cabbage
@cabbage@piefed.social
- Comment on ‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine 11 hours ago:
Posts are one thing, and difficult enough to spot/moderate. Vote manipulation is a whole different story. Burying a story you don't want to gain traction is easy in Reddit, and if the post ends up gaining traction you can easily change the discourse in the comment section by burying critical voices.
It's probably already happening on Lemmy, but it'll get much worse as the platform grows bigger. I have no idea how it could be stopped. Kbin originally started out not federating downvotes, with this challenge probably being part of the reasoning.
- Comment on What % of Lemmy memes and reaction-bait is posted for the purpose of farming Lemmy comments? 1 week ago:
Ah. That's a fun idea.
I think it's too much effort though - you can get upvotes easier than that. But I'm sure content is already stolen from here for some uses, and it'll only get more common as time goes by. It's in the nature of posting things online, I guess.
- Comment on Why does the Music Industry allow Spotify/Apple to profit off of them? 1 week ago:
Fun fact: if you're an artist on Spotify receiving less than 1000 streams in a year, they won't even bother paying you. You also need a minimum number of unique listeners.
Spotify is good for those already rich, and bad for those who isn't.
They also have Joe Rogan and Gwyneth Paltrow on their payroll, and they actively lobby for more relaxed AI legislatiolegislation in the EU.
If you have a subscription, the best thing you van do is to cancel it, get your music from the high seas, and instead donate $12 per month or however much it costs directly to artists you enjoy by buying their music or merch online.
AntennaPod is good for podcasts.
- Comment on If a hostile country has installed a puppet leader to dismantle your government from the inside and the only thing that would expidite its destruction is a violent revolution how do you combat this? 1 week ago:
Yeah, generally people need quite a bit of nudging before they get off their asses.
So now seems like a good time to start - no reason to wait for things to get even worse. This is why I stress the community building - it only really requires people to fight back, but it does require people to fight back.
- Comment on If a hostile country has installed a puppet leader to dismantle your government from the inside and the only thing that would expidite its destruction is a violent revolution how do you combat this? 1 week ago:
She'll be happy to hear that it has worked on numerous occasions throughout history! After the fall of Fascism in Europe, people in many countries got together and created strong welfare states in the post war period. Some were moe successful than others, but even in the ultraconservative UK they managed to create a national health service that hs proven difficult to kill off.
Sadly, I'll have to break to her that the fight never ends. The second you stop fighting for progress, some asshole will pop up and try to instill feudalism again. After a generation or two people tend to forget the ongoing nature of this threat, and it seems we haven't managed to come up with ways to permanently get rid of it, despite our best efforts in the French and American revolutions.
Maybe the time has come to go back to the drawing board, and rethink some of the decisions that were made back then. Jefferson said every generation should have its own constitution. Maybe he was right.
- Comment on If a hostile country has installed a puppet leader to dismantle your government from the inside and the only thing that would expidite its destruction is a violent revolution how do you combat this? 1 week ago:
If your friend is willing to make the effort to combat this, she should get organized. She should find like-minded people, act locally to gain political power, and create a stronghold where the illegitimate government will face resistance. She should base this around ideological lines, rather than willingly subscribing to what experienced members in established political elites in her country are trying to make her say or do. She should write down whether values are and make sure to keep them close at all times, knowing that she just might be successful and that power corrupts.
She should not give up hope, but she should give up the belief that others will change anything for her. She needs recognize that her country is already broken, and she needs to act to be the change.
She needs to recognize that she's not powerless. She can make a difference.
Likewise, she needs to recognize that it's a long and painful process. It needs to start locally, and it might always stay local. But that is fine.
She needs to realize strength is in the community. Building the community of like minded people working for local action is crucial. She'll be disappointed in them at times, but she'll just have to keep going. There's power in community.
At least that's what I think I'd advice her. But I don't know your friend or her situation, obviously.
- Comment on Why can't someone create a public alternative to health insurance in the USA? 1 week ago:
American capitalists are really, really good at cracking down on any civil attempt at unionising and/or improving society at the cost of the ultra rich.
You could recite the extensive history of violence, but honestly the greatest achievement is in the propaganda. Solidarity seems to be commonly understood - by all classes - as having to take the bill for somebody even poorer than yourself, and nobody seems to be comfortable with the idea that they might themselves one day benefit.
Americans can't have good things before they start fighting back. Read up on union history. Organize. Educate. Teach people what solidarity is and what the Battle of Blair Mountain was. Learn what was taken away from you, and help others understand as well. Begin locally.
Either that, or keep watching the fascists take over day by day, as they have been doing for decades.
- Comment on What % of Lemmy memes and reaction-bait is posted for the purpose of farming Lemmy comments? 1 week ago:
My impression is that karma matters less here. But I never used reddit much and I have never used Lemmy either, so I'm a bit of an anti-expert.
