r/changemyview is one of those “fascist gateway” subs, or at least one of the subs that I suspect as that. The gateway works by introduing “controverial” topics which are really fascist but they get upvote because “look at this idiot!”. But slowly it moves the overton window and gives those people who actually do believe in inequality a space to grow in. Opinions that are racist, anti-feminist, anti-trans, ultra-nationalist, authoritarian or generally against equality and justice.

Reddit was slowly boiled over the last decade like a frog.

And you can be absolutely sure that not only researchers are researching this for science, there are plenty of special interests that do this. It really started with climate change denial.

Well I’ve always hated Visual Studio. It installs so much bloat, it is more like another operating system installed on top of your existing one. It’s an abomination.

And no matter what they call VSCode, for what most people need to create software it’s a perfectly fine substitute. I guess you should call it a DE, a development environment since compilers are not “integrated”. But that is a good thing, to be able to install compilers separately. On the other hand if you install compilers, the addons to integrate that compiler into VSCode. Maybe it’s an “integrating development environment”? :D

You can’t install any new regime without at least the military ignoring a revolution. And then the current elite stays in power.

Yeah done that now :)

Yeah, I’m just too lazy to reinstall and copy over my settings to VSCodium.

Supporting open source projects by small teams has been the only good thing MS has ever done. Imagine if MS would even partly open sourced part of windows. Like there are bugs in explorer for 3 decades that just don’t get fixed lol. And then there still would be bloat and shitty things, but it still would be better.

Microsoft Terminal vs the default Command Prompt haha. VS Code vs Visual Studio.

In general software is one of the rare thing where ordinary people can “mass produce” things that compete with commercial offerings.

Well this might be good. In order to achieve regime change and new elections with the protests, you’ll need the military on your side. You can never overthrow the government otherwise. So conservative people like this can help.

I think that is their main feature. To cut off the fringes of leftism and socialist ideas so it has a nice round and smooth bottom

No, it doesn’t. Either one, democracy is still better… Science does best with freedom from suppression.

U.S. science no longer leads the world. Here’s how top advisers say the nation should respond

This comes a bit down to utilitarianism vs ethics based on principles. But that’s a lie, it’s really about who has power.

I’m just watching a video by Majority Report where he talks about the question “Why is democracy is good” which the Democrats sort of fucked up in the election. And he makes a pretty painful point that it’s a “show me, don’t tell me” question. If you live in a democracy and constantly exploited, overworked, fucked over, in terror of economic hardship or terror attacks, harassed by police, then what is the point? What is the benefit? I’m not making the point that democracy is bad, but that a shell of a democracy, a fake, is leading especially the “dirtbag left” to adopt a pretty hostile posture.

So what is the actual quality of life in China vs the USA? What are the actual material benefits looking at living in an apartment, working, raising children and living a peaceful life?

How do YOU know that life in China isn’t actually better and people more happy than in the USA? I don’t believe that is true but it’s a valid question. Of course China has massive problems and corruption and abuses. But there are a billion people there that were on a medieval level after WWII. The CCP has massively invested in e.g. education and healthcare and infrastructure.

Or compare quality of life in China vs democratic India. Similar can be said about Iran, 55% of University graduates were women. But it’s painted as black and white.

Sure you have freedom of speech with the means of communication owned and controlled by the oligarchs. And you can say whatever you want on reddit and get downvoted to hell - which goes to my previous point, that the propaganda is so internalized and polarized now that you don’t need threats of state violence to keep the population in check.

So those opinions are not just for fun. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer is an aphorism that is leading the west inevitably towards fascism. So all the “posturing” about how superior our principles and freedums are is just… well it’s a delusion. It’s happening right now. They are stealing your future right now and there is nothing you can do because they control the media.

But still the socialists are completely rejected and banned from the largest lemmy instances.

The problem is that over the last decade any nuanced opinions on those topics has become less and less “politically correct”. And that is the correct term, anyone who isn’t politically correct and in line with the liberal mainstream opinion (= imperialist propaganda by the US state department and think tanks) must by definition by a paid shills of Putin, China or Trump. There are those people of course, but the dynamic has become more and more polarized and steeped in conspiratorial thinking. And that is by “design”. It’s profitable and it serves the US imperial agenda and it’s easier to avoids the frustration of talking to trolls and fascists - just paint everyone of a different opinion with the same brush.

