WrittenInRed

At least personally I agree with the part of his statement about the corporate capture of the democratic party, I don't think that's the part most people have a problem with imo. It was saying that republicans are now the party of the little guy, or more likely to tackle abuses by big tech that was dumb. Obviously neither party is going to seriously go after any abuse or anything, but the richest tech CEO is blatantly running the country under the republican president, so saying they're "more likely" to help is straight up a lie lol. I don't think calling Andy a fascist is correct either, but I also very much disagree with his opinions of the republican party. Under either party billionaires and corporations are in control, but Trump is definitely not making that better at all.

And honestly all things considered Lina Khan was a pretty great FTC chair tbh, and Johnathan Kanter was pretty decent as the head of the antitrust division too. He was probably a lot better than Gail Slater will be. She's literally a VP in a few different big companies, so touting her as a champion of the people against the abuses of big tech feels either misinformed or disingenuous.

I personally used spotdl when I wanted to transfer my music off of Spotify. It does unfortunately only download from YouTube which means its not 100% successful, it missed a handful of songs for me and 1 or 2 had an incorrect version altogether (like 10 hour loops, etc.). Overall it was like more than 99% correct for my playlist of around 2000 songs though, and its super easy to use especially in either a python or shell script since its a python library with a cli built in. There are definitely other options I don't know about, some of which are probably better tbh, but spotdl has been good enough for me personally at least.

Same thing here. I was always vaguely left wing/pro FOSS/etc, but joining Lemmy introduced me to solarpunk and a much more anarchist/radical community in general. Since I started using Lemmy during the reddit API stuff I pretty quickly went from wishing I ate less meat -> vegetarian -> vegan and from vaguely anti-capitalism -> anarchist. Now I'm learning to hand mend my clothes and joining local mutual aid groups lol.

Just posting about bad things happening shouldn't be the limit of what action people take (unless that's all they can do obviously), but it's also far from completely pointless to try and spread awareness of stuff like anarchism/anti-capitalism or ways you can make an impact/support others. Movements and ideas can't spread if no one is talking about them. Plus posting about actual concrete actions you can do is super useful to anyone who wants to do something but doesn't know how to start.

This definitely reads like chat-gpt right? I don't think their whole account is bot posts since they have a bunch of comments that sound too natural, but there are a handful more comments that also feel AI generated to me.

Like I said, coming out and saying he supports the forced removal of Palestinians is awful, and neither Biden or Harris would have done that obviously. It seems pretty obvious neither of them are actually happy with Israel. But whether the US president is happy about it or not, lsraels end goal is and always has been ethnic cleansing either way. So while it is worse to express support for that goal than to express disapproval, as long as the US keeps up the supply of weapons - which we will almost assuredly do no matter what, Trump or otherwise - then to all the people being ethnically cleansed it doesn't mean anything. The Biden administration has been expressing support for this since at least 2023, via its actions rather than words. That's what people mean by Trump not being meaningfully worse for Palestine. Not that he isn't worse than Biden or Harris, but that the ways in which he is worse on this specific issue don't matter to the people who are actively the targets of the genocide. If you're being bombed by US funded weapons then who gives a shit what the person approving those weapons says about it, they sent them either way.

Worse in general or just in regard to Palestine? Obviously he's so much worse in general, which is why I did vote for Harris. But specifically on the issue of Palestine no matter what the genocide wasn't stopping, the Biden admin made it pretty clear there wasn't actually a red line Israel could cross that would end the supply of weapons, considering every one they did make was blown past with no consequences. And Harris repeatedly signified that wouldn't have changed.

But it's also not productive to try and assign blame to people who didn't vote, or voted 3rd party, though. The problem isn't that people didn't want to vote for the conservative party instead of the fascist party, its that we only had those 2 options to pick from. Obviously one of them was less harmful overall, but that doesn't make them meaningfully better for Palestine, or even a good/appealing choice. Our entire political system was built to represent slaveowners and rich white men, and that's so deeply ingrained into every aspect of its design that there's no way to move away from those roots from within the system. Even if Trump lost this time, what's stopping him from running again? Or the next version of him? Or what about the continued corporate capture of the government and both parties? None of those can just be voted away, and placing responsibility for fixing things entirely on voting just wastes time that would be better spent organizing while they continue to fester and grow.

Pretty much no one thought he'd be better, more like not worse in a meaningful way. Obviously saying the US is going to turn Gaza into a resort is worse than not saying that, but that distinction is pretty unimportant to everyone who would be killed or driven out under a democratic president anyway. The end goal has always been to fully settle Palestine, what exact form that takes or whether the US funds it with a smile or a frown doesn't change that.

