You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism | Authoritarians and tech CEOs now share the same goal: to keep us locked in an eternal doomscroll instead of organizing against them

[email protected]

PieFed offers both, as well as most of the most heavily asked for features lacking from Lemmy (Categories of Communities, sign-up wizard asking for interests and subscribing to communities based on those answers, hashtags to facilitate cross-community discovery, etc.). Ironically it is the more foundational features (cross-posting, users tagging, comment previews, post searching) that it still lacks, but the point is that work is being done along the lines of what you said, even though I highly doubt that such will ever appear in "Lemmy" per se.

[email protected]

I feel personally attacked, I agree with the article, but painfully so.

[email protected]

these places are the last bastion.

That's what I mean? We need to cultivate and solidify our online sanctuaries, or at least methods of secure and private communication now, before everything goes full tits up, because, as you said, they will be all up in our business before we know it.

Like, I'm working on a solution to have someone "steal" my guns so I can file the police report relatively soon, as well as shoring up my servers/archives in the event that the internet becomes intermittent, including hosting a full copy of Wikipedia. I'm also looking into buying some ham radio equipment and speed running that learning curve. I hate to have a tinfoil hat on, but I'm fairly certain something between widespread civil disturbance, civil war, and the collapse of our country are right around the corner, and shit is about to get nasty real quick. The absolute most effective tools we'll have are communications and information.

[email protected]

It's good, but it's centralized. Let's say an authoritarian regime shuts down the central Signal servers. Then what?

[email protected]

Why read the article (especially if there's a paywall) when you can read - or even better make - the comments?

Seriously, if the goal is that sweet sweet dopamine fix, then this is the most efficient means to achieve that end...

Thinking is hard, hence just don't do it! Better yet, downvote those who do as being "pretentious".

It's far easier to talk ~~rather than listen~~ over others.

[email protected]

Yeah there was still problems with the admins. But 95% of the problems people encountered were due to virgin subreddit mods.

[email protected]

Is this some copypasta?

[email protected]

I wouldn't use any of those other features. I just browse by top all 1/6/12 hr (which piefed lacks) and the theme isn't great either.

How does it offer either of those things? I see an 'attitude %' on hover, and it says it has 'strong moderation tools'. But I mean 100% community run. Subscribers have to vote on bans or something. And proof of personhood verification tests.

[email protected]

What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I'll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I've been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I'm the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You're fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that's just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little "clever" comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn't, you didn't, and now you're paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You're fucking dead, kiddo.

[email protected]

@baggachipz @rimjob_rainer *shit furry

[email protected]

i have been trying to look for any organization that would try to do something. I know i cant found anything like that myself so best i can do is support someone else. I have no idea where to even look or are there even such groups in my city or even country.

Only one i know of (extinction rebellion) are basically glorified facebook group(at least their local group, no idea how they are in general) that might occasionally do something that causes slight outrage and not even about the issue, just against them.

[email protected]

any group that hopes to have any success or effect on anything should thoroughly plan for the eventuality status quo wants to put stop to them. You make very good point.

[email protected]

that requires effort to move away from platforms that force you to doomscroll with their algorithm. For many people that is very strong chain. If you relinquish your mind its not easy to even see the reason to take it back on your own.

[email protected]

in warhammer40k there was some saying about "armor of contempt" against influence of chaos. Imo, you need something similar against corporations to resist their shit.

[email protected]

Ironically, religion seemed to be helping. And before that (before humanity itself), tribes. An extension of "self" to include other who nonetheless were not "other", at least not fully. But people seem to prefer wanting to game the system, ~~allowing~~ forcing others to put into while themselves pulling out from.

The age of enlightenment did much good to expose religious corruption, yet offered an inferior product to replace it: "knowledge", which so few people know how to properly handle, lacking training. e.g. in the USA we knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that most people were too busy and tired to properly educate themselves, yet we placed no restrictions upon voting (like a college degree, or even a test as simple as asking how many branches of government there are - which even that would cause many people to fail).nor did we offer the requisite aid (like a livable minimum wage, or conversely access to a minimum form of healthcare) to help people to help themselves, nor did we keep watch against the predators that would take advantage, e.g. safeguarding the media (instead allowing it to be bought out by billionaires, rather than staying true to the mission of doing "journalism", the seeking out and reporting of actual truth facts).

We brought this upon ourselves. Even if Donald Trump were to have a tragic accident tomorrow, even if the entire Republican party were to disappear into thin air, or all politicians combined, we would still be left with a broken system, just as before. We cannot escape the laws of Nature (whether put there by a God or not, but it's worth noting that for those who believe in such, He agrees that we deserve this fate).

Even so, I hope for better. I don't know what, or how, only that I need such for the sake of my own sanity.

