Mauve 👁💜 @mauve@mastodon.mauve.moe

If the independent, non-slop web has any future at all, then now must be the time for every firefox fork to commit to working together to maintain a hardfork isolated from Mozilla.

It's a project that is too large to be handled by any small project alone (and maybe even all of them combined), but one that is too important to left under the guidance of an organization like Mozilla.

Without such bold co-operation I fear we have already lost.

It is incredibly important to be specific about what properties apply in situations to be able to make the correct trade offs.

An in that respect, VPNs are incapable of providing privacy - under any specific definition of privacy.

They can route around censorship, they can provide security, they can permit jurisdictional and trust flexibility.

But they can only do those things under very specific assumptions which require sharing additional information (albeit changing who gets what data)

I keep seeing the "cars replaced horses" thing related to "AI."

People keep comparing "AI" to cars (positively) without thinking about the fact that cars were forced on people (GM bought up and destroyed tram lines, there were massive protests, etc), and are the primary driver of climate change that is currently on track to make complex human society impossible. Meanwhile, cities that weren't destroyed for cars, or that have reversed most of the damage, are some of the most desirable places to live.

Maybe we could take the car analogy as a warning. Maybe it could be a reminder to think about how forcing technology on people against their will can reshape society in a profoundly negative way.

The answer for cities has been to right-size transit. Eliminate cars wherever possible, maintain emergency vehicles and mobility aids, and find more efficient alternatives (bikes, trams, metros, and trains) where possible. I feel as though we can extrapolate from the metaphor.

We do not have to repeat the mistake of reshaping society around a single, oversimplified, solution in order to benefit a tiny minority. Perhaps we can actually choose the right technologies based on use cases, rather than hype or dogma.

Cars didn't replace horses. Cars replaced walkable cities, tram lines and mass transit, and children playing in the streets.

"Cars replaced horses" to the benefit of a small group of elite men, at tremendous cost to literally everyone else. When people say, "AI is the new 'cars replacing horses'" they are saying something very specific about their privilege and intentions.

Edit: I write AAA, but it should have been GM and related companies. Look up the "General Motors streetcar conspiracy." And yes, that means that "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" was actually based on real events that you didn't realize were real.