Mango

We really need to start asking ourselves what a “future-proof” social media could or should actually look like.

Does any media company actually think about it? I know there are some big tech ideas like Meta or whatever but I’m serious, it feels like no one running anything has any real thoughts about the future except for in terms of propaganda or advertising. No one actually cares about the social part of social media which is why people have to build it on their own… Hence, the fediverse.

I predicted forcible demods…

But like, I feel like the one thing that would work is the one thing no one has been talking about.

A mod strike!

Maybe it has been suppressed because it would seem too radical but like, if the communities are going to die anyways might as well go out with a bang. Mods should all go on strike and spammers can run free and burn the site to the ground. That’s basically what happened with Twitter, right? Has Spez seen what has happened to the valuation of Twitter this past year or what?

I went on Reddit during the blackout and on the front page there were shitty tattoos of bdsm furries with their dick and balls out… If the front page could all turn into that and the enforcement of NSFW tags was lost due to lack of mods, I can’t imagine that the shareholders would be happy about what the site has become.

Mod + user direct action - everyone should post spacedicks/porn and mods should refuse to enforce the rules. Reddit wants to destroy the mods? Then reddit should see what a world without mods on the internet actually looks like… Especially before the IPO. Plus, the internet can get VERY active when it comes to participating in mischief instead of watching things slowly fall apart. I’d upvote spacedicks for the cause.

I have no idea why no one is talking about this unless posts/comments like that are being suppressed. Since it seems like most 3rd party apps have the best mod tools and most mods won’t keep up their work if they don’t have the right tools, the end result will be the same anyways.

Edit: they can’t afford to pay people to replace enough mods. Spez deserves a look at what reddit will become BEFORE the IPO in my opinion.

Ah, I see.

I personally don’t think people have to put too much stock into whether tankie has been used to refer to all socialists or not - those are the kind of people who don’t understand that there are more political dimensions than left/right. And even then, people will learn more about the terms and the meaning of the word will become more well known in common use.

Personally, I think it might be useful to keep the term around because it helps observers to understand that there are different kinds of leftist politics and not all leftist thought = Stalin’s USSR. Putting a name to the specific brand of authoritarian violence helps people understand that it is something that is acknowledged, named, and disliked by different kinds of leftists. Probably good for recruiting from the general public who will feel more comfortable exploring leftist politics without having to feel like they are doing something bad if they can dip their toes into leftist spaces and think “well I should be safe because they say there are no tankies allowed here”. Lemmygrad has a literal tank in the profile pic for the instance… I feel like as long as that kind of thing is around, we need words to describe it especially for newcomers to leftist politics. Particularly as people on the right love simplified labels and ingroups/outgroups, labels can create a sense of comfort before telling them to read literature from the 1800s to understand what they are seeing. Memes are incredibly powerful tools used in the right way! Personally, I can understand having interest in marxist-leninist ideology and whatnot but I really can’t get behind genocide denial or use of indescriminate suppressive violence.

As I said I’m listening to the Revolutions podcast right now and the Bolsheviks have just become the communists… Lenin put into the constitution that states are free to secede from the USSR but then immediately have to not actually allow that because for example Ukraine is so resource essential… What’s interesting to me learning about this stuff is that part of it is happening before the end of WWI so part of it is trying to figure all this out with imminent German imperialism on the table. And also that they all thought that other states would rise up in socialist revolution at the same time to make it all work out… It’s actually very interesting to learn more about how people THOUGHT it would all go vs how it actually all went. Tbh I just think authoritarianism is just part of Russian culture because there were secret police and imperial strongmen with monarchy, then communism, and then oligarchical capitalism… Three different political systems but new boss is the same as the old boss. Russian military doctrine has also always been good defense and horrible offense and human wave attacks for every political system they’ve had. I really think that authoritarianism is just deeply baked into the actual culture of Russia (and China) and not so much the political system tbh. These are just some random thoughts but overall I think that most random people associate political violence and oppression with leftist politics so we need language to describe how to get into leftist politics without obligatory gulag jokes.

Looks like you put the work in! Just saw the FAQ on the main page. Nice! Hopefully there will be a link to that post in the community notes section so new users are directed to it easily.

Not the person who you replied to but isn’t the name tankie referring to the people who support the use of tanks as a tool of political repression? Like specifically Stalin using tanks to commit mass murder and being ok with that because the massive amount of civilians killed by tanks “deserved it”?

