Lvxferre

I wish that it was darin (darling). It rolls off the tongue so much better.

I don’t think that handedness plays a huge role. I think that in some cases it’s simply random, and in other cases it’s “we write in this direction because that’s how we learned it”.

Inkwriting exists since at least the 2500 BCE, it was already used with hieroglyphs, and yet you see those being written left to right, right to left, boustrophedon, it’s a mess. Even with the Greek alphabet, people only stopped using boustrophedon so much around 300 BCE or so.

Plus if it played a role we’d see the opposite of what we see today - since the Arabic abjad clearly evolved among people who wrote with ink, that’s why it’s so cursive. In the meantime the favourite customary writing medium for Latin was wax tablets, where smudging ink is no issue:

As others said it was a conscious decision of the developers, as it’s gamification of the system and they aren’t big fans of that.

I agree with this decision.

The Fluff Principle* makes easy-to-judge content get higher scores, and we do see it Lemmy. It isn’t a big deal because fluff ends on its own specific comms, but once you gamify the aggregation of score points, the picture changes - now you’re encouraging people to share content that they believe to score high over content that they believe to be contributive.

Additionally a publicly visible karma enables a bunch of poorly thought mod practices, like karma gating (“you need +500 karma to post here lol”) or automatically banning people with low karma (even if it might come from a single post/comment).

*“Hence what I call the Fluff Principle: on a user-voted news site, the links that are easiest to judge will take over unless you take specific measures to prevent it.” (Source)

You // need // some // Xanax // /s 😁🍻

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO STOP IT!!! /s

Serious now. It doesn’t work here, since there’s no audible ping for every reply that you sent me. It’s more like in whatsapp*: I definitively don’t want to mute some people, but I wish that they didn’t send me multiple short messages.

*inb4 I hate whatsapp but not having it in Brazil is social suicide.

Messaging:

• People who reply to direct text questions with 5min audio recordings.
• People who use Enter as if it was the space bar, sending 10 messages for what could be easily sent as one.
• People who treat their requests as of utmost urgency, but when you contact them back take hours or even days to reply back.

Online forums:

• The sort of illiterate fuck who treats “but” as if it contradicted everything preceding it.
• People who feel entitled to have ELI5 versions of the text content produced by other people. (i.e. throwing a tantrum because of difficult words, text size, or even conceptual complexity.)
• Usage of “lol” and/or “lmao”. (I mentally translate those into “I’m braindead and should be treated accordingly.”)
• The sort of dead weight that focuses too much on specific words being used to convey something, instead of what it conveys.

Before watching the video:

No, English is not a creole by any sane definition. It’s a West Germanic language with some North Germanic and Romance influence, that’s it. This is clear when you look at creole languages typically…

1. having simpler and more regular phonology and using less contrast than the parent languages;
2. having simple syllabic structures, like CV or ©V;
3. breaking the comparative method once you try to apply it to them;
4. having grammars that typically look nothing like the ones of the parent languages.

Those are all consequences of how creoles originate: to keep it short [sloppy definition] they’re the result of speakers of 2+ languages interacting, with no side understanding the others’ language, but still reaching some compromise.[/sloppy definition] The phonology and syllabic structure get simpler because it’s typically what all sides can distinguish; the comparative method breaks because all the creole vocab is borrowed; and the grammar is something anew because it’s generalised from those ad hoc rules, as needed by the speakers. And this happens relatively fast.

In the meantime, look at English:

1. If anyone thinks that English phonology is “simple” or “regular”, look no further than the bloated vowel system. Typical for Germanic languages by the way.
2. The syllabic structure goes up to CCCVCCC (see: “strengths”).
3. You can backtrack a good chunk of the vocabulary all the way back into Proto-Indo-European, through the comparative method. Specially core vocab.
4. The grammar is basically Germanic. And even the differences from [say] Dutch or German don’t really fit periods with more interaction with other languages (such as the tribal invasion of Britannia, Danelaw, or the Norman rule), they’re gradual and better explained as the result of internal development, for example the noun case system kicking the bucket due to phonetic erosion.

That’s because English, like other non-creole languages, is the result of a somewhat stable linguistic community slowly changing their language over time. Stuff like the Norman conquest had some influence in the lexicon, but that’s it, it was just a Romance ruling caste eating “porc” and “mutton” while the huge majority of the population, the Germanic-speaking lower caste, was raising “pigs” and “sheep”.

