When it comes to people you meet each day (friends, colleagues, schoolmates, ...), are there people among them you'd call 'genuinely evil'? Is it a majority of them?
Honestly? Yeah, it's well over a majority. I wouldn't call them 'purely evil', but 'genuinely evil' is pretty much the norm in society. People just tend to compartmentalize their evil.
I feel like this is projection. How tf do you know "well over a majority" of people are compartmentalizing "evil", in a way so good that we can't detect it, but somehow you know this to be true and we should trust you? Why? How? What makes you special in knowing this? I'm sorry if I'm coming off rude, I just don't understand how people can say this with such confidence when they haven't asked "well over a majority" of humans. š
In 2024 35% of eligible voters didn't vote and 32% voted for Trump. That's not a perfect measure, but it's about as much of a case as can be made. I'm also far less inclined to move any of those 67% over to the "good" side than to move any of the 32% that voted for Harris to the bad side.
In my personal experience, 95+% of people are, at the end of the day, pretty selfish. I donāt mean that they need to be saints, but almost everyone does not want to make small sacrifices to make the world a better place.
Iām talking about people that donāt want to eat less meat or try to consume less, or maybe just give the benefit of the doubt to the other side.
It feels so weird to pass by incredible filth on a daily basis, but then get taken aback by a worldview. You must have been through a lot, wish I could help somehow.
Everyone I'm close to knows about the prison industrial complex because we talk to each other. That's how a few of us found out, by knowing people who are activated enough to look into these things and spread the word. As to the rest, I could hit you with a list of things and say "approach the world with intent to confirm this bias" and it would amount to the same thing.
Not being part of the problem takes work, it's true, but wisdom is in knowing people are highly situational, neither inherently good or bad but often entirely unequipped for the world we've created or the heights we've grasped. We're beings of brilliance and kindness but also complacency and disaster. Not evil, but we create many evil situations by accident and shortsightedness.
We live in different countries. I left the US because it was driving me crazy, and my heart goes out to you since I know a lot of people feel that way but don't have a viable exit strategy. I've put in a lot of work to stop participating in an empire of slavery and stolen land, moved back to the land of my grandparents (which has its own terrible history, perfect being the enemy of good as we all know).
I'm against all the buckets. The only bucket we're all in is a gravity well, and we need to act like it if we're not going to hate it every minute.
Everyone I'm close to knows about the prison industrial complex because we talk to each other.
Maybe we live in different neighborhoods. Most of my neighbors are fine with locking "those people" up, and don't much care what happens to them beyond that.
"approach the world with intent to confirm this bias"
How do you account for the vast majority of eligible voters either not showing up or voting for Trump? That's about as unbiased a measure as I can think of.
Not being part of the problem takes work,
So we're on the same page there.
wisdom is in knowing people are highly situational, neither inherently good or bad
If it takes work to not be part of the problem than aren't people inherently "bad" until they do the work? I didn't introduce that dialectic to this conversation. Of course throwing everyone into two buckets is inherently going to miss a lot of depth.
often entirely unequipped for the world we've created or the heights we've grasped.
Feels almost like a non sequitur, even if not untrue. I know enough history to know that evil is banal, but that chiefly refers to people who stay silent, choose comfort over justice, and follow unethical orders. It's taking things a ways further to say most people are mostly evil, don't you think?
Comes down to your definition of evil, really. And how comfortable you are calling the majority of people evil - if you arenāt, obviously youāll jump through a few extra hoops to keep that worldview intact.
Go outside and start counting all the absolutely unnecessary gas guzzling SUVs. Walk your neighborhood with a trash bag and see what you collect. Ask yourself how many people you know are aware of the prison industrial complex, or would even care if they did know. How many people want subsidized housing in their neighborhoods to address homelessness? How many want some of the funding for their school districts to go to school districts in less fortunate neighborhoods? If there is a local home in obvious disrepair, how many people will gossip or complain to the municipality compared to how many will ask the neighbor if they need help?
Most people are nice. That's not the same as not being evil. Not being evil takes work.
I can't help but recall of two quotes: one from Rousseau who said "Humans are born good but society corrupts them", and another from Hobbes who said "Humans are a wolf to humans". While it seems like both thinkers couldn't agree with each other because both statements look different, the logical implications from Rousseau inevitably leads to that of Hobbes. I'll try to explain my point below.
