I was once on a farm, laughing at something, and a horsefly came up and bit me on the tongue.

I had no idea why it happened, still don’t, but it was one of the worst things that had ever happened to me at that point in my life.

1. Because they want to know who you are
2. Because what are you going to do about it? They’re going to make money regardless

One or the other

There’s usually one of the buttons you can hold down to mute the ads, near the bottom right in the little phalanx of buttons all around the screen.

If you find it, label it “MUTE” in marker or something, spread the word.

No idea about tools although I hope you find something.

Two related suggestions that will change your life:

1. Grunt Fund if you are making decisions about equity
2. Have people estimate the total time for a task, rigidly enforce that every man-hour spent on a project has to be allocated to one of those tasks (including the elusive but vital “oh shit we forgot” task), keep track of the coefficient between the two. It’ll be different for different people sometimes. When estimating a project, have people come up with estimates and then multiply by the coefficient. Be transparent with everyone about this system. It’ll revolutionize your project management life once people get used to it. I tried to find a blog post which explains more detail, but honestly, it’s not complicated, and Google is too shit now to find it.

• Librewolf is also quite a good browser
• Piefed seems like it’s shaping up to be better than Lemmy in a few different ways and it’s compatible with all the Lemmy people

The earth will be fine. It’s been through way worse than us. There was about a billion years when the whole thing was just a snowball. People don’t even really know how microbial life that was adapted for the surface survived, although the theory is that its little lifeboats were melted pools of water near volcanic hotspots, some sort of liquid water that incredibly enough was able to randomly stay around the whole time through. It only takes a very small number of survivors to repopulate everything once it turns okay again. The earth has been through oceans at the poles and total freezes and meteor strike apocalypses and everything in between, some of where we came from was the engine of creation in the wake of one of those disasters, the end of the dinosaurs.

The paradise place we call home, though, is cooked and done for forever, on any kind of human timeline. There is 0 chance that what we call a livable biosphere, the kind of green grass nice summer day paradise we were born into, will still be around in a hundred years. It’s gone. We’re the last generation.

There’s still a lot we can do to choose less apocalyptic options. The sheer massive scale of the disaster means that every fraction of a percent could save millions of lives, or significantly reduce the chance of total extinction. But bottom line, the planet itself and the web of life that lives on it will persist. Whether we will, certainly whether our civilization will, is uncertain, it will be determined by this generation and the next.

Israel props up Hamas because it knows it can get away with the terrorist framing to justify it’s escalation of ethnic cleansing and apartheid to western powers. Israel regularly assassinates and imprisons more moderate leadership so that fundamentalist groups gain more prominence. This is the way Israel likes to justifies it’s blockade, mowing the lawn, and divide Gaza/West Bank. If you think Hamas is being played by Israel, sure.

Absolutely agree with all of this.

But it’s not like they have any option other than armed resistance. I can critisize their methods all I want, but at the end of the day, I’m not the one living in Gaza, I have no clue what it’s really like living in those hellish conditions, I don’t really know what I’d be willing to do to try to break free from the Zionist entity that has routinely bombed, imprisoned, tortured loved ones for generations in the largest open air prison on earth.

Yeah. I get this… I’m not trying to sit in judgement of anyone in that situation. Maybe I overstepped my bounds in saying some of these things, that’s fair. I’m just saying that “trying to break free” in a way which basically just plays into Israel’s hands and gives them the pretext they were looking for to eliminate Gaza once and for all is not resistance, even if it feels like it is at the time.

What the Palestinians actually need is from someone from outside, from one of these powers that has more money, weapons, and size than Israel by 100 times over or more, to step in. And no one is, while they die like leaves in Autumn.

The PA is a fig-leaf of resistance because they directly work under Israel to violently suppress resistance against the settler colonialism and apartheid in the West Bank. The PA is Counter Insurgency (COIN) wielded by Israel to prolong the Apartheid and continue to delay any semblance of statehood. The PA is viewed by Palestinians nearly just as negatively as Israel because of that. They assist Israel’s expansion and crack down on resistance. It’s another arm of Israel’s Apartheid apparatus

Yeah, pretty much. What I’m saying is that Israel overpowers them both by so overwhelmingly much that neither of them is “permitted” to accomplish anything at all. Hamas is permitted to splinter the Palestinians politically, and to commit terrorism from time to time, not nearly enough to be a threat but enough to keep a lot of people (certainly a lot of Israelis) hating the Palestinians and providing a good pretext.

