stabby_cicada

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Strangely, I think this article gives Musk too much credit for good intentions. It assumes he honestly wanted to make government more efficient and fucked it up.

I think he wanted to, one, eliminate the dozens of DOJ investigations into his companies and delete the evidence they'd collected; two, sabotage every government agency that might possibly interfere with his companies in future, doing so much damage that it would be decades before they could return to even their pathetic Biden-era level of effectiveness; and three, collect all the US government's information about us in one place so he could steal it for his surveillance machines.

Musk accomplished all of that brilliantly, and then fucked off to enjoy his trillion-dollar victory lap.

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stabby_cicada @slrpnk.net 7mo ago

Capitalism isn't a political system. It's an economic system.

And I think it's totally fair to point out how "a company making a product worse because they make more money off the worse product" is one of the flaws of a capitalist economy.

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stabby_cicada @slrpnk.net 8mo ago

There were no primaries in 2024....

That's the fucking point.

Don't tell me I can fight the billionaire masters of the Democratic Party in the primaries when those billionaire masters canceled the primaries just last year.

We need a new progressive movement, not just to outcompete the failed Democrats, but to move this country away from a broken system of electoral politics that lets us "choose" between two oligarchs from the Epstein caste and calls it democracy. We don't need progressives banging their heads against a billionaire funded wall and lending credibility to a rigged primary process through their participation.

stabby_cicada @slrpnk.net 8mo ago

And before that, Obama, Kerry, and if I remember right even fucking Gore were all accused of being the most radical left Presidential candidates in American history.

Funny how the Democratic Party keeps running more and more progressive candidates - both the Republicans and Democrats say they're doing it, so it must be true - and yet the Democratic Party keeps moving more and more to the right.

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stabby_cicada @slrpnk.net 8mo ago

Remember Democrats, if he's the Democrat option come election time it's TOO LATE TO bitch!!

And that's why I'm not a Democrat.

Jesus Christ, if you think Presidential primaries matter, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell you. If the Democratic primaries weren't rigged to hell and back Bernie would have finished his second term last January. And if Democrats had been allowed to have a primary in 2024 Newsom would probably be president now.

If you want us to believe that your primaries are an opportunity for actual choice, maybe you shouldn't have appointed a 2024 Presidential candidate who never, in her entire life, won a single fucking primary.

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stabby_cicada @slrpnk.net 9mo ago

But people already have a public place to appeal. This sub, the sub you linked, pretty much any other instance that has a meta discussion community. But posting here, or there, isn't an actual appeal process - it's just publicly complaining about administrators.

And that was the answer to OP's question: that there's no single fediverse-wide place to appeal a ban, you have to follow instance specific appeal procedures, if they exist, and/or contact the instance's administrators directly.

Which is a good thing, because it helps keep the verse decentralized.

I think, if there was a single location where the fediverse started telling people "if you get banned, post here to appeal", users would expect some sort of formal response to their post, and get upset when people tell them posting there doesn't actually do anything. Which would be bad. And if that location could do anything to encourage administrators to reverse ban decisions, via peer pressure or otherwise, that would also be bad, because it would compromise the independence of instances. That is to say, a fediverse wide appeal community would be at best useless and at worst harmful to the fediverse.

So I think the only appropriate response to "I was banned, what can I do" is "that's between you and the people who banned you".

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stabby_cicada @slrpnk.net 9mo ago

I think any sort of fediverse-wide appeal community, or process, would risk compromising the whole point of the fediverse, ie, decentralization. The fact that admins have the final say on their own instances is part of what keeps the largest instances from controlling smaller ones and keeps the fediverse free of centralized control.

I mean, can you imagine a coalition of the largest instances coming together and telling a small instance "the appeal community agreed this user was banned unfairly, unban them or we'll all defederate you"? Because I can imagine that sequence of events, if an appeal community got any kind of formal backing from the big instances, and that would pretty much end decentralization.

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stabby_cicada @slrpnk.net 10mo ago

One of the freedoms the American military purportedly protects is the freedom to talk shit about the American military.

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stabby_cicada @slrpnk.net 10mo ago

At least the newly unemployed soldiers will have a nice well-paying paramilitary to join, so they can keep supporting their wives and their wives' boyfriends.

