Safe from who? ISPs? Copyright trolls? State law enforcement? Different problems may have different solutions.

People are often safe pirating without a VPN either because of ‘safety in numbers’ (essentially just obscurity) or by living in a region that doesn’t care much about it. But as a distributor, I would assume there is a higher risk if you’re distributing something that will make copyright owners seek a take down.

Further, what is the reason you’re open to onion routing and I2P but not VPNs?

and there’s people who have gotten in trouble because someone else downloaded child pornography through their network.

I doubt that, it sounds like a violation of safe harbor (similar to ISPs and hosting sites not getting in trouble unless they are made aware and fail to act) which is admittedly a gray area. Got a source?

Shout-out to !fuck_cars@lemmy.ml

Buy air from the 80s!

Obviously they should have created a demand for bionic eyes.

Maybe they get to ‘forcibly employ’ your body to pay off debts.

We’ve already seen teledildonic chastity ransomware, I’m now waiting for limb rootkits.

It would be morbid but interesting to know if there are accidents caused by this, leading to litigation. Take the close call with the stairs in the article, or a car crash. How would an (e.g.) US court treat it? Do recipients sign away rights?

Crosslinking my post here: https://lemmy.ml/post/240595/comment/166490

The title is very misleading. Fuck Erdoğan, but this it’s not trying to take over Iraq. They’re killing Kurdish separatists with Iraq’s permission (which is also bad).

I wouldn’t be confident assuming “it’s just retribution”, it’s tactically useful. More detail in https://lemmy.ml/post/239272/comment/165414

Nation states and criminal organizations have considered universities a valuable target for a long time now. Easier than financial institutions and military targets, campus-wide networks, sensitive data on thousands and thousands of students, often lots of powerful hardware and even research equipment to botnet or abuse for processing/mining coing. Lots of value in owning them.

Nation states and criminal organizations have been doing that for years it’s not a new thing that just started happening.

Alternatively, reclaiming ‘female dog’ would work too

I have a feeling many younger feminists have done that intentionally, treating the word as a badge of honor for their vocalness in protesting. For the past 26 years, Portland, Oregon had a feminist zine with that exact title.

To provide some responses to your extra questions:

I don’t think “female” is offensive.

The frustrating thing about offense is it often relies on people having a different perspective, which sometimes is obvious (especially with terms clearly used as insults) but sometimes is more subtle. I feel that it helps to seek out a properly-explained reason someone is offended, to understand the context rather than just the text.

LGBTQ+ politics is confusing …

It’s not even that (those letters stand for things and ‘female’ isn’t one). It’s not even feminism either, I’ve seen “femcel” misandrist groups using ‘male’ the same way to alienate and objectify. Some other people have already explained, it’s a technical biological/medical term that is legitimate, but some people (especially those who don’t like women) use it in a context that is dehumanizing and objectifying, by not using adjectives or nouns more casual and specific to people. Context is the big thing with offense and something I think needs to be emphasized.

I understand that the nuance, like most social nuance, my seem silly and a big thing to care about; a woman is literally an adult female person and that isn’t in itself an insult, it’s a category. But using technical language in a casual context can be interpreted as treating someone like they’re an object of study rather than a fellow human, same with referring to people as ‘it’ (a few people are fine with that for they purpose of explicitly denouncing the concept of gender, but most people would be offended if you referred to them as ‘it’ instead of (for examples) their name or another gendered pronoun).

I think much of it comes down to how “male/female/intersex” are often used in non-technical language when referring to animals (or flowers or electronic connectors), whereas “boy/girl/kid/man/woman” and others usually refer to humans (although they are regularly used also with pet animals, which people often like to humanize and develop personal bonds). That’s why some people are instinctively offended by male/female in a casual non-technical context, like “I find you males interesting” or “It’s easy to talk to you guys, but females make me nervous”. It’s alienating and sexualizing.

Since capitalism has been the most common economic system since its rise in the 19th century, it’s the majority of the countries that have fallen since then, and a bunch of sovereign states before. It’s a large (and probably contested, based on definitions) list. I am confident, for one example, to list the British Empire in the 1800s onward which embraced free trade, liberalism and a market economy [wikipedia]. It’s not a country, but a capitalist empire and the “first global economic superpower” that shrank from this in 1921 to these current 14 overseas territories. I realize it’s not strictly a country but it demonstrates the point of a big capitalist system falling. If you don’t consider fascism to be capitalist (debatable based on definitions: socialists generally consider them capitalist), then I believe liberal Kingdom of Italy and the Weimar Republic (Germany) before the '20/'30s count too.

A different (IMO better) question is whether capitalism itself was the cause, or how it influenced their downfall. And that’s obviously a complex question. Merely being capitalist/socialist/etc. and falling (even for economic reasons) isn’t a solid reason to abandon those economic theories, especially when these systems were new and being trialed for the first times.