I believe that this myth that English is a creole language is mostly caused by clueless people who look at a language as nothing but a collection of words, just like they would confuse an animal with its fur.

As I’m watching the video:

We already know that English borrows from everybody,

English is not even special in its propensity towards loanwords. Just look at Romanian or Japanese.

This picture is misleading as it implies that Germanic vocabulary in English was [all/mostly] borrowed, when it was mostly inherited.

Also, when it comes to Latin+Greek vocab, it ended in almost all European languages, not just English.

[Keisha Weil, PhD] Creole languages are basically languages that were created by different communities of speakers who came together and needed to interact with each other.

English already doesn’t fit the definition - since it’s trivial to show that it’s the result of Proto-Germanic slowly changing over time, not some sort of “creation” by different communities of speakers coming together.

(That said props to Dr. Weil, that’s a great way to explain this stuff to laypeople.)

[about pidgins]

A quicker way to explain pidgins is that they’re the sort of coarse communication used by speakers of different languages, when they want to finish a task and get over it, not really interested on anything past that. They typically have incomplete grammar, a small vocab, no native speakers.

And as the video mentions, pidgins can evolve into creoles, once speakers feel the need for more than just “finish it and get over it”; for example, once children start learning that pidgin as their native language and they want to express themselves. In this process the “gaps” of the incomplete grammar and vocabulary get filled, the phonology gets systematised, and you get an actual language.

extended pidgins

That’s mostly an intermediate category for a communication system that is already more developed than you’d expect from a pidgin, but still not a full-fledged language like a creole. I don’t think that it’s an useful concept, but that’s perhaps just me.

Why are they not teaching students in their home languages? [exemplified with Kreyòl]

[Dr. Weil] That’s a really good question. And I preface this with saying I understand why it’s not taught, even though I personally believe it’s wrong [to not teach in creole languages]. Creole languages, for most part, they’ve always been considered like a bad version of a European language. French, English, Dutch, those are real languages, where Haitian Kreyòl and Papiamentu and Jamaican Patois, because they’re so young, they’re not real languages yet.

Emphasis mine. It has barely anything to do with being a “new” or an “old” language; if it was an old language people would discriminate it another way, but the discrimination would be still there (like “it’s primitive” or “it’s just a dialect”, or worse), untouched.

It’s all about power. Languages piggyback on the power of their speakers, and languages associated with disempowered linguistic communities are often degraded into “this is not an actual language, it’s a bad version of [insert another language]”.

Here is where Dr. Weil could have inserted her talk about people of colour, and it would be extremely meaningful and accurate - because racial issues are one of the things disempowering the Kreyòl, Papiamentu etc. speakers, and creating this idiotic stigma behind creole languages.

Is English a creole language?

[Dr. Weil] Ah! I can guarantee you there’ll be other linguists who will tell you “no, English is not a creole language”. But when you ask them to break down why it’s not a creole language, is it because black and brown people are speaking that language, that makes it a creole language?

No, it isn’t. As I’ve explained at the start of this comment (and I’m glad to have done so before watching the video), a creole language has a different origin than a non-creole one.

Dr. Weil dropped the ball here.

We don’t call Montréal French a creole language.

Can someone informed on QC French argue for/against this point?

We don’t call Afrikaans a creole language.

Okay, that’s bullshit.

Afrikaans is outright called a creole language by at least some authors, such as Hein Willemse. Other authors - such as Hans den Besten - claim that it has a mixed creole origin. But academically speaking nobody relevant is trying to deny Afrikaans’ roots on Dutch-based creoles dammit.

Why are we not calling English creole languages? Because it [English] didn’t just pop out of some place, right? It didn’t just magically appear.

Why is she outright ignoring the definition of a creole language that herself provided, to lean into an “ackshyualy all languages are creoles” discourse??? Why??? Just to build a strawman and beat it to death???

In fact, do we even need the word “creole” as a descriptor to separate the languages out?

Yes if you want to talk about the origins of languages like Sranan, Kristang, and so many others. And talking about origins is important:

• it explains better why each of those languages has its own unique features;
• it explains the similarities between them;
• it highlights the history of colonialism, that made a lot of those languages to be;
• it gives their speakers a sense of belonging, because “here’s how my language was born” is part of their rightful linguistic identity;
• it gives linguists another window to look into Language - as the human faculty - through how those languages are formed.