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stabby_cicada @slrpnk.net 10mo ago

If the Trump administration, and especially Project 2025, have taught America anything, it's that libertarians don't fucking have ideals.

Libertarians spouted propaganda about small government and free speech and privacy until conservative authoritarians took power. And then they cheered while conservative authoritarians built the most extensive police state and government surveillance apparatus in American history and began arresting people for writing op-eds and posting memes.

Libertarians, like Republicans, never actually supported small government or free speech or the privacy of citizens. They deployed the rhetoric of small government and free speech and privacy as weapons to attack liberals and prevent Democratic administrations from pursuing their policy goals. Now that conservatives are in power, those weapons are no longer useful, and libertarians have discarded them.

Libertarian "ideals" were weapons against Democratic government, and they were never anything else.

And to get back to your point: of course libertarians spout rhetoric about financial privacy while keeping cryptocurrency in centralized KYC exchanges. Because crypto was never about privacy as an ideal. It was about bypassing financial regulations, laundering money, dodging taxes, grifting, scamming normies, and gambling on pumps and dumps. Crypto bros talk a good game about privacy and independence to shield themselves from regulation and make themselves look legitimate. Anyone who actually believes that crap is a useful idiot that probably lost all their money in a cryptoscam.

stabby_cicada @slrpnk.net 11mo ago

There are more comments in this thread alone than this MAGA site will probably ever host. (Trolls and spammers motivated by this thread don't count 😆 )

And honestly? The biggest takeaway from these comments is how many users don't understand the difference between a protocol and a platform.

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stabby_cicada @slrpnk.net 11mo ago

...it's a joke.

It's literally a joke.

No rational person would believe they're calling themselves terrorists literally.

The message here is "liberals will think the worst of us no matter what we do, so why not just call ourselves terrorists, lol". And by taking it seriously you prove them right.

And after the barrage of cringe tone deaf "humor" about a fucking political assassination I think my side doesn't have room to criticize other people's jokes.

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stabby_cicada @slrpnk.net 11mo ago

An attempt at censorship failed because the censors didn't understand the system they were trying to censor. I think that's both funny and satisfying.

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stabby_cicada @slrpnk.net 11mo ago

The Trump administration is going mask off in so many ways that have nothing to do with racism. Though that too.

This is connected to all the formal groveling sessions where Trump's minions or big tech CEOs take turns thanking Trump for existing and for being the incredible awesome masculine big-handed alpha male America needs. And this is banana republic dictator shit, sure. But it's also how billionaires act towards their employees and subordinates.

All of them.

What Donald Trump is doing in public is no different from what Zuck and Musk and Bezos and all their ilk do in private with their lower caste servants and sycophants.

Demand flattery, hold court and let their courtiers line up to praise them, because they don't understand the difference between flattery and respect. Reward obedience and punish disobedience, because they don't know the difference between obedience and loyalty. And wield your power blatantly and without subtlety, suck up to your superiors and bully your inferiors into obedience, because they don't know the difference between strength and authority.

Trump does this shit in public because he doesn't believe Americans care about equality anymore. He thinks Americans want to be led by a powerful alpha male leader who demands public displays of submission and gets them. He thinks America doesn't want a President, first among equals, but a King, who stands above his subjects. And, unfortunately, I don't think he's wrong.

And the King is pleased - pleased - when their subordinates come to literal physical blows over access to the King. Because such men confuse aggression with strength, just as they confuse flattery with respect.

Two of Trump's courtiers were so desperate for his approval that they almost came to blows over it. These are two men so manly that they are willing to physically fight other men who disrespect them - which makes them two alpha males, as conservative minds see it - and these two alpha males respect Trump so much that they're willing to physically fight for Trump's attention.

In the mind of Trump and those like him, this is one of the greatest compliments he can receive.

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stabby_cicada @slrpnk.net 11mo ago

If you wanted to summarise this letter on a t-shirt, it would be “People > Protocols > Platforms”.

Can I get this under Calvin pissing on a Disney logo?

Seriously, this is now my favorite summary of the fediverse.

stabby_cicada @slrpnk.net 11mo ago

But someday after that, we’ll reach a point when the phrase “social media is all fake robo-crap” will be as common of knowledge as “cigarettes cause cancer” or “slot machines are a poor investment”. Adults can still smoke and slot, sure. But nobody in the developed world can say they weren’t warned of the risks.

Prescient.