And this being the internet, of course they’re qualified, why else would they rattle off a bunch of topics they’ve supposedly mastered? Surely no one on the internet would ever lie to win an argument!

People wonder why everyone on the internet is so full of shit, but then they take something like this at face value.

And the thing is, it’s actually somehow less cringe if they’re making the whole thing up. Healthy, well adjusted adults don’t argue with strangers on facebook, and they definitely don’t list random topics they’ve studied to “win” the argument. On reddit there used to be an allegory about pigeons and chess that applies here.

But my money is still on this person having no psychology degree whatsoever, because…I’m not new to the freakin’ internet. Cheap, unprovable claims to authority should be dismissed as easily as they’re written.

If you’re saying something factually verifiable or properly sourced then fine, but rattling off “credentials” to internet strangers is cringe af and always will be. I take it as an immediate sign that you’re not confident in your facts and are hoping to avoid or deflect scrutiny.

The reply is dumb but the re-reply is cringe lol

“No you MUST uninstall Brave, the company is too shady!” -someone using a phone made by a literal advertising company

The two party system isn’t the only problem though, there’s also:

• Money being a form of speech – EU MEPs aren’t soliciting billionaires for money to spend on TV ads
• The 10th amendment – prevents any national effort where the federal govt uses a power not explicitly granted to it in the constitution. Obamacare tripped up here for instance, and Obamacare is far from national socialized healthcare. It was a feature when people identified more with their local culture, but in an era when every American identifies as American-first, and engages the political system accordingly by only knowing or caring about national candidates and parties, it becomes a bug.
• States that should have never been states – the US Senate took a heavy rural turn in the 19th century as vast, sparsely populated territories were given statehood. Nowadays this means to buy two US Senators you only need to gaslight ~600k people with advertising (the population of Wyoming). The founding fathers never really developed a solid plan for how the west would be settled, and it shows.
• Powerful and unaccountable Court – the Supreme Court is given authority over both other branches, serving life terms, with few guidelines or restrictions. A party with the Presidency and Senate at the right time can gain a majority of the court and undo (or manufacture) precedent at the snap of a finger. The resulting system makes it far easier to capture the court than to pass a constitutional amendment. Think abortion should be legal? Here’s a roundabout legal justification for that. Oh the new majority thinks it shouldn’t be? Okay now it’s gone. It’s a chaotic way to handle bedrock rights like access to healthcare and privacy (neither of which are mentioned anywhere in the US constitution). The constitution should be malleable enough that the court is strictly tasked with interpreting the letter of the law. The US shouldn’t be relying on legal gymnastics to legalize abortion and gay marriage. It’s unstable and undemocratic.
• Electoral College – the leader of the country, not just the Executive but the Head of State, is elected in a way that respects statehood more than personhood. It is more concerned with making sure Wyoming gets a fair vote than making sure John Doe in Queens does.
• First past the post voting – this is another oversight by the founding fathers that many European republics were able to avoid, and it’s the root cause of the two party system. But it also makes gerrymandering possible, which completely breaks both state-level politics and the US House. It makes so many seats into “safe seats” that the “money is speech” briberies become much easier to allocate.
• Racism – almost every dumb thing about American politics can be traced back in some form to slavery, segregation, or racism. Why is every state given 2 senators? Slavery. Why were some of those rural states admitted? Also slavery. Why did White Americans support progressive policies in the 30s, 40s, and 50s? Segregation. Why did the entire Deep South flip from Democrat to Republican in the late 60s? Also segregation. It’s America’s original sin and it’s still playing a role.

Every one of those things plays a role in the US not adopting stricter privacy standards, or leading the way in anything except military might. It’s why American politics is so broken that even a majority of voters wanting to fix it isn’t enough.