I think the bots are set up by people who simply wanted to see the content. I don't think anyone is trying to farm anything here.
Ideally they should all be tagged as bots, which would make them less problematic.
- Comment on How to get back into academia for a masters degree after being out for 20+ years? 2 weeks ago:
Where are ypu based? US? If so, which state? Which field? Are you willing to travel far?
There are huge differences om costa (from free to insanely ecpensive) and quality (not correlated with cost). But if you want to do a PhD, it could be a good idea to search out a research environment right away and to use the Master's as an opportunity to familiarize yourself with their work.
- Comment on Why do people with lots of 'karma points' tend to be nothing but egotistical assholes? 2 weeks ago:
Yup. Huge selection bias.
The people bothering to post random negative comments arealso likely to have too much time om their hands, leading them to post a lot inn general. But there are also plenty of nice people woth too much time on their hands.
- Comment on Should Germany aquire nuclear weapons? 2 weeks ago:
Considering this is the problem, I struggle to believe "more nukes" is the solution. No matter how much American political realists enjoy jerking off to their doomsday scenarios.
- Comment on Should Germany aquire nuclear weapons? 3 weeks ago:
We should be hesitant to accept too many lessons from the American realist school of thought. Their great legacy is to narrowly steer clear of a nuclear holocaust, on several instances out of sheer luck, while repeatedly fucking up huge parts of the world beyond recognition.
Somehow we celebrate this clown parade for the one disaster they nearly brought upon us, but we narrowly escaped. There's no lessons to be learned from the Americans, except as a cautionary tale.
Sure, MAD worked; we only came closer to our own extinction than we ever have in the process.
- Comment on Should Germany aquire nuclear weapons? 3 weeks ago:
Build up defence, and a plausible threat using other less awful weapons.
Nuclear threatens the civil population. Despots like Putin might not even care all that muscha about that. What we need is targeted weapons and intelligence. Putin should expect that, if he launches a nuke, might not mean that Moscow will be transformed to ashes, but we'll take out him and his cross-within targeted strikes wherever they may hide.
The Russians have a history of burning their cities to the ground, and of sacrificing their population for strategic reasons. Targeting the civilian population is pointless. We can do a lot better with targeted strikes, and with modern technology it should be possible.
- Comment on Should Germany aquire nuclear weapons? 3 weeks ago:
Nuclear war is not a stuck battle, it's a knife fight. You'll both end up bleeding out. Best thing you can do is to not fucking participate.
People should watch Doctor Strangelove as a fucking case study.
- Comment on Should Germany aquire nuclear weapons? 3 weeks ago:
This comment section seems to assume that just because the cold war never went nuclear, it never could have. It also seems to forget the stress of living under constant threat of nuclear war.
We need to get rid of nukes, not build new ones. One of our core projects as humanity should be to get rid of nuclear weapons. Our failure to do so is the fault of the Americans as much as the Russians, if not more. You guys sure love your bombs.
So to answer the question: Nah, fuck that.
- Comment on I've had the same laptop for seven years. Don't know much about them besides buy a Toshiba. Is this Hp Essential Laptop a good deal? 3 weeks ago:
I feel like I can download files to my newest laptop faster than I can move them around locally on my older ones. But maybe I'm just getting old, and my reference points are dates. Or maybe I just don't know what I'm talking about, that's also likely.
In either case, thanks for the explanation!
- Comment on what's the best way to react if a guy stares at you like he wants to have sex with you when you're doing yoga? 3 weeks ago:
I get that it's not very fun to talk about, but I wish women would tell men about these constant risk assessments more often. We live in parallel worlds and it seems most men are completely fucking oblivious - even many of the mostly well meaning ones. And even when they're told about it they might initially dismiss it as crazy talk.
- Comment on I've had the same laptop for seven years. Don't know much about them besides buy a Toshiba. Is this Hp Essential Laptop a good deal? 3 weeks ago:
A new laptop, even the best in the world, won't make your downloads any faster.
I struggle to make sense of this. Most obviously, network cards have gotten better with time. It obviously depends on what you're coming from and what you're changing to, but of course a laptop upgrade could make your downloads faster?
- Comment on I've had the same laptop for seven years. Don't know much about them besides buy a Toshiba. Is this Hp Essential Laptop a good deal? 3 weeks ago:
I have awful experience with recent T series ThinkPads.
My Ideapad 510S that I bought many many years ago is much more robust, and has lived through a lot of use and abuse. Meanwhile I treat my ThinkPads like precious relics, and they still keep breaking down on me for stupid-ass reasons. I bought ThinkPad because I thought it could last me at least a decade — that couldn't be further from the truth. What a pile of trash. I guess they were good ten years ago.
