volkris @volkris@qoto.org
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
@markdarb It's really complicated, though, ranging from what the standards should be through what the goals are through how do you even enforce it?
Just for example, so many users don't value that at all. Why would we enforce it on them? Why would we take away platforms that don't have a feature that they don't even want to use in the first place?
But even more pointedly, Fediverse itself locks in users to individual instances. We would lose this platform to under such regulations, assuming they are even enforceable.
So it's one of those propositions that might sound great in theory, but really has serious issues in reality.
@freeschool well, I can expound a bit more than @amerika as I agree with that brief statement, and at the risk of laying out reasoning that they wouldn't actually agree with...
I do think politics is a way of managing, organizing, and even generating power. Politics is a tool that we can use to give more structure and hopefully use power in a more constructive way. But the power exists outside of politics, separately from it.
If your neighbor is big and strong and could beat you up, then he has the power to walk over and take your money, make you cut his lawn, etc. He has that power.
So politics offers an alternative to that violence. It says you'r strong neighbor might refrain from stealing your money if, in the alternative, you both agree that you'll give up some of your money in taxes to do some of the things that your neighbor would like done. And that would happen in the context of compromise and mutual benefit where you'll get some things from him in the process.
So power that people otherwise have over each other through violence might be redirected by politics into hopefully pro-social directions.
One reason this is so important is because while politics offers an alternative to that violence, it only works if your neighbor agrees to take the deal. He still has the power to walk over and beat you up to force you to work for him, so politics must work to get his buy-in or it just fails.
When talking about politics with regard to social media like this, it's always important to realize what politics actually is in the social order. Folks quipping at each other over here might not actually have anything to do with seeking buy-in from those who really want to use force to get their way in the real world.
@markdarb It might very well be that federation isn't the right tool for that job.
So often the drawbacks of a federated system make it plenty well suited for cases where content is not individually mission critical, like social media, but when you're doing something like using it to post and apply for job openings, a guarantee that messages will get through is a bit more important.
@CWSmith No, definitely not.
In some cases federation makes sense, and another cases it does not. It just doesn't offer value that contributes all that much to the goals of the project.
There's an old joke in the Unix world that every program expands until it can send email. The joke sort of made fun of feature creep. Well this sounds like the new generation of that.
@mountdiscovery Well I would say that it IS widely adopted in some communities and sectors while being almost absent from other communities and sectors, showing that it's not just about elitist POVs.
Every sector has their elitists.
I think it's more about the value proposition aligning sufficiently with the needs of the particular sector sufficiently to overcome inertia to tempt change.
So same thing here. The goals of Fediverse as a whole are a bit undefined, with different participants having different and sometimes contradictory goals.
Each potential change, such as the introduction of threads, gets measured against goals, and in this case the goals can be a little complicated because of that.
@DoctorDNS he can always appeal to SCOTUS, but at every level of appeal there is less and less grounds on which to make the actual appeal.
This is just a general way the system works.
Especially when moving from state to federal courts, the feds have a strong rule of deferring to the states because the states know best what their own laws are.
So to appeal the state ruling to the Supreme Court would require a very strong showing that something went terribly wrong in the state procedure. Otherwise the court would generally shrug and let the state have its way, even if it was a minor mistake.
@tomiahonen wow.
You're posting on a social media platform specifically set up to allow people to respond to individual messages.
Instead of getting upset with somebody who uses the platform the way it was intended to be used, it sounds like you would be better off just not using the platform because it doesn't meet your needs.
Your complaint is with the platform, not with this person asking a reasonable question.
@Nonilex last I looked no state has outlawed abortion entirely.
Every time somebody claims that a state has done that, I've looked up the law and seen that the law explicitly provides exceptions to restrictions.
@mhjohnson No idea. Ask the borders to figure that out.
@mrman Why does color matter?@NoBeret@noauthority.social @mhjohnson
@mhjohnson according to the article they specifically denied that they had such a preference
@fkamiah17 what in the world do you think Washington can do about it?
I'm surprised it took this long for such a death to be reported.
No satellite news delay. Just hard political reality.
@abucci The cloud is made by and maintained by workers...
@Kozmo the difference is that the US system is intentionally designed to mitigate such influences.
Checks and balances were a good idea.
@enmodo Well same thing as here, you don't see all of the Fediverse sense drinking from that fire hose is just too much. You only see what happens to be on your feeds when you sign on.
Threads users wouldn't see everything that's happening here.
It will remain to be up to the interfaces that the platforms run, and so anyone leaving those platforms will not be treated the same from their interfaces.
@enmodo Well they're just aren't that many people on this platform compared to the others, so getting the hell off threads and x and facebook would be shooting themselves in the foot.
@BeAware@social.beaware.live
It's like saying everybody obeys gun laws since I've never been shot.
No, this is important because a lot of people in this platform don't realize how tenuous the privacy controls actually are. We really need to emphasize that so much on this platform is based on good faith expectation instead of actual engineered control.
People need to know how little guaranteed privacy they have here because people rely on the system that isn't actually nailed down.
@flyoverproj you are misunderstanding what I'm saying since what you are repeating back to me is not my position.
So, yeah.
@CodieneC the incredibly important thing to emphasize is that presidents don't have the authority to do that.
The way to counter #Trump is to point out what a failure he has been to his own cause, to his own supporters, as he has failed to live up to promise after promise because he made promises that were impossible to keep under the design of the US government.
We've only made him more electable by speaking as if he could do stuff like this, when he can't. We actually support him by buying into this sort of rhetoric.
If he gets reelected, it's because we played his game. We need to stop playing his game.
#us Politics
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
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