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this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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politics
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Okay, it's been a few hours and I think the thread will be quieter now.
Read or don't. I know you owe me nothing.
My thinking, and I think the down votes bear this out, is there is a very large gap between experiences and perspectives.
If a person is comfortable and believes either the institutions will prevail, bad dem behavior can't go unpunished, or fascism may benefit them - or not harm... all of these allow for a more easy path to considering not voting for a Democrat (or at all). It need not even be consciously thought.
Meanwhile I've seen some Lemmings lose their mind about things they are entitled to. Like YouTube without ads, FOSS (where their version of the F is literally free), apps for lemmy, and politics. There is a vein of entitlement to free things and to others' votes.
It's not everyone, it's not close to everyone. But it is disproportionate to my life outside of this space.
And instead of discussing the urgency of the situation, the role of empathy in seeing that fascism is bigger than just whether it directly harms you or not... Its a dosing of down votes for not aligning.
For me, this is putting me off sympathy for those struggling - even if I am one. It just looks entitled and not like a cry for help. Even if that's what it is underneath it all.
Raw, near panicked desperation that the country and the world will all fall to pieces and the elders and privileged won't even give fuckall. They got theirs, you get yours.
It's complicated. Or maybe I just think this wrong. But I've never seen so many people lose their minds so easily as I see it here. This place breeds anxiety and anger.
I'm evaluating the wisdom of using lemmy, personally.
Here's how I see it - we're all fucked, as a species, and yet no seems to feel any urgency. There's no compromising with reality, but the Democrats do nothing but compromise between the rosy picture the populace generally believes in, and the imaginary world Republicans paint
Many Republicans are quite literally fascists. They'll tear down the system to extend their time in power. They'll pick one enemy after another, and impose their way of living on us.
Biden is progressive for a neo-liberal. That means he'll occasionally do something good, but mostly just keep the status quo.
We need to be making large, sweeping changes. IDGAF about YouTube - I care about what it means. YouTube blocking ads is no different than my grocery bill going up by 30%, or search results sucking so bad knowledge becomes unfindable.
It's late stage capitalism - we're being pushed into the age of techno-fuedalism. Instead of physical ownership, we're being locked into virtual fiefs where companies tax us and control the information we're exposed to.
That's the issue here - free access to information is a big fucking deal. If YouTube shut down, I'd be sad... But it's not nearly as big a deal as YouTube demonstrating disdain for both users and law.
IDK... This is all very interrelated in complex ways. This probably comes off as a rant, but these things are intimately interconnected. Basically, these are all symptoms of the same existential threat to our species.
I can't explain it all briefly - you have to think systematically, and that's more of a college course than an essay, let alone a comment. But if nothing else, remember how systems die, from computers to a human body... They sputter, and then collapse all at once. These are sputters. The global just-in-time supply chain snapping will be the collapse... Whether it comes from a natural disaster or because too many workers become desperate enough to fight, this is a civilization level problem
I with you on a lot of this. I can't expect a free service of... Anyone. It's part of my zen. I can be delighted that things are available, that I can afford certain things but despite being 50, my experience has been Millennial and I am Not even where I "should be" at 30.
I like Dark Brandon and wish we saw him more often. When he fights for us, I'm more than pleased. The union wins are a celebration and I hope begin to set an expectation back to actual living wages.
And I want those vehicles to be green, with great batteries and range. That's only one piece of the puzzle, but it's my main direct carbon contribution and I WFH.
Appreciate the discussion. It's helpful.
Sure, and I'm with you there. It sounds like your values are in the right place, but marketing affects everyone, and nearly all of our media is owned by billionaires who have repeated the same narrative until we internalize it.
Electric cars and working from home are great, but they're not a solution - they're a compromise between reality and the status quo. Just like recycling - it's a way to sell personal responsibility, but it's entirely ineffective. They don't even pretend to recycle anymore, they just throw it into the dump, because it was never a solution to single use packaging, it was marketing.
We have to stop the carbon at a system level, by realigning incentives to make companies feel the hurt for the damage they do, and then deal with the consequences.
But back to the topic at hand...I guess if I had to sum it up, it's not about being entitled to free things.
It's about the deal being altered unilaterally in a very hostile way for short term profits. These things were free because that's how the numbers worked out... This isn't about profits or revenue, it's about investors
Look at unity - they killed their own company, and damaged an entire industry. And for what? They couldn't even answer basic questions about how their wild licensing scheme change would work. A small group who knew it was coming made a lot of money, but far more value was destroyed
YouTube is the same - the numbers have been worked out. This action makes ads worth less because it'll lower conversion, makes the experience worse for everyone, and shrinks the pie for the creators that make a living on the platform.
At the end of the day, this is logging companies cutting down the whole forest and putting themselves out of business. The investors make more money at first, which they can reinvest in the next thing. Meanwhile, we have a bunch of loggers out of a job, a destroyed forest, and people still need wood. They can move on to destroy another forest with a new company, and make even more money if they own the shipping too.
From the owners perspective, it's taking the lump sum instead of the annuity.
That's the issue here - companies are destroying value. It's extremely profitable for a small number of people, but the whole pie shrinks.
In the case of a marketplace (or platform) you get enshittification, in the case of an industry you have endless acquisitions and downsizing.
The key driving force is the same - it's late stage capitalism. We have to suppress these lose-lose situations systematically, because chopping down the forest and reinvesting is always the more profitable choice so long as it's on the table.
This kind of went all over the place because to me this is all about looking at misaligned incentives in our system, but there's a Enshittification essay that is an approachable starting point to break down the YouTube and Reddit issue we started with
"So anyway, I block YouTube ads" lol
...Do you think that's a contradiction or something?
That you don't is quite telling lol
It's telling about one of us alright...
I'm not sure if you think "free" here means without paying, or if you don't understand the difference between the ability to access information and the ability to force others to view information
"information should be free"
"Here's this massive source of literally all the information that could ever exist."
"People should have to pay for that because I don't want to watch ads."
Now you're violating both versions of "free" by both creating a closed system where before it was not and requiring a barrier of entry most won't overcome.
Jokes on you, I think YouTube is terrible, and should be split apart or run democratically. If it shut down, it would suck for a while, but we'd be better off as a society with more fragmentation. I'd be fine with less video and more blogs even, but that doesn't work so long as the platform is so large
Also, the value of ads is on conversion rate. Lower value means you need more ads per view, and users will only tolerate so many ads (0 for me). This is a losing move for YouTube, which is why they've quickly rolled it back when they did this previously
But if you don't get the concept of how these types of ads restrict freedom of information, I don't know what to tell you
Reddit is my reference point, but I understand only those who think in specific ways were likely to jump (e.g. Moral clarity around API, spez, moderation/permitted acts).
So it was a subset of reddit (not representative) that joined lemmy, which is also not representative.
What I think I see is what I've described elsewhere: white males realizing the tide went out for them, too. Then, not realizing that they have unchecked privilege, acting out and acting like they can tell people how to vote or to vote, how to run their app, run their service, etc.
It is either entitlement, privilege or both. It's, for me, the most off putting thing since I joined. Not simply this thread, but many others.
Let me add, I'm not Mr Lawnorder. I just think, historically, complaining and demanding doesn't change things, nor is it persuausive. And the specifics of the acts matter. Strikes work. Boycotts may. Streaming around ads... Will not work except to provide content for free to a user for a while, at the detriment of YT and the content creator. I believe it also hardens an attitude that seeps into other parts of life.