Is it?

What is the motivation of these ‘content creators’ that you are thinking of to have these metrics? How do those impact your decisions?

I create content but I’m guessing it’s a euphemism for people making media commercially.

Good critique, I’ll have a read of them. Thanks.

by simply adopting technology invented by those dirty capitalists

Well when 90% of the countries are capitalist, where do you expect most of the world’s inventions to come from? Should they boycott most of the world over some meaningless idealism? That’s like saying “NASA adopted technologies from the Nazis” (Operation Paperclip) as if that’s a meaningful critique.

But it seems concerning that the places that invented those technologies weren’t as effective in using them, shouldn’t they have an advantage?

(I have an Excel inventory of most of the things I own and where they are stored).

I have been personally wondering if this is a good idea/worth it. Since I’m moving to a new place in… ~oh wow it’s about two weeks now~, it will be possible to get this started without excluding anything that’s rarely used.

Any advice, or is it pretty straight-forward?

Automation is just a beautiful thing (when it works)

I think it’s more than just “a […] country”, it was most of Europe as well as the USA!

And it might be a good time to mention things like United States involvement in regime change (Wikpedia). It’s not an isolated issue, it’s a strategy.

Yeah, it’s a terrible thing how marketing techniques have found their way into research, especially when they should be the most motivated to tolerate dryiness.

That post was also downvoted to hell

+12 / -4 isn’t really down, but yes you’re right that the ‘link dump’ is being better received. Point taken, I was a bit quick to bite.

If you actually watched it,

And that’s the problem: I didn’t want to watch it. And I agree with it.

There’s more to rhetoric and convincing people than merely being correct and well-cited. Those are important, and I love those, but understanding your audience is critical if you want them to even begin reading, let alone continue.

I personally believe that a good approach is to post the shorter material that directly answers their written arguments in the body of the post (like the “USSR failed” and “mass murderer” points) and then say the rest, like “to understand the other reasons why people support Marxism, see these:”.

There is absolutely no way to trim down an answer to “why Marxism” into anything resembling bite sized.

The image you posted in https://lemmy.ml/post/218208/comment/150132 gives an excellent counter-argument to this claim.

It doesn’t go into depth, it leaves that for later now that you have their interest. You’ve provided the introduction at the beginning of the book, a quick snippet of the benefits the USSR brought to its people and the impacts of taking it away. They didn’t need to read Capital Vol. 1-3 to understand that 0% unemployment was achieved. And now that they see that, you have their interest, and your links come into play with a more in-depth explanation of why Marxism was responsible for this and able to help achieve it.

I agree, but that doesn’t refute this answer in the context of the original question.

Stalin’s reign (and other USSR leaders) objectively had many benefits to the people, despite its flaws, and the switch to a capitalist economy afterward has resulted in massive issues. Even thought that’s only one interpretation of Marxism (“Marxist-Leninism”), that enough is a reason for many people to support it.

Based on only the titles, the 3rd and 4th are the only ones that actually approach the given question. I think that’s why the comment isn’t well-received. Are the others really necessary, or optional additional reading/watching? The first just makes a horrible clickbait impression from the dumb mocking thumbnail and bragging title, it feels like self-assurance rather than convincing an audience. I don’t think it’s an effective way to introduce skeptical people.

The reason I’m saying only the titles is, quite frankly, I’m not motivated to go through that list if I’m the OP asking a question. I have limited time.

Why would they have to act differently? What would force this to be so?

For one, material conditions. They don’t have the same resources, the same society, the same enemies, the same trade options, the same existing infrastructure, the same social expectations, etc… 1917 Russia is not the same as 2022 Portugal, not even close. In fact, it can be argued that if they did act the same, it would violate Marxism, “a method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict as well as a dialectical perspective to view social transformation”. It’s not some static formula.

What if, for instance, they considered that the projected failure of their state 100 years after the founding to just be the price of utopia, and did everything the same way? What if they considered it a fluke, some extremely slight random chance that toppled their government?

Then they’d be laughed at, and hopefully ignored by any organization that takes itself seriously. There are people like that you can find online, and I don’t see them getting popular in organizations or their online communities.

It might even be unreasonable to think they would

Absolutely not. Look at how capitalism has changed since its inception. Even today there are clearly distinct forms, such as comparing the Nordic Model to USA’s current economy. They clearly didn’t just do the same thing. They had different conditions, difference social values, different pressures from rival economies, different capacity for invading other countries, all which visibly influence how their economic systems and social governance developed.

Making automated rules to clear junk from email inboxes. As @yogthos said, adjusting notifications. Basically cleaning and organizing my digital life.

Didn’t the fall of USSR teach us anything?