In addition to the other replies, there's also quite a large difference between the actions of a foreign government doing something our current government already considers human rights abuse and the actions of a foreign government defended by our own, carried out with weapons manufactured and supplied by us, and where any criticism or protest of said support is categorized by nearly every politician as either antisemitism or tacit support of republican extremism. Both are genocide, but trying to protest the actions of the Chinese government as a US citizen in the US is pretty pointless, it's better to focus efforts where it has a more direct impact. You don't need to evenly split your attention between every single issue in order to be allowed to talk about any of them.

I mean in that sort of case then the group would defer to the person more knowledgeable in that specialty, same as what happens when after brainstorming people split into small groups or volunteer for individual responsibilities. Crowdsourced decision making is meant to be for the bigger aspects, stuff like what the end goal of a project should be. Smaller, extremely specialized aspects should get handled by those best equipped for it, that's not a hierarchy. Listening to an expert is just respecting someone's knowledge, and as long as they don't have actual authority over you, then there's much less risk of corruption taking place. There's a quote from I think ~~Proudhon~~ Bakunin that I can't remember off the top of my head, I'll come back and edit this when I find it. But effectively, it boils down to the difference between authority as in power over people, and authority as in knowledge.

And people who help organize and manage jobs also don't necessarily need to be part of a hierarchy either. If the group agrees that someone is extremely effective at helping resolve conflicts or suggesting the best path to take and that sort of role is desirable for the project then that's what they should do. The difference is that they aren't in a position of power over anyone. They don't have the unilateral ability to fire someone (nor does any individual), or take away their income/ability to live. And since they don't have that power, they aren't in a hierarchical position over anyone. If they start trying to force their way without taking feedback then the group will stop listening to them and appoint someone else if they still feel that it'd be useful. Without a position of authority over people no hierarchy exists in the definition used in anarchist theory.

Edit: Thanks @onoira@lemmy.dbzer0.com! Knew I read it somewhere on here recently.

Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a savant. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism censure. I do not content myself with consulting authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognize no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.

— Mikhail Bakunin, God and the state, Chapter 2

But yeah, respecting peoples expertise in topics, splitting up work, or appointing people to give managerial suggestions aren't hierarchical. A lack of hierarchy is not a lack of structure, it's just a lack of power and violence being used to oppress or control people. Efficient structures like these tend to naturally fall out of self-organization once the monopolies on violence used to prop up hierarchies are removed.

I think the main rebuttal to that argument is what stops that from happening in a hierarchy? If anything having one makes that more likely, since someone in charge can have a bad idea and no one below them has any real power to stop it. There's a reason "incompetent boss/manager" is such a common trope. Having a horizontal structure where consensus is prioritized actually helps prevent those sorts of issues, since people who are the most knowledgeable and involved in the process are the ones making those decisions. It's why group brainstorming sessions are so common, bouncing ideas off of other people involved in a project is extremely useful to help filter or improve bad ideas and build on good ones. Horizontal groups are sort of the natural state that you fall into when collaborating with people when there isn't an existing rigidly enforced hierarchy between the members.

Yeah I know it's technically visible, but unless I'm just dumb afaik the default ui doesn't have a way to easily see which mod did an action unless you manually filter by every mod it could be. Since it is possible to do that it's really not a huge deal, just something that could help prevent misunderstandings.

I've rewritten this a few times with various points I was trying to make, but for the sake of not having a wall of text I'll try to keep it short lol.

For the whole tankie discussion, I saw @LH0ezVT@sh.itjust.works mentioned imperialism, and it made me think that the whole rule should probably be reworded imo

The big thing is that it feels like the whole debate is mostly based on semantics, so that should be fixed if possible. It basically boils down to what "tankie" means or is perceived to mean. As written the rule uses ideological labels to try and represent a broader set of beliefs, but the main issue with that is that by picking those sorts of imprecise labels it sort of muddies what specific kind of beliefs the rule is trying to highlight. Especially with tankie (and even more so on Lemmy), lots of different people use it to label very different things. Even if the rules are using it "correctly", there's still enough disagreement surrounding the term overall that it seems worth it to just elaborate more specifically on what it's actually trying to refer to. Doing so helps prevent some misunderstandings that might happen between users and mods as to what is covered by this rule, means that new users who have been incorrectly called a tankie elsewhere on lemmy don't see the term and assume they'll also be banned here, and also just generally makes the rules more clear which is never a bad thing.

Maybe something like:

Support or defense of authoritarianism is not welcome.This includes but is not limited to: imperialism, nationalism, genocide denial, ethnic or racial supremacy, fascism, nazism, etc."

I feel like that covers the problematic stuff from any type of authoritarianism. Could even be safe and make it something to the effect of "Support or defense of authoritarianism, regardless of the state, is not welcome..." to make sure it's explicit.