I think that social media (which is much broader than most people think) isn’t really the issue. It’s a tool being leveraged by the real danger. As you say, Lemmy hasn’t been bought and sold by special interest groups.

The way social media is leveraged is very harmful, but those groups are also leveraging other media (particularly the news). I would blame our ibcreased social division on the special interest groups that benefit from, and promote, social division.

IMO blaming social media itself for our woes is like blaming the ocean’s plastic on straws. It ultimately let’s the real damage continue while blaming the everyman’s suffering on their own consumption.

Most people vote Conservative because they are afraid, and are drawn to leaders that seem strong, powerful, and promise to destroy or protect them from the things they fear.

They might’ve been dumb enough to be tricked. Now they’re too afraid to admit they were. They’re in too deep, and they’d have to sacrifice standing, community, stability, and their understanding of their place in the world if they were to admit they were wrong.

That’s too scary. Most of them aren’t too dumb to understand, they’re convincing themselves because the alternative is too horrible for them to admit.

How do you reconcile that with how social media platforms like Lemmy allow people to collaborate across groups also? Or to educate?

Like, I do agree that social media plays a hugely pivotal role. But that’s because humans are social creatures with pliable perspectives and are reactive to the views of those we call our peers.

That means special interest groups can tell us what our views should be and sway millions, but it also means that small towns have always been extremely insular and would reject ‘out-group’ people, with or without social media. The ‘liberal redneck’ can only exist now because they can have contact with diverse and nuanced people outside of their local communities through online platforms.

I think humans have stunted relationships with their local communities in favour of fragile online ones, but I believe bad actors are leveraging the power of humanity’s propensity for community groupthink. Social media expands the size of our ‘tribes’, but it’s engagement algorythms that are enforcing echo chambers, to keep us on platforms in profitable ways. That is a property of for profit Capitalism, more than of remote peer-to-peer interaction.

[he’s] an extreme germ, a phobia.

I love the new version where now he’s straight up just a singular bacterium with strong opinions, and that’s freaking you out. Pls don’t change it again

Yeah, agreed. There’s a general guide on whether votes are motivated by intrinsic fear (security) or extrinsic empathy (community). Fear-based voters are anxious for the future, of losing their job/money/lifestyle/status. They’re drawn to leaders that look strong and confident, that promise stability and security, and tell them they have answers. They’d rather have bad answers than no answers at all.

This is why ‘conservatives’ often believe similar things around the world, and are more common during times of hardship. Its why you cant explain logic to sway them (their fears are what need addressing). This is also why people used to get more conservative as they aged: they gained more assets to be afraid of losing. We’re seeing that change with millennials.

And besides, Americans make up the largest chunk of the English-speaking internet. So ofc their empire’s anxieties have global impact.

As US is proving though, laws only matter when enforced. Using their stats (because that’s what I have), wage theft is responsible for more economic loss than all other forms of theft combined, including larceny, petty theft, and embezzlement. But it’s rarely chased up - its too hard to prove, or the departments are kept perpetually understaffed, or the employees can’t afford court.

Wage theft is illegal in NZ too, but it’s not unheard of for smaller companies to stretch it. But yeah, my partner had a review recently, and when he mentioned having to work into his lunch breaks to meet daily targets on busy days, they took that very seriously and adjusted the workload elsewhere to compensate. It’s good.

More of less, though the division of ‘liberal vs conservative’, where almost all political and lifestyle ideals boil down into two camps (and leftists made invisible) is a very American one. I know that Aus is more ‘conservative’ than NZ is too, though surely not as much as the US.

Its more accurate to say its the neo-liberals. After Reagan and his Reaganomics, our cabinet followed through with our version, Rogernomics: selling off public services and resources to private for-profit holders.

To this day, Rogernomics and free-market liberalism (with focus on bonuses for hunting, fishing, and landlords) is the message of the National and ACT parties that are frequently in coalition.

You could call National ‘conservative’ I suppose, but they’re centre-right liberals and have more in common with US Democrats. Our hard-right party is NZ First (the nationalism is in the name), and the seats for NACT were so weak that they have a coalition with them this cycle.

Together, ‘NACT1’ is doing a lot of shit, but ofc the Prime Minister, National’s party leader, pushes the bills through ‘under urgency’ and then blames the leaders of the other parties for even proposing it, like his hands are clean.

And the other leaders - especially Winston - are proposing insane bills. Like, preventing illegal Mexican immigrants? In New Zealand? it’s an obvious ploy for Kiwis that eat American propaganda on Facebook, but it will work. Our public news has also started using terms like ‘wokeism’ and ‘DEI’. [siiiigh]

I’ve tried it a couple times and I hate it. The UI sucks, I can’t find shit, and they’ve stripped back control panel even further. Tried to help my mother with virtual disc’s and you can’t simply mount them anymore, instead there was some strange 3rd-party tool I’d never heard of and it didn’t even export files that were too deep in the folder tree. Fucking useless.

All the bloatware sucks, search defaulting to AI and Bing instead of your own computer sucks. Removing administrative controls sucks.

But I’m a visual designer and the market needs powerful industry-ready software like Adobe and Affinity. I can’t design publishing in fucking GIMP. The Linux alternatives aren’t enough. I’m considering using a Linux home machine with Mac for work but the apps I own already are Microsoft so it would be very expensive to switch. So I’ll probably end up using W11 and just complain the whole time.

We have a lot of nice labour protections (esp compared to the US, yikes) but ofc this means business goes around them (and current parties are discussing rolling them back to ‘support small businesses’ from having to do that).

It’s really hard to fire a worker under contract unless they straight up abandon their job or violate their contract. If youre bad at your job, but not dangerous, its so hard to fire you (and taking you off shifts, ie: constructive dismissal, is also prohibited) that you’ll basically be sticking around anyway.

But that means that employers just hire part-timers to work juuuuust under the requirements, or have them on the 90-day probationary period and oop sorry, I don’t think it’s a great fit. The results is that job stability is pretty good if you can actually fucking get one, but most younger Kiwis are stuck in casual work or move overseas.

But like. Are you stopping him? He’s been doing shady and illegal shit for ages, and yall can point out its illegal and shady, but like. Are any of those critics actually stopping him or nah

Like please, I want some good news, and Moral High Ground does not count

Modern PCs don’t truly hibernate, they sleep. If the tower loses power its considered a hard reset.

If anything, Windows machines often have ‘fast boot’ enabled which saves certain things to state, so today’s manual shutdown (without power loss) is closer to old school hibernation than today’s ‘sleep’ is.

You can shutdownyour PC each night, but depending on what you’re working on it can disrupt workflow, so I understand why many people prefer to sleep instead.