• 1 Post
  • 789 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: January 24th, 2024
  • I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.world•Cloudflare defies Italy’s Piracy Shield, won’t block websites on 1.1.1.1 DNSEnglish
    42·
    1 day ago

    A lot of people don’t seem to remember Alex Jones getting banned from YouTube in 2018. While rightwing, ultra-MAGA’s were already a thing, they were relatively small compared today. Alex Jones was the first high profile ban from social media and it was like tossing gasoline onto a small bush fire.

    You have to remember that Trump did not win the first time because he had an army of fanatics. A lot of other factors were at play; from people still upset about the DNC’s snubbing of Bernie, to people who weren’t fully paying attention (remember, politics used to be boring), to people who voted for Trump simply “for the lols” (don’t discount this last group, any historical account that doesn’t factor in how important internet memes were to getting that man elected is being willfully ignorant) . Die-hard MAGA’s were relatively rare, and usually a source of ridicule.

    Until their spokespeople started getting banned from places. It seems so small by today’s standards. People get banned and deplatformed all the time. But Alex Jones was the first real incident, and people saw it as a massive attack on free speech. To his relatively small number of followers, the man had his free speech rights violated by the left-wing news cabal for daring to speak the TRUTH™. Suddenly, all their bullshit was justified.

    I’ve always been pretty far-left but I got a deep chill when that happened. I remember remarking to my friends that banning political speech, no matter how full of shit, would only cause problems in the long run, and so it has. Precedent was broken, and the right took it as a declaration of war. I truly believe things would not have gotten nearly as insane as they are had Google not decided to ban him. He deserved it, but they opened a door that couldn’t be shut again; and following this was a couple years of high-profile bans of rightwing figureheads and safe-spaces, all cumulating to the shut down of /r/theDonald in 2020. And the infection, which had been contained to a few small corners of the internet, suddenly exploded.

  • I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.worldtoGames@sh.itjust.works•Ubisoft Closes Halifax Studio Just After Employees UnionizedEnglish
    915·
    5 days ago

    I support unions, but at this point I’d be terrified to join a new one. Especially when you’re somewhere owned by a large company or private equity firm. There are just no protections for unions anymore, and these days large companies would rather just close down entire departments than give employees basic rights.

    I get that the fear and intimidation are the point, but that really doesn’t help. Having a gun pointed in your face is also a form of fear and intimidation, but knowing that doesn’t make it any less dangerous when it happens to you.

    I just don’t know what to do anymore, every single thing feels like a losing option while the world just continues to get worse and worse. I’ve scrimped and saved for years to have some sort of nest egg, and its barely more than what more successful people casually spend in a week. I don’t see a way out of this mess.

  • I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.worldtoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world•Who care about book
    1·
    6 days ago

    A lot fucking less than the internet would have you believe. Take a second and examine all your evidence for believing “there are people who actually hold this opinion”. Does it all come from the internet? Almost entirely from no-context screenshots or clips that seem suspiciously scripted? Do you think maybe those aren’t the best sources?

    That’s the problem every time these fake as shit posts are created. There are always folks in the comments that rush to defend it by going “well it might be fake THIS time, but it sounds like something that COULD happen, so I’m gonna still file it away as evidence that it does.”

    Like, I’m sure SOME people exist like that. There are 8.3 billion people in this world, that’s enough that you can always find a handful that believe anything. There is a non-zero number of people that enjoy eating literal shit, but that doesn’t mean they are everywhere.

    And before you say it (because this is always the reply), if your evidence for their existence is the results of elections or the abundance of stupid people, that is faulty logic. There is an ocean of separation between people who are simply idiots, and those that actually hold opinions like “Libraries are a waste cuz they’re full of books. Why book when internet?”