Don’t worry. If I’m elected pope, you’ll get to see the return of the Cadaver Synod, bigger and better than ever! In fact, I’ll set up a whole special court just to try former popes I have a theological beef with! They’ll have several cases going on simultaneously. I’ll put dozens of former popes on trial!

As new Pope, I promise to repeat the Cadaver Synod. I promise to dig up the corpse of Pope Benedict XVI and put him on trial for his homophobia and transphobia! And I may not stop at him…I may have to set up a whole special court just for putting former popes on trial.

Honestly, at this point, I’m on board with just banning social media algorithms entirely. No more personalized feeds. You can have a website that publishes whatever you want, but you can’t tailor individual feeds to individual people. People can replace their “feed” with what the original internet was meant to be - visiting a series of websites. Want to read nothing but right wing blogs? Fine. You can spend all day navigating to different URLs for them. But no more spoon feeding individually personalized content to people.

It turns out that method of content delivery is just a very dangerous and damaging technology that really fucks with the workings of the human mind. If you tell AI to build an ideal feed model for a person, it builds a nightmare that traps human beings in skinner boxes.

We can ban these algorithms. We don’t have to continue to tolerate their existence. And in the grand scheme of history, it would be no different than a thousand other things that we discovered, at first thought was a panacea, but eventually decided the benefits weren’t worth the costs. Asbestos is a fantastic fireproof insulator, but we willingly let those benefits go in lieu of its severe respiratory effects. DDT is an incredible pest killer and insecticide, but it also was rendering entire species of birds extinct. Targeted, individually tailored social media algorithms create entertainment feeds that can entertain us to such degrees that the kings of old would lament their jesters in comparison. But what these algorithms are doing to us, what they are doing to our society? On political polarization? The effects they are having not just on children, but of people of all ages? We as a society need to recognize that the benefits just aren’t worth the costs. We are tearing our civilization apart for the sake of cheap entertainment.

We need to ban targeted social media feeds. We have faced technologies like this before. We have made the choice before to give up the benefits of these things for the sake of the greater good. We’ve done it before, and we can do it again. It is time we ban targeted social media feeds.

Sounds like the Lizardman Constant at work again!:
https://gwern.net/doc/sociology/survey/lizardman/index

My partner added “as someone who can’t even say the word 'seminary” without giggling…"

It wouldn’t be the first time!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaver_Synod

I promise to spend the entire papacy dressed in dresses that look like they belong in the White Tower scenes in the Wheel of Time series.

Or, on the theory that we’re living in the stupidest timeline, they’ll go with “Pope Biden I.”

Eh. Rules are arbitrary and can be changed.

Looks like it’s time for another pope race. I would like to throw my hat in the ring. As a lapsed Catholic trans woman who’s never so much as visited a seminary, I know I’m an unorthodox choice. But maybe it’s time to mix things up. My central campaign planks? We’re going to bring back indulgences and try to make the Papal States a thing again. Also, expect skits and improv sessions to have a big place in Catholic mass in the future!

Do you want to triple the state’s death by poisoning rate?

And that’s nothing. You know how they’re pushing for washing machines, dishwashers, etc. to be internet connected? Currently they’re forcing this for data mining purposes. But I have no doubt their real goal is to eventually make these devices like printers, with expensive consumables locked in by internet-connected DRM. They’ve already gotten people used to using dish and clothes detergent pods. How long until they’re putting everything in plastic cartridges, locking things down with DRM, and charging like printer companies do?