Agreed. I’ve voted center-left in pretty well every election of my adult life. Generally in favour of a socially progressive / fiscally conservative approach irl. Donated to green party campaigns. Was a card carrying member of Greenpeace for years. But on Lemmy, when I express a generally neutral viewpoint on a topic, and/or don’t support hard-left positions, I’ll be accused of being a right-wing republican nutjob who’s destroying America and supporting Trump and crew’s agenda. Even more amusing in that I’m Canadian, make no attempts to hide that fact, and am vocally part of the “don’t buy american stuff” crowd.

I do think it feels insular/hostile, though my take is different than yours. Yes, I’ve had some folks nitpick posts and one up, though I imagine you get that in many similar social media sites – there’re reasons for the running joke that in order to get a correct answer online, you gotta post a question as a woman, and confidently answer it wrong on a male account, and then people will pile on with correct answers and judgey-ments.

Many of the sites that seem to get posted to lemmy are on VERY fringey locations, locations that often seem highly likely to be hosting malicious content. There’s also far fewer people posting topics, with a very small group of users having like 10k+ posts per year. So it feels a lot more ‘concentrated’, especially on particular subjects, due to those posters’ bias’: if you’re an aggressive poster, it’s fairly easy to astroturf lemmy. Which feels insular / bubbly.

Adding to that, Lemmy has mods who are just as heavy-handed as on Reddit or any other heavily moderated setup – though lemmy’ll moderate things in a far more ‘progressive’ friendly way than most alternatives these days. Pejoratives are allowed for some groups, but not others. Even calling that sort of thing out in more explicit terms, though still in a neutral tone, can get you banned from many communities on Lemmy.

I generally agree with you, but there are also a bunch of older generation ‘norms’ and etiquette things at play in some of these situations / scenarios.

So first off, there’s definitely back channel reasons for some customs/behaviours. Consider for example the recent example from Trump’s trip to China, where Xi had Trump sitting in a lower chair, with the intent of creating a specific dynamic to the meeting and photo-ops. Or how Putin made sure to introduce Merkel to his pet dogs, having discovered she had a fear of dogs. Higher-tier diplomacy often involves such shenanigans, in part as it sends a message in itself.

One older tradition/norm, or ‘way to flex’, is exactly what the article mentions – showing up late. There’s an old saying I recall hearing my mom say (passed to her from her dad), along the lines of “If you need to meet with someone, arrive 5 mins early to be respectful of their time. If someone needs to meet with you, arrive 5 minutes late so that they understand you’re busy / getting your time is a privilege”. In more modern terms, think of it like a webinar/video meeting – if you need to attend a webinar/virtual meeting, you should be logging in to the system early to make sure there are no technical issues on your end. If it’s not something you need to attend, or if you don’t care about it that much and are just pressured to go to check a box on a list for your boss, you might not bother pre-checking connections: you don’t care if the other party has to wait 5 mins for you to sort it out, you don’t care about wasting their time.

Honestly, even in the private sector, I’ve cancelled meetings with people if they’re more than 5 mins late without notice, though you’ll usually allow for at least a 15 min window depending on what’s on the agenda.

That said, it’s clearly getting spun to try and drum up clicks. They don’t mention how long people were waiting, for example – big difference between Vance waiting 5 mins, and him waiting 2 hours.

Other guys comment, and the note about pension funds, is more about how things like the CPP will invest in SpaceX – as will many ETF/bundled type ‘funds’ that people use. Things practically outside your control.

Yes, you and others can invest your personal wealth into whatever you want. But your gov old age stuff will invest into stuff like SpaceX regardless, and be exposed to potential risks should things collapse catastrophically.

Kirk was 2025. It’s 2026.

Lemmy skews left, and censors moderate views / comments. You’re generally ok in various areas to be openly hostile towards certain demographics – typically white people, cisgendered people or men in general. You can use pejorative language to describe those groups with impunity. You can get banned from lemmy sites for questioning left-leaning narratives. Functionally, it’s not that dissimilar.

Censorship is used in part to cater a site to its market niche / audience. Whether you agree/disagree with a sites censorship approach, is generally based on whether you’re in that target audience / intended marketing bubble. If you’ve never been censored on a site for moderate views, you’re just squarely in the target group.

Meh, X skews right-wing, sites like Lemmy skew left, every social media site uses censorship along the lines that their intended bubble-market prefers.

Not exactly news, nor surprising in any way.

Also not all that ‘tech’ oriented really, it’s more mundane political drivel.

“May history not accuse us of turning the pain of ​those who suffer into a common sight along our shores,”

Bit weird to hear a Pope talking about history judging folks. Pretty sure religious folks tend to worry about a different sort of judgement, when it comes to immoral stuff, more so than ‘history’ judging them. One of the general ‘draws’ for religion being along the lines of “Don’t worry if you’re getting fucked in real life, your tormentors will get theirs in the next life, and god’ll set you up in heaven for your suffering”.

Also, history seems to show that people generally don’t care/get judged for historical wrongs, and/or that responsibility for historical wrongs gets diluted, generally absolving individuals of wrongdoing. It takes a LOT of bad stuff to have a significant impact on that front – just look at the church’s history with things like Crusades, religious indoctrination/genocides, or child molestation, and how many people still view it in high regard.

It’s almost like large international sporting events like the World Cup, are just tools to help hide crimes against humanity from the front page.

