*not my opinion

[–] Eldritch@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes. They're happily ignorant about everyone but themselves. They believe we achieved perfect equality in the 60s. And that Obama marked the end of racism. Not it's resurgence.

Their own struggles are everyone else's fault. Everyone else's struggles are their own fault. It's stupidity and its final form.

[–] bobs_monkey@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Somehow I highly doubt they're in their final form of stupidity.

[–] TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Saying cities were 'destroyed' is a bit hyperbolic. Even the cities with the craziest riots, like Portland just had a block of the city dedicated to it. The Capital Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), that the news used to make ~~Portland~~ Seattle look like a warzone, only covered 2 intersections of the city.

Edit: The CHAZ/CHOP was in Seattle, not Portland.

[–] CloverSi@lemmy.comfysnug.space 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I think the point they were making was that someone whose home, safety, or means of income were damaged or destroyed would have a different perspective than someone who wasn't adversely affected, regardless of the big picture.

[–] Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] hakase@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_arson_damage_during_the_George_Floyd_protests_in_Minneapolis%E2%80%93Saint_Paul

Multiple individual residences and at least two apartment buildings in Chicago, for starters, and that's just the first examples I found in a ten second Google search.

[–] MrMonkey@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Do you understand that hypothetical questions don't have be real?

Even if nobodies house was damaged his point stands.

So why bother being argumentative? Especially when you're, ya know, wrong.

[–] TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Oh I agree with that statement, the original comment just needs to be narrowed down. Nobody's city was destroyed. Some people had their business properties destroyed, but I imagine most of the shops that were broken or burned had some sort of insurance, and most of them avoided bankruptcy.

I do feel bad for anyone whose livelihood was affected by that, though. I think a lot of the rioters' anger was misplaced. I especially feel bad for any of smaller businesses that were affected. Walmart and Target can handle all of their stores being burned, but your local mom and pop shop might not bounce back from that.

[–] Drusas@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The problem is you framing protesters as rioters. There were relatively very few rioters and a lot of them were simply opportunists who would have been rioting regardless of what the protests were about. Bad actors exist everywhere.

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[–] Drusas@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

CHAZ was in Seattle and it was massively overblown by the media. I live here. It was like two square blocks and mostly full of young people treating it like a festival.

[–] Derproid@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

i imagine some of the people that lived there before CHAZ didn't feel the same way.

[–] Drusas@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It was a park area. There were some apartments overlooking, but mostly public space.

And most of Seattle saw them as an afterthought, not some huge issue like Fox News made them out to be.

Thank you for the correction. Sorry I misremembered and got it confused with other events around the same time.

[–] SJ0@lemmy.fbxl.net 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

A friend of mine was giving a play by play of the destruction in Minneapolis and St. Paul, and the way she described losing some of those buildings and the meaning some of them held was heartbreaking.

I thought about my own city, and there's a lot of really old mom and pops that, if some mob burned the building down, are never going to be rebuilt. My city like the areas of many of those cities, are economically depressed, most things we have out there are 70 years old from the economic good times back when the factories were still running.

It's easy to discount when it isn't something you care about being destroyed, but think about it it was your favorite restaurant, favorite gaming bar, favorite corner store or book store. You can say it doesn't matter, but it matters a whole lot to someone.

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[–] jeffw@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

Also worth noting that a study show a lot of the violence was started by cops, and then people reciprocated. Another study noted 90-95% of the protests were peaceful.

Only bigots call them riots, to push a political narrative.

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[–] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 57 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Google is currently defending itself in the US Supreme Court over a lawsuit that alleges they assisted the terrorist group ISIS in recruiting members after it was found the YouTube algorithm promoted ISIS recruiting videos to young men who later committed a terrorist attack.

So to answer your question using Google's argument: they have so many videos that an advanced search feature is required to make the site usable. Their search feature only suggests things that are popular. It's not their fault ISIS recruitment (or other violent content) videos are popular.

The counter argument is: Google is curating content by displaying things people didn't search out themselves. This is direct promotion by Google itself and therefor it should be treated as if they are the publisher of that content. Anyone publishing violent content should be held liable for it.

[–] cantstopthesignal@sh.itjust.works 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Promoting terrorism increases engagement

[–] Prethoryn@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Yeah, except it gets more complicated than that. Google wouldn't necessarily be promoting it either. As their algorithm looks for popular searches. Terrorism seems to be an overly used word for comparing protests to terrorism.

As an example, I live in a pretty red state. I would consider my self democrat/liberal in this state. When the George Floyd protests were happening a lot of people in my state were referring to the non-protest raids as terrorism. Despite the fact they will all defend the very clear terrorism on the capital as an attempt to save the U.S.

Point being you take the word protest and terrorism. You set it side by side as an exaggeration for literally anything half the the country disagrees with and boom you get popular terrorists searches.

I also don't think Google isn't at fault since their algorithm is designed to continue feeding that kind of content and the deeper you go the more ingrained into content you get and the more insane it gets.

[–] ipkpjersi@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So wait, is Google only suggesting things that are popular, or are they displaying things people didn't search out themselves? How do they prove that in court, do they need to show their source code or something?

[–] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not a lawyer and haven't read through the court documents, but from legal commentators it seems that Google provides the general steps for how their algorithms work in plain language for the judges to consider. Even then, the Supreme Court itself has stated they have no clue how technology works so this is difficult for them to rule on

[–] ipkpjersi@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago

What prevents Google from lying about how their algorithms work, though? How could it actually be verified? There's no way it could just be as simple as they give their word and suddenly that's good enough for a court ruling?

[–] Anitabath097@lemmy.world 37 points 1 year ago (3 children)
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[–] blanketswithsmallpox@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

oh god that's terrifying

[–] 0x4E4F@lemmy.rollenspiel.monster 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It's because people usually search for that... one of the many reasons why I lost hope in the human race... people getting their kinks on other people getting beaten up or killed... I mean, it just goes to show you how worse we are even than animals.

[–] Danterious@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean I don't think thats the full story. You should try looking at this interactive website.

The Evolution of Trust

Yeah, this thing works if everyone around you is not an asshole. It doesn't if everyone is. And even if the copycat or copykitten win in the end, the number of retries is just too tiring, so you just give up and decided to not trust anyone, thus becoming the cheater, same as everyone else.

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[–] optimal@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 1 year ago

Engagement. Hate promotes engagement and therefore is very profitable

[–] elvith@feddit.de 8 points 1 year ago

I guess it's just often used terms in search?

Or some kind of text prediction (e.g. simple Markov chains or something more advanced) that just "thinks" that this fits?

[–] db2@lemmy.one 3 points 1 year ago

Because that's what drives the lowest common denominator to view ads.

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