Fear? Oh yes right, I do "not" desire to become a black hole, um, yeah... ๐
Fwiw, I agree with you. I even tried it myself personally, but then moved back into a city. So I understand what you are saying, believe me I do. All I meant is that we need to see clearly as we move forward, and that means questioning our own biases and preconceptions, so that we can accurately chart out a course forward that does not fall again in the same old traps, e.g. that HRC fell into by not bothering to campaign in the midwestern states (Obama likewise ignored rural in favor of urban areas, though in his case it seems more defensible since many racists were never going to vote for him regardless of his platform or activities?).
Learn corporate buzzspeak in <5 minutes
For genuine humans though: that link is not what you probably expect ๐
People need to be free to be how they like. e.g., if a mod is forced to have to read constant Russian (or Chinese, or Israeli, or American, or UK or whatever) propaganda with horribly offensive active disinformation, then likely they will quit being mods. I'm not saying they are holding their efforts hostage to their preferences - but I'm not not saying that either (it is factually accurate if unnecessarily adversarially phrased), just saying that it's the normal default of the world and we would do better to bow to natural principles than to wish and hope that things were not that way.
It is really, REALLY hard to find common middle ground - and sometimes it cannot be done. Echo chambers are a natural result of how people with opposing viewpoints choose not to tolerate one another.
Intolerance is uniquely important, bc being intolerant to intolerance is not the same as generalized intolerance!!! In fact, the opposite is true: anyplace that is even somewhat vaguely neutral towards intolerant behaviors, in general, will quickly become intolerant overall. Imagine a room with screaming toddlers - those who scream loudest get noticed, and the behavior spirals forward feeding off of the other behaviors to become more pronounced, not less so. A space quiet enough to be heard is not normal. Entropy must be fought against if order is desired. There is a balance somewhere between letting toddlers do nothing at all fun, vs. letting them do whatever crosses their minds at any given moment, thus inflicting their tendencies upon others nearby.
Take Chapotraphouse for instance: I would not dream in a million years of trying to shut that place down. Maybe I should? But I don't. That said, neither do I want to go there, and the Fediverse would be a much more welcoming place overall if it would warn people about what goes on inside of it. If they are willing to be fair-minded, they could even contribute towards writing up the content text of such a warning? They should not be solely in charge of that endeavor, ideally, yet neither do I see any legitimate reason to lock them out of such a process?
I don't know how the Fediverse expects to survive when we mix together the equivalent of 4chan and Wikipedia, but don't label any of it, and then try to get people to come and enjoy their time here. Especially with it being so confusing - e.g. was a comment removed by a community mod or an instance admin? (fortunately v0.19.4 looks to entirely solve that latter one, yay dev efforts on that one - they really do so much for us all, for free!:-D)
Note I am not advocating for a common middle ground here - I do not believe such exists (e.g. if someone wants to make fun of me, but I don't want that, why would we presume a "middle ground solution" should be the default?). I am rather advocating for labeling things what they are. Imagine going to a website to watch videos, but some videos are porn and your friends are all prudes, or moreover let's even imagine some are nonconsensual pedophilia - will you send them there? Sending people to Chapotraphouse, or a place that federates with it - crucially: without labeling it - is like that.
Some places on the Fediverse are like porn - they are (/ may be?) fine to exist, but are considered offensive enough to need to be labeled, if we want to reach out to a more common audience (of e.g. non-Arch-Linux users:-). And then yeah, label Lemmy.World as likely to remove content that goes against Western standards? (Except you picked bad examples imho, being community mods rather than instance admins) And do similarly for Lemmy.ml as well - again, hopefully with their own participation in writing up that label?
That doesn't mean that Congress doesn't want to know where all that money went though. It does mean that it's too big to fail, and too big to jail.
That's a good point where the aspect of correctness aside even, it unhelpfully puts too much focus on the sender, whereas communication is widely known to be more of a partnership between both the sender and the recipient(s).
e.g. birds singing is interpreted differently by other birds (want some fuq?) than us humans who happen to hear it as well (oh, such pwetty songs!)
think
I suspect that's the blocker right there:-|
Tell us: with that level of density, is the earth going to be okay? Like, do we need to send some people away, or will we turn into a black hole or some such? (Sorry, I'm just one of those plebes - I know nothing okay!?)
The end result of capitalism is slavery. The end result of anarchy is also slavery. The end result of socialism is... yup, also slavery. Basically humanity seems to enjoy slavery:-). :-(
Knowing this, it might have been good to have tried to work against that trend. However, we got too lazy, and/or greedy, and if you don't fight against entropy then the natural state takes over.
Case in point: our level of technological progress is higher than it has ever been. We could feed the world. We won't, but we could. And yet, food prices reflect... more similarity to slavery than to freedom of choice - what other food can I buy except the stuff that is twice as expensive as it was?
You might find it fascinating to watch The Alt Right Playbook by Innuendo Studios on YouTube. It just might change your life. It's not fully about politics so much as, much more importantly, the method of discourse that has somehow become popular in the Western world, as many right-wing groups worldwide have started to use it and it has permeated our entire culture.
People in developed worlds live such comfortable lives, we start to feel entitled to things. Like "genocide should not happen"... okay then, so how about investing some effort to stop it instead of just talking through our mouth holes about it?
One for the USA: we know how the electoral college works, and especially now with WFH many people could live anywhere, so will we go somewhere to flip districts, in order to both stop genocide (at least the Russian variety, and maybe Chinese, if not also Israeli; but the other side wants to do more genocide not less) and also preserve rights for women, and minorities and every other thing we claim to value?
Answer: no, at least so far we have not. It is not so easy or simple... and I don't blame anyone especially women of child bearing age for not wanting to move to a place that could be dangerous. BUT then in that case we need to accept the consequences of our choices, and that's the part I almost never see, especially on social media.
Just be genuine and I think you'll be okay. I mean you never know - some people used to roam around and string people up on trees to hang them, sometimes fairly at random even (so long as they had a certain ethnicity or immigration status or whatever) - but all you can control is yourself so don't focus overmuch on what is beyond that.
Also I believe that the literal, legal definition of pedo (or whatever, "statutory rape" I guess? I'm not searching for that term right now!:-P) excludes people who are 18 dating someone who is 17. It would be different if you were 20 dating a 15-year-old, but in general once you move past high school just don't go back and I think you'd be fine?
Also children (even at 15 years old... and sadly also at 50) are going to play regardless, and that means slinging words around that they don't mean, or necessarily even know what the definitions are. Just don't be a pedo, and then even if they accuse you, there's nothing there to justify it so you should (fingers crossed) be fine?