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Comment The fine line between author and carrier (Score 1) 221

I think the discussion about "common carrier" elsewhere in the comments misses the point. Social media platforms do not wish to be merely common carriers because a common carrier only transports messages by others and what they want to do is both monitor and control which messages reach specific users because they make money selling information about their users and delivering targeted advertising.

It is the secret, proprietary algorithms of Google, Twitter, facebook, et al. which are the problem here. The social media platforms are not merely common carrier if they are actively pushing certain messages whether for financial gain or ideological purposes. At a certain point we might consider them the author of the content they decide (or calculate) to push. We cannot know if the murderers in this case were fed hateful "instructions" by a YouTube algorithm or not but if they were then that is a problem that should be addressed, certainly.

Comment Re:How do we fight back against Beta? (Score 0) 253

It's clear that they have no intention of backing down or addressing user concerns. The only question now is, what site will we all move to after Beta stops being optional?

I'm doing the Slashcott, too, but I don't have any delusions that it'll get them to adopt the only course of action that would be acceptable: abandon the Beta site, keep "classic" Slashdot, issue an apology, and never try this shit again.

Dice doesn't care. They bought Slashdot for the name and the traffic. They'll end up ruining the former and driving away the latter.

Comment Re:The Life We live (Score 1) 545

1. Be willing to be on call 24/7... why should this be the case? Maybe this should change.
2. Spend free time researching and learning? Really... I need this for my job? No I don't and companies can train people.
3. Forgoing human contact? There is no reason for this again. Many tech jobs heavily involve communication be it for product planning, support, design meetings... ...

You're competing against people (mostly men) who ARE willing to do these things.

Comment Re:Hire them at companies without experience (Score 3, Interesting) 545

So she's not very qualified relative to the other applicants. She's no worse off than a man with the same qualifications. When the labor supply is so much larger than demand, employers just keep raising the bar. If we were struggling to find programmers, things would be different. This push to make more and more people into programmers is only going to worsen the situation for people seeking their first job, and will depress wages for the people who do get hired. ...it's almost like that's the point.

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