[-] comfy@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 day ago

Sure, I agree, but at the end of the day it's useful to be able to search and watch YouTube videos so long as it's a popular platform because it still has by far the bulk of topics covered.

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submitted 3 weeks ago by comfy@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

Every place has its different environment, whether it be the level of organisation, reputation of socialism, dominant values of society, history and experiences, conflicts and crises. Because of these dynamics, I'd expect to see stark differences in what the movement looks like around the world. An obvious example familiar to most here is seeing the widespread and militant union mobilisations in France's retirement age protests.

Which countries do you have experience in, and how are their labour movements different?

The title is intentionally vague by saying 'labour movement', so you're welcome to talk about workplace attitudes, unions, socialist organisations, legislation and more.

[-] comfy@lemmy.ml 34 points 1 month ago

How is that Stalinist? Censorship isn't some unique rare policy, even 5EYES countries regularly challenge the legality of E2EE.

[-] comfy@lemmy.ml 43 points 2 months ago

As someone else said, the secret is that the US isn't 'turning into', it's been bad for at least a century. We've finally gotten to the point where racism is starting to get unpopular enough that it's not just normal and largely ignored.

[-] comfy@lemmy.ml 37 points 2 months ago

Even without guns involved, there are many regions with antifascist groups which come and give them a beating (see Patriot Front getting run out of Philadelphia). Collective violent resistance intimidates them. Non-violent tactics are essential, they come first and are more important overall, but violence makes them scare to come outside. Just look at the dissolution of the British Union of Fascists after the '43 Group threw bricks at them enough times for a big example (there are many smaller examples - especially since modern neo-nazis tend to recruit scrawny teens online who can't handle getting beaten up).

[-] comfy@lemmy.ml 52 points 2 months ago

As an aside, I've always found it hilarious when a Faux News host says 'the media', as if they're not one of the biggest media outlets in the world. It's an amazing disassociation and it seems to land somehow. The television screen tells you "the media doesn't want you to know the truth!", o fanged poet.

[-] comfy@lemmy.ml 48 points 2 months ago

The organization is full of full blown vile Marxists who to “abolish capitalism” and establish socialism

Well, yeah, they're socialists. Why shouldn't they want to abolish capitalism and establish socialism? There's nothing vile about that.

They outright want the destruction of Israel.

The dissolution of the state of Israel. Their worldview understands it as a settler-colonial ethnostate, just like former apartheid South Africa was. Jews, Christians, Muslims and others co-existed in Palestine before the Zionist state of Israel was established, the two-state situation is segregation caused by the establishment of a Zionist regime.

They organized a tone deaf pro-Palestinian rally on Oct 8th right after the attacks when the world was still in shock

That is a perfectly-appropriate time to rally support. They are pro-Palestinian and wanted to make it clear that people believed the resistance was supported, regardless of whether they are critical of the methods. The mass media gets to have its voice immediately, so rallies should not wait either.

They condemn social democracy

Yes. Democratic socialists are not capitalists and would not consider liberal democracy (especially the US version!) a working form of democracy, and don't consider social capitalist parties within it to be effective because they must work within a broken system. Social democracy is a false hope to them.

And their interests are not with the US succeeding, they are nothing more than assets of our foreign adversaries.

Most socialists will understand the US as a settler-colonial imperialist state from day 1, so yes, their interests are ultimately that the US (as we know it) should stop being imperial terrorists that most of the world (including state allies) hate. But to call that being "nothing more than assets of our foreign adversaries" is ignorant of the very real and growing discontent with the US's own borders. A lot of US citizens hate the US governments and how they work, and to blame that on foreign adversaries will ultimately prevent them from being solved and prevent their numbers growing.

[-] comfy@lemmy.ml 27 points 3 months ago

wow the /c/greentext community has posts that remind you of 4chan

:0

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submitted 3 months ago by comfy@lemmy.ml to c/greentext@lemmy.ml
1
Yakko is an Anarchist (nuclearchange.net)
submitted 5 months ago by comfy@lemmy.ml to c/completeanarchy@lemmy.ml

Which really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone!

