I always felt the Onion should have pivoted to actual news after the world jumped the shark. Seeing posts from them these days is just depressing…

What is there to learn that we don’t already know? The USA jockeyed for geopolitical influence during the Cold War, the USSR dissolved and was captured by capitalist interests, and now the Russian Federation is waging wars to protect and project their own influence.

Getting into the nitty gritty is pointless if you truly believe all sides are bad actors. The discourse online is a hollow wedge issue; just countless whataboutisms egging the masses to pick sides and keep the focus off of the people looting and destroying everything.

I think the umbrage most people take is when that opposition to NATO turns into Russian apologism. Like you said yourself, it’s a country owned and operated by capitalists waging wars against other capitalist interests. The conversation can end there, fuck both of them.

Spank the monkey?

Any that are widely in use or accessible?

Signal is based in San Francisco and, last I checked, runs on AWS/Azure. Bsky is similar, US based and operated. Google/Apple could be ordered to delist anything from their stores preventing wide adoption of other apps.

Best I can think of is something very decentralized like Briar or Matrix/fediverse/i2p alternatives. As of right now, adoption of those is limited. If you pulled the lever tomorrow and cut the major platforms, most people wouldn’t even know where to go as a fallback.

The Arab Spring is a great case study on why that type of resistance will never happen in the USA. The proliferation of social media was a key spark in those movements. Let’s take a look at what stance those platforms take today:

Eh, I feel like every day there’s a new story of Tesla’s being torched. That’s a pretty directed and forceful form of protest that gets no credit.

Also, it’s not like America never has large scale protests. Hundreds of thousands of people fill the National Mall pretty regularly, skimming Wikipedia I counted 14+ since 1950 of over 200,000.

Just 5 years ago 15m-26m people participated in some especially roudy protests across all 50 states, but no credit for that either.

Large protests that get even slightly out of line in the USA usually end with:

• well armed, paramilitary police violently dispersing everyone
• the CIA assassinating protest leaders
• and/or the 6 media conglomerates suppressing coverage at the behest of the ~15 people that own them

If you’re criticizing Americans for anything, it should be for their response to that and not their ability to organize and orchestrate protests.

Lemmy is celebrating cracking 50,000 users. Discord has 200 million MAU. They take a broader approach to punishment because it’s the only feasible way to avoid legal problems.

IIRC some Lemmy instances were defederated at that time for poor moderation and nobody complained. Its a reasonable approach to avoid liability.

My question is why do people feel the need to be in 40 servers? I couldn’t name 10 I give a shit about.

As a user you’re voluntarily joining a server, you should know what the content is and how well it’s moderated. Ignorance isn’t a defense here; a server doesn’t get nuked for one bad actor posting illegal content once or twice.

Nine times out of ten these stories are from a user that joins servers made for NSFW content (usually for something like OF leaks). There’s no content verification and lots of active channels.

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that combo almost always ends poorly (see: reddit jailbait or old pornhub). If it feels risky just leave, there’s no lack of places to find porn on the internet.

They’re a minority because it’s an extremely dangerous and low success-rate way to enter. You’re comparing global affluent population shuffling to actual poverty migration. The vast majority of the globe doesn’t have the skills desired for a work visa, much less the ability to pay the costs of relocation. If people desperately needed to migrate quickly, that’s the only way they can.

Poland is a weird example to pick, they’re very publicly in the news right now for blocking a refugee initiative. They may have lax requirements for legal entry at this moment, but all signs point to a shift.

All migration is population pressure, I can assure you these governments don’t care if you’re from the USA fleeing fascism or a South-Asian country fleeing wet bulb events.

Point is it’s not something a “normal person” can do. It’s an obscenely privileged thing to even suggest. Most countries require proof of enough wealth to support yourself and your family before you can even start the process. And it’s only going to get more strict as countries start locking their doors to climate refugees.

More realistically your exit involves an overflowing boat straight to a migrant camp, then “remigrated” back as the world plunges into a recession and the locals don’t want you. And that’s if you’re lucky.

What a dumbass piece of advice

Its telling that your example is someone explicitly kept out of the public eye during his life. Basically any account of Turing is from personal friends or his professional work. He was a generally good person and great scientist that helped defeat the nazis, but he’s only celebrated by progressives for his persecution as a gay man.

I struggle to find any major social cause he publicly championed or records of his views on controversial topics. I’d like to be wrong, but it’s easy to not have a mixed record as a private citizen. Nobody was grilling him to free slaves or asking his opinion on systemic injustice.

Einstein is a contemporary comparable. He was a great scientist, opposed the nazis, and by most accounts a decent guy. He was even had to flee his homeland to escape persecution as a jew. Clearly lots of parallels. The main difference being he was an idol in his own day so we have way more first hand accounts.

Turns out he was a socialist with varying views on communism, had shifting support for zionism and wrote rascist shit in his travel diaries. You could probably find a quote like Roosevelt’s and slap it on a picture of him, that doesn’t sum up his life.