Aaron and Lacey Jennen’s roots in Arkansas run deep. They’ve spent their entire lives there, attended the flagship state university, and are raising a family. So they’re heartbroken at the prospect of perhaps having to move to one of an ever-dwindling number of states where gender-affirming health care for their...
The problem with platforms advertising that they’re free speech platforms is that you’ll get a lot of people who gives no flying fucks about freedom of speech, they care about that specific discourse that got them banned from other platforms, and only a few people who actually care about free speech as a principle.
And that backtracks all the way into
The false dichotomy that freedom of speech is binary (either you have it or you don’t). It’s quantitative - you have more or less of it, never full or empty.
That nasty, robotic tendency of plenty social media users to stick to the words themselves, instead of the underlying concepts. Cue to “ackshyually”. In this case “free speech” makes them think about some random law of some random country, what it allows and what it doesn’t, instead of thinking on the principle itself.
The incorrect belief that only people above you in a hierarchy can lower your freedom of speech, when we do it all the time. (For example: specially stupid users reduce the freedom of speech of the others, as they discourage their participation.)
Once you work around those three, you realise that, in a lot of situations, forbidding a discourse actually increases the freedom of speech of some other group; so sometimes you need to do it to maximise the overall freedom of speech of all parties involved.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing for a piece of financial reform that would unshackle small businesses and consumers alike from the maw of Visa and Mastercard’s credit card duopoly. Wall Street, in response, is spending millions to thwart the bill’s recent advances by fueling a conservative culture war over gay...
The Journal of the American Medical Association published a damning report confirming that party affiliation in Ohio and Florida was a risk for dying of Covid-19....
ORLANDO, Fla. — Diversity, equity and inclusion programs were abolished Tuesday from Walt Disney World’s governing district, now controlled by appointees of Gov. Ron DeSantis, in an echo of the Florida governor’s agenda which has championed curtailing such programs in higher education and elsewhere....
The four count indictment Special Counsel Jack Smith handed down against Donald Trump alleges that on Jan. 6, approximately two hours after the mob broke into the Capitol, “the Defendant” joined others in the outer Oval Office to watch the attack on television....
Carlos De Oliveira allegedly helped Walt Nauta move boxes around Mar-a-Lago and allegedly had conversations with others about security camera footage there....
It’s on Mr. Biden to stop this madness. In fact, promoting a humane immigration and asylum system is exactly what Mr. Biden promised to do when he ran for office....
New laws targeting LGBTQ+ people are proliferating in GOP-led states, but often absent from policy decisions is a clear understanding of how many people will be directly affected....
A Republican-backed spending bill threatens to end national access to mail-order abortion pills and cut billions from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) that provides low-income families with food benefits....
It's all a little confusing. Here's my understanding of how things work, though I can't claim to be an expert so may have gotten something wrong:
A community's home instance will always have the complete history of a community/magazine. So if you click on a lemmy community or kbin magazine and end up on that community/magazine's home server (eg lemmy.world or startrek.website or fedia.io - the first two being lemmy instances and fedia being a kbin instance), you will always see everything, including any pinned posts. The critical distinction is that you're viewing the community not on YOUR server (eg kbin.social), but on the HOME instance of that community (ie lemmy.world or whatever). Here's an example of a community on another server: https://startrek.website/c/startrek
If you are NOT on that community/magazine's home instance, ie, if you're on kbin.social, but someone had already subscribed to that community/magazine from your server (ie someone from kbin.social subscribed to [email protected] or whatever) than you will be able to see all posts from whatever date that initial person first subscribed. So if you are on kbin.social (like me), and looking at [email protected]while on kbin.social then you will see all posts from whatever date someone from kbin.social first subscribed to that community and kicked off the federation process. I assume this also means that you will see any pinned posts, as long as that post was created after that first federation. Here's an example of that startrek community, but viewed on kbin.social: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]
However if nobody on your instance has subscribed to a community/magazine before, you first need to subscribe to that community/magazine from your home instance (ie kbin.social), and from that moment on only new posts will be seen in the feed for that community while you're on your server (ie kbin.social). If you want to see the complete history, including any posts pinned before that first federation, you need to visit that community's home instance.
Not sure if I've explained all this clearly, it's probably something best represented using diagrams.
