• 18 Posts
  • 285 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: April 1st, 2022

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  • comfy@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlFuck Tankies
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    3 days ago

    fascist (might as well just call them what they are)

    Whether you hate them or not, the term ‘fascist’ just doesn’t apply to either of them. Fascism is a school of thought with specific ideas and behaviors which is borne out of specific conditions (consider WWI’s effect on Europe and the failure of liberalism in the Weimar Republic).

    Communists take ideological analysis seriously, fascism is a real and re-emerging trend, not just some namecalling buzzword.


  • Good idea. I have seen some instances using mod-privileged bots for automating some tasks, like making weekly posts in communities, but I don’t think I’ve seen an auto-moderation bot yet.

    I personally think having pre-filled ban reasons is a great moderation tool which would be useful for Lemmy.


  • I agree with trying to find and support a local instance. I personally find it nice to have this account (made before my local was made) for a global feed and a local account for playing more into local culture and news which are too niche to get visibility on a regular instance’s feed.


  • comfy@lemmy.mltoAsklemmy@lemmy.mlAny tips for a new user?
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    5 days ago

    They often leave a dogmatic impression when someone says something which is completely normal to hear and say in (for example) the USA, but is unknowingly bigoted or ignorant misinformation. The .ml admins have no time for that and I think its unfortunate that there’s little attempt at linking them to resourced that explain why their post was prejudiced, because it’s usually not intentional or heartless.

    One can absolutely critisise China there and you’ll probably end up banned if you aren’t critical of the Russian Federation. I’ve made posts on Lemmygrad challenging their notion of China’s form of worker democracy. But certain popular critiques are just bigoted or unfounded propaganda which the admins will ban people for, so it comes off as just shutting down opposing viewpoints. And that’s really unfortunate.






  • Sure, that’s technically true, but I think it’s acceptable for this infographic’s purpose.

    • I don’t believe a US company profits from someone using LibreWolf (unless you want to count volunteer labor if someone upstreams their contributions, which doesn’t apply to most of the target audience)
    • As you said, any other usable browser is going to be based on Chrome, FF or Apple tools. So what should it say? Nothing? Even if it’s not perfect, I believe LibreWolf is a far better suggestion than just leaving them with a default choice like Chrome or Edge, or something unusable on sites they want to use.

  • why not just Linux?

    Choice paralysis is a real obstacle for casual users who don’t have specific needs (e.g. anti-proprietary values) and don’t want to know what a kernel or a binary blob is, we’ve even seen this with Lemmy and other Fediverse options. So giving a specific distro suggestion is effective for this, and then later enabling them to move to other distros if there’s one more suited to them.

    Linux Mint is generally well-received by beginner users, especially those moving from Windows which is similar enough to Cinnamon. Even if it’s not the ideal distro, it’s one which I believe casual users are less likely to reject. Hardware is more likely to ‘just work’, including graphics cards and non-free codecs. Non-free software readily appears in the app store, which is important if users are still dependent on them (e.g. their hobby group only uses Discord). While I personally believe in, support and create FOSS software, I don’t see how FSF-endorsement is important to the target audience, and if it risks them complaining that their NVIDIA GPU is acting weird or they’re having trouble installing proprietary tools they need for work, then I’d compromise and give them the smoothest reasonably-free option possible and allow them to decide to move to another distro later when they’re more familiar with Linux and how easy it is to try out distros.






  • The parts I talked about are more the groundwork of analyzing the here and now, rather than actually talking about it, yes. I was addressing the points about individualism and self-serving ‘nature’, to point out they were only capable of manifesting through feudalism, capitalism, etc., and aren’t some inherent immutable human nature. We know that egalitarian societies have been workable worldwide, it’s not some utopian idealist dream.

    As for no-one coming up with workable alternatives, yes and no:

    • There are examples of societies today which are anarchist and/or socialist instead of capitalist such as the Zapatista territories in Mexico (pop. ~300,000). Most of them are smaller pre-industrial societies, so we can’t just transplant their society structure into modern cities and expect it to work, but they’re still useful examples.
    • The PRC presents one interesting example of dirigisme. Their state does not (nor claims to) depart from the capitalist mode of production, but it has departed enough from capitalism as-we-know-it due to the unusual power the government has over big business. So while the government has historically had troubles with corruption (which the CIA would exploit to accelerate assets into higher positions, pay-to-win IRL), on the other hand, we see institutional attacks against corrupt billionaires and selfish bosses which are unthinkable to most other capitalist states. Musk, Bezos or Zuckerburg would have to stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody before they maybe go to a special upscale jail or house arrest, while the PRC have given suspended death sentences for extreme financial crimes (like Liu Liange taking millions of dollars in bribes) and notoriously executed multiple billionaires (for murder convictions).

    Now, whether that second example is a society that people want, that’s obviously a hotly debated topic, but I’d say objectively their system is working (in terms of stability and economic strength) and a modern alternative to our current system (their system is capable of rewarding societal values above self-service)


  • The point being that nothing is inherently wrong with making individualistic self serving choices except when there is disregard for others

    Historically, individualism hasn’t been a good survival strategy. I agree that self-interest isn’t inherently wrong, although I believe much of the things we consider self-serving are ultimately only sane to do once our basic needs are met, and depending on where you are and who you are, those may be at risk soon. There’s a reason why people historically formed tribes and villages to survive, individualism is only possible when you have the privilege of an advanced enough society. The capitalist market system, in fact the market system altogether, couldn’t come into existence prior to civilization, where society was strong and safe enough that individual enrichment was a viable survival strategy.

    This video makes the point I’m getting at more concretely. Can start at 15:55, when they begin talking about historical materialism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nPVkpWMH9k

    (tagging parent commenter @Cryophilia@lemmy.world because this also addresses their reply about people’s inherent self-serving)



  • The earliest exoduses were socialist political communities banned from reddit (particularly /r/chapotraphouse who formed Hexbear, and /r/GenZedong who landed in Lemmygrad). Then, the most recent exodus is related to censorship related to Luigi Mangione, a US political issue, coinciding with a strong sudden re-emergence of global anti-American [government] sentiment due to diplomatic catastrophes with a range of former allies.

    In fact, the founders cite reddit’s corporate nature and its pro-US-imperialist, racist stances as their motivation to create Lemmy: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/users/07-history-of-lemmy.html

    So I’m not surprised at all that the default feed is covered in political topics, it’s always been a strong topic here and it’s just gotten stronger. But there’s probably enough activity now that one can filter it out and still have enough action to keep it fun.