Kobolds with a keyboard.
Not trying to dredge this all up again or restart this conversation, but I thought you might like to know… I went and watched some of the videos and read some of the accounts you’ve referenced (none of which I’d seen previously), and I can safely say that you’ve at least in part changed my view on this insofar as it applies to his intentions that day. Thanks for taking the time to discuss it.
I’m not sure why you’re giving a history lesson when I already acknowledged that point in the comment you are replying to.
It’s because, despite claiming to have acknowledged the problem, you’re still making such an incredible false equivalency - comparing joining a new Lemmy instance to moving out of an authoritarian country - that you either completely misunderstand what you’re talking about, or you’re arguing in bad faith.
Sure, I theoretically could create my own instance, but then I would have the same problem as current instance admins, even those who are sympathetic to these ideas, as I suspect Lemmy.world and my own are. That there is no structure within Lemmy to enable collective decisions to be made or executed, and I would need to build them from scratch.
You’d have full control over your instance, and could, if you built up a community, use any online voting method you wanted - of which there are plenty - to poll your userbase and gather their opinions.
However, ultimately, you’d be the one paying for the instance, and doing the work to set it up and keep it updated and running. What would you do if you attracted a userbase that had views that were completely counter to your own? What if you attracted the alt-right crowd, and what got voted into place was all hate-speech, nazi rhetoric, and intolerance? (I assume you disagree with these things…) Would you continue paying for and hosting the instance, just because that’s what was democratically decided, even though it’s no longer an instance that you want to participate in? Could anyone really fault you for not wanting to do that?
A better method might be for you to make clear your own opinions - either via a post explaining them, or via a pre-defined federation / defederation plan - and let people join your instance who agreed with those decisions. Which, incidentally, is how most instances currently operate.
One could also simply move to another country if desired.
That’s nowhere near as easy for the majority of people - especially those in authoritarian countries - as you’re making it out to be.
North Korean defectors are North Korean people who left North Korea to become citizens in a new country. In North Korea, it is against the law to leave North Korea without permission. North Koreans are also not allowed to change their own citizenship, so anyone born a North Korean must also die a North Korean. The punishment for leaving North Korea without permission is extremely harsh. People who are caught are usually sent a prison camp or put to death in public. Like many other crimes in North Korea, illegally leaving the country may not only punish the accused, but also his or her family up to three generations.
The fact that there I can choose which authoritarian system I want to be under means little when they are all quite similar. I don’t know of any instances that have such democratic governance. They are all run by their admins as they see fit. It would be like choosing if I want to live in North Korea or Nazi Germany. Sure, they might be different in some ways, but I don’t have a real voice in decisions either way.
Anyone can start an instance. Make your own, and federate with whomever you want. Nobody’s stopping you.
So, you are right that admins imposing defederation unilaterally is an authoritarian action in line with things the North Korea or other repressive governments have done, though obviously far less severe due to the lack of violent enforcement behind it.
What? It’s nothing like that at all. Your instance isn’t a country; you aren’t stuck there. You can go wherever you want. You can read content on multiple instances.
It’s more akin to CNN deciding not to run a story that Newsmax is covering. You can have more than one source for your news.
I think you have a point here, although I think the issue is less with defederation itself, which is an important tool to manage conflict between instances, but rather with the lack of democratic governance in instances themselves.
Instances are run by individuals, who in turn have the power to run those instances as they see fit. If you dislike how a particular instance is being run, move to a different one, it’s as simple as that.
Nobody’s being censored. Anyone can go to lemmygrad and read their content. They’re not even being deplatformed - nobody’s preventing them from posting anything their instance allows on that instance. It’s closer to curation than censorship… instances are free to curate the content they host. If you don’t like the curation of a given instance, just move to a different one.
Alternately, maybe it’s the case that doing something bad to bring attention to another bad thing isn’t okay just because the thing you’re trying to bring attention to is worse.
I actually support the protests where they’re throwing soup on paintings or whatever. Those paintings don’t really matter, but some people sure think they do, and it’s effective to get a dialog going. Libraries are a public good, one of the few we really have left. It’s like ransacking a food bank to draw attention to starving people in Gaza; it’s not helping the cause they ostensibly care about, but it is hurting others.
I’m responding to your implication that actions in protest that get people talking about the issue are inherently valuable and worth taking. To make the point that that is not the case, I am using an extreme example to demonstrate a scenario where your statement is (I hope) objectively false.
I think I clearly stated my counter-point, which is that just because we’re talking about it doesn’t mean it is an effective or worthwhile form of protest to be engaged in.