Of course it teaches us things, but why do you think that the fall of the USSR implies a critical failure of Marxism altogether? Many capitalist countries have fallen, does that alone mean capitalism was a failure and shouldn’t be a thing?

will they do anything different than the dictators of the soviet union?

They likely would not only choose to act differently based on lessons learned, but they would have to. Each country is in different conditions. The USSR was formed at the end of WWI from a monarchy and had its capital city invaded in WWII, lost approximately 20-25 million people in the war, and later faced decades of antagonism from Europe and the world nuclear superpower USA (who were almost untouched by WWII) through the Cold War, among a myriad of other rather unique factors.

My point being, the way they acted and decisions they made weren’t some universally applicable comparison. They had a unique country, unique culture, a unique set of enemies and a unique set of leaders to approach a different set of challenges. There are lessons to be learnt that can be applied to other places. China’s communist party has to act differently based on their challenges and developed their own application of Marxist ideas, North Korea’s Juche ideology has a different interpretation based on their situation, etc…

Another point to mention is that the USSR, for much of its existence, adopted the ideology of Marxism-Leninism (which was actually developed by Stalin, not Lenin, based on his understanding of orthodox Marxism and of Leninism). So there are likely to be issues with Marxism-Leninism which aren’t inherent in Marxism.

Also, some here seem to admire Stalin

Well, he did lead the country that crushed the Nazi invasion of Europe, helped bring a war-torn nation into a world superpower, and other benefits to much of the citizens there, considering what the country was like before.

I personally don’t admire Stalin, there were lots of things he did that I think were horrible. However, his reign did bring many benefits that even former USSR citizens admire.

I would really have to try hard to find a community that would admire Hitler

I can find 10 in 2 minutes. They certainly exist, it’s just that most mainstream platforms kick off the communities that admire him, because they tend to be edgelords, obnoxiously racist people who make other users uncomfortable, or merely a reputational risk that hurts a company’s profits.

edit: grammar

Well I just woke up. It’s been alright. Slept early, for once.

you mean you don’t have a keyboard with a macro key that types the first three lines of your tenth favorite song to begin all your passwords? enjoy getting h4ck3d!1

Popularity is a weird thing and can happen unexpectedly. You’d be surprised how often an internet-celebrity shout-out can attract thousands.

The hard part is retaining users from a spike in interest, we need to have actual value to whoever arrives, like original communities, quality discussion or an attractive culture. Easier said than done, but in a rather civil place like this it should be possible.

And, on a second note, thank you for upstreaming code improvement! Having done that in other projects, I realize it’s an extra effort that often seems thankless, but it does feel good to see those changes improving more than just one site.

Damn, that new post is a brave move. I’m not surprised by the mini-essays you’re receiving from a few people.

It’s an interesting dilemma that I think explains a major difference in libertarian socialism and US libertarianism (‘right libertarians’) behaviors (warning: over-simplification!): extreme personal freedom can come at a cost to everyone’s collective freedom if the person/people want to oppress others. It’s hard to resolve that without compromising liberty, especially with more abstract things like speech which obviously have power but aren’t really comparable with physical violence, and especially in a culture like USA’s that ostensibly values individualism and freedom as core virtues. That’s the reason I’m surprised that post has a positive vote count.

Like I said in the post before, we’re in an unfortunate situation where most of the people who seek free speech are seeking it because they’re banned from other places, rather than by virtue of valuing freedom for all. Of course I don’t need to explain the massive banning of speech on commercial platforms like Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/YouTube that need to keep a good reputation in order to maximize profit (and are ultimately beholden to US government interests that aren’t really open to change). But then you have alt-platforms, like Gab, Parlor, (most/all of) Mastodon, lemmy.ml and similar who allow some alternative and even radical ideas but are definitely not free speech either, even the ones that use it as a marketing point.

So, unless someone values free speech without a personal stake (such as being constantly banned), they’re going to be the people those places reject, which in my experience on loosely-moderated forums is uncivil nazis, open pedophiles and ‘schizophrenics’ (non-technical term used for any obsessive people who spam forums with their obsession to the point were they disrupt conversation and aren’t welcome, usually with a rambling style seen in the writings of people with schizophrenia). Basically, the people who are anti-social to the point of mass rejection even among radical groups.

Which is unfortunate because by being one of the few places to allow neutral free speech, it’s guaranteed that place will mostly be used by the people who most of society don’t want to hear. It would be pretty nice to have some popular melting pots where everyone can be truly sincere and honest and civilly approach sensitive topics, but it’s pretty hard to get that when most people are comfortable where they are and don’t want to regularly see people arguing views they consider abhorrent and shocking.

They tolerate communists too, are they a communist supporter in your book?

I don’t expect that alone to grow this place. It may trigger a small exodus but no, not much. The removal of “left-wing” subreddits is what grew this place a lot recently, maybe also with the recuperation of formerly anti-capitalism communities like /r/antiwork, but that’s not sustainable.