The PA I know less about, but if they are fully corrupted and complicit in Israel’s oppression that would make sense to me.

You’re not wrong about the Palestinians having no options at all. I don’t even know what they are supposed to do.

I’ll ask you again how many idf terrorists was killed by Hamas and how many was killed by the PA and do you deny that PA are collaborating with Israel and do nothing against illegal settlers

I said literally nothing at all about the PA. My point was that Hamas is corrupt, violent, and counterproductive, which is why the government of Israel supports them. Them periodically killing civilians or IDF people is extremely useful for Likud, which is why Likud likes them. Nothing Palestinian is strong enough to present any genuine threat of any kind of resistance. If Hamas or the PA could present anything like a real threat to Israel as a whole, the leaders would react differently, but different trivial numbers of Israelis killed by one or the other has absolutely no bearing on anything I’m saying.

You seem like you are persistently claiming I am saying one thing, and arguing very vigorously against that thing. Like I or someone here is trying to compare the PA to Hamas. I thought it was weird that you held up the PA as the “fake” resistance or seemed to be missing the point so thoroughly, but I think the only time I ever even mentioned them was asking you some questions about your own point of view.

Israel love hamas so much according to you that they killed all it’s top leaders

Because it barely matters anymore. They are just killing everyone in Gaza.

For a time, they needed to delegitimize Palestine on the world stage, and Hamas was violent enough and not-PA enough to serve that purpose.

Now, what they need to do is pretend that their “war” is against Hamas and not against a totally defenseless wreckage of starving, traumatized familes, and so holding up some dead Hamas people is useful for them.

It’s different behavior for different situations. This is not some kind of PhD argument I am making here, that needs a deep understanding in order to grasp it. I honestly have no idea why you are so amped up about this or not listening to anything I am saying, and determined to “win” the exchange instead. I hope you grow out of it, and learn to blossom into the beautiful butterfly of online discoursing that you always knew you could be.

Israel don’t like hamas there is a misconception about israel/hamas relation.

They literally have talked openly about it.

In an interview with Politico in 2023, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that “In the last 15 years, Israel did everything to downgrade the Palestinian Authority and to boost Hamas.”

At a Likud party conference in 2019, Benjamin Netanyahu said: “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas … This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”[36][37]

“Netanyahu’s strategy is to prevent the option of two states, so he is turning Hamas into his closest partner. Openly Hamas is an enemy. Covertly, it’s an ally.”[40]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_support_for_Hamas#Use_of_Hamas_to_undermine_the_Palestinian_Authority

The idea that they were ever a “charity organization” is pure fantasy. The destruction of Israel is in the charter. Literally everyone else in these comments is aware that they are focused around armed resistance to an occupation. That is literally their reason for being.

Weirdly you still think hamas is the fake resistance and PA is the true resistance.

When I am king, the one and only rule on Lemmy will be that anyone who tells their opponent what it is their opponent believes, when neither their opponent or even anyone else said the thing they’re saying, will not just be banned. Someone will go to their house and kick them, and tell them sternly, “No!”

I actually feel duped that I took your comment seriously enough to dig up citations for why it was wrong. Reading the end, it’s clear to me that you’re either just trying to provoke conflict for reasons of your own, or else you’re more or less just sitting down at your computer to go BLBLBLBLBLBLBLBLBL onto Lemmy thinking that it is productive input.

If you oppose armed resistance against genocide you are pro genocide. It is that simple

It’s not quite that simple. Hamas is a deeply corrupt and counterproductive organization. Israel arranges funding for them and supports them against their political opposition, because having Hamas largely in charge of (edit: Palestine) Gaza is often a disaster for the Palestinians, which Israel enjoys.

You can absolutely oppose Israel’s genocide and also oppose Hamas’s horrifying fig-leaf of “resistance” to that genocide which is mostly useless militarily, and just provides useful pretexts for Israel to do more genocide (not that they need them.)

Else you can pretend to be pro Palestinian by supporting the PA which is nothing more than an extension of Israel oppressing Palestinians.

This is where your argument goes from incomplete to bizarre. Why do you say the PA which Israel dislikes is an extension of Israel, while Hamas which Israel likes and supports (in between military operations) is an authentic resistance organization?