When Rousseau says "society corrupts good humans", he implies the existence of not-good humans because, as we know, society is made out of people (not just Soylent Green). Rousseau implies that the not-good humans were once good until they got corrupted by earlier not-good humans, which were corrupted by even earlier not-good humans... somewhere, non-goodness was born. Causality requires that a non-goodness stemmed from some kind of "patient zero of evilness".
Now, religions would be tempted to think of this "patient zero" as something supernatural: Shaitan, Iblis, Angra Mainyu... It's not exactly wrong (as archetypal representation), but it's not accurate either: it's not something too otherworldly, it's right in front of us or, should I say, inside us.
Take Derren Brown's "The Push" (a documentary about social compliance and conformity): before the auction gala where (spoiler)the person was cluelessly played by a hidden script to push someone from a rooftop, commiting murder to (in their mind) save themself(/spoiler), Derren conducted a "selection process" where the candidates would answer a test: unbeknownst to them, the test was beyond a questionnaire, it was evaluating who would keep standing up and sitting whenever a bell rang. They weren't told to do so: they were, instead, socially pressured to do it, because all the other candidates were doing it. It's the "monkey see, monkey do".
Those who didn't watch The Push (watch it, it's illuminating) might ask: if the candidates weren't told to do it (switch between sitting and standing whenever a bell rings), how did the behavior emerge? The behavior was initially seeded by actors, people who initially acted on it. Then things got funnier: one by one, actors were removed and fresh, clueless candidates were added, until no actors were in the room, yet the behavior continued. It was carried among "generations" (batches of candidates).
There was no devil behind this behavior. One could argue "Derren Brown was the devil behind the scenes, conducting a social experiment", but something motivated those actors (e.g. money), just like something motivated the hypothetical "first evil human" to be evil, except... something also motivated clueless candidates to imitate it, just like something motivated the "Rousseau's good humans" to spread societal corruption.
It's not a devil: it's humans, it's us. We're born with this wolf inside, and it just takes a "push" for it to howl. It's inherent to us because it's inherent to Nature.
Humans are situational. That's what makes them interesting and worthwhile. Anything that is the same in every situation has no heart.
I tend to think that you really see what people are made of in a tight spot. In a nice situation, everyone finds it easy to be kind. But even those who rise to a challenge and show true heart only do so when they really believe it is an option. That is the point of having hope.
Bsky markets with being decentralised while being not. I mean people can have their own data servers but because of DIDs moderation and other things go back in the hands of the company behind it.
Another red flag is that a main investor is crypto bros and that the ceo or something is crypto friendly but they gave promises not to shove crypto currency up their users.
Is it worth using?
If you use mastodon + bridgy i dont think so
If you want to use it because all your friends are using it: i wont stop you but thats what bridgy is there for
If you dont like platforms where a significant amount is a linux user: then maybe bsky is better
and a + of bsky is that users can make their own algorithms i think easily and that those can get shared.
At least one interoperable PDS has come online, and the network later folks seem entirely aware of the single point of failure that their "firehouse" model suffers from. More importantly, their entire value proposition isnt "were not Twitter", but rather "if we become evil you should be able to pack up and go elsewhere."
It's fashionable on Lemmy to bash Bsky, but the difference really is comparable to the old GNU Hurd project vs Linux. The two most successful FOSS systems ever (Linux and git) took a sucess-first, share-later model while an opinionated actor in charge. I dont mean to argue that this is philosophically better or appropriate for all projects, just that there's precedent for FOSS starting less open than it eventually becomes.
Oooh, and here I thought the GOP was a bunch of Nazis fucking children. Guess it's just the algorithm fucking children and opening concentration camps.
We get it, you disagree with OP. Have you considered your comment may come across as a level of unhinged and impotent rhetoric that only moreso proves OP's point? I hope you find peace soon, and I absolutely relate with your distaste of the current atrocitiesāļø
So are they atrocities or not? Because you seem awfully chill about the whole thing, like they're mild inconveniences that aren't actively ruining millions of lives
hope you find peace soon, and I absolutely relate with your distaste of the current atrocitiesāļø
There's nothing outside the text. Whatever you're reading into this is strictly your fantasy. I'm not denying we're in a nightmare, I'm just old and stuck protecting the few that depend on me.
Emphasis on 'potentially'. Don't waste too much time on them, some of them get off on watching you uselessly spend your time and energy and sanity on them. Brainwashing doesn't work like it does in comic books. These are people who were already willing to and capable of rationalizing putting kids into cages and the 'brainwashing' just gave them an easy explanation.
It's like a person who has committed rape. Even if they come out later as an anti-rape activist and they're publicly remorseful and they do a lot of work to make up for the harm they caused you still aren't gonna leave them alone with your sister.
