• 4 Posts
  • 446 Comments
Joined 10 months ago
cake
Cake day: January 22nd, 2024

help-circle
  • Trump is very unpredictable on Ukraine. He said he will support Ukraine but who knows. But some say he will withdraw support from Taiwan, which is unlikely because he never had good relations with Xi and China. As for Israel-Palestine, we know where stands on that.

    For me as non-American, I am more concerned with geopolitics. I wish Trump would provide support to Ukraine. But if he doesn’t, at least he will stand against China. I understand many Americans are tired of over twenty years of hawkish foreign policies with corporate and imperialist agenda, but if Trump withdraws from Europe, at least he should pivot towards China. It balances out between complete isolationism and imperialism (I believe on a case by case basis of interventionism as part of just war theory, like the US entry into World War 2 and intervention on Yougoslavia).




  • For example, I definitely see the decrease in frequency, or not at all, on Reddit philosophy getting into frontpage despite having millions of subscribers. Many posts from r/philosophy often would gain thousands of up votes landing them into the front page. However, since Reddit’s crack down on bot activities, I see r/philosophy posts getting only a fraction of the number of up votes they used to get, which makes almost none of the posts go into the front page. It is clear evidence that bots manipulate the votes.

    I don’t know about you, but others also noticed completely innocuous and benign comments just getting a downvote. Before I would chalk it up to people just down voting for no reason or to downvote others to propel their own content at the expense of others; but after what transpired with Reddit’s crackdown on bot activities and user participation just so happened to decreased significantly? One would have to admit or acknowledge there is deliberate manipulation on what contents get to be seen or promoted long before and even as we speak.



  • My dude, there are plenty of actual automated bots on Reddit. IIRC when Reddit cracked down hard on bot accounts recently, over half of users and participation in many subreddits also decreased. That alone says that there is artificial engagement on Reddit rather than genuine human interaction (which vindicates the dead Internet theory). It explains a lot as to why a very innocent and neutral comment somehow gets a downvote: they are just bots downvoting.

    Even here in Lemmy, there are downvotes on the same benign comments and no explanation as to why someone would disagree. But even if the comment is political in nature, there are downvotes but no feedback as to why one would disagree. There is a post on c/climate on European Greens calling for Jill Stein not to run for US presidential elections because she would just siphon the votes from liberals and progressives even though she will not win. And many comments on that post are getting half or a third of downvotes, but there are no accompanying disagreeing comments to explain the disagreement. It is clear that there are bots in that post who are trying to downplay the repercussions of Stein running to US elections and democracy.







  • I see this response all the time “create your own if you want to see niche communities and Reddit communities migrate here.” Well, if I have the bloody time to moderate, or even if I do, will there be many people? And if there are many people, do I have the time to moderate? What if there are mod bickering and drama?

    The question is time. Does anyone else have the time to moderate and put up with BS inevitable with most communities?








  • It will take years for Lemmy to take off in much the same way as Reddit had slowly built up.

    As I and other mentioned before, the main downside of Lemmy is that the community you care about isn’t here (and frankly, I don’t know if they will even come here at all). Like, we don’t have AskHistorians here, and the Lemmy for your hometown or country is either quiet or just completely died. So, I end up having no choice but to return to Reddit to keep in touch with those communities. However, as someone who is privacy conscious since Reddit now sells your data to train AI, I try to log in to Reddit with Tor. But even with the Onion site of Reddit, it won’t let me log in at most times because of technical discrepancy with stupid captchas or something. Sometimes I could log in via Tor but most times I’m not able to.

    Anyhow, I would love Lemmy to take off as soon as possible but there is teething problem common in new communities. But the pessimistic side of me thinks it may not since so many people have become too invested in Reddit. And the latter intentionally hooked people in for the worst reasons.