this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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It seems a lot of people here think that anyone who runs a Web site is a tech company.
Go to any tech site, publication, podcast YouTuber, etc. All of them are talking about Twitter. Mainstream tech has agreed that Twitter / Facebook are tech.
Im not saying I agree. I'm not saying even that I care about these topics. I don't. I think Musk is an idiot and actively avoid news about his BS. But clearly a lot of people do care and a lot of people agree that Twitter is tech.
If this community wants to specify a definition of tech that differs from the mainstream, then they need to put it in the rules and accept that we need to control the acceptable conversation because certain members of the community are getting triggered by having to scroll past posts related to Musk or his properties.
This statement indicates that what is technology is decided by popular opinion, not by any inherent meaning in words. Certainly the meaning of words change with time and they have no inherent meaning, so in a very real sense, definitions are decided by popular vote. However, if Twitter is a tech company, then so is every newspaper, magazine, bank, credit card company, any business with a data base for inventory management. It's a useless definition. Let's go with the actual mainstream definition of a tech company, a company that develops, produces, licenses or sells technology or technology services, and Twitter doesn't do any of that. It sells ad space and subscriptions, the business model of a media company.
Friendo....
That's how language works. Language evolves and adapts over time via social pressure. Nobody uses words exactly as they are defined in the Oxford English Dictionary. Words are given meaning by people and inevitably those meanings shift and change as people use them in new and different ways.
Just because you adopted pedantry in order to push out topics you hate hearing about doesn't mean everyone else has to adopt your constructed definitions.
Yes, I've just said that languages evolve. I'm saying that "technology companies" has not yet and will not ever evolve to mean "companies that develop, produce, license or sell technology or technology services, and also Twitter". When Twitter starts getting involved in tech, it will be a tech company.
This argument is kind of saying "/c/technology should contain any topics which are interesting to people subscribed to /c/technology".
We're not a publication, podcast, or youtuber. This is a community aggregating posts about the topic of choice. We're not trying to gather up users by posting things that are interesting to our existing users.
they... do? it's like the "what is art" debate. the answer is "whatever you want it to mean in that moment and it can be different in the next moment"
So news of an online store doing shady shit constitutes as "tech news" because they run a web site? Strictly speaking the wheel is also technology, so a post about the history of the wheel seems like a worthy post in a tech community? We might as well post anything here because almost everything you use in your daily life is either technology or related to technology. While I do understand the philosophical aspect of the answer it has no practical value when it comes to defining what kind of content should be posted here.
There needs to be a more practical understanding of what the community considers "tech" so that wrong kind of posts don't get spammed here. For me personally the internet has been around for most of my life. It's not some new a shiny thing, it's as common as the wheel. Therefor I don't consider just running a bog standard website "tech". Similarly I don't consider Twitter / X a tech company, they're a social media company that uses software as a tool. I haven't considered anything about Twitter, except firing the engineers, as tech news since Musk wanted to buy Twitter. Maybe even before Musk tried to buy it, but who remembers things from eons ago. If there was news about some kind of exploit on Twitter or a data breach, that I could consider tech news because that is generally related to the actual tech they are using for their business. But a Twitter rebrand? Has literally nothing to do with tech beyond the tools they used constituting as "tech". But then we're back to square one where I could post about a new bicycle coming out, because the wheels bicycles use are "tech" and the frame material being used is produced by "tech" and there's a lot of "tech" that goes into a bicycle. But somehow I doubt this is what the community cares about.
So writing "R MUTT 1917" on a urinal and putting it in an art gallery constitutes as "art" just because they said it is?
etc etc
According to you it definitely does, that was literally your argument for having anything remotely tech related as tech news.
My argument was that it needs to be actually related to tech/art to considered that. If we want to be super critical of art then just writing that at an urinal may or may not be art. For the sake of argument let's say it's not. But if someone takes a picture of it (or turns the entire thing into a composition) and puts it in an art gallery then it is art. It has to contextualized somehow as art to be in a gallery and that contextualization defines it as art. Similarly tech news should be in in the context of tech, which is why something like rebranding a company is not necessarily tech news.
yes, I was using the famous example that broke the Fin De Ciele -era snobbery about art and the distinction between artist and artisan to make a point.
my point is that you can't define it. So you say "should posts about the wheel be included?"
and the answer is if you exclude all things about wheels where do you draw the line? someone creates a new type of ball bearing that revolutionizes manufacturing, but thats not allowed because it's a wheel? Someone uses a new archeological discovery about an ancient device to invent a modern one? No posts about cars, trains etc? No posts about waterwheel generated activity?
It becomes impossible to police.
Like I said before, I understand the philosophical aspect of this argument. Strictly philosophically I even agree with it, but the argument has no practical value because it's essentially saying "moderation is pointless". In practice most people would still want moderation because some moderation (even if it's not 100% correct) is better than no moderation.