I think the belief that most people are good actually causes people to attack the ones calling out bad behavior, rather than calling out the bad behavior itself, which is a major contributing cause of many societal issues. Some people are truly just bad people, and we need to learn to accept this. I did after the last few years in politics. Can't be an algorithm when they elected the president. "Stay positive" is bad advice when you're trying to accurately identify and solve a problem where things aren't positive.
Nah, Iāve talked to a lot of republicans in real life and almost all of them are just fundamentally bad people who derive joy from hurting and oppressing others.
I legitimately know someone exactly like that. It blows my mind how anybody could be so sociopathic, no human compassion whatsoever, even for the people supposedly nearest & dearest to him.
Iām with you. I mean, its probably the bubble I live in, but Iām so tired of trying to talk to my friends and family about all of this but Iām dismissed as being paranoid or they tell me that Biden was just as bad or frankly most often just some dismissive joke in response.
Iām guessing about as many people care about this as there are who support all of it. The remaining 40-50% is just checked out and thinks this is just politics as usual. Thatās my impression anyway.
You'd probably be shocked at how ignorant most Americans are. See those man-in-the-street interviews Mamdani had with NYC Trump voters? They seemed to know nothing about Trump, just had vibes.
If you get your news and political views from FaceBook, you're going to be ignorant as hell. And if you throw Fox News in, you'll come out knowing even less.
On top of all that, over half of Americans top out at a 6th-grade reading level. 20% are flat out illiterate. Can't find the stat again, but an appalling number of us can't follow along in a novel.
We can't fix anything in this country until we fix education. How can we even speak to people about climate change, collapsing ecosystems, repeating 20th century history, anything at all, when they don't have a basic education?
I totally agree that most Trump voters simply know nothing about him. I maintain an acquaintance with a Trump supporter kind of just out of curiosity and they know incredibly little about him as a person, or the things he's doing as president. They're generally just unaware. He didn't even know that Trump abused emergency powers to bypass Congress to impose tariff taxes on Americans.
But that doesn't mean they aren't a bad person. Not engaging with the democracy you live in and ensuring that it remains healthy makes you a bad person, in my opinion. Too many people sacrificed their lives to give us democracy and not engaging responsibly is unbelievably disrespectful and makes you a bad person. Voting for someone without knowing anything about them makes you a bad person.
Which ironically I believe is the problem with Lemmy too. I tend to browse unfiltered/all/top 6 hours (with the exception of .ml) and the amount of doom and gloom on here either depresses me or makes me angry with everything being reported.
I find I have to step away or switch to highly curated stuff that doesnāt have a drop of real world events in it.
There's a certain amount of catharsis in commiseration. Not all the negativity is due to algorithmic curation; a decent amount is legit sadness/anger at the way things are going in the world.
Which is valid, imho. But I also understand that it requires some serious hand-curating to get only positive information. Reddit is a lot harder in that regard, as well.
People are coherent in my experience but parochial is a fair descriptor. Many can talk your ear off about the shiny object they bought, the minutia of the statistics of their team's star player, or the resort they recently visited while having little to no awareness of broader concepts. Some are completely aloof to concepts that don't involve them.
Whether they're good people.. That depends on how you set the standard. I believe that a fairly self absorbed person can still be a good person but there are many who would disagree with that.
This, more than anything, is why I stick to the Fediverse. There's some negativity here, but it's organic, and generally not being conjured out of thin air to get me to buy shit.
When I log on to FB to check my DM's, it's very obvious what the algo is doing, and I can't be bothered to indulge it.
See I hard coped the "Believe that most people are good" thing, and then I saw numerical data that proves that most people (in the USA), in fact, not only want me to die; but hate most people not like them enough to support a sleazy dictator wanna-be and support a fascist regime, just to destroy the lives of other people who they see as "competition" or "lesser" or "undesirables".
I'd love to if they didn't show their ass IRL as often as online.
I used to believe people were good, but over the years I've just seen worse and worse behavior from the general public to the point that the only way I could possibly believe most people were fundamentally good would be to reject reality.
70 million people voted for Trump twice. They cheer at ICE kidnappings, call racists saints, and such. The reality is that a lot less people are actually good (meaning they care genuinely about the well being of others) than this post makes it seem.
Or just stay away from algorithmic social media, or maybe i mean ad-based for-profit algorithmic social media.
