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Comment by hatware | Hacker News Reader

In today's world, it's guaranteed that these are folks outside of Ukraine.

Virtue signalling will be the death of us. Wanting to look like you're doing something is winning more than actually doing something.

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Unless you're one of a handful of a senior politicians, you can't 'do something' meaningful.

But fortunately, we live in a society where speech has an effect. Speech (which you derisively refer to as 'virtue signaling') shifts the Overton window, and influences the direction society goes.

The expression "virtue signaling" implies insincerity.

And there's nothing more insincere than telling strangers on the internet to believe what you do because "it's the right thing to do!"

Do FOSS contributors actually expect malware like this to produce signifiant positive attention to their cause? More-so than social networks and the media?

Exactly. They piss off ten people for every one they think they're helping. It's not sustainable.

> shifts the Overton window

It's ironic that you mention this, because the Overton window has been shifted so far to the left, I don't even think it's on the wall anymore.

Censorship is _rampant_ around the world. I'm glad you think it's all roses and daisies out there, but you have no idea how naive your perspective is.

Has it? Because in the past few years, it's started including ideas like 'The shadowy forces of Antifa and the occasional broken window on May Day is a bigger threat to liberty than actual fascism' and 'Is an election that the right loses actually a legitimate election?' and 'Basic public health measures are tyrrany!' and 'The most popular podcaster in the world with millions of followers is actually an incredibly repressed, censored, and silenced person, who can't say anything anymore because he's a straight white guy.'

If anything, the common trend seems to be insecurity and feelings of martyrdom among disciples of ideas that would have been considered batshit insane a decade ago. Have you completely failed to miss the boat where the American right took a hard step away from the center, courtesy of Obama, and later Trump and Q?

> occasional broken window

I repeat, as someone who moved out of a city to get away from much more than 'the occasional broken window', your perspective is naive and you look ridiculous.

> Is an election that the right loses actually a legitimate election?

That's a cute way to 'remember' it was the first time we did mail-in voting at scale, or did you also forget that in 2016 the media and left wouldn't shut-up about Russia infiltrating our elections? You know, if things were so f*cked in 2016, I'm not sure what changed to make the 2020 elections so impervious to fraud by comparison.

> Basic public health measures are tyrrany!

You do realize that the models for COVID-19 got more wrong the longer the charade went on? You do realize that for 2 years things such exercise and preventative care were put off for sheer virtue signaling through cloth masks? No, of course not, you're just another person who thinks we all made it through a 'pandemic' when worse pandemics have happened no sooner than a decade ago. Here's a hint: None of the measures during the pandemic were in the name of "public health" and someday in the near future, you'll learn in difficult ways why that is the case.

I truly hope you find the right way. From only two comments I can tell you're the type of person who thinks propaganda could never affect them, but is somehow hyper aware of the propaganda that is affecting others. It's the most dangerous type of pawn and you're the epitome. Congratulations.

You're not informed if you're just repeating what some billionaire wants you to.

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