Oh, I didn’t mean you specifically, I didn’t realize it came across that way. Just that in general a lot of mods / instance owners seem to feel like communications on their server are “theirs,” to mold to be the way they want them to be.

There’s a responsibility you hold to the users of your system to keep the bullshit out. (And everyone’s definition of “bullshit” will be slightly different, which is why it gets tricky.) But roughly speaking, you need to be doing what your users want you to do, and your users need to be showing respect for your system and wishes and the social contract from their end. As soon as either side of that contract breaks down, it’s bad. And specifically in this case, there are instance owners who feel that it’s their job to make sure the opinions expressed on their server are in line with their own, and fuck the users if they don’t agree, because the users aren’t in charge.

This is very very wrong. My whole feeling on that, is why I felt the need to write up this whole mini-essay about it. As black-and-white right and wrong of an issue as Palestine is, I feel like it’s a bad precedent to set to say that the issue of which opinion is the “right” one and the feddit admins being on the other side has any bearing on this. It doesn’t. Simply the fact that they want to delete certain opinions is already enough for them to be in the wrong, in my opinion.

Hey everybody, this guy’s having fun

Get him out of here

Agreed. I have such a distrust at this point of any media that fits a particular format and style, and that whole instance checked a bunch of the boxes.

Like, as far as I know, “Drop Site News” and “In These Times” have not done a thing wrong, and still every time I see them I instantly think “What the fuck! Are you guys Russian? What are you up to?”

No one will know for certain, people will argue, those bots will argue, other bot accounts with the same agenda will argue, people will be manipulated, they will argue, and status quo returns…

Fair enough. I do think this happens. At the same time I don’t see that there’s a lot to be gained by being super sensitive about it, or deciding to freak out and abandon the topic because of some people arguing.

I would say that every so often, I wander into one of the lemmy.world political communities and I have exactly the reaction you are expressing here. It’s just random aggressive people, some of whom I think are deliberately trying to inflame conflict and prejudice, and they drown out anything useful. It’s a waste of time, so I don’t fuck with it. I guess the point that I’m trying to make is that not everything is that way. I would say the vast majority of things I observe on Lemmy are not that way.

Or, they’re not what I would describe that way. You seem like you’re maybe talking about something different, and accusing the conversations I like of being something deliberately designed to waste my time that I should be able to “rise above” or etc. But you also don’t want to give examples, so IDK, not much I can do with that.

So check out this example. I’ll give my take on it:

https://ponder.cat/post/2904223

I think there are some people there who are just there to stir shit. But, I would say the great majority at least of what I was paying attention to is productive. I learned about some propaganda, learned the shape of the media landscape, from some previous interactions, and then in that thread we got to talk about some other issues related to that, and work some things out.

Yeah, if you focus on the idiots exclusively, then your interaction will be unproductive. I do definitely think that yes.

By talking about ‘anything of substance’ is being framed by the bot posts, repeatedly, to manipulate. But, take a step back and you’ll realise it really isn’t ‘anything of substance’ but something to distract.

If you feel strongly enough about this topic to be concerned that people are going to be taken in by it, give some examples. By being vague and evasive about what it is you’re talking about, you make it impossible for anyone to learn about what you’re saying if you have something of value to try to make a point about, and also impossible for them to make counterpoints if they disagree with you. It just all stays in waste-of-time-land. Which is, ironically, exactly the issue you are trying to raise.

If you’re concerned that people will disagree with your categorizations, and that’ll just be so upsetting that you can’t bear the thought of doing it as a result, I feel like this whole issue may be more of a you problem than a Lemmy problem.

As for the early internet, I think you’re thinking about early pre-banhammer-FBI-raid 4-chan.

Not even close. I was talking about Usenet, early BBS culture and anonymous FTP days, then the more modern era of Napster / Slashdot / Rotten.com / the little proliferation of forums and personal sites came after those “old days,” and 4chan was created a little bit after that.

Everyone is going to have different definitions of when “early” is, but “the internet” goes back quite a long way before 4chan. 4chan and Myspace were kind of the first iteration of the massive everyone-goes-to-the-same-place omni-site model that presaged the horrors to come.