Lemmy doesn't seem to have a particular bent toward conflict the way that Facebook does (I know they're different in a lot of ways). Bluesky doesn't seem to have it, either, although we could still be in the "bait" phase before they "switch."
You have to discipline Algo like a rigid schoolmarm. You will show me lo-fi cyberpunk synthwave. Darker. Darker!
If you're looking for recent news tempered by the context of US history, look up Prof. Heather Cox Richardson and her offerings. Also MSW Media (specifically Daily Beans ) will at least commiserate with you when you hear the bad news, and will offer some hopeful insights.
Mainstream media is not your friend. Don't give them time except to verify news you think is important enough to verify, and then use multiple sources and cull the specific consistent facts.
Also it's often highly subjective what even is "good". That's the root cause of a lot of problems in the first place. Subjective instincts that are considered an objective ethics.
That's not quite the same, though notifications and spam through the app would count.
The corpo LLMs do have a huge sycophancy bias, which would contribute as an addictive effect, I guess (and get people down strange psycological rabbit holes like you see in the news). I'd suggest switching between different models, especially the 'niche' open-weights finetunes on OpenRouter and such, that aren't so sycophantic. And also aren't OpenAI, because Altman is literally a blood sucking con artist.
87 Comments
the_q@lemmy.zip · 59 pts · 342d
EfreetSK@lemmy.world · 22 pts · 342d
When it comes to people you meet each day (friends, colleagues, schoolmates, ...), are there people among them you'd call 'genuinely evil'? Is it a majority of them?
yeahiknow3@lemmings.world · 30 pts · 342d
Daily reminder that 30% of people would vote to bring back chattel slavery if it was convenient.
LadyButterfly@piefed.blahaj.zone · 7 pts · 342d
Yes, but only for foreigners and non whites. Who don't matter obviously
shawn1122@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 342d
Tinidril@midwest.social · 8 pts · 342d
Honestly? Yeah, it's well over a majority. I wouldn't call them 'purely evil', but 'genuinely evil' is pretty much the norm in society. People just tend to compartmentalize their evil.
victorz@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 342d
I feel like this is projection. How tf do you know "well over a majority" of people are compartmentalizing "evil", in a way so good that we can't detect it, but somehow you know this to be true and we should trust you? Why? How? What makes you special in knowing this? I'm sorry if I'm coming off rude, I just don't understand how people can say this with such confidence when they haven't asked "well over a majority" of humans. š
Tinidril@midwest.social · 4 pts · 342d
In 2024 35% of eligible voters didn't vote and 32% voted for Trump. That's not a perfect measure, but it's about as much of a case as can be made. I'm also far less inclined to move any of those 67% over to the "good" side than to move any of the 32% that voted for Harris to the bad side.
victorz@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 342d
I'm sure each of those people think they're doing good though, rather than purposely "compartmentalizing evil."
Tinidril@midwest.social · 2 pts · 342d
Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 342d
In my personal experience, 95+% of people are, at the end of the day, pretty selfish. I donāt mean that they need to be saints, but almost everyone does not want to make small sacrifices to make the world a better place.
Iām talking about people that donāt want to eat less meat or try to consume less, or maybe just give the benefit of the doubt to the other side.
victorz@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 342d
Doesn't make them evil though, just human. The human brain is wired not to make life worse for its host, or its offspring.
Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world · -3 pts · 342d
It feels so weird to pass by incredible filth on a daily basis, but then get taken aback by a worldview. You must have been through a lot, wish I could help somehow.
Tinidril@midwest.social · 7 pts · 342d
Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 342d
Everyone I'm close to knows about the prison industrial complex because we talk to each other. That's how a few of us found out, by knowing people who are activated enough to look into these things and spread the word. As to the rest, I could hit you with a list of things and say "approach the world with intent to confirm this bias" and it would amount to the same thing.
Not being part of the problem takes work, it's true, but wisdom is in knowing people are highly situational, neither inherently good or bad but often entirely unequipped for the world we've created or the heights we've grasped. We're beings of brilliance and kindness but also complacency and disaster. Not evil, but we create many evil situations by accident and shortsightedness.
Tinidril@midwest.social · 2 pts · 342d
Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 342d
We live in different countries. I left the US because it was driving me crazy, and my heart goes out to you since I know a lot of people feel that way but don't have a viable exit strategy. I've put in a lot of work to stop participating in an empire of slavery and stolen land, moved back to the land of my grandparents (which has its own terrible history, perfect being the enemy of good as we all know).
I'm against all the buckets. The only bucket we're all in is a gravity well, and we need to act like it if we're not going to hate it every minute.
