CoderKat

Really it'd be like, "I'm sorry... Just like this segue to our sponsor!"

They can't put out a statement without a segue. It's just not allowed! They love that word.

But all of a sudden one day these hexbear posts and users started popping up and now I’m embarrassed that I even recommended this place.

I've felt this too. It's a really big, active instance. They can easily fill comments with their content and even if only a relatively small number of people act trollish, that's still a lot of people.

I could block the instance myself, but that's not something you can easily do for others ("hey, check this out, but first please download an app so you can block all these things"). And while blocking could hide posts and contents, there'll still be the affect of votes. I've had plenty of times where I do a double take like, "wait, that comment is popular? Who the fuck am I sharing this site with?

They have plenty of content I can find agreeable, so I can just grit my teeth and bear their trollish and less agreeable content, but that's not something I feel comfortable subjecting to others. When I link something to someone, I'm very aware that they're going to be judging just what kind of content I consume, and for good reason, as that often tells you what kind of person someone is. I most certainly do not want people think I support things like supporting the Russians in their war against Ukraine (or even turn a blind eye to it).

I can't speak for OP, but I see a lot of what I would call "Kremlin propaganda". Which I define support for the Russian government position to such a degree that doesn't make sense to be merely skepticism or support of communism.

I'm a democratic socialist myself, so I was expecting to find Hexbear mostly agreeable, but instead was shocked at the number of people who espoused talking points I'd expect to hear directly from Putin. Stuff like claiming they're justified in their war against Ukraine is an example that I've seen repeatedly. And in general, I've noticed a shocking amount of support for the USSR and China, which I find bizarre because I thought no reasonable, modern socialist would support a brutal, authoritarian country like those two. Which frankly makes the most likely answer being that they're simply trolls.

The OP mentioned the instance being strongly supportive of things like LGBT rights, but that is fundamentally incompatible with supporting such anti-LGBT nations (never mind their other human rights abuses).

Yeah. Pretty much all the transphobic arguments could apply to most top athletes.

"Yao Ming is stealing sports from natural, normal height men!"

"Michael Phelps has an unfair advantage because he has unnatural lungs and bone structure!"

"It's not fair to normal men that they have to compete against Mike Tyson. Would you want your son to have to fight against that?"

The reality is that the top athletes will always be physical outliers. That doesn't mean more average folks need to be excluded from sports nor that birth gender necessarily gives you an unfair advantage compared to the top athletes.

Yeah, I saw that in several videos and it made me uncomfortable. He'd say rude things in a way that didn't actually come across like he was joking. If it was just a friend thing, I could maybe understand it, but there was a big power imbalance. Can't imagine what it'd be like to be on the receiving end of how he can act.

What's the difference again? I forget, which ones are the ones that want women to cover up, will claim your clothes are the reason you got raped, and want to kill all trans people?

Your union sucks then. Unions have done all sorts of things besides get more pay. They fight for benefits like vacation and sick time, make sure you can't be fired without cause, ensure good work/life balance, make your job physically safe, and help bad management be held accountable.

Striking isn't the only tool in a union's répertoire. They'll also do things like help pay for lawyers to fund legal action (hard to do as an individual) and negotiate on your behalf. Most people don't want to be negotiators (especially the most vulnerable) The union does that undesirable work for you and can often hire experts to do it.

Work to rule is an alternative to striking that is similar but keeps you working. That's doing exactly what your contract says and nothing more (eg, bus drivers have done it by not collecting fares, but still driving their routes; teachers have done it by only teachong their classes without doing any extra coaching or supervision on the side). And since your comment suggests that people won't strike because they can't go without pay, they can also pay you for the duration of a strike.

Yeah, apologizing, paying Billet, and promising to slow down to improve quality would have been the perfect response. That would have been enough to keep me watching. But with the way he responded instead, I unsubbed and will avoid their videos, because he's made it clear he can't be trusted and doesn't deserve my money.

And I was the perfect kind of viewer. I have money, have bought things from YouTube sponsorships, have Patreoned people, and I've actually been considering buying stuff from LTT's store for a while (the only thing that stopped me was that their best shirts were sold out).

I suspect that for the most part, the kinds of people who would pay to support otherwise free content are those who are more informed and also care highly about the quality of what they pay for. The only reason I Patreon to stuff is because the creator has high quality and good ethics. I'm not gonna give money for no reason to someone who can't be bothered to act ethically.

We should say how it's consumed, because the arguably safest way to consume marijuana doesn't involve smoking at all (edibles).

There doesn't have to be coordination if there's incentives.

It's like how so many people who drive cars act in ways that benefit cars and is counterproductive for those who don't drive. They want plentiful free parking, lots of lanes, and cheap gasoline. They're not particularly coordinated. They're just incentivized because of their position. They benefit from those kinda things, so gravitate towards them (and also don't oppose them).

I suspect that not all social media is equal. And that even within the same site, people can have radically different experiences because social media is always tailored to you in some way. On sites like Reddit and Lemmy, it's tailored by the communities you subscribe to. On Mastodon, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, it's tailored by who you subscribe to and sorting algorithm.

I suspect that the difference in who/what you subscribe to would actually be bigger than the difference by site. You can find really toxic, harmful content on every site and you can also find really positive, helpful content on every site. Though some sites make it easier to be exposed to harmful content.

Eg, the Reddit/Lemmy model benefits from the fact that moderators can apply strict rules to communities you subscribe to (such that you only have to curate broad communities). By comparison, many other sites would let pretty much anyone reply to posts by specific people or groups and while the original poster can usually block or remove replies, that's not scalable and posters often won't.

But that said, we can't forget that Lemmy is still social media. It still has many of the risks that social media has and we must be cautious of that. I firmly think we can ensure Lemmy is better than all other forms of social media (I do think the Reddit/Lemmy moderation model is strictly superior), but there's a lot more we can and should do to ensure Lemmy is of high quality and that people can and do curate their feeds responsibly.

Small sample sizes don't invalidate studies. They reduce the statistical certainty, but can still be accurate and there's formulas for gauging how accurate a given sample size is based off the standard deviation.

The student only part does mean a sampling biase, but that doesn't invalidate things either. Mostly just limits it such that we can only make the claim for students and not anyone else (but it's still a meaningful result and provides justification for larger studies).