Just in case you're reading this as an attack on you:
as if every user holds the same opinions and inherently knows the nuances of this debate.
I meant that the other user was acting as if you were one of the people accusing us of brigading simply for posting on a non-local instance, when it's pretty clear you weren't.
Fwiw that user specifically has been shitflinging a lot and they're a relatively new account. I suspect they're either someone from Hexbear that doesn't want federation to work out, or a third party just trying to upset people.
It wasn't relevant to you in particular at all, just a weird transference of aggression, as if every user holds the same opinions and inherently knows the nuances of this debate.
I still use uMatrix to block javascript and other shit by default, then enable as needed.
there's an unfortunate tension between privacy and anonymity (and usability): the more you change about your behavior and system to preserve privacy, the more you stand out as a unique individual.
Multi-tiered threat modeling is a good way to find the best of as many worlds as you can tolerate. Maybe you use tor browser for anything it doesn't hopelessly break. Use hardened firefox for other things. Vanilla firefox profile for when a site doesn't work for whatever reason. Chromium when necessary. By dynamically shifting between security levels as your threat model necessitates, you can maintain usability while preserving some amount of privacy. The downside is time and effort, but baby steps are fine. Switch out corporate apps and services with open source ones over time. There's decent-to-great alternatives for most things microsoft/google
Wonder if router blacklists can get around this.
On other sites this has so far been an arms race between ads and adblockers. Google certainly is a much bigger player than like forbes, tho
kinda true in that no one cares about you specifically (as in no govt agencies or corporations, yer mum loves ya), at least until you do something to draw focus to yourself
however there's multiple layers of tracking, from local to state to federal (and various agencies at each level) as well as every single corporation that you interact with or buys your data. all of these actors are primarily interested in your data in aggregate (unless and until you give them a reason to focus on you specifically) so that they can manipulate whatever demographic/class you belong to into doing whatever action serves them.
It can be difficult at first to conceptualize how each of us exists as a single part of various larger systems/entities, but that realization is instrumental in understanding how things work in today's globalized and technological world.
lmao yeah this one is programmed deep into my muscle memory with how often i close the wrong tabs
or close a tab only to see something interesting right as it closes
Our anarchist users are also vocally against western imperialism. Leninists will voice their opinions through their Leninist lens, or perhaps their experience of the world will lead them to preferring a Leninist analysis. But the same is true for our anarchists, trotskyists, syndicalists, whatever.
It's more that people who are used to a small or different Overton window will group all anti-western-imperialism stances as "Leninist" (or more accurately, they'll group and dismiss them all as "tankie") because they don't yet understand the nuances.
I don't really want to relitigate your experiences and these issues in this thread (especially because I'm a visitor on lemm.ee), so I'll try to be succinct. But I'm happy to continue elsewhere if you want.
What we mean by "broad tent" or nonsectarian is that diverse opinions aren't explicitly banned or removed (as long as they aren't pro western imperialism or anti LGBTQ+). That means shitflinging and low effort sectarianism (ideally) isn't allowed. It doesn't mean people aren't allowed to voice disagreement about ideologies and geopolitics. And since we don't have downvotes, we aren't afraid to voice disagreement, unlike Reddit where you just anonymously downvote and move on. This difference is certainly a culture shock at first, but I've come to prefer it. Even if everyone else disagrees with you, you still have a voice, rather than getting buried in downvotes and hidden.
As much as our users call people liberals derogatorily, in equal amounts we get called bots and shills and tankies (which is especially funny when directed at our anarchist users). I'd personally rather name calling be avoided in favor of good faith discussion, but it's difficult to assume good faith on the internet.
Hexbear has been around for three years, all the while dealing with a constant stream of bad faith wreckers and doxxers from 4chan and the like. Ultimately our goal is to foster a broad-tent leftist culture, with primary focus on LGBTQ+ and anti-US-imperialism. Within those two focuses we have a wide range of leftist tendencies, from anarchist (syndicalist, ancom, etc) to Marxist (trotskyist, leftcom, ML, etc). We, I personally, see good-faith disagreement as tremendously valuable and necessary for growth of ideas. We do our best to discourage sectarianism (within the bounds of anti-imperialist, pro-LGBTQ+ leftism) while encouraging discussion.
