No contradiction. Law is a dumb basis for deciding what you like and don’t like.

Also consider not having an economy where our jobs dominate our lives.

There’s plenty of studies, videos and anecdotes discussing how despite technology becoming more and more efficient, we work more hours a day in the Industrial era. Most of the older culture we consider traditional didn’t come from the media industries we see today, they came from families and communities having enough time to spend together that they can create and share art and other media relevant to their own lives.

(although given the decentralised framework of the fedi, I’m not sure how that could even happen in the traditional sense).

It’s possible to dominate and softly-control a decentralized network, because it can centralize. So long as the average user doesn’t really care about those ideals (perhaps they’re only here for certain content, or to avoid a certain drawback of another platform) then they may not bother to decentralize. So long as a very popular instance doesn’t do anything so bad that regular users on their instance will leave at once and lose critical mass, they can gradually enshittify and enforce conditions on instances connecting to them, or even just defederate altogether and become a central platform.

For a relevant but obviously different case study: before the reddit API exodus, there was a troll who would post shock images every day to try and attack lemmy.ml. Whenever an account was banned, they would simply register a new one on an instance which didn’t require accounts to be approved, and continue trolling with barely any effort. Because of this, lemmy.ml began to defederate with any instance which didn’t have a registration approval system, telling them they would be re-added once a signup test was enabled.

lemmy.ml was one of the core instances, only rivaled in size by lemmygrad.ml and wolfballs (wolfballs was defederated by most other instance, and lemmygrad.ml by many other big instances), so if an instance wasn’t able to federate with lemmy.ml, at the time, it would miss out on most of the activity. So, lemmy.ml effectively pressured a policy change on other instances, albeit an overall beneficial change to make trolling harder, and in their own self-defence. One could imagine how a malevolent large instance could do something similar, if they grew to dominate the network. And this is the kind of EEE fears many here have over Threads and other attempts at moving large (anti-)social networks into the Fediverse.

Almost all of my creations which I share (mostly code and visual art) are entirely volunteer work. Community culture doesn’t cost money. Entertainment does not need to be a job, even if it must take time and work.

Of course industrial large feature films cost full-time money. But I don’t come to online communities for that.

The upvote/downvote button is not a [] petition for making a problem go away by disagreeing with it.

Unfortunately, in a material way, it is. Downvoting a post is a way of lowering its visibility on the platform.

Thank Goodness You’re Here

Just by the name and you mentioning it’s a comedy, I suspect it’s a nod to the TV show Thank God You’re Here (or more likely the British version), where performers such as comedians enter a surprise setting and must improvise.

• https://youtube.com/watch?v=FnM-cWvPoMg
• https://youtube.com/watch?v=rAmIG2c3e_0

My blind playthrough was great, despite or even due to mistakes made. Lost once playing sport so badly it destoyed my self-esteem, but also won a miracle 5% perception roll right at the end (although we scared it away). On my first playthrough I intentionally tried to avoid losing and I played conservatively enough for the game to start bullying me over it, which is great design.

I’m the kind of person who thinks it’s hilarious how fragile the player can be where (esp. because of the class I picked). The cursed chair didn’t get me but it sure made me laugh.

What do you think was the source of the general disdain in the UK?

When things get extreme they get similar.

‘Extreme’ is a vague word, but when you’re talking about communism and fascism (or more generally ‘far-left’ and ‘far-right’ ideology), that’s a false generalization known as ‘horseshoe theory’.

There are many clear counter-examples when talking about communism, like the entire school of anacho-communist ideologies and the existing societies stemming from them (including the Zapatista territory in Mexico with a population of around 360,000, or the FEJUVE federation in Bolivia, or the many anarchist communes around the world).

As for the more authoritarian versions (Stalinist, Maoist and related ideologies), despite their strong one-party systems, they are still extremely different to fascist ideologies in their goals and how they use their strong state to achieve them. To say ‘they are the same in many respects’ would apply just as equally to liberal capitalist states like the USA and allies, with their infamously militarized police, constant wars and imperial militarism, strong cult of nationalism (for the US, it’s centered on the Founding Fathers), mass imprisonment and state interference in bodily autonomy.