[email protected]

Shamelessly reposting this here, because it seems relevant:

Negative news has a greater impact on people than positive:
https://assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/71516.pdf

Media sites know this, and use it to drive engagement:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/social-media-facebook-twitter-politics-b1870628.html

And so, negative headlines are getting worse: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0276367

But negative news is addictive and psychologically damaging: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/why-we-worry/202009/the-psychological-impact-negative-news

So it's important to try and stay positive:

https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/benefits-of-good-news

If you want a break from the constant negativity, here are some sites that report specifically on positive news:

And here's 35 more: https://news.feedspot.com/good_news_websites/

Some communities on Lemmy you might be interested in:

Remember, realistic optimism is important and, unlike what some might have you believe, is not the same as blissful ignorance or 'burying your head in the sand': https://www.learning-mind.com/realistic-optimism-blind-positivity/

https://www.centreforoptimism.com/realisticoptimism

And doesn't mean you must stay uninformed on current affairs: https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/how-to-stop-doom-scrolling

https://goodable.co/blog/tips-for-balancing-positive-and-negative-news/

[email protected]

You can't even get Lemmings to leave Facebook because "muh marketplace" or "muh Auntie I haven't seen in a decade." Good luck. Y'all are addicted to this shit.

[email protected]

There are multiple themes to choose from. People that already know how to use Lemmy will be able to do more with Lemmy, for sure - PieFed is atm more of a concept of what is coming up, hence exciting! Especially for onboarding new users who don't already know how to use Lemmy, i.e. from Reddit. I use PieFed as my daily driver, but I frequently have to fall back to Lemmy to accomplish certain types of tasks. So it's not yet ready for the masses who don't have an early adopter mindset. But it does offer tools to help with specifically those two things that you mentioned!:-)

Afaik, any proof of humanity depends on instance admin practices - same as Lemmy (and Mbin) too - but what PieFed offers uniquely along those lines is "reputation". This can either be used directly by a mod (or admin) - e.g. for the first 2 weeks after signing up I was not allowed to DM anyone - or even by the individual end-user, as I'll mention below with icons.

One really cool thing I see from PieFed already now is democratization of moderation: mods on Lemmy (and Reddit) have a binary choice to make between removal of content vs. allowing it, while PieFed significantly expands upon those options. One way is to auto-collapse, or even auto-hide, comments and posts below a certain vote threshold (different values provided for each of those, the first retaining the ability to always see the content just one single click away, the latter removing it from view altogether), thereby allowing people who want to avoid "controversial" content to do so more readily (related: there's also a NSFL option, on top of a NSFW one, attempting to maximize such features available to people), in a manner that is independent of a community moderator, and with the ability to change the setting at any time.

PieFed similarly allows people to block all users from a specific instance, without having to defederate that requires admin support as Lemmy does (Lemmy has a feature that it calls instance blocking, but it is horribly misnamed bc it does not in fact block instances as all, and despite being promoted by people as an instance block is really just a community mute, leaving users free to spam your notifications for WEEKS and WEEKS after you no longer want to receive them - which is a real thing that has happened to me, TWICE, and basically caused me to leave Lemmy altogether as a result, although fortunately I found PieFed so didn't have to go all the way back to Reddit to avoid such).

Another cool thing that PieFed offers is user icons: either placed by the user (whatever custom one you want, to help you recall whatever you feel that you need to - like "be careful, this guy is wordy!"), or automated ones placed by the system. Examples include new user (who may not know how things work, so be gentle), account which posts >20x more often than comments (hence may be an unregistered bot account), someone who receives >50x downvotes than upvotes (highly contentious person, very insensitive to whatever community they are in) - and to be clear these are overall, not specific to a community or post/comment, hence still works to brand-new content offered by each user. Whereas previously I spoke to removal or posts/comments based on such features, note here that this feature merely places a LABEL onto these categories of users - ultimately leaving it up to the end user, rather than a mod, to decide what to do about it. You can ignore these icons entirely, seek them out specifically, or whatever. But those varieties of "reputation" scores are made available to you in a numerical capacity.

Another cool aspect of labeling, this one requires an instance admin, is to place a commentary below every post from certain instances, like for Beehaw it says:

This post is hosted on beehaw.org which has higher standards of behaviour than most places. Be nice.

Note that link is to the exact statement from the instance admins themselves describing their policies in their own words. So this is far from "unfriendly", and rather more welcoming to describe for instances where the "normal" expectations differ, what their particular desires are. Can you imagine if for Lemmy.ml it would say "any post criticizing Russia or China or North Korea is subject to removal" or some such!?

Speaking of, note how the community "side-bar" text appears below EVERY post - while some apps hide that away, PieFed places it front and center every single time, so that users have access to the info that they may need.

Also, PieFed is written in Python, rather than Rust, so its future development should proceed forward more quickly than Lemmy, allowing it to reach feature parity soon and even exceed Lemmy, as it already does in so many ways (though crucially: not all yet, so again I'm mostly describing the future here rather than the present, even though all of the above already exists).

agnos.is Forums

You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism | Authoritarians and tech CEOs now share the same goal: to keep us locked in an eternal doomscroll instead of organizing against them