Tinidril@midwest.social · 1 pts · 342d
Maybe we live in different neighborhoods. Most of my neighbors are fine with locking "those people" up, and don't much care what happens to them beyond that.
How do you account for the vast majority of eligible voters either not showing up or voting for Trump? That's about as unbiased a measure as I can think of.
So we're on the same page there.
If it takes work to not be part of the problem than aren't people inherently "bad" until they do the work? I didn't introduce that dialectic to this conversation. Of course throwing everyone into two buckets is inherently going to miss a lot of depth.
I'm not sure it was ever any different.
Tinidril@midwest.social · 1 pts · 342d
the_q@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 342d
Shiggles@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 342d
Thereās not a lot of difference between the average german citizen in 1940 and the average westerner today.
Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 342d
Feels almost like a non sequitur, even if not untrue. I know enough history to know that evil is banal, but that chiefly refers to people who stay silent, choose comfort over justice, and follow unethical orders. It's taking things a ways further to say most people are mostly evil, don't you think?
Shiggles@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 342d
Comes down to your definition of evil, really. And how comfortable you are calling the majority of people evil - if you arenāt, obviously youāll jump through a few extra hoops to keep that worldview intact.
Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 342d
Are you only here to sneer? At least do so interestingly.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 342d
Can you be more specific? What is this referring to?
Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 342d
I tend to cruise /all
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 342d
It seems as though you somehow made it less specific lol
Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 342d
https://lemmy.world/?dataType=Post&listingType=All&sort=New
An insane mess
Tinidril@midwest.social · 0 pts · 342d
Tinidril@midwest.social · 0 pts · 342d
Tinidril@midwest.social · 0 pts · 342d
Tinidril@midwest.social · 0 pts · 342d
Go outside and start counting all the absolutely unnecessary gas guzzling SUVs. Walk your neighborhood with a trash bag and see what you collect. Ask yourself how many people you know are aware of the prison industrial complex, or would even care if they did know. How many people want subsidized housing in their neighborhoods to address homelessness? How many want some of the funding for their school districts to go to school districts in less fortunate neighborhoods? If there is a local home in obvious disrepair, how many people will gossip or complain to the municipality compared to how many will ask the neighbor if they need help?
Most people are nice. That's not the same as not being evil. Not being evil takes work.
Feathercrown@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 342d
Holy shit dude how do you dupli-post 10 times
Tinidril@midwest.social · 2 pts · 342d
Weitd. I'm traveling so it was probably network issues.
Tinidril@midwest.social · 0 pts · 342d
Tinidril@midwest.social · 0 pts · 342d
Tinidril@midwest.social · 0 pts · 342d
Tinidril@midwest.social · 0 pts · 342d
Tinidril@midwest.social · -1 pts · 342d
lastweakness@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 341d
Yes and yes, unfortunately.
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 342d
I reject the premise. The term "Evil" is meaningless.
SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org · 13 pts · 342d
Here's my counter: most people are idiots
Feathercrown@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 342d
That doesn't make them good. Being stupid is a rather limited excuse in the face of such great evils we have today.
dsilverz@calckey.world · 1 pts · 342d
@the_q@lemmy.zip @LadyButterfly@piefed.blahaj.zone
@politicalmemes@lemmy.world
I can't help but recall of two quotes: one from Rousseau who said "Humans are born good but society corrupts them", and another from Hobbes who said "Humans are a wolf to humans". While it seems like both thinkers couldn't agree with each other because both statements look different, the logical implications from Rousseau inevitably leads to that of Hobbes. I'll try to explain my point below.
When Rousseau says "society corrupts good humans", he implies the existence of not-good humans because, as we know, society is made out of people (not just Soylent Green). Rousseau implies that the not-good humans were once good until they got corrupted by earlier not-good humans, which were corrupted by even earlier not-good humans... somewhere, non-goodness was born. Causality requires that a non-goodness stemmed from some kind of "patient zero of evilness".
Now, religions would be tempted to think of this "patient zero" as something supernatural: Shaitan, Iblis, Angra Mainyu... It's not exactly wrong (as archetypal representation), but it's not accurate either: it's not something too otherworldly, it's right in front of us or, should I say, inside us.
Take Derren Brown's "The Push" (a documentary about social compliance and conformity): before the auction gala where (spoiler)the person was cluelessly played by a hidden script to push someone from a rooftop, commiting murder to (in their mind) save themself(/spoiler), Derren conducted a "selection process" where the candidates would answer a test: unbeknownst to them, the test was beyond a questionnaire, it was evaluating who would keep standing up and sitting whenever a bell rang. They weren't told to do so: they were, instead, socially pressured to do it, because all the other candidates were doing it. It's the "monkey see, monkey do".
