I’ve always wondered why conservatives insist on coming to the fediverse when conventional networks are more appealing to them and their ideals nowadays. Or is that still not enough?
They need an audience to perform for. When ever you see a social media “safe space” for conservatives (Voat, Truth Social, etc.) they almost always wither and die. They need people to blame for being everything wrong with the world as well as react to their terrible takes, otherwise there’s no point in shouting their outrage and anger on the internet.
When I was a conservative piece of shit, in my younger days, I had the most outlandish bumper stickers you can imagine. Probably more outlandish than you can imagine, actually, 99.9% likelihood. There were quite a few. I knew I was being an ass and I loved when it offended people, because I was miserable. Someone was paying attention to me. I was getting a reaction. I existed! Anyway, yeah, it can be as simple as “they get off on ruining your day cuz they’re miserable pieces of shit.” Speaking from experience.
That’s true of everyone, though.
Leftists find leftists grating, rigid with their insufferable call-out tactics, fixation on niche issues, clashing priorities, infighting, ease of provocation at obvious bait.
We love to troll ourselves & just have a stronger capacity than the right to endure the left.
That video is like a weirdly nostalgic confessional of my time in D.C. I was a huge piece of shit. Systematic theology book. Capitol Hill job. Little bitty bow ties. Speakeasies. Pork stuffed potatoes at Dixie Bones. People can change.
Bingo. These are the same people who will say that most political violence comes from the left while removing a study showing the opposite: a study about a statistical trend that has been well known and documented for longer than I’ve been alive.
They don’t care. Their beliefs shape shift to fit whatever is most expedient in the moment. They will openly lie to your face, without even trying to hide that it’s a lie while they smile and say they’re being honest. The people who gaslit the nation about project 2025 only to have cabinet members gleeposting about implementing it on social media.
Truth is irrelevant and reality is an inconvenience. Hypocrisy is as dead to them as the corpse of civility they prop up whenever it suits their narrative.
When living in the US, it seemed American conservatives seemed mostly to be oligarch shills and with very shallow and performative beliefs.
Mind you, I think there needs to be balance of sorts between left and right, competition to keep both sides honest. But this doesn’t apply to American “conservatives” who at least at the high level seemed to mostly consist of demagogues.
The “marketplace of ideas” phrase is a perfect example of the theatrical and performative nature of American conservativism.
Same reason why tankies don’t just move to China, or why some Canadians had Trump bumperstickers: the point is to take over and wield authority as a weapon. Of course they try to invade and pollute every space they can and muddy waters wherever possible.
They go everywhere because even if a bunch of people are like “fuck off nazis” there will be a few people that are like “oh hey you have some good ideas”.
That’s why they’ve been recruiting online since the beginning of the internet. Capture whoever you can that’s sympathetic and keep bolstering numbers by any means necessary. Worked out pretty well for them
thats why they also favor discord too, have thier own echo chamber, and allow adminstrative controls like with facebook, and not having something like reddit ban system hovering over thier shoulders, plus propaganda mods that keep them from speaking out of line(like with r/conservatives)
FOSS is for everyone. Not wanting to be dependent on big tech isn’t uniquely a leftist ideal, and it should be obvious by now that the political affiliation and community guidelines of big tech companies are entirely dependent on the current political landscape, not any moral values or held ideals, and can change at any moment.
Not wanting to be dependent on big tech isn’t uniquely a leftist ideal
Are you sure? most people working on projects against big tech tend to be very left leaning. The conservatives love using the appeal of authority to silence minorities and voices they don’t like.
Right wing creeping up to take control of these spaces doesn’t make it their ideal.
I could be wrong. Can you name some popular projects against big tech by conservatives?
Can you name some popular projects against big tech by conservatives?
The entire alt-tech sphere, I guess, but other than that I can’t really think of many projects that explicitly say they lean right or left. As far as I can tell, most projects focus on working on whatever they’re trying to accomplish and don’t mention their political opinions for whatever reason, maybe because they don’t want to alienate their users and contributors or maybe because they are made by many people, each with their own opinions, and there isn’t a single shared belief system behind it, like ThePirateBay for example. We can try to infer what political stance someone holds, like the CEO of Brave, for example, who donated some money to an anti-gay marriage bill in 2008, or the CEO of Proton, who said some positive things about the Republican party recently, but I don’t think it’s fair to assign a political affiliation to the entire project because some of the team members expressed their opinions.
Are you sure? most people working on projects against big tech tend to be very left leaning.
I think that you make a mistake and assume that just because someone agrees with you on not wanting to be reliant on big tech, they also agree with you on everything else, or you read something like
We want to advance human rights and freedoms by creating and deploying free and open source anonymity and privacy technologies, supporting their unrestricted availability and use, and furthering their scientific and popular understanding
and falsely assign that to be a left-wing stance, when in reality most people, left or right, would support that. I haven’t seen any evidence that most people working on anti big tech projects are left-leaning. Most people don’t publicly share their political beliefs.
