Don't blame me, I voted for the other guy. (Politics General)

If they do some loan forgiveness, tamp down on housing and rent prices, clamp inflation, and make a bigger push toward green energy, they could basically sit back and let the youth vote sail them to victory.

My confidence in them doing any of that is exceptionally low.

@Meanlucario
Meh.

Russia is cutting natual gas exports to Poland and Bulgaria.

Biden has finally issued his first set of presidential pardons, targeting 75+ nonviolent drug offenders.

My dude what the fuck are you even talking about? “The early internet” was characterized by its vast sprawl of newsgroups, forums, IRC chats, and basic “blogs” with very insular communities and ever-present moderators and admins.

What we have now is people concentrating on a few select platforms due to those platforms already being popular (and repeat), with the community sizes being so large that there’s extremely little moderation or “gatekeeping” at all, practically none compared to “the early internet”.

If you don’t like that some subreddit has mods that don’t tilt your way… make your own subreddit. Hell, make your own site, there are shitloads of open source projects that mimic the functionality of every major site, free market and all that. Or just stick to the existing “free speech” platforms.

Nobody owes you that an existing site and community submit to how you want them to be run.

@Background Pony #2618
That is indeed a very interesting article that both extensively describes and sums up the current situation of the internet and how it got there. What’s best is the timeline across the different other articles that it links to - I for one was especially fond of those about “The Great Awokening”, the results of the “Hidden Tribes” studies and how animosity is what fuels engagement in social media. All claims that, if someone made them during the past decade, they would’ve been called paranoid and a reactionary.

@The Smiling Pony
That’s libertarian argument. That’s an AnCap’s argument. It’s something straight out of Bioshock 1. Not even arguing against you, but that’s become a very recurring argument in internet discussions - “Just make your own website!” “Just make your own Twitter, your own Google Inc.!”. It’s like a reverse slippery slope that goes all the way up to “Just make your own country!” The Twitter stockbrokers also owed nothing to anybody by selling the website to Elon Musk.

And at any rate, what Ereiam said a few posts back showcases how both sides of the aisles employ the same tactics and react to opposition in similar ways, the only difference being the political brand that they are subscribed to. It’s kind of a catch-22: free range discussion will devolve into disinformation and s**tposting (e.g. 4chan, Twitter, WhatsApp groups, etc.), while moderated discussion will evolve into segregation and echo chambers (e.g. Subreddits, Resetera, etc.); actual discussion is made unsustainable in either case because of tribalism.

@Background Pony #988B
Twitter’s private property; if Musk buys it, he’s free to do with it what he wants (within the confines of the law), and people are free to bitch about it, as well as they’re free to set up their own alternatives or move to other sites that better suit them.

Too many people bitch and moan about some site or service not catering to them and act like they’re owed that privately owned businesses behave like public services. But hey, that’s the easy thing, expect that others will just give them everything for free and whine about it when it’s not “perfect”, never consider trying something different and demand others sacrifice instead.

To be fair it’s hard to convey sarcasm in messages.

@Dustcan
You think it’ll be enough? Midterms are a referendum on the current president, and it doesn’t seem like he’s doing well in the polls.

@YourPalContrail
Will in the polls?
not Well in the polls.

Well here’s the thing about polls they are biased.

@The Smiling Pony
Gatekeeper doesn’t mean “have a moderator or admin”. Moderation can play a part, but they aren’t the gatekeepers. Almost every site has some moderation staff of some sort. 4chan has mods that enforce rules, 4chan is not what anyone thinks of when they think of gatekeepers.

The gatekeepers in this conversation are referring to people like journalists, editors, etc. who are connected to old media or some other form of larger power (as in not independent). They did not control the early internet. The early internet was a decentralized mass of sites where individual communities formed, often over specific interests. Additionally, people were not as politically divided as they were now. So when it came to ideological bubbles, they were not as important. You’d be more likely to see a big argument over atheism and Christianity then a big argument over republicans or democrats in many places.

These gatekeepers couldn’t exert control due to the decentralization of it. Now that it is more centralized these gatekeepers can exert more control. They can exert it over the moderators of a place like Reddit more easily because you could have a small number of moderators running a large number of reddit boards. You can use the algorithm and the verified marks to boost your message to other viewers. You can exert much more pressure because now you can go on Twitter and stir up a mob about a thing you don’t like, where before this where could you do it as easily? Their wasn’t one place.

It sounds like you have some other issue with how people view moderation, that’s fine, but that’s not what I’m saying when referring to gatekeepers.