(Found this on Nuclear Change's /social/)

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/14112766

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Yakko is an Anarchist (nuclearchange.net)
submitted 5 months ago by comfy@lemmy.ml to c/memes@lemmy.ml

Which really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone!

(Found this on Nuclear Change /social/)

209
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by comfy@lemmy.ml to c/fuck_cars@lemmy.ml

Dear consumer: do not operate this motor vehicle while experiencing emotion

edit: I've updated the title as I've discovered more information: a credible death threat isn't quite the same as attempted murder

[-] comfy@lemmy.ml 32 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Ultimately, it's important to remember that BlueSky is a for-profit business, like Twitter, like reddit. I urge everyone to avoid it where possible, just like I would go back in time and urge people not to make Twitter a thing.

They will inevitably go down a similar path. Even in the best case hypothetical scenario, they are still beholden to the interests of shareholders and advertisers. They have to make money from you, or from rich companies, to survive. Mastodon instances, on the other hand, are scalable enough that they can sustain themselves off self-funding or donations. Just like Lemmy, they don't have an intrinsic motivation to throw in ads, or to get you addicted to scrolling and arguing, or to censor communities that offend their sponsors.

It's no co-incidence that you're feeling some similarities between Lemmy and Mastodon, in fact Mastodon users can actually post here! 'Fediverse' programs all use the same language (protocol) to communicate and so some are able to interact. I've had a Lemmy<->Mastodon conversation before. Admittedly it's not ideal to do that everyday, because of the obvious difference in formats, but having the ability to do that can be useful, especially if one service has a community that yours doesn't.

[-] comfy@lemmy.ml 35 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Their argument is that the Voice isn't even something good. It doesn't give Indigenous people any powers they didn't already have, and the Voice can be ignored just as easily as the advice of the royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody recently was. Interview with the Black Peoples Union describes in better detail.

But even if that weren't the case and they did think it wasn't worthless symbolism, successful collective bargaining doesn't just settle for every first offer. So I don't know why you're claiming it's a bad strategy, it's how unions have won important gains for workers. It's a strategy that has been historically shown to work when applied correctly.

[-] comfy@lemmy.ml 150 points 11 months ago

pls no more punchlines in the title!

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submitted 11 months ago by comfy@lemmy.ml to c/technology@lemmy.ml

For details, see the Release notice section Bigger new windows.

[-] comfy@lemmy.ml 32 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If anyone considers themselves a historian and thinks anything is unbiased, their experience and insight will be dubious at best. Understanding that everyone has a distinct worldview and therefore bias is literally high-school history class, years before History 101. Do they think reddit.com, or any reddit alternative for that matter, is unbiased or neutral??

Not only is it irrelevant in context (FOSS, forkable, the devs in question only moderate this single instance), it's especially unreasonable coming from /r/AskHistorians. They of all people should be able to understand bias, context and causation. If anything, this bias is just a guarantee that they won't sell out and extort the userbase.

[-] comfy@lemmy.ml 33 points 1 year ago

If this was a specific-purpose non-politics instance like many are, I'd say power to you. But for an general-purpose instance that advertises itself as being:

A generic Lemmy server for everyone to use.

Lemmy.world is a general-purpose Lemmy instance of various topics, for the entire world to use.

...then there's a need for some serious self-examination. Preemptively blocking thousands of users, and talking about blocking another long-lasting substantial community because some other community made comments about them? This is disappointing, this does not sound properly thought-out.

You're right, defederation should only be considered as a last resort. Not as a broad-spectrum discriminatory first action.

1
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by comfy@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

I've already started seeing a lot of redundant communities being made here that have already existed on other Lemmy instances, and lemmy.ml is at risk of centralization and overload, so now is a great time to raise awareness of other instances.

For science topics, mander.xyz has a lot of good ones set up, and !solarpunk@slrpnk.net on slrpnk.net has been great!

edit: for new users - you can type ! to begin autofilling a community, even for ones on other instances, like I did for the solarpunk community above. It may take a few seconds for the autofill results to show up if you have a slow connection like me.

