Of course. That's easy.

Only one person in those examples intended to kill someone, and then followed through with the plan. Murder is worse than unintentionally killing and hurting people through negligence.

It's really easy to explain.

Thinking that isn’t going to lead to more actual children being exploited is extremely naive.

That particular argument doesn't hold water. We don't generally subscribe to this kind of argument.

The general principle behind the specific argument you bring up here is this: All expression which is likely to inspire someone toward illegal action should itself be illegal.

CP is likely to inspire some people toward child abuse. Child abuse is illegal. Thus the distribution of CP should be illegal.

We don't do this anywhere else.

Descriptions of non consesnual violence are likely to inspire some people toward non consensual violence. Non consensual violence is illegal. Thus the distribution of all descriptions of non consensual violence should be illegal.

If we take this seriously, we have to ban action movies. And I am not even getting into the whole porn debate...

No, the only valid reason for banning the distribution of child porn which I can think of, lies in the rights of the victims. The victims were abused, and their image was used without their consent. Without them even possibly being able to give consent to any of that, or the distribution that follows.

So anyone who shares child porn, is guaranteed to share a piece of media which shows someone being subjected to a crime, while they couldn't possibly give consent for that to be recorded, or shared publicly. Making it illegal to share someone being a victim of a crime, without them being able to consent to that being shared, is a reasoning which has far fewer problems than what you propose here.

Reddit has more users than lemmy. Can't be that bad then!

And there are small independent artists who want to display their latest artwork to an audience of followers on a social media platform, with the potential of broader reach and impact. And there are activists, who aim to raise awareness by doing the same thing.

What you seem to be saying, is that social networks like Mastodon are not for that. No artists. No activism.

So, what's Mastodon for?

I think this opinion is a bit... strange.

So no, spending an hour putting pixels on r/place is not a great way to stick it to Reddit. Constantly talking about Reddit and basically giving it free ad-space and mind share on Lemmy also does not stick it to Reddit. The original poster is correct: best thing is a blank canvas.

This is basically a rehash of: "There is no bad publicity!"

That's complete nonsense. An advertiser looks at a few things in a website to advertise on. Three very important factors: Traffic, because you want a sufficient number of people to potentially click your ad. Engagement, because people who participate on the website will be more likely to click your ad and then buy something. AND brand identity. That third one is the reason why advertising Disney plus on PornHub might be a bad idea, even if PornHub has great engagement and traffic.

This third factor is the problem reddit is currently facing, and has always been facing: Really big players spend millions on PR so that they are catching the current feeling of what is hip, young, and positive in their advertising and brand identity. They also want to advertise their product on websites which give people the same feeling: They want their product displayed on websites which feel young, hip, and positive. You do not want your product associated and displayed on a website whose userbase is obviously annoyed, negative, and keeps shouting "Fuck Spez", whatever that means.

That has been a reddit problem for quite a long time: It never had a brand identity which was glitzy and positive enough to be very attractive. It isn't young, and hip, and positive. It always had the stigma of being a "nerd cave". Which is fine, if you have a product that you don't mind to be associated with that, and if the userbase is happy with that. "When did the Narwahl bacon?", was cringey as fuck, but it reflected an essentially positive attitude and feeling of a userbase which didn't mind to be associated with the site. As an advertiser you can work with that, and cann piggyback on that.

You do not want to piggyback on "Fuck Spez". Because you don't want your product to be associated with an obvious feeling of negativity and frustration. You don't want your brand to be caught in that. The best option for an advertiser when faced with a website that carries clear negative reputation and connotations, is to just not be there.

So, I think what you are saying here, is not true. It would be better for reddit, if nobody talked about reddit. A bad reputation, and a brand identity associated with "frustration" (in exchange for more clicks and engagement) is far worse than being a "mostly neutral nerd cave", which is a bit less popular.

Elections are coming up. I remember the time around 2016. Nothing new under the sun.

A more accurate analogy is tolerating the abusive person because you don’t want to completely lost contact with many other people you care about

Thing is: Communities also can leave. If the community cares about its mods in the same way the mods care about the community, a move toward an alterantive medium is not a problem.

Of course that's not how it is. The communities at large to a good part don't give a shit about the people who moderate. The relationship is often entirely one sided. A community which cares, leaves with the mods. A community which doesn't give a fuck, stays.

Do you notice a pattern?

Every single one of those is either SF or Fantasy.

There are a lot of artsy lovers of literature out there who hate exactly those genres, and who have a burning passion to fix all the (perceived) flaws which (in their view) come baked into them.

As I see it, that's a big part of the problem: For the last century "a writer" was always "the literary type". There were some nerds who pretended to be writers. And those wrote pulp, SF, fantasy, and comics. Those were not real writers. You wouldn't hire one of those, if you wanted to have a real, well crafted story. At least that has been a rather common prejudice for the last 100 years or so.

And now, all of a sudden (over the last 20 years), the most popular franchises, generating the most income, all turned into SF and Fantasy, while eating everything else in their path.

In that context, I don't think the current situation is all that surprising. If you want to hire "a real writer", there is a good chance that you will hit one who despises what writers were taught to despise for the last hundred years. In an unlucky twist for everyone involved, that also happens to be what they now have to write.

For me what I appreciate most about current lemmy, is the difference in approach between an "early adopter crew" and "mostly mainstream".

What drew me to reddit about 15 years ago was the notable difference in climate between it, and a lot of other more mainstream social media platforms. That difference withered away over time, which, in hindsight, lead me to run.

That "running" happened within reddit: First I started off my interaction with reddit at the frontpage. Until the frontpage became a cesspool. Then I made my own frontpage, with subs that were funny and interested me. Until every sub that even had the potential to hit the frontpage, suffered its own slow decline toward "YouTube comment section discourse". So the subs I frequented and participated in, became more and more niche, smaller, and more specialized.

It's not that my interests shifted all that much, toward "a few extremely narrow and specific things". In hindsight it seems clear that I was just running away from the "commercial giant mainstream social media thing", that most of reddit was becoming.

Running away from reddit is only the last step in that long process :D

That happens at times on the internet. I have to agree with the general impression though: I have only been here quite shortly, but the feel seems closer to "the reddit of olden days" for the general tone and feeling. Mostly a good thing.

If antivax views weren’t being removed, way fewer people would believe in them.

If google removed Coca Cola ads from their service, more people would buy coke.

Exactly! It just takes everyone to choose to not murder people, then murder is not a problem. It is all a question of individual responsibility.

I abhor those leftist communists who always aim to regulate matters to death, when it's just so simple: Just individually choose to not murder people. Then we don't need all this communist "laws" and "regulations" crap! Because individuals have the power to do everything. Everyone just has to be a good person, and do the right thing! The solution to every problem in society is so simple! America! Fuck yeah! /s