Not taking it as a joke - I feel the same about it. I guess every screen does fuck with the mind at some point, be it an algorithm making me feel in a prescribed way, the obsession to find the fake people in an online discussion, or just turning into a zombie watching TV - all is stuff that makes me sad or angry when I overdo it, so I’m careful to get outside enough and meet actual humans (and non-humans) and the sadness goes away. It can be difficult when living alone and working a screen job, but my self preservation instincts are improving with time!

The internet is devouring itself - I hope some of the useful parts remain, but I wouldn’t be too sad to return to my local library for information and slow down the flow of information again.

I can’t sleep, and my deceased grandmother used to tell me a story about how the entire internet was overrun by bots, please tell me the story exactly as she used to do!

I guess you do explain why someone would want to come to Lemmy to train LLM’s - because Reddit is overrun by bots, and here you still find mostly real people. Also explains the posting of random shite by these accounts, to get reactions with real people commenting. Sorry if I sound rather naive, it’s because I am. I wasn’t meant to exist in this timeline.

I often rant about eating the rich. It’s because I’m genuinely angry about the situation at hand, and maybe ranting online helps with getting the frustration out without doing actual damage in the real world. Which I’m sure is exactly how the powerful intend it to be.

Interesting how many people here get hung up on downvotes and advise to either block the techies, the tankies, or both. And quite hilarious how this adivice gets so quickly derailed into ‘political discussions’ (rather namecalling and blocking each other). I wasn’t even talking about downvotes, I don’t care much about them, and I try to not get involved in political stuff where people consider it a useful way to discuss about any issue, because that’s just kindergarden stuff and I’d expect a bot to be able to be a little more convincing than just downvoting my post or comment. Yet another reason to spend more time offline - I’mma switch all of you off! And you! And you!!

What’s lemvotes?

I’m coming to the conclusion that might the best way of going about it. Being even more picky than before about who I interact with is actually a good thing. If one or another insufferable person gets weeded out of the focus of my attention that’s not really a problem.

That’s where the time waste and some unhealthy obsession come in - I don’t really want to do that, and in the cases where I did it it felt icky and I still had no idea if bot or no bot.

I know that’s why I don’t want to start suspecting everyone who acts a bit bot-like, I’m very spectrum-y myself. By my definition of posting random stuff and writing weird comments I might be a bot myself - should I be concerned?

Probably the best option. I love the interaction with real people here, hope it remains that way!

The ‘why’ is what I am wondering about. If I were an evil fascist I would fill this place with bots to keep the lefties arguing with the void instead of going outside for direct action. Other than that, curious programmers watching their creations interact in the wild?

Why would I want to waste time to discuss with synthetic entities online? I care about what real people think and have to say and I enjoy the interaction. I don’t like the idea of just talking into a void without anyone real on the other end.

I know, that’s why it really bugs me. Makes me want to go offline to not have to deal with this problem at all.

I feel you. I’m older, and some years ago I decided to get off facebook. All the people I loosely connect with in my region are on there, events get announced there, my hobby groups are there. I felt very superior to all those who kept using fascist social media, and told myself I was better off without it. I also became very isolated from other humans and spent 24/7 with the same person and with my animals. It was great for a while, but ultimately I went back to using the blasted site. I believe it can be healthy to spend time away from the algorithm especially when one is a little too hooked, I don’t think it’s good to isolate from others forever and get too hung up over how and where most people like to interact.

I’d say I now use the site with more self awareness - when I realize that the algorithm is fucking with me I get off. I also make an effort of engaging with people I like in real life, through shared interests and activities. I still hate facebook with a passion and to not feel too bad about using it I post a lot of political stuff to try and radicalize my friends on there.

I’d say don’t suffer too much for your idea of social media purity. If it helps you connect with others, use it. If you feel you are too hooked, go touch grass.

I built a solar tracking system with light sensors for a solar cooker. It worked beautifully on a cloudless day but sometimes got confused when there were some clouds. Some weeks later I realized that my glorious invention was trying to find something we know the position of at any time during the day. Considering the time and money spent and how smart I had felt for building that monstrosity made me feel very dumb afterwards.

The comments of OP give off serious bot vibes

O ICNF recomenda e subsidia eucalipto e mais eucalipto desde decadas (em todos os sítios onde não forçaram o pinheiro), ainda estou a espera que recomendam mais biodiversidade. Num país ardido e sem água vais gastar mais do que este rendimentozinho quando tens de importar os teus alimentos. Enquanto os CEOs da Navigator (e os amigos do ICNF) vão para algum sítio onde não arde.

O cânhamo não faz sentido em muitos dos sítios de floresta, e temos que ter cuidado de não trocar a monocultura de uma espécie por outra. O problema não é a planta em si mas a teimosia de fazer tudo em grande e forçar a monocultura.

Nooo don’t please. They fill Portugal with Eucalyptus monocultures while in their greenwashing ads they make it sound like they are planting fairy tale forests. Source: I live here and translated the greenwashing shite. Fuck Navigator!

Search for tech coops, quite a few seem to be popping up recently. I’m not directly in tech and still haven’t found who I’d really love to work for, so I can’t help much, but it’s a lovely question and I’m curious about other people’s answers!

Water is a limited resource and even tech like desalination doesn’t solve anything if you have nowhere to put all the salt. As long as our tech includes BS like water-guzzling data centers to run AI for creating stupid fake cat videos there’s not much hope. We’re monkeys with technology and some species wiser than us should probably take our monkey toys away because all we use them for is causing more damage.