Based on the content of the linked post and the evolution of the thread here, the mod team has decided to lock this post. There is an important difference between standing up for people who are marginalized and harassment, which this thread has been more or less equating. Please deal with this topic in a more nuanced manner going forward.

This video has seemingly no sources for its claims.

Here are some facts:

• Lyn Alden is part of "Ego Death Capital", a venture capital company around cryptocurrencies (https://egodeath.capital/team).
• Lyn Alden is the Board Director of Swan Bitcoin - a Bitcoin investment platform (https://www.swanbitcoin.com/alden/)
• Lyn Alden is not an economist (https://www.lynalden.com/about-lyn-alden/)

Here are some weird claims it makes:

• Bitcoin transactions happen at the "speed of light" (~27:00) REALITY CHECK: As Bitcoin has grown, transactions have become slow. It's in fact why many people do not accept it for purchases anymore.
• Bitcoin cannot be diluted (~27:25) REALITY CHECK: Bitcoin is always being diluted until it reaches its hard limit.
• The value of Bitcoin has only increased over time (~27:50) REALITY CHECK: The log scale is playing tricks. A linear graph would show how volatile Bitcoin has truly been.
• Nobody controls the network (~28:25) REALITY CHECK: If someone were to own 50% or more of the network's compute power, they could control the network.

Here are some things it omits:

• Bitcoin transaction fees (~28:15): Transaction fees that empower miners have also made it much less usable as a currency. The transactions fees for Bitcoin are so high that credit card fees are actually more reasonable.
• Bitcoin's hard limit is likely very dangerous for the network (~29:00): Once the hard limit is reached, it is unclear if people will keep pumping computing power at it. If the creation of new Bitcoin is no longer allowed, it is possible that transaction fees will need to be raised to compensate miners.
• Bitcoin's lack of rules allow for massive amounts of fraud and prevents effective taxation (~29:25): While the video paints a cute picture of financial freedom, the reality is that Bitcoin allows for fraud on a world scale and does not allow for sales tax because of the way that anyone can have a cryptocurrency wallet without disclosing their identity.

Genuinely, this is Bitcoin propaganda.

I will say I'm pretty glad to see a search engine which actually is not just a meta search engine. I wish Kagi would attempt this rather than partnerning with Brave.

One thing I find odd though is why these engines trying to make their own index don't do the adversarial strategy that Brave Search has done : while using other indexes, collect what people actually click on and use it in your own index. I will note that I do not support Brave.

Everybody gets horny, idiot.

Please don't call people idiots needlessly.

Does it matter if someone jerks off to JaLo in the Fappening or some random AI generated BS?

The issue is that this technology can be used to create pornographic material of anyone that has some level of realism without their consent. For creators and the average person, this is incredibly harmful. I don't want porn of myself to be made and neither do a lot of creators online.

Not only are these images an affront to the dignity of people but it can also be incredibly harmful for someone to see porn of themselves they did not make with someone else's body.

This is a matter of human decency and consent. It is not negotiable.

As mentioned by @ram@lemmy.ca, this can also be used for other harmful things like CSAM which is genuinely terrifying.

I'm gonna be asking hard questions, I think, sorry about that. I hope you consider it tough love considering our past interactions.

As an instance admin, I have some questions:

• How are you doing? I know there was a lot of pressure when things blew up and it seems to be calming down a bit now.

• How is Lemmy doing financially?

• Considering past releases and their associated breaking bugs (including 0.18.3), what measures are you taking to help prevent that?

• Can we consider the possibility of downgrades being supported?

• Why are bugs affecting moderation not release blockers? Does anything block releases?

• Are there plans to give instance administrators a voice in shaping the future of Lemmy's development?

As someone who is trying to help with Lemmy's development, I have some other questions:

• What do you think are the biggest problems with Lemmy as a software project and what are your priorities for Lemmy?
• Considering fairly low amounts of developers contributing to Lemmy, how are you working to help new people get into the project?
• Do you worry about the message it sends to potential contributors when the main developers are working on a different project which competes with the former? (Example: Lemmy-ui vs Lemmy-ui-Leptos)
• Considering most work is done voluntarily, how are you trying to organize and prioritize work?
• Do you believe you are stretching yourself too thin between Lemmy, Lemmy-ui, Lemmy-ui-leptos, Jerboa and Lemmy.ml? If so, what are you doing to help you focus?

This "report" is exactly what I would expect from Lunduke. It is really sad that this reactionary content comes from someone who I once thought was cool.

The only part I can agree on : the execs at Mozilla are getting paid too much in the current situation.

Now to get to the real meat.

The combined spendings to political organizations make up around 1m$. This is less than the donations made to Mozilla foundation. Considering the very political nature of the foundation, these spendings were likely authorized there.

Now, why would a technology company spend on political organisations? Well, simply put : technology is political. People trying to peddle that technology is not political are trying to sell you the status quo.

Technology companies spend insane amounts of money on lobbying.

Now, why would Mozilla spend money on left-leaning organisations? Well, simply put : left-leaning politics (though embedded in neoliberal Californian ideals of the internet) are embedded at the core of Mozilla from the start with Mozilla manifesto.

I'm not gonna get into why Lunduke thinks that these organisations are bad but consider it a red flag.

Now, what I would ask to anyone reading this : why do you think Lunduke is ignoring this? Why would Lunduke try to paint this picture?

Great video as always from Noodle. I think I'll try peglin - the rest is not really my jam.

...

Gets shot

Memes tend to not be a great discussion starter. If there is an overwhelming amount of memes, interactions and discussions can easily be buried and socially discouraged as a result.

Your comment is in bad faith. Take a step back to consider how you interact with people.

I mean, username vs phone number kinda doesn't matter anymore since it doesn't even do SMS anymore. This is probably the most popular change they could do and which has the least consequences on bloat.

I wish I could be excited for this but after no longer being able to use it for SMS and shoving crypto in it... Well, I just don't wanna use Signal anymore :(

Not sure why Lemmy.world is to blame for this - we had the same vulnerability - everyone did. I shut down Beehaw because we had the vulnerability.