I agree with this point. There is absolutely a 'left behind' gap that is under-explored.
My last job was a cable technician - making house calls to fix wifi, satellite tv, phone issues. Mostly elderly residents. The majority of them all were computer and phone illiterate. They were slow adopters to the fast-moving technology and many of them did not know how to operate their devices after we (UI/UX/hardware/software engineer 'we') removed them.
I wonder if this also has contributed to the elderly lonliness problem - sure its probably mostly related to physical companionship, acceptance of aging, etc, but the world that they knew (in general and the technological world they grew up in) is no longer recognizable.
But maybe it doesn’t matter that much to them. I don’t know how to skin a rabbit, but that knowledge could be handy in some situations. But I don’t see myself being in that situation other than accidentally.
My mother has a phone, but only use it to call. She has never needed a computer even though I spent my teenage years glued to one. But I have like 1 percent of a skill in cooking.
Exactly. We look at older people and think “oh, look at those poor souls. They don’t know X and Y technologies and they keep doing things the old way! They must feel so left behind.” Nothing is further from the truth. My whole life I’ve lived in neighborhoods full of people 20+ years older than me and not once did I have a neighbor or friend who I thought was overwhelmed with the pace of modern life and upset about how different the world was becoming from what they are used to. This is a trope. People are resilient and adaptive, and as you get older you learn how to embrace new things that actually help and reject new things that don’t. As I get older, I find myself just not caring about a lot of things that younger people care about and not doing a lot of things they do. I don’t use social media, I still pay for things with cash and checks, I don’t understand or care about the Kardashians or reality tv. My phone is 8 years old. I listen to prog rock and new wave music, and I probably couldn’t name a single popular musical performer today (besides Taylor Swift because I have a daughter). I don’t feel even slightly “left behind” or “obsolete.”
about as much as all the people who signed the petition to stop/slow the rate of ai advancement - nothing other than pointing to it in the future when all has gone to shit and say, "told you so"
cool. now do something about the hundreds/thousands of people getting rate limited on Antigravity even after upgrading their plans, even on their $250 /month plan.
not OP and not sure of the book but if you're interested in material like this, check out Derek Sivers' work - usually revolves around stepping outside your comfort zone, exploring new ideas, etc.
I think this decision is more defensive than "losing touch with their customers." The winds are shifting in other countries that are cracking down on social media use for children. Discord does not want to get caught in the shit storm of legal issues if they fail to comply. This is a proactive measure.
That is prioritizing internal politics over the realities of their product. The Discord userbase is young. And it serves a variety of use cases / the same account can be used to access open source communities, coordinate video game time with friends, interact professionally, and have a supercharged group chat for close IRL friends.
Any decision that isn't along the Apple's hard privacy stance lines, "we'll protect user privacy" is prioritizing the discomfort of that decision over the user base / use case.
It's not 'internal politics,' what are you talking about. It's the politics in our real world. UK gov is requiring ID verification for adult sites. France gov is calling a social media ban for teenagers.
We're talking about elected European governments here. It's not like Discord shareholders just woke up this morning and decided to make themselves poor.
Switching to another centralized service won't do shit as long as voters keep falling for 'protect the kids.'
This is the real issue, and it's why just cancelling your discord subs and moving to stoat or etc isn't a solid long-term strategy. If KOSA passes in the us basically every platform will have to do something like this.
That's a big if. And yes, if push comes to shove I guess I'll become a forum pirate. I won't tie my real ID up in anymore private servers than absolutely necessary (which as of now is governmental entities and banks, a highly regulated sector).
I don't think it's that big of an if anymore - there's worldwide pressure and interest groups to get some kind of age check on all these companies, at least. Keep some alternate contacts for friends at least
There's always been pressure. People have been fighting for decades on this. The only thing that's changed is how they've tried to disenfranchise dissent.
There still is push back, so I won't say this is a losing battle. I'll keep fighting regardless.
>Keep some alternate contacts for friends at least
They know where to reach me. Whether they care enough to go outside their gardens to talk is another matter.
They were already collecting everyone's messages and social links, and would still be doing it without this. But I'm not sure if the age verification / ID collection is really as useful for advertising compared to just being able to read all of your chats, right?
I think this is about "losing touch with their customers" and the need to IPO and make money from the customers.
The thing is, most of discords users are in countries which haven't yet passed laws that ban children from using apps like discord. If they were privacy focused they could do this only where the law requires it, like Australia.
There are no helpful representatives is the problem. It doesn't matter who you vote for, because they're all just varying degrees of bad.
There isn't a single politician I could vote for that could improve this situation. Even if there was, they would just get swept away by the ocean of people who actually believe in this "think of the children" narrative.
If that's the case, you need to grow the representatives you want. Many of the people voted into mayor or governor didn't pop up out of the ether. They were working in local boards or as comptrollers or even business owners.
That's why local elections are so important, despite the dreadfully low turnout.
A mayor or governor can't change these things though. That's part of the problem since I'm in the EU. It's irrelevant what representatives in my country want because they're too small of a minority. But even among those representatives there's nobody that actually cares about issues like this.
>That's why local elections are so important, despite the dreadfully low turnout.
Local elections here are about parties, not candidates. You can give your vote to Jim, but it's counted as a vote for Jim's party instead. The party picks whomever was their #1 candidate for the locality.
ive never played before. i moved my guys around the map for 6 turns then they just disappeared. also cant figure out how to increase the scaling of the screen
Doesn’t this just exacerbate the “black box” conundrum if they just keep piling on more and more features without fully comprehending what’s being implemented
My last job was a cable technician - making house calls to fix wifi, satellite tv, phone issues. Mostly elderly residents. The majority of them all were computer and phone illiterate. They were slow adopters to the fast-moving technology and many of them did not know how to operate their devices after we (UI/UX/hardware/software engineer 'we') removed them.
I wonder if this also has contributed to the elderly lonliness problem - sure its probably mostly related to physical companionship, acceptance of aging, etc, but the world that they knew (in general and the technological world they grew up in) is no longer recognizable.
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