403 karma · joined March 21, 2022
They never do because the WHOLE point of becoming a monopoly or near monopoly is so that the customer no longer dictates the terms of their relationship with the company. The company does. It is about a power shift and simply put power being taken from the customer is never good for the customer.
"People who want to be left alone will be trounced by"
You, people like you feel the need to tell trans and queer people who they can and can't be because you are such snowflakes that you feel threatened by people being different. The politicians people like you vote into office actively promote stochastic terrorism against queer and trans people, there is no analog to compare to on the left because violence IS the platform for the republican party at this point.
People like you will go so far as to forego voting into office politicians that would actually improve your lives and instead choose a dumpsterfire of a politician to vote for. You fragile idiots will ACTIVELY make your life harder because said dumpsterfires always cut social safety nets and services, just so yall can own the libs and punish some minority that you feel threatened by.
It isnt just that, its also the fact that the media's conversation around moderation is childishly underdeveloped and nuanced. Moderation IS the hard problem of social networks, you cant automate moderation away, you cant not have moderation but any moderation policy you choose is going to have edgecases and problematic instances and the distortions those cause are going to threaten to overwhelm the spirit of the moderation (which is, dont be a dick). Also, people stuck at those edgecases (someone talking about their experience as a victim of an illegal crime for example) are going to get banned or silenced in extremely harmful ways.
The reason Mastodon is the future is that it attempts to solve this moderation problem by having many different communities with different moderation policies that have unique wordings, red lines for behavior and different moderators enforcing the established policies. When different communities federate, they do so on the basis of similar philosophies about moderation. When more and more communities with similar value systems federate the edgecases of any one particular moderation policy begin to become less important as a vulnerability or exploitation point since any one particular community is small and the shared spirit of the moderation policies ("dont be a dick) becomes more important as a guiding principle in moderation disputes. Also the red line of unnaceptable behavior is different for each community which creates a fuzzy region of more and more unacceptable behavior that trolls cant exploit the way they can tip toe justtt around the edge of a singular red line.
No moderation system is sustainable since it will by definition have edgecases which will cause problems or be exploited by trolls. No moderation isn't an option. Mastodon/the Fediverse is the third option nobody knew we had and really I have NO idea how corporate social networks with monolithic moderation policies projected across millions of people have any capability of adapting this innovation. It is the massive elephant in the room for corporate social media companies and yet tech journalism is still stuck on "should we have no moderation or a single moderation policy?" which Mastodon is FAR past at this point onto more interesting questions like how do instance admins negotiate moderation disputes? What does that look like and how can it be improved? There have been disputes between predominantly black communities and predominantly white queer communities on the fediverse and it gets absurdly complicated and nuanced fast but there is the capacity for that conversation to happen and different people to make their own choices and part paths (defederate) that makes Mastodon undeniably a far more advanced social technology than any other corporate social media platform where it just becomes person A is right or person B is right.
I personally love it because techbros read it and conclude it isnt worth checking out and the rest of us dont have to tolerate another techbro joining mastodon to jump into rando conversations and mansplain arch linux.
That sounds like a recipe for a literal shitstorm.
You are likely still going to be entirely dependent upon that support network job or no job. Jobs that are available to most people dont generally pay a living wage anymore, is that not sinking in for you?
BEFORE the pandemic most americans couldn't afford a $400 emergency bill, people are pretty desperate in the US on average and if you don't encounter that day to day you are living in comparative luxury.
Yeah you save money living with your parents, this has always been true.... but there is a reason most people move out and its because family living situation can utterly grind people to pieces. What does saving money matter if your quality of life is so low that you don't want to exist?
All those people arent living with their parents because suddenly way more people have healthy family situations to be around, ESPECIALLY given how many peoples lives are imploding every day in the US because of emergencies obliterating what little resources they were able to cling onto.
Seriously, I have zero time for the "glad millenials are smarting up and saving money by living with their parents" bs, nobody likes pissing away most of their paycheck every month to some landlord who wont even repair anything properly in the rental. This always has and always will be true, its just whether people become so desperate they cant make this choice anymore and they have to risk the consequences of moving home.
So this article focuses on how millenials are stress spending on luxuries to try to make their day to day life getting yelled at by their parents worth living and how that is good for the luxury market? What?
Don't assume everyone else has the privilege of not being worried about an additional $100-$200 cost to airline travel, it isn't a cute look.
For every bit of good the DOD does it kills, destroys and spreads enough suffering to AT LEAST nullify it if not vastly put it in the negative. That is without considering how all the money the DOD wastes on killing people and overthrowing other governments could be used to massively reduce suffering if it was put towards something more useful like infrastructure or healthcare.
Who the hell has the energy to socialize these days? I get paid less and less, my boss acts like I am selfish for wanting a raise while simultaneously expecting me to do 3 peoples job, and its crushingly depressing thinking about how I will likely never have enough to retire or live a comfortable life in old age.
Who the hell is surprised that people are just sitting at home?
US society is being torn apart by the rich, and almost every social issue we have in this country is directly connected to that.
Look at the recent rail strike, some of those workers only get something like 40 days off a year, that is INCLUDING their "weekends". It is absolutely out of control how badly the average american is being crushed by a society with so much wealth and knowledge.
You deserve a higher quality of life
What a disgusting thing to say
Definitely, especially because the article seems to avoid the elephant in the room. The US is amidst full on class warfare, the transfer of wealth from the poor and middleclass to the wealthy has been staggering, we never recovered from the 2008 crash, only rich people did.
The rich are grinding us to pieces and honestly I just dont think most of us have the energy to socialize anymore. Wages are less, no one has much money to spend on recreation, everybody is stressed about rent, healthcare, and their bosses being assholes and making them do the job of 3 people.
There are certainly other factors at play here but avoiding talking about this factor just torpedoes any intelligent discussion of ANYTHING related to quality of life in the US.