If the thousand instance users are controlled by three people, it’s not that hard.
We might not be there yet though. Elections are far enough out.
I expect 95% of Lemmy to be propaganda and manipulation when we get closer. There’s only so much that can be done to keep out nation states when all the users are anonymous.
And when you put your real name on things, you get cancelled.
It’s a bad time for the Internet, and I don’t have easy answers. Just be very aware that what seems to be “consensus” opinion might actually be twenty accounts controlled by the same guy or organization. They might even argue with each other, and just have the side they want to lose present weak arguments.
Before Trump, the “traditional” social media was likely pushing the Democrats’ agenda (like the Twitter files under the guise of more moderation. Now the tactic is being used by the Trump administration just more in the open and in more traditional media (Jimmy Kimmel). Big media is such an easy target for govt influence when it’s all ad supported.
I’d bet they see the writing on the wall that the government has too much influence in social media. So this time they don’t want to be caught with their pants down when Democrats come back into power. The other thing I feel is on the horizon is the end of the ad supported internet. I’ve said it before, be prepared to do it yourself or pay for it. I guarantee the guys behind this instance is in the do it yourself camp.
Disclaimer: I am libertarian and view both DNC and GOP as different sides of the same authoritarian coin. Right wing flavored, left wing flavored, both are disgusting when it’s authoritarianism.
Why would we want to talk to MAGA assholes who want to eradicate most of the userbase?
They’re allowed to make an instance, the software can’t stop them. They’re not required to be federated with.
Just like how you can say anything you want, you’re not required to have someone listen to it, or not have someone speak their mind about it back to you.
Nobody is saying that they can’t, mostly what you’ll get is calls for defederation.
Calling for defederation is a matter of simply not accepting content or voting from the targeted instance. Everyone has the right to spin up an instance for whatever they believe, but everyone else also has the right to not pass your content through their servers or display it to their users
This isn’t to call to shut them down, this is to raise awareness so people can update block lists, instance admins to investigate/check with their users/mods on what they want to do
Yeah, isn’t truth social part of activitypub, just defederated… like Mastodon instances probably have blocks up if truth social doesn’t have it on their end
They’re totally allowed to, just as we’re totally allowed to defederate or block or whatever. The question is why are they here, when they have taken over all the mainstream places and don’t really need a federated niche community.
Because I don’t want to interact with them outside of very specific, and sporadic, questions. Their presence is an active detriment to me. Let them go back to truth social.
Is your argument here that your preferred way to deal with cockroaches is to let them have the run of your house? Hard to red anything rose out of that, given the context.
I need you to work on your reading comprehension and try again. Not going to spoon-feed you what I’m saying if you’re here asking me to spell shit out for you friend. Also this is not endorsement of said implications either.
You’re not making much sense to me. I ask this sincerely and without prejudice or malice. Are you feeling alright? Do you believe that having someone to talk to might help?
Im trying to tell you that fascism/MAGA is similar to an insect infestation. Would you like me to puree some food for you next and do the airplane thing with the spoon?
It’s perfectly fine to be frustrated, but please avoid demeaning others. I couldn’t detect sarcasm in either comment, so I read them straight. Lemmy is so averse to sarcasm that I can rarely notice it when it’s there. Were you initially speaking sarcastically?
I’ve always wondered why conservatives insist on coming to the fediverse when conventional networks are more appealing to them and their ideals nowadays. Or is that still not enough?
They don’t want their own spaces as much as making other people’s spaces are theirs too - aka “This is why we can’t have nice things”
(imo)…because the AI/bot deluge is slowly but surely becoming more obvious by the day.
even bootlickers want to feel like they’re talking to real other bootlickers
They need an audience to perform for. When ever you see a social media “safe space” for conservatives (Voat, Truth Social, etc.) they almost always wither and die. They need people to blame for being everything wrong with the world as well as react to their terrible takes, otherwise there’s no point in shouting their outrage and anger on the internet.
That’s fine. But how do they feel about beans?
When I was a conservative piece of shit, in my younger days, I had the most outlandish bumper stickers you can imagine. Probably more outlandish than you can imagine, actually, 99.9% likelihood. There were quite a few. I knew I was being an ass and I loved when it offended people, because I was miserable. Someone was paying attention to me. I was getting a reaction. I existed! Anyway, yeah, it can be as simple as “they get off on ruining your day cuz they’re miserable pieces of shit.” Speaking from experience.
Good job being less of a piece of shit and congrats on the happiness. Any advice for helping people out of there?
they want attention, which is why magat are so desperate for trump to recognize them.