@igotnopicks
Yea that’s why I don’t like the ones that show Biden absurdly low, it doesn’t help anyone. However looking at the RCP average Biden is close to trumps approval rating during the same in his presidency. He is behind where Obama, Bush, Clinton, and bush again in at the same time in their first terms. Something has to change if the dems want to hold on to their majority come the midterms. Ill even throw you a bone, 30% of Americans believe we lost jobs since Biden took office when that is not the case. Whether the WH changes their messaging or changes policy something needs to change.

It’s hard to say. Current polls show Biden and the Dems need some desperate change in appeal if they want avoid getting routed come November.

Forgiving student loans will go a long way to that.

@The Smiling Pony
This argument is comparable to the old controversy behind first-person shooters like Doom encouraging young, impressionable people to engage in mass shootings.
What do we blame for the act of violence? The video game, or the person’s unstable mental health?
Similar issue here. If hearing vulgar, distasteful words is enough to encourage a person to go out and physically attack people, that says more about his state of mind than the words he heard. Anything could potentially send them off the deep end.

Now, with that said, I do see where you’re coming from with the argument regarding Ukraine.
In an ideal world, in an open setting, anyone who says that Ukrainians are scum and must be destroyed would be immediately ridiculed and debunked, whether by Ukrainians or anyone else. By letting this goober speak openly, people can see them as the foolish monster they are; they are vulnerable. By censoring them, are they just going to give up and forget about it? I see that as unlikely. They will be emboldened to find like-minded companions in more fringe parts of the internet and take more drastic measures.

Here’s a question. Why did the Russians want to spread hateful propaganda against the Ukrainians to begin with?
Bear in mind, most of the major media in Russia is controlled by the government.

I also want to add, as you’ve pointed out later, anything that is already illegal in the US (i.e., CP, malicious doxxing, direct calls to violence) will not be allowed on the platform.

In more “Party of Putin” news, Rand Paul of the GQP just insinuated it’s the US’ fault Russia invaded Ukraine because NATO is a thing.

@Dustcan
Not only that but he agreed with Putin. Thanks Paul. You might not win re-election.

@Dustcan
Jesus Christ, I feel like

For goodness sake, what will drive a stake through the heart of the far-right’s supporters?

@CaptainXtra
An actual one. They’ve shown that they’re more than willing to ignore any kind of shit they do as long as they “stick it to the libtards”

@CaptainXtra
In your american fingertrap party system? The left listening to their concerns.

You guys are looking at each other as evil and your political parties are “the lesser of two evils”

@Backgroundpony

@SazerLite
“we should just let people say whatever they want wherever they want and be subject to ridicule” / “~Light is the best disinfectant~” is a nice sentiment, but historically hasn’t work that well at all.

People are very good at ignoring ridicule, even having it galvanize their sentiments, and insular communities form regardless to make communication with likeminded folks more convenient or hidden. It’s not like places like Stormfront or the various incel forums would magically disappear if Twitter/Facebook/etc. changed their policies to “full free speech”, if anything it’d allow the more clueless people with those proclivities to believe their delusions are accepted and find the existing communities offsite easier.

~In an ideal world~ Twitter wouldn’t exist or it’d just be what it was when it started, a braindump for fleeting thoughts, and there’d be no “Trends” or “Topics” or whatever. Same for Facebook, turn it back to when it was just a way to keep in touch with friends and relatives, no Groups and recommendations. Bring back the wealth of forums and dedicated sites for different topics and communities.

Alas the ideal is no longer real and the town homophobe gets a megaphone because they’re couching their words with ingroup coding and the system decided to blast their message to millions of people because it has a high “engagement factor”.

@Ereiam
And that is why it will never happen.

@Backgroundpony
A perfect example of that happening is the infrastructure bill: Biden tried to compromise with the two right-wing plants in his own party. What was the result? Exactly the above. At this point, those weasels can just go fuck themselves.

@Ereiam
A perfect example of Biden trying to compromise with Republicans is Biden trying to compromise with two Democrats. I think I agree with Backgroundpony here.

Musks takeover of Twitter seems to have caused some of the platforms users to start expressing a desire to kill Elon Musk:

Elon Musk clarified his stance on what he means when he talks about free speech yesterday:

“By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law.

I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.

If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect.

Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.”.

Sounds reasonable enough, I wonder what the people on Twitter are so afraid of? It appears Twitter will be moderating content the same as before, just with less of a political bias. Twitter is not about to turn into 4chan, going that far would scare away advertisers, governments that use Twitter and users in droves.

Reading articles like this: Politico - Twitter’s top lawyer reassures staff, cries during meeting about Musk takeover , I get the distinct impression certain groups have received preferential treatment and protection under the old regime.

Perhaps that is why they react so negatively to change? Nobody likes having their privileges and special arrangements taken away but sometimes change is necessary to make the future better and more fair for us all.

@silbasa
That won’t turn away those naysayers though.