We [people in general] should not be assigning a judgment of value over those varieties, as if they were inferior to non-creole languages. However that judgment would be still there even without the term, since their speakers are typically poor and non-white.

Or alternatively we can ditch the word so the prejudice against those creole languages surfaces under another disguise, while we wash our hands and pretend that we defeated that prejudice.

Some linguists, including Dr. Weil, are saying no.

Perhaps because she’s ignoring her own provided definition of a creole language to pretend that all languages originate the exact same way?

Yup, I got that you don’t mean that everyone is a bot there. I just don’t think that there aren’t so many of them as you’re saying; it’s certainly not as much as half the users, or even the activity (bots tend to be more active than actual users).

They’re still wrecking damage on the place though. Eventually they’ll reach a plateau in proportion, but their numbers will go down, alongside the actual users.

Bots are parasites: they only thrive if the host population is large enough to maintain them. Once the hosts are gone, the parasites are gone too.

In other words: botters only bot a platform when they expect human beings to see and interact with the output of their bots. As such they can never become the majority: once they do, botting there becomes pointless.

That applies even to repost bots - you could have other bots upvoting the repost, but you won’t do it unless you can sell the account to an advertiser, and the advertiser will only buy it if they can “reach” an “audience” (i.e. spam humans).

Shorthand for third language [English] speaker. I mean that I’m prone to switch a few words here and there, due to other languages interfering inside my head.

This sounds familiar, almost as if history could perhaps, maybe, just possibly… repeat itself? Nah! (says spez)

Digg, right? Yeah. Perhaps spez even knew that it would repeat, but was smart (and shitty) enough to jump off the ship before it happened.

I know, the maturity standard isn’t too high, but I still think that Lemmy is going rather well given where the userbase is from.

By “witch hunting” I mean “to claim that someone, a group, or a piece of content belongs to a socially undesirable group, without rational grounds to do so.”

Here’s a made up example. Let’s say that Bob uses a picture of Richard Stallman as his avatar. Alice sees it, and…

• [Alice] Bob! Why do you use that sick fuck as your avatar? You must be a paedophile!
• [Bob] Nah. I use this avatar because I agree with Stallman’s views on software freedom, and nothing else. I don’t agree with his opinions on sex and sexuality, specially not about children.
• [Alice] That’s bullshit, I bet that you abuse little children! MOOOODS!
• [Bob] No, Alice, I don’t. Stop lying.
• [Charlie] Alice, please, stop making shit up. Pleeeease.
• [Alice] CHARLIE YOU DISGUSTING PIECE OF SHIT WHY ARE YOU DEFENDING A PEDO???

Alice here is witch hunting. Alice has no grounds to claim that Bob is a paedophile, but she’s still doing it.

The “witches” often do exist, mind you - they’re racists, bigots, sexual offenders, paedophiles, incels, transphobes, fascists, so goes on. They are socially undesirable, and need to be kicked out. Even then, witch hunting should not be tolerated in online communities: what they do is intrinsically unjust, it makes their target feel like shit, it makes the whole community walk on eggs (because anything that they say or do might get distorted into “witch behaviour”), and it numbs people against the issue with the actual witches (just like the boy who cried wolves unwillingly protected the wolves, witch hunters unwillingly protect the actual “witches”).

I saw this plenty, plenty times in Reddit. But here in Lemmy it’s surprisingly more common, given the smaller userbase.

But I would argue that it is as true now as it was then: people don’t enjoy being on the receiving end of intolerance, hence tend to be intolerant right back, and yet that is as it should be.

Fighting back is good. Punching random people isn’t. Witch hunters do the later, not the former.

I’m not expecting a big exodus, but rather a slow decline in both the number of users and their engagement. With a few peaks here and there that seem to revert the downwards trend, but each peak being smaller than the one before.

They won’t be leaving for the same reason as most people here did, pissed at the IPO-related changes (such as killing 3rd party apps). It’ll be more like “…meh, why would I check Reddit? There’s better stuff elsewhere.” We can already see the decline of the content quality in Reddit now; it’ll get only worse over time.