Not super informed but that was my impression of the name. If that is the origin, I don’t personally think it’s derogatory. Political violence is a complex topic but uhhhh I think using tanks to murder civilians instead of political targets/active combatants doesn’t make people the good guys. It’s basically just a name to refer to people who are ok with use of mass violence to subjugate people as long as the end result is achievement of a political goal. Genocide isn’t cool and people that glorify that aren’t cool either and should feel ashamed (pretty sure it also ties into denying the Holodomor genocide so). It’s basically just a name for people who think it’s ok to enforce political will over other people with mass violence. Who tf thinks that Stalin was actually a good guy? Lol

I’m actually listening to the Revolutions podcast by Mike Duncan right now and I finally got to the Russian revolutions. I’m only up to 1906 after 39 episodes so I can’t speak to Stalin yet. What’s interesting is that the revolution of 1905 was actually pretty spontaneous with people all over coming into simultaneous revolt due to being pissed off at how their life was going. The socialist movements kind of joined/co-opted/spread information to people but it really was a mass organic grassroots movement that lead to (ultimately failed) reforms (due to the Czar being you know… A power hungry Czar). A general strike shut down the country. That’s a people’s movement… The tanks will come later to repress people who didn’t want to do what Stalin wanted them to do.

What’s sad is that it seems to me like the people who glorify the violence of Soviet Russia/China/etc are making the same mistake that happened after the The Great Terror of the French revolution of 1789. The fear of repeating the violence of the French revolution hampered revolutionary potential across Europe for like 100+ years. Russia was able to finally get a constitution in 1905, over 100+ years after the French because monarchs heavily suppressed revolutionary thought after seeing how Robespierre/etc went sicko mode. Will the violence of the soviets/China hamper revolutionary thought for another 100 years just like the fear of French violence did? Seems to me like the tankies are making the same mistake.

(@C_oldy u/C_oldy - see there’s a good question, how do I tag a user if I didn’t reply directly to them lol)

I’m hoping that users can make posts that answer frequently asked questions and that users will look for existing posts before asking… Kind of like I accidentally did lol. I had a whole post written with a bunch of good questions that I’m sure a lot of new users will ask but it got lost in a server error lol (learned my lesson about saving drafts properly).

Maybe the first step is to make a really good FAQ at the grade 5 level? The introduction note page is still a bit technical.

I have found that chatGPT is excellent for both coming up with questions and for answering them at different levels… Something like “give me 10 short q and a style questions about Lemmy/the fediverse/etc and write the answers at a grade 4 level” and I’m sure you’ll be well on your way to making an excellent FAQ! Just do that over and over again, or ask it to make questions out of a submitted piece of text. Of course the real thing is being able to fact check if chatGPT is actually correct and tweaking answers but it might be a great place to start in coming up with questions you might not have thought of. This will only work in chatGPT 4 in my experience, chatGPT 3.5 isn’t smart enough to read my textbook for me and come up with good questions for exam review.

Short q&a style questions are the best format for answering most questions because sometimes multiple questions get lost in paragraphs. People also Ctrl+f for things so repetition isn’t a problem in answers - people will be looking for key words in their questions rather than looking for key words in their answers.

Ironically (ironically only in the sense that Lemmygrad are leftist authoritarians I believe) Lemmy kind of embraces the philosophical underpinnings of leftist anarchist thought. I’m not well-read or anything but that’s just my impression.

Voluntary decentralized communities who can voluntarily associate with each other? People act like dicks? There’s no way to enforce authority beyond exile. Exile instead of capital punishment is hard to do in real life because land is a thing that exists… but in the digital world of federated communities, it’s literally the only thing to do! And if you don’t like a certain instance you can just leave and find one that suits you better or create your own. Freedom of movement with stability dictated by the social contract and exile of those who are not adhering to the social contract.

Honestly it really does seem pretty in line with general anarchist thought to me. And I think it will really help create a better internet in this age of media consolidation, profit-seeling, and extremism. I’m just reminded of the people begging for certain reddit subs to get banned and it not happening because the traffic was too lucrative. Now people can just exile each other in a decentralized way, no begging the admins required. I mean yeah on a smaller scale sure… But now the power to enforce the social contract is in the hands of way more people instead of just a few people per million users. Quarantining extremists will help stop the rage machine from spreading hate. I think it’s truly it’s hilarious that authoritarians over on Lemmygrad got defederated and thwarted by anarchist methods. In real life… Well, that’s what the tanks were for.