I’m not really sure where you’re confused here.
If I went and shot someone in the name of Gaza awareness, and painted these messages on the sidewalk using their blood, that would be getting talked about, too. Point being, there’s effective forms of protest that we still shouldn’t be using.
Isn’t the image in the OP literally from Mausritter? :D
There’s also Mouseguard, which is similar in some ways. Very storytelling-heavy. Fun game.
I am 100% confident that American policy on Israel will also shift thanks to progressive voices. And it will not require a progressive majority.
I’d love to be proven wrong, but I don’t believe this will happen while Biden is president. Not to say I’m not going to vote for him - I’m not that stupid, but he’s made it pretty clear that he will stand with Israel more or less no matter what they do.
I do worry that he’s upsetting a lot of people to the point that they won’t vote for him, though, and that’s scary to me. He comes across as very weak when he capitulates to Israel this hard. He’s repeatedly said, “This is the line, don’t cross it!”, then when they do, he moves the line. If he loses to Trump in November, I’ll have a hard time not blaming Israel and his policies in dealing with them for that loss.
I don’t think you really have a lot of choices to be honest.
Therein lies the problem. We don’t have a lot of choices. Voting for new, progressive candidates feels great and it’s nice to pat ourselves on the back and think we’re making a difference, but the fact of the matter is that voting for a candidate who has no realistic path to winning is only even a realistic option when the candidate with the ‘D’ next to their name is all but guaranteed to win. And yeah, I’d really love to be able to make a statement by splitting the leftist vote between the democratic candidate and a progressive one; I’d really love to tell the democrats to get fucked and vote for a progressive third-party for every seat, but right now is far from the time for that, especially in states where those races are actually close. The last thing we need is to pack the House and Senate with republicans who win something like 40/30/30 because we couldn’t unify behind someone who actually had a chance of winning.
Not to mention, we only get to vote in 1 state’s elections, and often times there aren’t even any progressive down-ballot candidates on the ballot to vote for.
It won’t stop as long as American voters care much more about gas prices than about human rights. American politicians are willing to sponsor genocide to have some control on oil prices in order to win elections.
Who should we vote for to stop what’s going on? Please, enlighten me.
My kid was quite small for his age when he was in little league, and he was awful at baseball - I think he maybe got 2 or 3 hits the entire time he was playing, but because he was so small, he had a really tiny strike zone, and he pretty quickly realized that if he just never swung at anything, he’d get on base every single time. It was kind of funny, in a sad kind of way.
You may be taking this post slightly too seriously.
I can’t help but feel that Dwight would be a much better friend to have than Jim.
Yeah, I suppose I should clarify - that was in response to the objection to paying for pirated content; it’s different from the service provider’s point of view, but from the end user’s point of view, they’re paying for pirated content either way.
Not true–Wisconsin state law allows minors to possess shotguns and rifles as long as they’re not short-barreled.
Maybe I’m mis-remembering the details of the case, as this isn’t really something I’ve paid much attention to in the past, I don’t know, 3 years, but I’m fairly certain the person who obtained the gun for him was charged and convicted with some crime; is it a crime to give a gun to a minor but not for the minor to possess one? That doesn’t make a lot of sense. Is it that it’s illegal in Illinois to possess one, but not in Wisconsin? My understanding was that the gun charges against Rittenhouse were dismissed basically on a technicality using language that was written to apply to hunting rifles and was being applied to a rifle clearly not intended for that purpose. Maybe that’s the short-barreled clause? I’m not sure of the specifics.
Seems pretty obvious that is the reason–he’s even on video while at the protest saying exactly that, “for my protection”.
And if one isn’t starting out trying to find fault and looks at his actions objectively in hindsight, one could easily argue that the decision to deliberately put himself at potential risk in order to undo some of the damage and maybe prevent some damage, and help people, is selflessly altruistic.
I don’t know what the local culture is like in Wisconsin, so some of my view might stem from trying to view it through the lens of my local community, but I know I, for one, am immediately on edge when I see someone walking around open-carrying a firearm in a public place. It doesn’t happen frequently, so maybe that’s part of it, but if I attended a protest or demonstration, particularly one that the police are antagonistic to, anyone - no matter what they’re doing - who is carrying a gun like that is, in my mind, making the situation worse just by their presence. If they’re a protester themselves, they’re just inviting police violence and if they’re not a protester, my perception would be that they’re doing it with the intent to intimidate. Maybe that’s an incorrect perception and I am willing to accept that, but I can’t imagine that there weren’t plenty of people there who share that perception.