Well yeah, no one has ever used the term “only hope” optimistically lol

Wikipedia seems to suggest it was an original term, first recorded use in 1909, and mentions nothing about alternative terms or controversy. I call BS

That’s kind of an extreme example lol unless the game is asking for insane permissions. Still I get your point and hopefully the EU acts on it. Especially since they appear to be humanity’s only hope against shit like this

Yeah Android manufacturers been doing this since its inception. I remember having to remove the Blockbuster app from my Droid X lol

I use Youtube more than any other service. If you like video essays, documentaries, and other medium- and long-form content, it’s the only place on earth to get it. Cable television ditched intelligent content long ago. Nebula and Curiousity are okay, but most of the content that I couldn’t already get on Youtube has that shitty cable tv vibe.

The only downside with Youtube is it’s huge and the algorithm is iffy. It can take a long time to build up a library of subscriptions that provide high level content every day. But now that I have that, it’s basically my exclusive streaming platform. I watch 1hr of Netflix/HBO/whatever with my wife every night, and all the rest is history, cooking, science, etc. on Youtube.

Not sure why I said it that way, all I really meant was Instagram users

Anyone that cries “free speech” when government isn’t involved at all is a dolt

Yeah civil but also just a higher level conversation overall. And in a place like /memes. Just reminded me of old reddit. But maybe I just like logic-as-a-blade convos lol

Somewhat but reddit drew a lot of people in with celebrities. The people attracted to celebrities and image heavy content will be more drawn to Threads instead of Lemmy. At least imho

^ This is what reddit was like before it got big

I started reading your comment and thought “please be about Wave” haha. The funniest part about Wave is how they learned no lessons from it.

The invite-only model worked great for Gmail because it was an actual service with real utility and people wanted in (1GB storage was huuuuge). But with social networks, the courting ritual is reversed, because without a critical mass of users the product has no utility.

So what do they do with G+? Invite only 🤦‍♂️

And by then they had something like half the world running Android, with Google accounts… and didn’t just let them in. Youtube should have been a simple “if you want to check out G+, your Youtube account will get you in, otherwise carry on.” Instead they make it invite only and then bully youtubers into registering.

It’s just mind-boggling how little they understood about social networks after building such a wonderful piece of software for it.

Yeah it’ll be hard to regain my trust after this one. I mean I’ll still use Lemmy but for now I’ll assume mine or any other account could be hacked at any time and act accordingly. This is a really amateur mistake even by FOSS standards.

Yeah

If you really feel like getting sentimental, check out this Wait But Why, specifically the “Relationships” section. There’s also this awesome Kurzgesagt video which was inspired by it.

There is absolutely no chance that this is the strategy lol

They simply weren’t turning a profit (or enough of one to satisfy shareholders), and had to look to cut unprofitable avenues (eg, Apollo doesn’t show ads). They came up with a number of users that they were willing to lose if it meant the remaining userbase was profitable. Who knows if they came in under or over that number in the end, but my suspicion is lemmy has cost them more than they thought. The protests reignited development of lemmy mobile apps, which was really the missing component in making lemmy competitive (and why Reddit deliberately only gave devs 30 days notice, otherwise we’d have Apollo-Lemmy already).

But to me, their actions align pretty well with a company preparing for an IPO. The age of “growth at all costs” is over, and they need to start demonstrating a healthy profit. I just won’t be any part of it lol

Then why close it to admins? Just make vote history public, period. And make it very clear that everyone can see it.

The biggest problem that I have with it currently is that the vast, vast majority of lemmy users, whether it continues to grow or not, will not know about it. And many of them will use usernames that are identifiable, thinking that as long as they don’t say anything controversial, they can’t get into hot water with their govt/church/family/whatever.

just be careful when upvoting your unicorn bukake fetishes if you’re embarrassed about it

Sorry but this is just trying to trivialize a very real issue. If this is ever going to be a place for serious discussion and not just memes, puns, and repetitive jokes, then we shouldn’t dismiss real privacy concerns by acting like anyone who has them is just embarrassed of their silly fetish.