I mean you can’t even talk about talking about it, like not seeing those people as anything but “assholes”. The range of allowable opinions has drastically narrowed. It’s not even liberal in the modern sense of the word. People are too scared to be liberal any more.

The actual left wing, the something socialists something are partly on hexbear.org and lemmygrad.ml. And they are called tankies and blocked on lemmy.world. So how left wing can most people here be? The thing is that “left” has become synonymous with (neo)liberal values. Like there doesn’t have to be a free, independent press or social media and them being owned by capitalists is just fine.

I recently thought about what I’m missing, and came up with something rather complicated (sorry, nothing simple haha)

Basically I’m often compiling information in markdown text files. But images are still web hosted. Sometimes I use spreadsheets and wish I could do simple additions in markdown tables. Or I use bookmarks, but know websites will go down and wish I could just “backup” any website in a compact file and organize it without mucking around with files. Zotero does this partly. I also use “SingleFile” to save websites but it would be nice if it was something semi-compatible to web-archive. Or maybe just save a stripped down version of an article like you see in “reader view” on Firefox. And of course usable in both desktop and mobile.

I do think Project Jupyter does something like this and there are also other note taking apps.

Overall the state of computer science in 2025 is still deplorable. The very basics of storing data still don’t have good solutions.

Basically amps is capped at 5 ampere, so it’s watts / 5. So for 20V you need 100 watt. USB Power Delivery specification revision 2.0 does up to 240W with 48V which is pretty awesome.

I’d love a 20V battery for power tools that just has a USB3 plug instead of special chargers.

Nah the next president of the USA would just get the nobel peace price for not being Trump lol. Remember Iraq and Afghanistan?

A good quality open source “federated discord” would be as important as lemmy or mastadon. But there isn’t much hype around it. Afaik matrix is still far behind discord quality wise and the architecture has limitations for anonymity and encryption.

Discord is just high quality and so easy to use because making a server is so easy.

You make no counter points just baseless and heinous accusations.

Doesn’t look like anything to me (lol)

He didn’t deny the ills and the repression in the USSR but showed with sources that there were significant economic upsides. He states that Russia isn’t communist or socialist any more. At no point does he deny Russia’s invasion is illegal. He at no point denies genocide.

So what does make him a tankie? That he has a different analysis of the history about how this war came to be? Which wasn’t even the topic of discussion! You can argue about the quality of the sources or survey - but you were already ready to call him an odious tankie and shitpost.

People equate anyone socialist or antiwar or anti US empire with being a tankie and putin apologist. Which leads to the wholesale censoring and defederation.

I do agree that mods are WAY too ban-happy on lemmy.

Arguably neither that post nor the political discussion belongs in that community.

It was meant lighthearted, but trolling by fascists (maga) or agitprop (putin) does have an mental effect. That is my point, the culture and attitude has changed. To say it hasn’t changed is just factually incorrect.

This is the factually incorrect comment, heavily upvoted:

Lol what? What year did you join Reddit? As someone who’s been there since 2008, I promise you that this is nothing new.

He’s not just laughing at me, implying I’m some reddit noob, and then attempts to gaslight me. But I’m the meanie? Ohwee.

You’re saying you don’t waste time and when someone disagrees on facts, they are wrong and you move on. Could you imagine that if the mainstream constantly fed you one version of events, you might be the one being so sure that the historical events are one way that you end up saying 1+1=3?

You rely on facts being what they are because a google search results in sources trusted by you say so. All neoliberal sources fed by the US state department. And the dissident arguments and evidence just happens to be the same as a certain russian dictator - so they must be wrong. Which is called a genetic fallacy.

Luckily blocking, banning and defederation is easy on lemmy, so we can just live happily ever after in our echo chambers.

Thanks, really interesting analysis! I’d argue that profit seeking is significant in this change though. Polarizing content leads to anger and higher engagement. So any algorithm that is written or trained to increase profit from advertisement will encourage that outcome.

I believe there are other influences too, the fascists and putin trolls (agitprop) has led to some “automatic downvote and ban reflex”. On lemmy the mods are basically power tripping non stop in trying to curate their fief into a single minded community that brooks no dissent. There is one narrative and anyone dissenting is a <insert slur>. On all sides, people are just sick of the bullshit and are on a hair trigger.

This seems to the be result of the last decade of mainstream media and social media being run for profit through engagement. I have no idea of how to reverse this.