What it really comes down to (again, in my mind) is that his decision to go there, into the middle of what was already basically a powder keg, carrying an AR-15 was, at the very least, incredibly poor judgement. Even if 90% of protesters saw him as helpful, all it’d take is one who didn’t to cause a problem.
There were people at these protests (speaking nationwide, I can’t speak to the one in Kenosha specifically) who were there just to cause trouble - looting, vandalizing, trying to paint the peaceful protesters in a poor light.
Not really a long way at all (20 miles),
Maybe ‘a long way’ was poor wording but the point I was trying to get at is that he doesn’t live there; it’s not like this was happening in his town.
Well, owners of the Car Source denied accepting Kyle and Dominick Black’s offer to help protect their business, and one of them denied even knowing who Kyle was, and then text exchange between them, with Kyle offering to help out, surfaced, and the other owner literally had his picture taken with Kyle and the rest of his group, in front of the dealership. Kyle was obviously not randomly taking the liberty upon himself to spend time defending that place, nor was he unwanted there.
I was only aware of the first part of this - that they denied knowing or wanting him there, so if the rest of this is true, I will concede this point.
Still, this is beside the point–it doesn’t matter to me if he became, or always was, or whatever, someone with shitty views.
It’s relevant (to me) because he holds views (and did before the protest, as far as I recall) that put him at odds with a lot of the protesters there. I’m not calling him a white supremacist (nor am I calling him not a white supremacist, I really don’t know what his views are on that topic, nor do I really care), and I’m certainly not calling him a serial killer. I think it’s pretty clear from the trial that he isn’t legally guilty. However, I do think he’s morally guilty because he put himself in a situation where, in my view, a reasonable person should have been able to foresee that something like this might happen. Then, afterwards, rather than condemning the glorification of it, he just went along with it, hook, line and sinker.
Honestly, if it hadn’t been for that last bit, I’d probably hold a different view, and…
All the left did was call him a white supremacist serial killer (as you can see, this continues to this day), even after all the facts came out. It’s no surprise he became amicable with the only people who weren’t doing that.
Maybe you’re right, and he’s a product of the circumstances, but he didn’t, and doesn’t (based on his behavior after the fact) seem particularly remorseful for what happened there. He’s going along with (at the very least) the glorification of his actions, and I cannot see him as anything but in the wrong as a result.
I will say that you make some compelling points and maybe my initial stance was too severe - that is to say, maybe he wasn’t literally looking for trouble, but he certainly wasn’t taking what I see as some very basic steps to avoid trouble.
All I’m talking about is what I know about, and that’s the facts of this case, and what we know (or should know, given how many people still get very basic, known facts wrong)–as far as notorious legal cases go, there are few with more hard evidence easily accessible to the public, so even a ‘random’ civilian can have 100% of the facts anyone else does.
The basic facts of the case were pretty widely misrepresented, by news outlets, never mind keyboard warriors on Twitter and Reddit; I don’t think it’s surprising at all that everyone’s perception of the details differ so greatly. The ACLU made a statement basically condemning him post-verdict, for one, and that was pretty widely reported on.
First off, I want to be clear that I’m not the one down-voting you; I haven’t voted (up or down) anywhere in this thread, but it always makes me self-conscious when I’m having a disagreement with someone and the posts I’m replying to consistently have 1 downvote at the time I’m replying.
The result of all of this, in my eyes, is that he went to an awful lot of trouble to put himself in a situation where I feel a reasonable person would have believed they would end up in an altercation, and he made sure he had a rifle with him at the time. I will accept that he could have used it sooner than he did, but I, as someone who actively does not want to have to shoot someone, wouldn’t bring a gun to a Trump rally while publicizing that I was there to keep the peace and enforce local noise ordinances. That’d just be asking to get attacked. To be put in a situation where I’d need to use that gun.
Of course, if I was going to go to that rally, and I was hoping I’d have to shoot someone, I’d make damn sure I made it look like I had only the best possible intentions.
Can’t see it on desktop web.
Be the change you want to see in the world. You don’t have to code in an integrated solution; all you’d have to do is set up an online poll, listing all of the other instances up for consideration (such a list can be pretty easily obtained - for example from https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list ), run a new poll on regular intervals, say, every 2 months, and let anyone who is interested vote. Then, you update the defederation list based on the results of the poll.
However, I think you’ll quickly run into the other problems I outlined which, unfortunately, can’t really be changed. You could require everyone who’s participating in the voting to also be contributing time or money to run the server, except that then you’re operating a plutocracy, not a democracy, so most likely, you’ll need to be giving up your time and money to make your desired server administration a reality.