Next time I'm gonna put good money into a laptop — and, as both charging ports on my T14s are currently failing, I'm afraid it won't be long — I'll get myself a Framework.
For the lower end of the price spectrum I sadly have no idea. I'm just here to warn everyone about ThinkPads. It has become my destiny in life.
- Comment on what's the best way to react if a guy stares at you like he wants to have sex with you when you're doing yoga? 3 weeks ago:
If you're alone and/or feeling potentially unsafe, you did the right thing no question. Prevent the situation from escalating, get away, leave him to his daily routine of making people feel uncomfortable.
If you have a greater audience and you're in a safer setting, you could consider calling him out. Make eye contact, flip him off, make him know he is not being appreciated. That could be a learning moment, but it could also be the moment when he starts giving you extra attention as you have acknowledged his existence and/or hurt his ego. So it could go both ways and should never be attempted without bystanders.
In a setting where you're in a mixed gender group, make a male friend aware of the situation and ask them if they could go tell the creep that they're making you uncomfortable. Men are sadly more likely to believe that their behaviour is creepy when it's coming from other men, in my experience.
Raising awareness of the issue in general is good, and judging by the comment section here so far there's not all that much of it around. So that's also something. I think this is really a question that should go out to men more than to women - what should we do when we observe men making women feel uncomfortable? How can we react in a constructive manner?
- Comment on what's the best way to react if a guy stares at you like he wants to have sex with you when you're doing yoga? 3 weeks ago:
Strong disagree on the whole giving up part.
Looking over briefly and not as subtly as one would maybe have hoped is normal behaviour. Coming up and staring is not.
Sadly, if there was an easy solution to this problem we would all have been well aware of it by now. But giving the world up to the creeps is not the right way to go - they will keep going at it forever, shrinking in women's freedoms little by little until there's nothing left and women won't be allowed to leave the fucking house without a man any more. We've seen it happen, anyone who thinks America is any better should take a second look at it.
- Comment on What's wrong with Bluesky App? 4 weeks ago:
Mastodon is non-proprietary software. So one person or company cannot own it in a meaningful sense.
His foundation might own the copyright on the name and logo, so that bad actora can't pretend to be them. That's pretty much it.
- Comment on What should I bring to far-north Scandinavia? 5 weeks ago:
Vitamin D supplements. You're not gonna get much sunlight, and you need vitamin D not to get depressed.
The locals are used to seasonal depression. Foreigners tend to have a hard time with it.
- Comment on What should I bring to far-north Scandinavia? 5 weeks ago:
Layers are key. Noting beats real wool.
Use mittens, not gloves. Gloves suck.
- Comment on List of book and/or film titles dealing with resistance movements--organization, strategy, tactics, etc? 1 month ago:
I think Homage to Catalonia is an important read. It's a great account of things that can go wrong in a resistance, despite amazing people and incredible efforts.
- Comment on How is it that "protecting basic democracy and the rule of law, and not crowning a criminal dictator" wasn't even on the chart?! 1 month ago:
They elected the candidate backer by Russia, which is still the shining beacon og a state for the Tankies out there. So Trump is a perfectly fine representative of fascism, left or right.
- Comment on How is it that "protecting basic democracy and the rule of law, and not crowning a criminal dictator" wasn't even on the chart?! 1 month ago:
I think we have to accept that the American electorate actually wants fascism.
- Comment on do you think lemmy will ever be popular? 1 month ago:
I meant to say that I would never have believed back then that Lemmy would become as popular as it is today.
My point is that it's a moving target. Reddit has a billion active users. Instagram has two billion. I don't think these make sense as targets.
- Comment on do you think lemmy will ever be popular? 1 month ago:
I'm gonna say yes, for the exercise.
Four assumptions:
- Reddit will keep getting worse, due to the nature of enshittification and venture capital. Eventually enshittification reaches a breaking point where people leave or stop arriving.
- Lemmy (in a broad sense - et al!) will keep getting better, due to.the nature of open source software.
- Non-free alternatives to Reddit will eventually enshittify, law of enshittification.
- Free alternatives will use ActivityPub for the obvious advantages.
If these assumptions are met, given infinite rounds of enshittification and unhappy users, eventually a federated and free alternative will be the most lucrative option for the majority of users. Eventually Reddit will Digg itself a hole. Maybe Lemmy won't take over then, but it'll stick around.
The most unrealistic assumption is of course that the federated solutions will keep getting better indefinitely. Maybe they won't. But as long as people keep developing and contributing to the Fediverse, it's alive and improving in a way commercial alternatives cannot in the long run compete with.
- Comment on do you think lemmy will ever be popular? 1 month ago:
If I saw this question posted the first time I visited Lemmy (some months before the Reddit app drama) with "popular" being defined as the current level of activity, my clear answer would be a loud and clear "probably not".