Anyway, the way I've tried to address this for my little Musicals community, is to include the pinned post (in my case a "Welcome" post), and where to find the complete history, in the community description, like so:
For lovers, performers and creators of musical theatre (or theater). Broadway, off-Broadway, the West End, other parts of the US and UK, and musicals around the world. Welcome post: https://tinyurl.com/kbinMusicals See all/older posts here: https://kbin.social/m/Musicals/
It would be the second time the special counsel has notified the former president that he is likely to face indictment, this time in connection with the criminal investigation into the events leading up to the storming of the Capitol....
Campaign groups have written to officials in nine states urging the former president be barred from running for office for allegedly inciting an insurrection.
Americans learned Wednesday morning the rate of inflation nationally has dropped dramatically, to just 3% annually, down from over 9% one year ago.But not in Florida, which MarketWatch reports “has the highest inflation in the U.S.”For much of the year, even before his presidential campaign official...
There are so many from the GOP this time I've barely heard of. Useful resource to track them and their campaign positions. Though none of them are any competition to DeSantis in the opinion polls. Neither is DeSantis to Trump. Never imagined I'd say that's a good thing but oh my god Ron
It seems like it would help further prevent censorship, given how each instance of the Fediverse is run by people who can unilaterally decide what their users see. I'm beginning to feel like federation is but a half-step toward a solution.
Content quality and the rate of submission has clearly plummeted. /r/all has become stagnant, and completely filled with memes and shitposts. Comment quality has amazingly gotten even worse (4chan level in a lot of cases), and there are definitely less participants on threads.
In comparison, I've found commentary in the fediverse to be more active, engaged, and positive than Reddit has ever been - and I was there since before Digg. My kbin feed, with a bit of tweaking and expansion out to other instances, is more useful by far than Reddit ever was, and it's activity level is beginning to match what used to be common on Reddit.
I think that Reddit was banking on not having a competing centralized corporate entity to absorb their users, and that it would prevent a Digg style exodus from their site. And to some extent, they were right - users, primarily readers still came back to reddit and have continued to do so because it's still the easiest place to find content on the internet. But, as you can see from the slow heat death of /r/all - that's changing.
What Spez didn't count on was that their moderators and content creators - the real engine behind Reddit - would leave. He assumed the thrill of having a large audience would be enough of a carrot to keep them participating while he made the site more difficult to use. This was a significant miscalculation, as anyone who's ever run a forum knows. Only about 2% of your users on a site will post, which means that if you alienate that 2% by any significant amount, you'll see a following degradation of non-participating readers as the content dries up.
Huffman should have realized this, as in Reddit's early days, he and the other admins on the site would regularly post with sockpuppet accounts to keep the content flowing enough to maintain readership. This mess is clearly of his own making, and one that he personally should have anticipated given what he and the other admins had to do to build the community in the first place.
But what's more interesting to me is what this (and the Twitter debacle) has done to illustrate the flaws of relying on centralized media. It's created a discussion about the wider internet and an interest in expanding it that hasn't been really talked about since the last decade. There was no reason to expand out from the centralized services as long as they were working well, fairly, and with an eye towards fostering their communities. It's when they moved into looking at their users as profit centers, and their moderation of content as a means of social control that it became clear that this contract of social responsibility had been broken.
And when that contract was broken, it broke the soul of Reddit's community. Nobody wants to contribute to Reddit, because Reddit isn't about creating a good space for the internet community to grow anymore. It's about how much money it can make Spez, and most of us really don't feel like working for him for free.
[Analysis] Many transgender health bills came from a handful of far-right interest groups, AP finds ( apnews.com )
Aaron and Lacey Jennen’s roots in Arkansas run deep. They’ve spent their entire lives there, attended the flagship state university, and are raising a family. So they’re heartbroken at the prospect of perhaps having to move to one of an ever-dwindling number of states where gender-affirming health care for their...
Squabbles, another recent reddit alternative, seems to be taking the doomed "free speech" path ( i.imgur.com )
[Analysis] Wall Street Stokes Culture War to Fight Swipe Fee Reform ( prospect.org )
A bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing for a piece of financial reform that would unshackle small businesses and consumers alike from the maw of Visa and Mastercard’s credit card duopoly. Wall Street, in response, is spending millions to thwart the bill’s recent advances by fueling a conservative culture war over gay...
[News] Bill Barr says he’s willing to testify against Trump at Jan. 6 trial ( thehill.com )
Former Attorney General Bill Barr said he is willing to testify against former President Trump at his Jan. 6 trial....