I really dislike the idea of defederating for difference in political opinions. That kind of thing merely recreats the kind of echo chambers found on corporate social media. I believe Lemmy has potential to be better than that. Differences in philosophy and politics and culture should be moderated at the community and personal level rather than broadly sweeping instance blocks. This leaves the agency up to communities to set rules and define their cultures, banning people as needed at this level rather than simply cutting off entire communities. It also gives users the agency to choose whether to block instances, communities, or users they'd rather not interact with (instance blocking on a user level is coming soon I believe).
The other reasons people give for defederating us (although I believe politics is primary) are spamming and brigading. The former is due to: the oversized emoji bug in Lemmy (we're sorry for this, on our side the emojis are normal sized so we don't even realize they're spamming) as well as the novelty of federation and lack of clear delineation between local and federated posts. The emoji bug will be fixed, and in the mean time we're on notice to try and avoid using them while on other instances. The novelty will quickly wear off. As for delineation between local and federated, this is a mistake that's gone both ways: lemm.ee users stumbling upon a hexbear post and not understanding why they're being responded to differently, as well as hexbear users stumbling upon a lemm.ee post and commenting/meming as if they're on their home turf. In either case, the rules of the given instance and community should be followed and enforced through bans rather than defederation, and ideally there'd be some CSS to make it obvious when someone's on another instance to make it easier to follow said rules. Defederating because of this happening would be like a person on Reddit posting their /r/NSFW stuff on /r/awww by mistake, and /r/awww unilaterally blocking all /r/NSFW users, as if there's no overlapping userbase.
As for brigading, by and large I think people are overreacting because they're used to the walled garden Reddit has become in its profit-seeking attempts to ban wrongthink. Keep in mind that Hexbear users have no ability to downvote (literally removed from the site for other reasons a while ago), so at most a "brigade" (or most often simply seeing a post on our front page) will be a bunch of (soon-to-be normal-sized) emojis and opinions you may disagree with. If a user is breaking a comm or instance rule they can be banned. If they're engaging in bad faith or spamming they can be blocked. Hell, even if they're engaging in good faith they can be blocked if a person simply doesn't want to see takes they disagree with. But ultimately it seems like a non-issue to me. Allow those of us that want to engage with diverse opinions to do so, and allow the rest to block as they see fit.
Back before Hexbear re-federated we used to have a sorting algorithm that was a bit better for smaller communities. Right now, Active posts stay for too long and Hot posts don't yet have enough engagement to encourage people clicking through. I believe there's talks of adjusting the sorting algorithms, hopefully soon.
I think I'm more inclined to beg the people who are advocating for voting that they should organize. Everyone already knows they should vote. But when I go to org meetings in a lot of places, turnout is abysmal.
like sure, do both. but right now the half that most people aren't doing is organizing, and that happens to be 95% of the battle compared to voting.
it's not that trump would have been better, it's that we shouldn't be using trump or republicans as the bar we measure politicians against. it's a really low fucking bar.
these democrats are occupying the position of opposition, but since they're ineffective and corporate, the republicans are allowed to push further and further right with every election. And since democrats are occupying said position (and actively attack anything that threatens said position) it's difficult for any other person or institution or party to arise that can represent actual, effective opposition to republicans.
So in each individual vote we are trapped in an impossible-to-win game theory problem in which choosing the lesser of two evils is the strictly rational choice, no matter how bad it is, as long as it's technically better. And thus democratic politicians can assume any "rational" dem voter is going to vote blue no matter who, so they (the democratic politicians) can spend their time/energy catering to other demographics (or more often, their major donors).
It's only the actual threat of a withheld vote that keeps dems in line, as the only thing more materially impactful to their interests than donor money is losing their seat (and thus the power that the donors are paying for). So despite the fact that the rational choice within a single vote is to choose the technically better option no matter what, when acting in a series of votes it may become rational to abstain when our interests aren't being represented.
And even so, all of this electoralism is very effectively acting as the circus of bread and circuses. We need to be out and organizing outside of controlled political institutions.
we really need to organize outside of electoral politics. might as well vote too if it's low effort and there's actually any hope of harm reduction (although it's worth considering that a person that is guaranteed to vote and vote blue is a person the dems feel safe dismissing)
but ultimately electoralism as it currently stands in the US is a mechanism designed to attract and dissipate social energy, like a lightning rod.
should be mandatory 16 hours off between shifts tbh
i don't even mind long shifts all that much depending on the job, just hate the "you have exactly 8 hours from the time you clock out until you have to be back", as if I can even do anything useful or productive with that time