Those who didn't watch The Push (watch it, it's illuminating) might ask: if the candidates weren't told to do it (switch between sitting and standing whenever a bell rings), how did the behavior emerge? The behavior was initially seeded by actors, people who initially acted on it. Then things got funnier: one by one, actors were removed and fresh, clueless candidates were added, until no actors were in the room, yet the behavior continued. It was carried among "generations" (batches of candidates).
There was no devil behind this behavior. One could argue "Derren Brown was the devil behind the scenes, conducting a social experiment", but something motivated those actors (e.g. money), just like something motivated the hypothetical "first evil human" to be evil, except... something also motivated clueless candidates to imitate it, just like something motivated the "Rousseau's good humans" to spread societal corruption.
It's not a devil: it's humans, it's us. We're born with this wolf inside, and it just takes a "push" for it to howl. It's inherent to us because it's inherent to Nature.
Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 342d
Humans are situational. That's what makes them interesting and worthwhile. Anything that is the same in every situation has no heart.
I tend to think that you really see what people are made of in a tight spot. In a nice situation, everyone finds it easy to be kind. But even those who rise to a challenge and show true heart only do so when they really believe it is an option. That is the point of having hope.
DomeGuy@lemmy.world · 36 pts · 342d
Maybe drop a platform owned by a modern-day facist who keeps using your tweets to train his attempt and cyberdyne?
Mastodon and BlueSky are right there.
Deceptichum@quokk.au · 16 pts · 342d
victorz@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 342d
I'll leave Bluesky when it happens, don't worry. Until then it's a pretty cool place so far. š
aislopmukbang@sh.itjust.works · 11 pts · 342d
aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 11 pts · 342d
victorz@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 342d
Kind of a different use case but sure
shawn1122@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 342d
Actual scientifically minded people there. Might as well use it until a takeover happens.
Little8Lost@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 342d
Bsky markets with being decentralised while being not. I mean people can have their own data servers but because of DIDs moderation and other things go back in the hands of the company behind it.
Another red flag is that a main investor is crypto bros and that the ceo or something is crypto friendly but they gave promises not to shove crypto currency up their users.
Is it worth using?
If you use mastodon + bridgy i dont think so
If you want to use it because all your friends are using it: i wont stop you but thats what bridgy is there for
If you dont like platforms where a significant amount is a linux user: then maybe bsky is better
and a + of bsky is that users can make their own algorithms i think easily and that those can get shared.
DomeGuy@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 341d
At least one interoperable PDS has come online, and the network later folks seem entirely aware of the single point of failure that their "firehouse" model suffers from. More importantly, their entire value proposition isnt "were not Twitter", but rather "if we become evil you should be able to pack up and go elsewhere."
It's fashionable on Lemmy to bash Bsky, but the difference really is comparable to the old GNU Hurd project vs Linux. The two most successful FOSS systems ever (Linux and git) took a sucess-first, share-later model while an opinionated actor in charge. I dont mean to argue that this is philosophically better or appropriate for all projects, just that there's precedent for FOSS starting less open than it eventually becomes.
reddifuge@lemmy.world · 25 pts · 342d
Oooh, and here I thought the GOP was a bunch of Nazis fucking children. Guess it's just the algorithm fucking children and opening concentration camps.
Ging@anarchist.nexus · -13 pts · 342d
We get it, you disagree with OP. Have you considered your comment may come across as a level of unhinged and impotent rhetoric that only moreso proves OP's point? I hope you find peace soon, and I absolutely relate with your distaste of the current atrocitiesāļø
Feathercrown@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 342d
So which is it? Are these atrocities happening, or is it just the algorithm pushing that narrative? You can't have it both ways (it's real, btw).
Ledivin@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 341d
So are they atrocities or not? Because you seem awfully chill about the whole thing, like they're mild inconveniences that aren't actively ruining millions of lives
Ging@anarchist.nexus · -2 pts · 341d
There's nothing outside the text. Whatever you're reading into this is strictly your fantasy. I'm not denying we're in a nightmare, I'm just old and stuck protecting the few that depend on me.
reddifuge@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 341d
You Republicans never cease to make me laugh.
