In political science, the term polyarchy (poly "many", arkhe "rule") was used by Robert A. Dahl to describe a form of government in which power is invested in multiple people. It takes the form of neither a dictatorship nor a democracy. This form of government was first implemented in the United States and France and gradually adopted by other countries. Polyarchy is different from democracy, according to Dahl, because the fundamental democratic principle is "the continuing responsiveness of the government to the preferences of its citizens, considered as political equals" with unimpaired opportunities. A polyarchy is a form of government that has certain procedures that are necessary conditions for following the democratic principle. So yeah, you are right. A representative "democracy" is not a democracy. It's a monarchy with more than one ruler. A gummy bear is as much a bear as representative democracy is a democracy. I didn't know that, because i was taught in school that a representative "democracy" is a form of democracy. And the name makes it sound like one. But it isn't. It's not even supposed to be in theory. I am sure 99% of people living in a representative "democracy" don't know this. I hereby encourage everyone to abandon the word representative "democracy" in favor of polyarchy or maybe oligarchy. This makes it much clearer what we are talking about. Also i doubt the authors of this article know this, because they imply that representative "democracy" is desirable, but it is obviously undesirable.

[image: 89a35cc5-cbda-4ab4-806f-4d1fb9cb977b.jpeg] Beautiful

Why don’t they use AI to replace human AI developers?

This will be a privacy nightmare.

I made a PayPal account like 20 years ago in a third world country. The only thing you needed then is an email and password. I have no real name on there and no PII, technically my bank card is attached but on PP itself there's no KYC. I think you could probably use some types of prepaid cards with it if you want to avoid using a bank altogether but for me this wasn't an issue, I just didn't want my ID on any records, I don't have any serious OpSec concerns otherwise. I'm sure you could either buy PayPal accounts like this if you needed to, or make one in a country that doesn't have KYC laws somehow. From there I'd add money to my balance and send money as F&F. At no point did I need an ID so in that sense there's no KYC. Some sellers on localmarket were fancy enough to list that they wanted an ID for KYC, but I'm sure you could just send them any random ID you made in paint from the republic of dave and you'd be fine.

"Extra Verification steps" I know how large social media companies operate. This is all about increasing the value of Reddit users to advertisers. The goal is to have a more accurate user database to sell them. Zuckerberg literally brags to corporations about how good their data is on users: https://www.facebook.com/business/ads/performance-marketing Here, Zuckerberg tells corporations that Instagram can easily manipulate users into purchasing shit: https://www.facebook.com/business/instagram/instagram-reels Always be wary of anything available for free. There are some quality exceptions (CBC, VLC, The Guardian, Linux, PBS, Wikipedia, Lemmy, ProPublica) but, by and large, "free" means they don't care about you. You are just a commodity that they sell. Facebook, Google, X, Reddit, Instagram... Their goal is keep people hooked to their smartphone by giving them regular small dopamine hits (likes, upvotes) followed by a small breaks with outrageous content/emotional content. Keep them hooked, gather their data, and sell them ads. The people who know that best are former top executives : https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/01/business/addictive-technology.html https://www.today.com/parents/teens/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-rcna15256