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submitted 2 years ago by comfy@lemmy.ml to c/fuck_cars@lemmy.ml

[yeah it's twitter junk, I know]

5
submitted 2 years ago by comfy@lemmy.ml to c/greentext@lemmy.ml
5
submitted 2 years ago by comfy@lemmy.ml to c/greentext@lemmy.ml

(technically it's /games/ but that's a dumb title)

0
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by comfy@lemmy.ml to c/lemmy@lemmy.ml
What is this post?

A quick and dirty look into Lemmy instances, their size and interactions, and some insights.

Disclaimers
  • I AM NOT AN EXPERT OR WITNESS: I only started using Lemmy in March 2022. Lemmy was around for around 3 years before that. I am not a developer or instance owner.
  • I DID NOT GO AND TALK TO PEOPLE WHO UNDERSTAND THIS STUFF: This is just me exploring for fun and starting a conversation. This is not a proper study. Consider telling any one who links you to this page as if it's an expert historical account that I called them an idiot.
  • This is limited by my experience and my searching, it's not comprehensive. If someone made a dark instance, I probably won't find it. If there's some deep lore, I probably don't know it.

Thanks to https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list for many of these stats.

Alright,

Now for the casual rambling.

Organic posting started on lemmy.ml from April 2019 so I will consider that the start of Lemmy as a service (my understanding is that lemmy.ml is the oldest non-dev instance)

As of now (May 2022) AFAIK, the Lemmy-based sites with the most total user comments are:

  • hexbear.net (2.5M)
  • lemmy.ml (114K)
  • lemmygrad.ml (105K)
  • bakchodi.org (42K)
  • wolfballs.com (15K)
  • szmer.info (15K)
  • feddit.de (3K)
  • [dev instances ignored]
  • sopuli.xyz (1504)
  • lemmy.eus (1262)
  • lemmy.ca (974)

The count of users active in the last month is similar:

  • hexbear.net (unlisted, approx. 1.3K in the last 14 days)
  • lemmygrad.ml (508)
  • lemmy.ml (474)
  • bakchodi.org (286)
  • szmer.info (65)
  • feddit.it (51)
  • sopuli.xyz (31)
  • wolfballs.com (29)
  • feddit.de (29)
  • lemmy.ca (17)

My guess is that the difference at the bottom of the list is due to highly federated instances spreading their user comments over many instances with more activity, and also due to some instances peaking a few months ago and then declining. For those new to user statistics, you'll notice that popularity usually tends to be exponential: more popular things get more popular.

What was that first one? Hexbear?

Two of the sites listed there, Hexbear (aka. chapo.chat) and Bakchodi, do not federate. They are not part of the Fediverse, but they are using Lemmy. Hexbear is actually running their own fork of Lemmy. In that sense it reminds me of Gab, another huge island fork, but only due to size and isolation. While I can't find an admin statement, various Hexbear Gitea issues from 2020 and this comment from December 2021 "We’re working on bringing Lemmy up to speed with some of the features our “fork” (it’s more of a rewrite) has. When that’s ready we’ll switch to that which will already have federation ready for us." and this from Feb 2022 "The only issue is that [Hexbear] doesn’t support federation for semi-technical reasons (happy to explain), but that’s going to be fixed (later this year maybe)?" indicate Hexbear is open to the idea but unready (this 2020 comment even states they chose Lemmy precisely because of its federation goal), and Bakchodi appear to have just not set any up (the admin states "Federation is not functional as of now." in a post and nothing more). Contrast both against Gab who cited abuse/security issues and lack of local federation users for their voluntary removal of existing federation.

Another point regarding Hexbear and Bakchodi is that they are continuations of existing popular communities: I believe that Hexbear is a continuation of reddit's banned subreddit /r/ChapoTrapHouse, and Bakchodi is a continuation of the banned /r/chodi (which I believe was banned around the same time as /r/GenZedong's quarantining caused a mass exodus to https://lemmygrad.ml/c/genzedong ). To the best of my knowledge, lemmy.ml, most of lemmygrad, wolfballs and szmer are new original sites rather than an existing active community migrating as a mass.

Connections

Most instances are connected into the Fediverse. Hexbear and Bakchodi appears to be the only active non-trivial instances that don't federate.