Ging@anarchist.nexus · 0 pts · 341d
The pubbers are baseless as all hell now--what makes you think I'm one of em homeboy?
finitebanjo@piefed.world · 20 pts · 342d
DarkFuture@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 342d
Yeah, talk to enough conservatives IRL and you'll know this is bullshit.
Selfish, evil human beings. Whether they realize it or not.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 342d
Except for the elites, I think it's more constructive to think of them as brainwashed by an ancient meme; potentially redeemable.
o1011o@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 341d
Emphasis on 'potentially'. Don't waste too much time on them, some of them get off on watching you uselessly spend your time and energy and sanity on them. Brainwashing doesn't work like it does in comic books. These are people who were already willing to and capable of rationalizing putting kids into cages and the 'brainwashing' just gave them an easy explanation.
It's like a person who has committed rape. Even if they come out later as an anti-rape activist and they're publicly remorseful and they do a lot of work to make up for the harm they caused you still aren't gonna leave them alone with your sister.
Feathercrown@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 342d
I think the belief that most people are good actually causes people to attack the ones calling out bad behavior, rather than calling out the bad behavior itself, which is a major contributing cause of many societal issues. Some people are truly just bad people, and we need to learn to accept this. I did after the last few years in politics. Can't be an algorithm when they elected the president. "Stay positive" is bad advice when you're trying to accurately identify and solve a problem where things aren't positive.
ayyy@sh.itjust.works · 18 pts · 342d
Nah, Iāve talked to a lot of republicans in real life and almost all of them are just fundamentally bad people who derive joy from hurting and oppressing others.
LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 341d
I legitimately know someone exactly like that. It blows my mind how anybody could be so sociopathic, no human compassion whatsoever, even for the people supposedly nearest & dearest to him.
Blackmist@feddit.uk · 15 pts · 342d
How I wish that was true.
4grams@awful.systems · 14 pts · 342d
Iām with you. I mean, its probably the bubble I live in, but Iām so tired of trying to talk to my friends and family about all of this but Iām dismissed as being paranoid or they tell me that Biden was just as bad or frankly most often just some dismissive joke in response.
Iām guessing about as many people care about this as there are who support all of it. The remaining 40-50% is just checked out and thinks this is just politics as usual. Thatās my impression anyway.
Formfiller@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 342d
How could most people be good if they voted for the the pedo king three times?
shalafi@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 342d
You'd probably be shocked at how ignorant most Americans are. See those man-in-the-street interviews Mamdani had with NYC Trump voters? They seemed to know nothing about Trump, just had vibes.
If you get your news and political views from FaceBook, you're going to be ignorant as hell. And if you throw Fox News in, you'll come out knowing even less.
On top of all that, over half of Americans top out at a 6th-grade reading level. 20% are flat out illiterate. Can't find the stat again, but an appalling number of us can't follow along in a novel.
We can't fix anything in this country until we fix education. How can we even speak to people about climate change, collapsing ecosystems, repeating 20th century history, anything at all, when they don't have a basic education?
DarkFuture@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 342d
I totally agree that most Trump voters simply know nothing about him. I maintain an acquaintance with a Trump supporter kind of just out of curiosity and they know incredibly little about him as a person, or the things he's doing as president. They're generally just unaware. He didn't even know that Trump abused emergency powers to bypass Congress to impose tariff taxes on Americans.
But that doesn't mean they aren't a bad person. Not engaging with the democracy you live in and ensuring that it remains healthy makes you a bad person, in my opinion. Too many people sacrificed their lives to give us democracy and not engaging responsibly is unbelievably disrespectful and makes you a bad person. Voting for someone without knowing anything about them makes you a bad person.
shawn1122@sh.itjust.works · 7 pts · 342d
Most people did not vote which is a different kind of bad
ramble81@lemmy.zip · 13 pts · 342d
Which ironically I believe is the problem with Lemmy too. I tend to browse unfiltered/all/top 6 hours (with the exception of .ml) and the amount of doom and gloom on here either depresses me or makes me angry with everything being reported.
I find I have to step away or switch to highly curated stuff that doesnāt have a drop of real world events in it.
Kyrgizion@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 342d
There's a certain amount of catharsis in commiseration. Not all the negativity is due to algorithmic curation; a decent amount is legit sadness/anger at the way things are going in the world. Which is valid, imho. But I also understand that it requires some serious hand-curating to get only positive information. Reddit is a lot harder in that regard, as well.
