steltek @ steltek @lemm.ee

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2 yr. ago

The Internet is a series of tubes, not a dump truck.

I found fishing for (and following) hashtags on Mastodon effective but Mastodon was also in much better shape to receive the waves of Twitter exoduses.

Lemmy lacks effective tools to organize a feed. I think many people recreated their favorite subreddits as communities but the userbase was too small to support them. Being able to create "multi-reddits" to group related micro-communities together to help mitigate the ghost town feeling as you raise the probably of at least one of them having something new to talk about.

Effective prevention of climate change is and has been politically impossible, like you said.

Maybe I'm just depressed about it all but I've moved on to the unfortunate "resilience" (or acceptance) phase. It's coming and it's not slowing down. So what are we going to do about? The answers differ depending on where you live. Some places just aren't going to survive. The ones that do are going to have strained resources to withstand extreme climate effects while simultaneously having a refugee problem.

Modernized privacy law alone wouldn't be enough. The danger from social media apps (not just TikTok) is algorithmically swaying public opinion. It's an ultra-refined form of propaganda.

Taking the GDPR as an example, a modern and widely recognized privacy law, there is virtually no protection from manipulation of your news feed. GDPR is primarily worried about gathering and resale of personal information to data brokers. Within a service, it's virtually guaranteed to obtain consent from people to gain full access to the site.

We put import restrictions on groups of things. We ban cheese from France. We don't ban cheese specifically from Jacques Cheese Emporium in Lyon but all other French cheese is okay.

To avoid misrepresentation, I'll quote my original proposition:

It was not to compare ideologies but the end result of extremism and radicalization. Words become violent action and a willingness to forego peaceful change.

The casual introduction and acceptance of capital punishment and "useful" applications of police brutality, as if they were common tools in a political toolbox, is a mark of the beginning of that very shift.

Anyway, I've spent far too much time in here so I'm trying to put this whole post behind me. My own personal "disengage", I guess? I just didn't want to leave while being lumped in with the other people leaving crude, shallow dismissals as Russian tankies/bots/shills/trolls/whatever. I entered these conversations with a neutral viewpoint on Hexbear, not even in favor of defederation, but that has sadly changed quite a bit.

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

Holy crap that was a wild read. Jewish Mother but a Holocaust denier. Died in exile in Iceland while evading criminal deportation to the US. I had this vague memory that he was an asshole but I had no idea.

I raised this exact point to a relative on a similar issue (people on the road during a major blizzard).

That said, there are many jobs where you don't need to be there in person. Saying "if you feel sick stay home" (or similar) should be encouraged as it's necessary to enforce this expectation that if you can stay home, you should.

I'd call it a strawman but it's so weak, I don't think there's even any straw.

No, those were not radical extremist positions. Anti-Nazi was the default position, it did not start small and grow. For Abolition, that depends on what region you're referring to but in the US, it was not a radical position. Even prominent slaveholders admitted slavery was bad although it didn't change their behavior.

I only have the unfortunate experience of encountering MAGA types who revel in using the term as a pejorative. Regardless, hurling personal attacks is unpleasant no matter who's doing it.

If those long threads were mostly on topic (about federation), that would at least be something. They present interesting view points but at all the wrong times and in huge numbers. This post is about examining their behavior and their effect on conversations. I think they've shown it to us.

So you support defederation then. Interesting.

It was not to compare ideologies but the end result of extremism and radicalization. Words become violent action and a willingness to forego peaceful change.

That said, someone just insulted me by calling me a Liberal so I dunno, feels kinda MAGA-y to me ;).

As mentioned, they were welcome to comment but I'm afraid their participation has only reinforced my beliefs. I was really hoping for a discussion on WHY federation matters and what we hope to build and encourage in the Fediverse. Instead every thread turns into a pointless debate about the finer points of political philosophy or why the US bombed Hiroshima or some other random event in history. Look those are important topics but that's not why we're here in this thread right now.

Despite the accusations of some, I truly do not care if they're communist. However, the Fediverse is faced with an opportunity to really change the Internet for the better. That change can't happen if newcomers are turned off en masse by aggressive users who want to proselytize. "Just block them" doesn't work for the newbies who just got here and who have no idea what's going on.

I personally wouldn't call this brigading per se but I stand by it as evidence of the eagerness to derail things into wildly offtopic discussions that poison the well for everyone else. And no, just because someone says something first doesn't mean you are compelled to respond until they concede or give up.

After more reading elsewhere, it also speaks to an all too comfortable relationship with political violence. "I'm not saying we put people up against the wall... But if we did, who would go first? The bankers or the factory owners?" The offtopic bit is destructive to community building but the absolute fascination of who dies for what reason is pretty damned concerning.

The soviet combat performance was much less important than the fact that Russia had just broken their alliance with the incredibly war crimin' Japanese Empire. Not exactly something that I would want to call out if I was on Team Red. Just sayin'.

This would have been the accepted action a little over 10 years ago. I think we've learned and experienced a lot since then. Just because something is online doesn't make it harmless. Radicalization is a real threat. It's how we got MAGA, ISIS, etc. Their ideology accepts summary executions in the street.

I was indifferent to defederation before, I don't leap to trampling the speech of others, but interacting here has opened my eyes. There's no way they can stay. The popular cliche "If there's 9 guys and 1 nazi sitting a table, there's 10 nazis sitting at a table" fits here.

A long winded manifesto justifying mass state executions for political enemies.

This also neatly plays into my other reason for defederation: Hexbears seem acutely susceptible to lengthy preaching and insatiable defense of their ideology. Even if such ideology didn't involve beheading the heretics, it's unwelcome as an off-topic distraction in almost all situations and communities suffer as a result.

Sorry for the misunderstanding. No, you did not make the attack.

However, it seems that things like "Your kulak grandparents deserved to die" are accepted and supported on Hexbear, as long as it doesn't draw undue attention. Except your user forget their "time and place" for airing the dirty laundry. This garbage is not a free exchange of ideas; this a few steps away from actually beheading the non-believers. Just as I would support defederating from other extermist hate instances, Hexbear needs to go.

And then to just throw in another comment:

ChestRockwell: when I say “landlords are evil and deserve to die or surrender their assets to the collective” what I’m describing is a particular set of actions. It’s not different from having an opinion on if murderers deserve capital punishment.

I see absolutely zero value in this "other viewpoint". There is really no legitimate debate here.

I hope you understand that I singled you out as you seem to be in conversation with Sun. And this is unfortunate to read.

Sunaurus is standing up for staying federated with Hexbear. That's about as good faith as it gets. To then be attacked in such a vile and repugnant way is totally inexcusable.

I find your explanation and your excuses about technical limitations to be pretty lame. I seem to be able to go about my online life without telling people that their grandparents deserve(d) their deaths. I don't need CSS to help me act like a civilized individual.