That's the whole point I'm basically making: I think this is an obviously bogus study, but one side will happely take the conclusions as granted because it falls in line with an agenda or narrative - furthering the divisions in society. Which by the way doesn't mean that the other side doesn't spew garbage as well.
But in these specific case, where it's so obvious... We can go on with corona virus lab like I mentioned. In these cases, where the common sense is "turned off" in some people, I really wonder what's going on and speak up. It's absurd.
> The study made an analysis, and concluded that they might point towards there being an algorithmic change.
Yes but you can't do that for the reasons I mentioned. But still doing it and then another study referencing that crap, shows to me that science is not at play here.
> From the information we have it seems like everything points towards this being the case.
Well if Greta Thunberg at the height of her popularity fell from a wind mill, someone could've made the claim Twitter is suddenly boosting a certain group of accounts. The CEO of Twitter even wrote condolences, something is up here!! Sorry, but this garbage.
> What other means exactly? We have no data to go on except observations of what happens on the platform.
Yes that's an issue, but that's not my problem?! If the circumstances do not allow for a proper study, you don't make it. I would look whether the boost in republican engagement came down again. If it stayed on the same level (maybe til today?!), I would agree, something is very fishy. Maybe there is a study that did that already? I don't know.
> The case for manipulation happening furthered even more by Elon Musk repeatedly showing he is full of shit, and has no qualms lying and totally making stuff up.
But this is not a science approach you can enrich a crappy study with. You can surely have that opinion - I have no problem with that. That's an opinion without proof, which I have too on certain topics. But then producing bogus studies to try to turn this opinion into some sort of fact where people point to as "proof" is what makes me upset. It doesn't help the cause, only causes division, because the people pointing think they have science on their side, instead of just having a opinion.
The study analyzed two separate phenomena - changes in engagement for Musk's posts AND changes in engagement for Republican content - occurring simultaneously. When taken together, these patterns strongly suggest algorithmic changes, not just organic user behavior from the assassination attempt.
Saying "you can't do that for the reasons I mentioned" is just wrong. Studies absolutely can point toward likely explanations without 100% certainty - that's literally how science progresses. The researchers used appropriate cautious language because they understand scientific rigor, not because their analysis is "crap."
Your argument that "if circumstances don't allow for a proper study, you don't make it" would eliminate most scientific advancement. Should we have abandoned Alzheimer's research because perfect data wasn't available? Obviously not.
What's truly absurd here is your selective skepticism. You demand impossibly high standards of proof for findings you dislike while accepting "common sense" explanations that align with your preconceptions.
Before dismissing research as "garbage" that "causes division," maybe consider whether your reaction is based on methodological concerns or simply that the evidence contradicts your preferred narrative about Musk. Your eagerness to defend him while offering nothing but personal opinion suggests it's the latter.
I've got a couple quite big Django projects for which I've used venv for years, and not once have I had any significant issues with it. Speed at times could have been better and I would have liked to have a full dependency list lock file, but that never caused me issues.
The only thing that comes to mind is those random fails to build of C/C++ dependencies. Does uv address this? I've always seen people rave about other benefits.
I often use Python for quick one off scripts. With UV I can just do `uv init`, `uv add` to add dependencies, and `uv run` whatever script I am working on. I am up and running in under a minute. I also feel confident that the setup isn't going to randomly break in a few weeks.
With most other solutions I have tried in the Python ecosystem, it always seemed significantly more brittle. It felt more like a collection of hacks than anything else.