Thanks for sharing. I’m glad you are feeling less miserable now.
Thanks. Take lots of psychedelics, everyone.
🤣
That’s true of everyone, though. Leftists find leftists grating, rigid with their insufferable call-out tactics, fixation on niche issues, clashing priorities, infighting, ease of provocation at obvious bait. We love to troll ourselves & just have a stronger capacity than the right to endure the left.
People can change. Even if that baby thinks they can’t.
I worry you’re right.
That video is like a weirdly nostalgic confessional of my time in D.C. I was a huge piece of shit. Systematic theology book. Capitol Hill job. Little bitty bow ties. Speakeasies. Pork stuffed potatoes at Dixie Bones. People can change.
Ideals don’t matter to them, what matters is spreading their propaganda far and wide.
Bingo. These are the same people who will say that most political violence comes from the left while removing a study showing the opposite: a study about a statistical trend that has been well known and documented for longer than I’ve been alive.
They don’t care. Their beliefs shape shift to fit whatever is most expedient in the moment. They will openly lie to your face, without even trying to hide that it’s a lie while they smile and say they’re being honest. The people who gaslit the nation about project 2025 only to have cabinet members gleeposting about implementing it on social media.
Truth is irrelevant and reality is an inconvenience. Hypocrisy is as dead to them as the corpse of civility they prop up whenever it suits their narrative.
A lot if it is sowing dissent and breaking discourse as well.
Conservatives value the marketplace of ideas. The fediverse is a true embodiment of the marketplace of ideas. No wonder they are coming.
Is that really true though?
When living in the US, it seemed American conservatives seemed mostly to be oligarch shills and with very shallow and performative beliefs.
Mind you, I think there needs to be balance of sorts between left and right, competition to keep both sides honest. But this doesn’t apply to American “conservatives” who at least at the high level seemed to mostly consist of demagogues.
The “marketplace of ideas” phrase is a perfect example of the theatrical and performative nature of American conservativism.
Same reason why tankies don’t just move to China, or why some Canadians had Trump bumperstickers: the point is to take over and wield authority as a weapon. Of course they try to invade and pollute every space they can and muddy waters wherever possible.
They go everywhere because even if a bunch of people are like “fuck off nazis” there will be a few people that are like “oh hey you have some good ideas”.
That’s why they’ve been recruiting online since the beginning of the internet. Capture whoever you can that’s sympathetic and keep bolstering numbers by any means necessary. Worked out pretty well for them
Maybe us commies and socialists need to do it the same way, work against them.
Free platforms like the Fediverse would actually suit conservative ideals of freedom quite well.
thats why they also favor discord too, have thier own echo chamber, and allow adminstrative controls like with facebook, and not having something like reddit ban system hovering over thier shoulders, plus propaganda mods that keep them from speaking out of line(like with r/conservatives)
Since when do conservatives follow conservative ideals of freedom?
That’s a reason why it won’t work - see Reddit’s r/Conservative which lists every post as “approved speech only” aka “flaired users only”.
and the mods are associated with Russia too, not surprising why its the most repressive sub,(after the others got banned years ago)
You don’t hear them talk about free speech constantly? You don’t see conservative platforms popping up every week? Truth Social anyone?
Talking and actually sticking with those ideals are totally different things. What they do is called selective enforcement.
Maybe you should try joining that instance and see how far the “conservative freedom” goes?
If they cared about ideals, that is.
Or freedom
If those were the ideals, the Kimmel and Colbert firings never would’ve happened.
FOSS is for everyone. Not wanting to be dependent on big tech isn’t uniquely a leftist ideal, and it should be obvious by now that the political affiliation and community guidelines of big tech companies are entirely dependent on the current political landscape, not any moral values or held ideals, and can change at any moment.
Are you sure? most people working on projects against big tech tend to be very left leaning. The conservatives love using the appeal of authority to silence minorities and voices they don’t like.
Right wing creeping up to take control of these spaces doesn’t make it their ideal.
I could be wrong. Can you name some popular projects against big tech by conservatives?
The entire alt-tech sphere, I guess, but other than that I can’t really think of many projects that explicitly say they lean right or left. As far as I can tell, most projects focus on working on whatever they’re trying to accomplish and don’t mention their political opinions for whatever reason, maybe because they don’t want to alienate their users and contributors or maybe because they are made by many people, each with their own opinions, and there isn’t a single shared belief system behind it, like ThePirateBay for example. We can try to infer what political stance someone holds, like the CEO of Brave, for example, who donated some money to an anti-gay marriage bill in 2008, or the CEO of Proton, who said some positive things about the Republican party recently, but I don’t think it’s fair to assign a political affiliation to the entire project because some of the team members expressed their opinions.