LadyButterfly@piefed.blahaj.zone · 6 pts · 342d
Come hang out with us at !wholesome@reddthat.com and !NiceMemes@sopuli.xyz there is only joy there
fading_person@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 342d
CuddlyCassowary@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 342d
I think theyāre saying they use the āTop -> 6 hrsā category to sort posts when they browse.
primrosepathspeedrun@anarchist.nexus · 11 pts · 342d
Most people are incoherent and parochial. That's not 'good', but it's certainly not what you see online.
I do very much recommend talking to people. The conversations can be amazing if you hold a straight face.
shawn1122@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 342d
People are coherent in my experience but parochial is a fair descriptor. Many can talk your ear off about the shiny object they bought, the minutia of the statistics of their team's star player, or the resort they recently visited while having little to no awareness of broader concepts. Some are completely aloof to concepts that don't involve them.
Whether they're good people.. That depends on how you set the standard. I believe that a fairly self absorbed person can still be a good person but there are many who would disagree with that.
primrosepathspeedrun@anarchist.nexus · 4 pts · 342d
I wouldn't say most are good or bad.
But seriously talk to someone at a cafe or bus stop about politics, philosophy, or science. It gets goofy fast.
FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 342d
This, more than anything, is why I stick to the Fediverse. There's some negativity here, but it's organic, and generally not being conjured out of thin air to get me to buy shit.
When I log on to FB to check my DM's, it's very obvious what the algo is doing, and I can't be bothered to indulge it.
arin@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 342d
Not with this government, 3rd world countries are installing solar while our leader is canceling solar and i cannot get panels
Ledivin@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 342d
Does it matter that most people are good if most people in power aren't, and they have an army of similar-minded people following their orders?
explodicle@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 342d
Because there's more of us than there are of them, so perhaps we can do something about it.
Toneswirly@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 342d
not to mention all the troll bots. If you are arguing online, theres a good chance its just a bot/
LadyButterfly@piefed.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 342d
I know it's scary
discosnails@lemmy.wtf · 7 pts · 342d
It's a nice thought. Absurd, but nice.
KelvarCherry@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 6 pts · 341d
See I hard coped the "Believe that most people are good" thing, and then I saw numerical data that proves that most people (in the USA), in fact, not only want me to die; but hate most people not like them enough to support a sleazy dictator wanna-be and support a fascist regime, just to destroy the lives of other people who they see as "competition" or "lesser" or "undesirables".
tomkatt@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 341d
I'd love to if they didn't show their ass IRL as often as online.
I used to believe people were good, but over the years I've just seen worse and worse behavior from the general public to the point that the only way I could possibly believe most people were fundamentally good would be to reject reality.
Strocker89@lemmynsfw.com · 5 pts · 341d
70 million people voted for Trump twice. They cheer at ICE kidnappings, call racists saints, and such. The reality is that a lot less people are actually good (meaning they care genuinely about the well being of others) than this post makes it seem.
ristoril_zip@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 342d
Or just stay away from algorithmic social media, or maybe i mean ad-based for-profit algorithmic social media.
Lemmy doesn't seem to have a particular bent toward conflict the way that Facebook does (I know they're different in a lot of ways). Bluesky doesn't seem to have it, either, although we could still be in the "bait" phase before they "switch."
Cyberflunk@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 342d
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 342d
You have to discipline Algo like a rigid schoolmarm. You will show me lo-fi cyberpunk synthwave. Darker. Darker!
If you're looking for recent news tempered by the context of US history, look up Prof. Heather Cox Richardson and her offerings. Also MSW Media (specifically Daily Beans ) will at least commiserate with you when you hear the bad news, and will offer some hopeful insights.
Mainstream media is not your friend. Don't give them time except to verify news you think is important enough to verify, and then use multiple sources and cull the specific consistent facts.
yeahiknow3@lemmings.world · 1 pts · 342d
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de · 1 pts · 342d
Also it's often highly subjective what even is "good". That's the root cause of a lot of problems in the first place. Subjective instincts that are considered an objective ethics.
Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club · 1 pts · 342d
Will, listening to a very narrow group of people (the ones you talk to) exposes you to a whole other set of risks.
The real key is education & (legit) trust in institutions.
aceshigh@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 342d
brucethemoose@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 342d
That's not quite the same, though notifications and spam through the app would count.
The corpo LLMs do have a huge sycophancy bias, which would contribute as an addictive effect, I guess (and get people down strange psycological rabbit holes like you see in the news). I'd suggest switching between different models, especially the 'niche' open-weights finetunes on OpenRouter and such, that aren't so sycophantic. And also aren't OpenAI, because Altman is literally a blood sucking con artist.