This is why the weekend DDoS attacks and frontpage vandalism don't really concern me. With spez and Musk burning their services to the ground, we're (along with other competitors, we're not the only one) going to get a steady influx pressure for the coming months or even years. Shutting us partly down for a few hours every weekend does nothing in the face of this much stronger phenomenon. Whoever is doing it is basically pissing into the wind.

We will never be able to compete with them for as long as they remain federated with us. We will simply have no unique value any longer. All of our development--open source. All of our content--available to the federation. He will have rightful possession of it all, everything we are.

However, he does not have to share his development with us. He does not have to share his hardware resources with us. He does not have to limit himself to only the capabilities that we want to be added.

He can, if absolutely necessary, buy us. One big Instance at a time.

Our only path forward with any independence is to defederate immediately and ruthlessly. This way, we keep our content. We keep that unique contribution, that we can use as a competitor to eventually demonstrate our value to the rest of the world. That's the only way possible for us to have any chance of eventually toppling him, instead. We must retain our unique value. We must protect our content. If he wants it, make him scrape it and repost it with bots or something.

Put it on a smaller Instance, based out of a location where this law does not exist.

Yeah, but I'm still doing it on purpose to help the community grow. Somebody's gotta fill this place with content, and at the end of the day that's our job.

Normally I'm more of a commenter exclusively unless I need the services of a specific community. (video game question usually) But the Lemmy project has sent me digging for all the best youtube stuff I've seen in basically the past decade and then finding the community to shove it in.

YES! Bots to moderate the bots! It's genius I say.

Funny the kind of folks that get suspended on Elon's twitter.

Nobody should be ashamed of the history of their people. That encourages some to hide from it. Instead one should not shy away, but try to study and learn from the mistakes of their forebears, so their children might get a better world someday.

Shame for something you yourself have not done, though? Pointless.

... I don't think they have enough Russians for that.

All I know is that if you're very worried about being surveilled by governments, the Fediverse is the absolute last place you should want to be.

This is one of the most transparent platforms we have come up with yet. Instead of all your data only being viewable by a host company, it's viewable and able to be analyzed by basically anyone who puts some effort in. This makes it economically worthless, can't really sell something that everyone can already just get for themselves.

We're all out in the open here. So, wave to all the national security agencies everyone. Hiiiii! Hope you're all enjoying the memes!

Yeah, girls do seem to like it when you demonstrate how much you care. Just have to get your foot in the door first, with dates and small talk and jokes and stuff, so it grows naturally. Otherwise, especially if there's anxiety at play, it can feel creepily artificial and accelerated. Those are not attractive.

That's where romcoms mess up, the shorter movie runtime means they have to skip the legwork that would be necessary irl before reasonably showing feelings that strong.

Let's be honest though, guys been pulling dumb stunts for girls they really like (and vice versa too) for a very long time. That's real life, which romcoms are taking inspiration from. They just cut out all the dull parts and exaggerate the rest for comedy purposes.

Good news. But let's not forget with this one in particular, this battle will probably not end in our lifetimes. We let down our guard, and support for net neutrality starts to waver, it'll get attacked again. Maybe in a different way.

This one takes a lot of vigilance and determination to keep. It won't stay permanently "won" any time soon, despite the breadth of the coalition of sorts that supports it. There's just too much money that could be made on the other side, creates a lot of pressure.

... wtf is going on over there... What kind of douchebags did you guys elect? I mean, I'm American, I know I can't throw stones here, but y'alls were better than that. You like, wisely stood against our 9/11 invasion and we probably should've listened.

But, wtf?

btw, if anyone was too lazy to dig, this publication is a nigerian newspaper that actually seems legit. Founded in 2020, so pretty new still. Looking at their front page they mostly just do local reporting. Has had run-ins with local power.

Oh nononono you don't. A former republican supported by the Orthodox Jewish community, which is heavily associated with the right-wing Israeli settler movement?

Yeah, we'll be watching how he votes.

I appreciate it as a self-aware jab at the nature of online communities in general, and it amuses me. Every human is a lemming in some way, shape or form, there's just nothing new under the sun so-to-speak. But by being aware of this tendency we can control our own behavior more consciously and effectively.

Gotta be able to laugh at yourself though, which is a capability that not everybody possesses.

A chilly, distant demeanor. Is it an asshole that hates you, or is it an introvert that just wants to go home?

I feel like every person in this thread that cannot fathom how he feared for his life has never had personal experience dealing with someone with severe mental illness, in their family or in public or something. Direct experience, though, of interacting with a large, loud, mentally ill person.

If you think you can just assume a stranger you encounter who shoves a phone in your face is mentally healthy, you're missing some facts of life.

NTD.com, or New Tang News, is a Falun Gong-funded organization founded in NYC in 2001. It is owned by Epoch Media Group, the owners of the Epoch Times. It leans strongly right and does not check its facts. While still potentially capable of reporting true things, this is one of the least reliable sources out there.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ntd-tv-new-tang-dynasty/

Yeah... that is pretty much the point of a protest. It is certainly not supposed to make people's lives more convenient, and if convenience is unchanged then it means people probably don't know you're there.

Weaponized inconvenience is a powerful thing.

If you don't want to parent your own son, there is someone out there willing to do it for you. They will not do a good job.

Because even if they actually had an income of zero, they had saved up enough money over the years to be able to survive off it for some time. Commonly referred to as a "war chest". They don't actually have an income of zero though, their income is actually quite significant since they still have major trading partners like Iran, India and China to sell their fossil fuels and other resources to. They don't buy fossil fuels, incidentally, they sell them. Like Saudi Arabia.

Also, you can buy things with more than just money. People figure that Kim Jong Un probably isn't trading his stuff to them for money, but instead is getting technological assistance from them. Just one of their modern fighter-bomber tech, for instance, would be immeasurably valuable to N Korea, where their own tech has lagged behind a good bit over the years.

Lastly, people in the west have been doing sanctions evasion. I recall some German financial/tech company has its CEO now wanted by Interpol for being a Russian agent. So, when your own people are playing fast and loose with the law, that's going to make things like sanctions more difficult.