Due to the political environment of the internet today and the content currently on Lemmy, I personally think it makes sense to classify the current federation networks of Lemmy instances into four loose groups:

  • socialist 'left': Primarily value socialism and/or anarchism, and related topics. Generally explicit about their instance's political alignment. The largest group. Examples are lemmy.ml, lemmygrad.ml, midwest.social, and would include hexbear.net if it were connected.
  • liberalist 'right': Primarily value freedom of speech and other liberty. While none yet are e~~xplicitly politically-biased through administration~~[correction], they do overwhelmingly have users with views typical of the American 'right-wing' as an inevitable result of where they are promoted, the ideas only they tolerate and the existing posts. Examples are wolfballs.com and exploding-heads.com.
  • general open: Overall mainstream OR diverse political views, will generally tolerate political instances on both sides of the above divide. Often national instances or 'general-purpose'. mander.xyz is an overt example, gtio.io is also an example. lotide.fbxl.net would be an example, but it's a lotide instance rather than Lemmy.
  • anti-intolerant: Primarily value friendliness and inclusivity, and so will readily block instances that tolerate intolerance, such as those in the liberalist 'right' category and potentially those further in the socialist 'left' category. An example might be sopuli.xyz.

These are all politically determined, as unlike Mastodon and Pleroma there don't tend to be any instances based around controversial single topics or around graphic content that causes instances to defederate. I thought there were more instances that blocked both sides of the 'left'/'right' divide, but they don't seem to exist yet (which is a good sign) beyond lemmy.rollenspiel.monster. It is also worth mentioning that lemmy.ml has blocked some instances due to abuse rather than any cultural disagreement.

The first two of the four categories are by far the most popular, even if not the most numerous in instances, probably due to them picking up users being kicked out of reddit and reddit alternatives as they block more and more political subreddits or become unsavory. The earlier kicking of many 'harassment' subreddits from reddit around 2015 lead to many 'right-wing' users to populate Voat and then later bannings lead to communities.win becoming popular, which I believe explains why Lemmy doesn't yet have a strong influx of users who align politically with those banned subreddits and more-so with recently-banned communist subreddits (the core developers' political views and lemmy.ml's reputation may have impacted people moving to instances named after Lemmy or considering hosting new instances, but I suspect it wouldn't affect people who were invited to a place called Wolfballs).

Interestingly, there is already a mirror instance that reposts from reddit: goldandblack.us.to

Growth

fediverse.observer has some stats. Ignoring the huge outliers in the middle, there has been a jump in growth in the past two months which I would mostly attribute to the influx to lemmygrad.ml wow look at that second graph and the launch of unfederated-but-included bakchodi. Apart from that, there has been a remarkably consistent growth in all the active instances. That's a good sign that this group of communities could last a while.

Some concluding thoughts, with regards to reddit

As someone who hasn't really used reddit in many years, I like to promote the view of us being independent, growing our own culture, our own norms and not merely aiming to mirror the same shallow emptiness. The bottom line is, we grow a lot when reddit shuts a place down, and as you can see in some of those stats, growth creates more potential for growth. I think it's important to think about what habits we see now both here and there that we want to encourage, and which habits we don't. Think about what should each community tolerate and reject and enforce (and make no mistake, that answer differs depending on purpose and audience!) and how do we redirect people in the wrong places or teach those who are mistaken? (protip: typing these things out each time is very dumb! That's why we invented FAQ pages!) What struggles did Mastodon face as they started to grow more and more?

Parts of reddit and similar groups will continue to arrive. Look at this list of communities that used to be allowed: it started off with the very blatant controversies like sexualizing minors, moved on to open blatant racism-focused places that conducted raids, and now they're at banning subreddits about a US (former) president and pro-China memes. Now that Lemmy has established itself as the home of some of the most recently banned communities, I personally think it's only a matter of time before reddit pops off a few more communities as they face pressure from media flak, investors or other major influences, and we should prepare for how to handle this: make potentially targeted communities aware that we exist before an incident, and make sure communities have a clear set of rules and guidelines written for the people that come in expecting this to be reddit again. I think this is an opportunity to fix the things we don't want repeated.

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comfy

joined 2 years ago