[Analysis] Journal of AMA Study - Gap between GOP and Dem COVID death rates increased by 43% in OH & FL after April, 2021. Conservative Political Rhetoric Now Has an Official Body Count - Esquire ( www.esquire.com )
The Journal of the American Medical Association published a damning report confirming that party affiliation in Ohio and Florida was a risk for dying of Covid-19....
[News] DeSantis-controlled Disney World district gets rid of all diversity, equity and inclusion programs and staffers ( www.nbcnews.com )
ORLANDO, Fla. — Diversity, equity and inclusion programs were abolished Tuesday from Walt Disney World’s governing district, now controlled by appointees of Gov. Ron DeSantis, in an echo of the Florida governor’s agenda which has championed curtailing such programs in higher education and elsewhere....
Opinion: Joe Walsh - Trump Is a Dangerous Criminal Who Belongs in Prison ( www.thedailybeast.com )
The four count indictment Special Counsel Jack Smith handed down against Donald Trump alleges that on Jan. 6, approximately two hours after the mob broke into the Capitol, “the Defendant” joined others in the outer Oval Office to watch the attack on television....
[News] Trump gains primary election advantage as states set delegate selection rules. New California rules could favor Trump while also making it harder for challengers like DeSantis to make it a two-person race ( www.washingtonpost.com )
In case of paywall:...
Posts of pictures of underaged girls
I’ve seen a few posts lately in my feed coming from this community with links to pictures of underaged girls marked NSFW....
News: Trump charged with seeking to delete security footage in documents case ( www.washingtonpost.com )
Carlos De Oliveira allegedly helped Walt Nauta move boxes around Mar-a-Lago and allegedly had conversations with others about security camera footage there....
Opinion | Beto O’Rourke: One Person Can End Cruelty at the Border ( web.archive.org )
It’s on Mr. Biden to stop this madness. In fact, promoting a humane immigration and asylum system is exactly what Mr. Biden promised to do when he ran for office....
Analysis: How many transgender and intersex people live in the US? Anti-LGBTQ+ laws will impact millions ( apnews.com )
New laws targeting LGBTQ+ people are proliferating in GOP-led states, but often absent from policy decisions is a clear understanding of how many people will be directly affected....
Republicans target abortion pill access as government shutdown threat looms ( www.theguardian.com )
A Republican-backed spending bill threatens to end national access to mail-order abortion pills and cut billions from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) that provides low-income families with food benefits....
[News] DeSantis defends Florida curriculum that suggests slaves benefited from forced labor ( www.independent.co.uk )
Full article text:...
If you cannot access the sidebar, please read our community rules here ( kbin.social )
Estimated read time: 3 minutes...
Discussion: Would bringing back the Civilian Conservation Corp Program be benefecial in the US? ( kbin.social )
Quick Wikipedia Summary:...
Trump Says He’s a Target in Special Counsel’s Capitol Attack Investigation ( www.nytimes.com )
It would be the second time the special counsel has notified the former president that he is likely to face indictment, this time in connection with the criminal investigation into the events leading up to the storming of the Capitol....
Can We Please Make Presidential Elections Shorter and Less Stupid? ( www.thedailybeast.com )
Full article text:...
Australians divided over ‘Voice to Parliament’ for Indigenous people ( www.nbcnews.com )
Full article text:...
U.S. states urged to block Donald Trump from 2024 run ( www.newsweek.com )
Campaign groups have written to officials in nine states urging the former president be barred from running for office for allegedly inciting an insurrection.
Inflation is plummeting across America except in Ron DeSantis’ Florida ( www.alternet.org )
Americans learned Wednesday morning the rate of inflation nationally has dropped dramatically, to just 3% annually, down from over 9% one year ago.But not in Florida, which MarketWatch reports “has the highest inflation in the U.S.”For much of the year, even before his presidential campaign official...
Doug Burgum is offering $20 to people donating $1 to his presidential campaign. Is that legal? ( www.npr.org )
Full article text:...
What do people here think about Nostr? ( kbin.social )
It seems like it would help further prevent censorship, given how each instance of the Fediverse is run by people who can unilaterally decide what their users see. I'm beginning to feel like federation is but a half-step toward a solution.
Reddit braces for life after API changes ( techcrunch.com )
Reddit and its communities are preparing for a life after the platform's API changes forced popular third-party apps to shut down.