It was an example of use cases for wearable tech and people with disabilities. Cameras aren’t ‘technically’ required for the other example I noted related to eavesdropping. There are plausible reasons why people with disabilities would need glasses with cameras, and ‘recording’ people extends beyond just camera-based recordings. The issue is more with ubiquitous, covert, wearable smart-tech.

Yeah, I’m not as fussed over having laws on books, but on whether those laws are realistically enforceable. Like I recall reading at some point that lots of jurisdictions in the states define things like Orgies as a group of three or more people in a private dwelling without shoes on, based on ancient prudish attempts to describe what goes on. That’s a law that’s “on the books”, but practically unenforceable.

Same sort of thought pattern, to me, generally applies to the recording of people in public. It’s practically implausible that govt can enforce it uniformly, and it’s on the books just so they can ‘throw another book’ at a perp who’s been arrested for far greater offenses. There are also potential issues with ‘two party consent’ type recording setups, where one party is wanting to document events for legitimate reasons (recording an interaction with police, to CYA).

Idk. People taking pictures / recording public ‘things’, doesn’t seem like a practical area for privacy legislation to come in overly heavy handed on.

One of the issues is that there are legitimate uses for the tech. Like there was a post recently of a girl with hearing disabilities, ecstatic that she’d gotten glasses that provide real-time subtitles to people she talks to. A business / space with a “No Smart Glasses” policy, could essentially be denying people with disabilities access, which could land them in hot water just the same as allowing unfettered smart glass recordings.

Having them become more ubiquitous will also likely have severe impact on regular day to day interactions, even outside of the pervo-sphere. Talking with friends, or even interactions with other parties, can become a lot more complicated when people can record every word, can take those exchanges out of context, and use them against you in things like court proceedings. Eg. friends will often embellish comments/positions a bit for dramatic effect / story-telling purposes, with an understanding that it’s not got to be perfectly accurate / you’re going to be held accountable for every phrase. So you’re right, that the more ‘obvious’ recording setup of phones limits this risk a bit… but not for long.

Yeah, I’d stopped short of noting that it’d prolly be more realistic to enforce regulations on wide-spread sharing / social media hosting of such content. Like in some ways, recording someone in public for whatever reason seems reasonable – recording interactions with police, for example, being an area that makes a good deal of sense – but posting those recordings, especially with the implied ‘hope’ that they go viral / generate notoriety and/or monetized returns, is pretty dicey.

Idk. Bans on recording someone in public without their consent, feel like a really difficult thing to properly enforce – with or without the glasses. The number of people doing it with Smartphones already, in most jurisdictions at least, would make such a law’s wide-spread enforcement seem implausible. And I mean, you’re in a public area, so you sorta need to expect less privacy… because it’s in public?

It isn’t big in North America – but yea, 16 different cities, from coast to coast, and from Canada down to central Mexico.

The total number of matches has increased – Qatar had like 64 matches, this time its around 100. Each venue seems to be hosting like 5-9 games. So it’s basically gone from 64 matches in a concentrated area, to… this clown show.

Canada too! Hotels are whining in Canada, after having jacked prices up to like $1000/night for the event.

It’s surprising, having the event done in 16 different incredibly geo-distant locations, with jacked up hotel prices, doesn’t seem to be a draw in a market where soccer is a lukewarm sport (it’s a bit bigger in Mexico, I think, but Canada and the US not so much). Shit, with the recent immigration surge from India, you’d prolly get more buzz goin by hosting cricket.

Rereading what you said, “Lemmy leans left”, yeah you just might be, that’s exactly the kind of crap that is telling.

Who cares what Lemmy “leans”. I don’t give a fuck why do you?

So, you care, considering you’d just used it in a prior response to question my stance / position. Part of that position notes that I care, because user content rules means that if a platform leans left or right, it can become an echo chamber silencing even moderate positions – which was a pretty big part of my initial comments, that you’ve cared enough about to bait me for multiple replies.

I’ve already provided you with my reasoning for not replying in detail. I’m not changing my position on that front just because you decide to pester me. I’mma just go ahead and stop replyin now too, since you either don’t seem to get the point, or you seem to just be trying to bait a reportable offense.

So I’ve gotten a handful of upvotes, and about 3x more downvotes, on my initial comment highlighting this bias / trend. So about 1/4 of the people who ‘voted’, generally seem to agree with me – that seems to re-affirm my note that lemmy leans left on this subject in general, and that I’m not alone in this viewpoint.

Lemmy’s not anonymous. Having accounts banned from communities is not no risk, especially if you lazily want to just use one account on the site.

Stating opinions that are deemed against/negative towards certain niche groups can translate into rule violations – rule 4 specifically states anything deemed transphobic is a rule violation. You quite literally cannot discuss any non-overtly positive viewpoint of any of the groups listed in that rule, without potentially pissing off at least a few people, who would report it and result in a ban. If they get you to reply a few times in a thread, mods are within their rights to ban the person holding the non-majority view based on ‘multiple’ rule violations.

Asking to have a conversation about those topics openly, is just baiting people into getting banned.

As annoying as this’ll be, I’m sure, I’m not even willing to raise them on lemmy at this point. Lemmy leans heavily left, generally speaking, and moderate right-wing comments will get you massively downvoted, and at times banned/censored, even when discussed in a largely theoretical sense.

Sorta like calling out Israel’s genocidal behaviour on Reddit – even if it’s generally ‘true’ / you’re able to support such comments factually, if you talk about it you’ll likely get banned/censored. While you can point in its general direction, actually trying to discuss it is a no-win situation.