I think that you make a mistake and assume that just because someone agrees with you on not wanting to be reliant on big tech, they also agree with you on everything else, or you read something like
and falsely assign that to be a left-wing stance, when in reality most people, left or right, would support that. I haven’t seen any evidence that most people working on anti big tech projects are left-leaning. Most people don’t publicly share their political beliefs.
even bootlickers want to feel like they’re talking to other real bootlickers, in their online spaces, not just bot/LLM spam
Hmm, that sounds fair.
Because this place isn’t censored for their side, they’re trying to break it.
If they get defederated, they just spin up a new instance and keep spreading their hate.
or they infilitrate instances by creating an account in there and just troll.
They got to emigrate the istance users aswell. Seems like a loosing game.
If the thousand instance users are controlled by three people, it’s not that hard.
We might not be there yet though. Elections are far enough out.
I expect 95% of Lemmy to be propaganda and manipulation when we get closer. There’s only so much that can be done to keep out nation states when all the users are anonymous.
And when you put your real name on things, you get cancelled.
It’s a bad time for the Internet, and I don’t have easy answers. Just be very aware that what seems to be “consensus” opinion might actually be twenty accounts controlled by the same guy or organization. They might even argue with each other, and just have the side they want to lose present weak arguments.
Ideals? You mean diet fascism?
Before Trump, the “traditional” social media was likely pushing the Democrats’ agenda (like the Twitter files under the guise of more moderation. Now the tactic is being used by the Trump administration just more in the open and in more traditional media (Jimmy Kimmel). Big media is such an easy target for govt influence when it’s all ad supported.
I’d bet they see the writing on the wall that the government has too much influence in social media. So this time they don’t want to be caught with their pants down when Democrats come back into power. The other thing I feel is on the horizon is the end of the ad supported internet. I’ve said it before, be prepared to do it yourself or pay for it. I guarantee the guys behind this instance is in the do it yourself camp.
Disclaimer: I am libertarian and view both DNC and GOP as different sides of the same authoritarian coin. Right wing flavored, left wing flavored, both are disgusting when it’s authoritarianism.
What’s the problem of those right-wing dipshits having their own instance? I’m trying to understand this perspective you all seem to have here.
Someone please elaborate the hesitancy of us accepting MAGA extremists having their own federated community?
Why would we want to talk to MAGA assholes who want to eradicate most of the userbase?
They’re allowed to make an instance, the software can’t stop them. They’re not required to be federated with.
Just like how you can say anything you want, you’re not required to have someone listen to it, or not have someone speak their mind about it back to you.
Nobody is saying that they can’t, mostly what you’ll get is calls for defederation.
Calling for defederation is a matter of simply not accepting content or voting from the targeted instance. Everyone has the right to spin up an instance for whatever they believe, but everyone else also has the right to not pass your content through their servers or display it to their users
This isn’t to call to shut them down, this is to raise awareness so people can update block lists, instance admins to investigate/check with their users/mods on what they want to do
Yeah, isn’t truth social part of activitypub, just defederated… like Mastodon instances probably have blocks up if truth social doesn’t have it on their end
They can have it. We just don’t want to federate with them, which doesn’t prevent them from having their own instance all for themselves.
They’re totally allowed to, just as we’re totally allowed to defederate or block or whatever. The question is why are they here, when they have taken over all the mainstream places and don’t really need a federated niche community.
Because I don’t want to interact with them outside of very specific, and sporadic, questions. Their presence is an active detriment to me. Let them go back to truth social.
Are you the type that asks a cockroach or ant infestation to politely go away as well?
Is your argument here that your preferred way to deal with cockroaches is to let them have the run of your house? Hard to red anything rose out of that, given the context.
I need you to work on your reading comprehension and try again. Not going to spoon-feed you what I’m saying if you’re here asking me to spell shit out for you friend. Also this is not endorsement of said implications either.
You’re not making much sense to me. I ask this sincerely and without prejudice or malice. Are you feeling alright? Do you believe that having someone to talk to might help?
Im trying to tell you that fascism/MAGA is similar to an insect infestation. Would you like me to puree some food for you next and do the airplane thing with the spoon?
It’s perfectly fine to be frustrated, but please avoid demeaning others. I couldn’t detect sarcasm in either comment, so I read them straight. Lemmy is so averse to sarcasm that I can rarely notice it when it’s there. Were you initially speaking sarcastically?
Yes i was indeed being sarcastic. Apologies for the lack of “/s”, I keep forgetting I’m not smart enough to convey the sarcasm well.
Nah, you’re just in a den of overly literal people. I’ve long since abandoned using sarcasm here.
Because they are trolls whose purpose is to actively harm everybody else. They do not deserve our tolerance.