timeuser

That definitely matches my experience. I spend so much more time re-writing existing songs than I did when I was younger. It used to be almost entirely creating new material and moving on to create more. I wonder how much is my standards have gone up or lack of novelty in general as opposed to how much I've become attached to some of what I've created and feel it is worth polishing. Some of both I think.

When a human recalls something from memory, the process of remembering itself alters the memory. It's an analog process. So a human creating art, code etc. based on their knowledge and memory is an inherently flawed analog copying process at best. Digital copies and processes are perfect and reproducible unless you alter their algorithm or data. These models are more like an applied form of lossy digital compression. We already treat analog copies and digital copies differently for copyright and many other purposes. At least that's how I'm thinking of it right now.

I'd think it's more comparable to compression. No one would argue that a jpeg or mp3 file can't contain a reasonable representation of the original because it is smaller.

That does not link to a real Michigan government site. Completely fake. Nothing to see here but a tweet of a GIF of a fake website, probably by a fake Twitter account.

I understand what you are saying and agree that algorithmic manipulation is a problem. I think it's very profitable for these companies and people can be manipulated by it. I still think it's a small aspect of the problems of the network & scale of information access/publishing which are leading to conspiracy content and mob amplification. Problems which exist even without algorithmic manipulation being involved. At this point, just due to the network of EVERYONE using mobile devices to connect & consume content it's similar to the eternal September problem but at full scale and saturation. Is the algorithmic manipulation needed for Fox News & other biased media to reach, feed & manipulate its audience? I think you could delete Facebook from everyone's phones and we'd still have a polarized world with these bubbles, conspiracy and mobs continuing as long as everyone still has their smartphones. I also think pagerank and similar popularity based ranking is just as big of a problem as the algorithmic timelines because it directly amplifies what we say and want to hear even without the personalization of search aspect. I'm not defending Facebook and algorithmic manipulation, I just think there is too much focus on that aspect of the problem and don't think we can fix things with that focus.

It was a good explanation of some issues with current social media platforms. But I don't think that ad driven business models and algorithmic content manipulation are the biggest problems we are facing in all this. The fundamental problem is we humans aren't wired to deal with information and social connection and this scale and speed. It's too easy for just about anyone to find and confirm anything they want to believe and so many others that believe it. On the other side of that coin it's too easy for anyone to reach an audience with whatever they want. Focusing on the algorithms and business models is a bit of hubris and a distraction from the harder problem of empowering mobs. I know people caught up in the conspiracy theories. They aren't finding them through Facebook. Some of it is through YouTube rabbit holes but a lot of it is just websites found through Google (which is really just popularity ranking) or text messages shared between friends & family directly. People have these biases and want to believe these things and the access to these easy tools of connection and communication are amplifying us. Maybe regulation, moderation, filtering and defensive algorithms can help? Maybe we will learn to deal with it better and society will change to accommodate it but it's becoming a rough transition at the least.

Thanks for sharing. It doesn't seem to work well in Safari on desktop or iOS. Seemed to connect but if you make the video larger than thumbnail or fullscreen it either doesn't show or only displays a small sliver.

Yep. Search is terrible. I don't see how the app store search ranking is so irrelevant, especially after the "clean up". How can crap like this get in the store at all. I recently had to resubmit our legit app over and over for what seemed to be almost random nitpick rejections for things that aren't documented in the rules. And then struggle to get enough exposure for a handful of downloads per day. This is so discouraging.

I think the biggest issue is you switched to using credits. That and you've only let this play out for 20 days. People can take quite a while to evaluate an app and decide to purchase. You have more experimenting to do. A one-time upgrade fee for unlimited or a yearly subscription seem like a better fit for how a user would expect to pay for this type of app than credits. At the very least perhaps add an "expensive" unlimited use option and I bet you get some purchases of that.