Carl and the Aqua Team make their position on piracy very clear.

https://inv.us.projectsegfau.lt/watch?v=MCTlcJMCSpM

Reminder to be aware of darknet mirrors like I2P sites and Tor .onion services - domains aren’t controlled by a company so they can’t just be taken down by a legal request.

For z-lib, the Wikipedia article lists their .onion and I2P addresses (I haven’t verified them so check before bookmarking): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-Library

the shooting was a reasonable response

Well, yes, but it was also an ineffective response. The problem isn’t that Trump is the head of the party, it’s the party. Trump isn’t some magic irreplaceable leader, and a recursive solution isn’t sustainable.

PS: (I said “it’s the party”, but that’s not true either. The problem goes further than that; the entire system is rigged)

(Also, to be extra clear, violence is not merely justified but inevitably necessary, but randomly assassinating leaders isn’t a viable strategy)

On one hand, I initially thought it was odd and insincere to contrast (what I assume is) state-made propaganda with commercial ads. In my state, the state-funded media channels are infamous for being far more progressive than commercial channels. The state-made stuff has an official authority to it.

But on the other hand, commercial ads are far more pervasive than state-made propaganda in my society. State-made stuff are basically just announcements, with occasional social campaigns about drink-driving, smoking and domestic violence, or maybe the military giving STEM ads aimed at women. The state channels can barely compete with ads and capital news, so perhaps it is fair to treat them as the primary face of media under capitalism.

most western states (and, in fact, most states) don’t suppress discourse as much as the USSR often did

This is hard to say outright just because of variation between and even within western states (I’ve seen very petty arrests over discourse in my state), but overall I agree, yes.

I also think it’s important to understand why it was the case. Western countries all have a similar media landscape so I propose the propaganda model described in the book Manufacturing Consent applies generally to them. The result of those filters being, the loudest voices are those of state (relevant former-CIA interview!) and commercial interests (in the US, mass media it’s almost all subsidiaries of Comcast, TimeWarner, Disney, News Corp, NA and Sony at this point), which may clash, but rarely ever enough to threaten the state or the status quo - the state treats the biggest companies well. Major news broadcasters aren’t promoting major change even when they criticize a government or leader, they usually just say ‘vote for the other liberal politician!’. The discourse is generally so tame, within the bounds of simple policy and culture changes, rather than threatening the state, so it doesn’t really need to be suppressed by the state. But when it does (see Jan 6, or laws about threatening the president at all), we start seeing the limits of where discourse is allowed.

In my understanding, USSR didn’t have as much luxury there. The people with the most money, rather than those with the least, have an interest in fighting the state and allowing them to have the freedom to use their money freely to gain power. So discourse which threatens the state will probably be a bit more scary to the leadership. I don’t think it’s a good thing (for example, it reminds me of news I saw of China’s state suppression of Maoist protesters, which comes off to me as fragile and repressive) but I understand why they don’t give as much liberty as the well-established propaganda model of the USA.

There’s also something to be said about the suppression of discourse that our economic system implies, rather than the state suppressing it. See this clip of filmmaker George Lucas talking about freedoms in film art wrt USSR and USA. Obviously I’m not suggesting the inability to publish art is the same as being arrested by a state, obviously not! Rather, I want to highlight that one can’t just point to state policy to compare the freedom of discourse.___

It’s less a dogwhistle and more just explicit symbolism, just substituting the swastika so that it’s not a swastika.

This was interesting. I know two of the small communist sites I use are hosted on these services so it’s good to know how stable the ground is.

Old boss, same as the new boss. I don’t think spez made the decision on their own, they absolutely suck but they’re just the scapegoat., the problem is the whole company and its structure.

The symptom is that they even considered it. The problem is that they are a for-profit company that systematically doesn’t care about us at all.

Yeah, I heard someone pitching the old let “AI” handle it line. Machine learning can’t moderate those communities to even a mediocre standard. It’s just too variable, subjective and nuanced. Even actual members of communities can be crappy at moderating them!

Well, while it is surprising it’s all happening within a year or so, it’s not unexpected at all.

They’re ultimately for-profit companies. They have openly demonstrated the obvious truth that when push comes to shove, users don’t matter to them, at least not as much as money. Our attention was the product.

These companies have proven time and time again that a quick moneygrab will win over retaining the people who make the site work. capitalism 101 baby.