I think that most will end in Discord. Some in Bluesky, and some will simply touch grass. Conservatives might end in Minitrue “truth social” or crap like that.

Facebook might perhaps absorb some of the former Reddit users. It feels disgusting for the privacy conscious, but for them it’ll be a simple matter of not finding interesting stuff in Reddit.

The same applies to Reddit’s liquid profit - for now, that value extraction still creates a small peak on raw profit, to the point that the bottom line became positive; later on the peak will barely reach the surface; later on, value extraction will be necessary to avoid making the bottom line too negative.

I think that most users there are still human beings, but botting has become a big enough problem that the platform can’t be seen as a place for genuine content any more.

Yup, it is 100% relevant! Selling user data is extremely profitable, specially with a large userbase. However, it lowers the value of the platform - it makes users less eager to genuinely contribute with it (due to privacy concerns, seeing it as a “they’re exploiting me!” matter, etc.). As such the data being generated there becomes less useful, less relevant, and less profitable over time, paradoxically enough.

I fucked it up and switched the terms, sorry. Look for “value extraction” instead; you’ll find multiple references to the concept such as this or Mazzucato’s “The Value of Everything”.

To keep it short: you create value when you produce desirable goods/services for the customers; however, when you extract it, you’re picking the value that was already created (by society, your customers, or even your own business) and turning it into profit. The later is faster but unsustainable, as that value doesn’t pop up from nowhere, so when a business shifts from value creation to value extraction it’ll get some quick cash and then go kaboom.

In Reddit’s case, this value is mostly users willing to generate, curate, and share content with the platform, and other users knowing this:

• someone recommends you a product/brand. The person might be wrong, but you were reasonably sure that they aren’t a corporation astroturfing their own product. Someone else might criticise it instead.
• you hop into your favourite subreddit and, while the content there isn’t the best, it’s still good enough - because the mods gave some fucks about growing their subreddits;
• you discuss some controversial topic. You might get dogpiled, but at least you know that the dogs piling you are human beings, that sometimes might listen to reason; a bot will never;
• et cetera.

All that value was being slowly extracted through the last years, but the changes in 2023/2024 did it the hardest.

As I often mention in other communities, this smells like value exploitation extraction* from a distance. Value exploitation extraction typically generates a peak of profit in the short term, but it makes losses even harsher in the long run.

As such I don’t think that Reddit is getting “bigger”. That profit is like someone who lives in a wooden house, dismantling their own home to sell it as lumber; of course they’ll get some quick cash, but it’s still a bad idea.

In a letter to shareholders, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman attributed the recent increase in users to the platform’s AI-powered translation feature.

Let’s pretend for a moment that we can totally trust Huffman’s claim here. Even human translations often get some issues, as nuances and whatnots are not translated, and this generates petty fights, specially in a younger userbase like Reddit’s; with AI tendency to hallucinate, that gets way worse. And even if that was not an issue, a lot of content is simply irrelevant for people outside a certain regional demographic.

*EDIT REASON: I switched the terms, sorry. (C’mon, I’m L3.)

The problem with no voting system whatsoever is that content then surfaces by recency and/or replies, so people generate a lot of noise to make stuff they agree more visible.

That said the current system is by no means perfect, and I agree with you that people should judge content by themselves.

The userbase is overall more mature and can actually discuss complex topics. Different instances have completely different feels, vibes, cultures and userbases, and that’s amazing. Some admin teams are spez wannabees but the federated structure limits the damage that they can cause.

Relative lack of niche communities. Witch hunting is becoming a worse problem here than in Reddit.

[Warning: I’m no lawyer, nor doctor] It depends on the country. At least in Brazil this wouldn’t roll:

• Article 135 of the Penal Code - demands you to render aid to people under grave danger, as long as it won’t incur in risk for you. That applies to everyone, not just doctors, but if you’re a doctor it becomes really hard to explain why you didn’t render aid.
• Article 33 of the Medical Ethics Code - forces the doctor to render aid to someone seeking urgent or emergent professional care, when there’s no other doctor in a position to do so. Note that failure to follow ethics codes can make a professional unable to exert their profession legally.

Sugar - it doesn’t neutralise but mask the sourness, so the resulting taste is a bit more interesting. Bicarbonate will truly neutralise it but the result is a boring sauce.