What we need is an actual community with original, valuable things. Being merely a clone (or a clone without ads and capitalist investment funding) isn’t a path to success. Federation doesn’t mean much to the typical web user. We need to have a culture actually worth something beyond “not reddit”, something creative or actually achieving something.

There’s no association in the people making it (as far as I can tell) but they are both federated softwares using the ActivityPub protocol, like Mastodon, Pleroma, Friendica, others and PeerTube. “Fediverse” is a collective term used for all the sites on these interacting softwares.

I don’t actually know how Lemmy and PeerTube can currently interact (are any posts visible between the two? Can you use one account to vote on both of them?), but as Dessalines explained, lemmy.ml is already able to federate with them.

I’m not saying they aren’t revolting or abhorrent or wrong. Of course they are. What I meant (and admittedly poorly worded) was that’s where I draw the boundary of where their beliefs will make me refuse to cooperate for mutual benefit.

I think there is a distinction. It’s not a ‘nazi instance’, it’s an instance with a couple of nazis using it and tolerated by it. The site ideology is best characterized as “US Libertarian”, the point being that the admin isn’t a Nazi, and their “pro-[personal] freedom” beliefs don’t conflict with the software project and its goal, even if they conflict with me. They can constructively collaborate for mutual benefit. We both hate “big tech” and want an alternative.

A ‘Nazi instance’ and/or a ‘pedophile instance’ is a grayer area cut off, as their goals are more antagonistic and promoting harm by nature rather than incidentally. That’s where I see the benefits of collaboration less worth it and would have no issue rejecting them. And I recall the admins here saying something a little similar, that fascist instances wouldn’t be advertized there.

It isn’t a comfortable decision, but I am able to put aside ideals to work against a massive common enemy. When I read “workers of the world, unite”, I realize it didn’t say “workers who I like, unite”. If a liberal or a US libertarian wants to join an environmental protest or action, good. If collaboration is a pragmatically effective way towards improving conditions and reaching goals, my idealism of purity isn’t helpful. Small FOSS projects need all the help they can get against a multi-national capitalist-funded website worth multiple billion dollars.

What is the point of these forums if you’re banned for using it?

Because it’s made for the people who don’t get banned.

If you get banned, it’s usually a pretty big hint that this community isn’t for you, and to evade is only wasting your own time in the end.

There are admins with clear political bias and they are using their powers to suppress opinions they don’t like.

lemmy.ml openly, explicitly has a political bias. This isn’t a free-speech extremist place, and people here enjoy that fact. We don’t want to see the same tired derails every day, we would go somewhere else for that.

I don’t think it’s a good instance. I certainly don’t think it’s a good community, and I see that as an inevitable result of its existence (“left-wing” people looking to avoid reddit’s censorship have two large lemmy instances for their interests, so almost none will have a want or need to go to wolfballs to counter out the “right-wing” people who are looking to avoid reddit’s other censorship and don’t have a designated instance). Theoretically it could be neutral, but it’s userbase simply won’t be. That’s how ‘free-speech extremism’ works online; only a few idealists and a heap of people no-one cares to hear need those places, so they become its target audience.

I do think the instance is fine to have on that site.

The Lemmy software isn’t created as an exclusive space for Marxist-Leninism, or leftism (unlike the two largest instances). It’s a self-hostable solution. And I’d personally rather the kind of people who would choose to post there see that there’s a place that caters to their views over there rather than mistakenly think they need to create a place for themselves on the other instances, especially smaller ones more vulnerable to flooding.

Furthermore, the more developers (such as their admin) who feel welcome in the project and can act in a constructive way, the better the code gets. Their admin made a post saying they would upstream any useful features they develop (although I haven’t checked to see if they did) they have, see replies.

So what if it’s there? What’s the actual problem with it being listed there?

Yes. It was the 4th most popular instance.

I signed up for this instance because:

1. I align with its stated core interests (anti-capitalism, FOSS enthusiast, privacy enthusiast). Even if it wasn’t the biggest or the flagship, it would be the most suitable in that sense.
2. It’s somewhat central, so when a new instance is added there’s less chance I’ll need a new account to post there
3. It’s not likely to fall. In my past fediverse usage, I have built up a history on a semi-random instance only for it to shut down without notice, while others became neglected by their hosts and stayed out of date. PeerTube didn’t have account exporting settings so I lost what was there (luckily the raw videos were still on the hard drive).
4. There’s an implication that the devs will have no problem running the instance, at least on a technical level, and (this is my opinion, it’s subjective, yes) they seemed reasonable when interacting with controversial communities like wolfballs.

However, as you can already see, I’m not limiting myself to posting on this instance. The Local/All filters in Communities do a nice job of making other instances conveniently accessible, but of course there aren’t many that are popular enough to rank highly on that list, or have a unique topic that I have an interest in.