1. It’s not clear exactly what you mean, what are some examples of posts that you think are being made by bots?
2. IDK man, there is definitely a problem of misleading and disinformative posts and I will 100% agree with it as a problem, but just abandoning the idea of being able to talk about anything of substance because the disinfo is trying to fuck it up is not the answer, to me. I like being able to talk about politics / anti-capitalism / geopolitics / whatever. I don’t find it “stressful” or the way some people receive it. If they don’t want it presumably they are not subscribed to that stuff, but I really value being able to find out what’s going on in the world and talk with a wide variety and population of people about it.
3. The early internet was wild. It was not for hobbies and betterment, it was for ludicrous conspiracy theories, arguments between creationism and evolution, far flung neo-Nazis finally being able to communicate with each other, and snuff videos. That was what made it awesome. I think you are thinking of early Facebook.

Not only that, this law has also in 99.9% of cases that I am aware of been enforced against the user who made the comment, not the site owner. Literally the only time I’m aware of it being enforced against the site owner is with Twitter, which kind of makes sense to me because (1) it is actually antisemitism in that case, not just “I wish Zionism would go away” and then BAN, (2) Twitter was actually arguably the source and the boosting agent for a lot of the antisemitism, it wasn’t just a neutral forum where people could go on and maybe break the law all on their own initiative.

But yes, it is also relevant that brought up “our hardware could get confiscated” when it is the flimsiest of flimsy theories for how it could even happen, even if we assume that they were going to get raided somehow. I get it. No one wants the police to come talk to them, it’s easy for me to talk over here safe (ho ho) in the USA. But the level of threat they are quaking in their boots over is very minimal. Very.

admins can’t change the law

Neither could the people that hid Anne Frank. And yet, somehow, they found a way.

This is developing into some top tier Lemmy drama.

@CommanderCloon@lemmy.ml said:

These kind of posts will, sometime in the future, be referenced in a memorial of some sort as complacency in the face of crimes against humanity.

History will not look kindly at you.

Which is think is pretty fucking on point.

I saw that user was banned, which is a whole different level of fuckery. I got curious why the ban. It turned out it wasn’t for sticking of Palestine, it was because they had said:

I would agree with that if Ukraine didn’t have a history of murdering and bombing the regions Russia has taken.

And, of course, they were promptly temp banned for saying that.

It was also, langage / phrasing issues and Wikipedia’s carefully worded hedging notwithstanding, originally a Zionist phrase. It only became a crisis when the people to whom all that 100% of the land had originally belonged wanted it back, and were talking about employing the same kinds of violence that had already been employed against them, and using more or less the exact same slogan to talk about what they wanted (wanted back.)

I would go beyond this. I would say that any instance that makes a habit of policing its users’ statements to make sure they conform to some kind of politics and don’t offend whatever type of powerful grouping should get fucked.

To me, the fact that an extraordinarily obedient-in-advance reading of German law requires them to do this isn’t really relevant. The chance that the admins will get in significant trouble for it is minimal. If this is their bar for standing up for the rights and the survival of others, fuck 'em. It’s not my freedom or money at stake, so that’s easy for me to say, but I’m in the US, you could make a strong argument that being an anti-Trump pain in the ass on the internet could carry a significant risk in the future depending on how things go down. At a certain point, you have to decide what you stand for, and if your government isn’t on board for it, then oh well and let’s see.

Also: As much as I agree in particular with the disgusting nature of censoring anything pro Palestinian for obvious “bro aren’t you worried about going to hell” type of reasons, I actually don’t think anyone should be “required” to have any certain position on Palestine to participate on Lemmy. I think it’s fine if people disagree and talk about it. I think the critical thing is the admins policing what opinions people can express. If you’re going to be on Lemmy and you want to help people communicate, deliberately distorting the conversation to make it comfortable for the powerful people needs to get all the way the fuck out.

I have no particular standing to call for SDF to do anything in particular, I’m just saying my opinion. It’s maybe a little incongruous to go all the way to defederation, when there are instances that are just as shameless about censoring speech that is just as blatant an issue of “right and wrong” as the Palestine issue is. I feel like taking a step back and talking about the nature of the network and what we want to have and whether you as an instance owner have the right to police “your” users in this way. In my view, you don’t, but most people seem to feel that you do. It’s an issue that goes way beyond feddit.org and maybe should get some more thought as opposed to one-off decisions.