volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@freeschool

This is a great illustration of what I'm talking about.

You go to jail? How does that happen exactly? Think about it literally.

If a politician declares that you go to jail, what happens? Nothing. He writes it on a scrap of paper or he says it into a microphone, but pfft, those are just words.

Now you might decide to voluntarily go to jail, I guess, but that's your own power that you're executing, not the politician's.

Or maybe an officer of some sort comes around and picks you up and puts you in jail, but again, that wasn't the politician, that wasn't the politician's power, that was the power of the individual officer who decided to use that power to put you in jail.

So it all comes back to, politics really doesn't have power. It isn't power. It can help organize power, it can help to get you to submit a tax payment that is then offered to the officer in return for his agreeing to use HIS OWN POWER to round you up and put you behind bars.

But that's his power, that's your power, that's not politics, that's our agreeing to accept the political invitation to use our power in such a way.

Politics is not power. It's only an invitation for us all to contribute our power in ways that represent the political consensus, if we want to.

@volkris@mastodon.sdf.org @amerika @wjmaggos @JeffC1956

@sammi you keep making assumptions about me that are just wrong.

I have a problem with that? No. I really don't care.

You might, though, if you don't want to sound like a nut who's just spouting propaganda in the course of arguing for something pretty extreme.

But that's not my problem. I have no problem with that.

@Lazarou

@shellheim I mean, you probably are!

Like I said, the way this platform works, your instance is broadcasting your posts to a lot of people who are perfectly able to take those posts and sell them to data miners.

With all of the posts being out there for the taking like this, I would be amazed if companies aren't out there collecting and reselling already, and haven't been doing it for a while.

The way this platform is set up, it makes it really easy for them to do that, so why wouldn't they? They get the benefits of data mining without having to bother marketing their platform building it themselves or anything like that.

We have set up a system that is ripe for exploitation, so it would be amazing if it wasn't being exploited that way.

@olives It's crucial to keep in mind that elected officials play a role in this. All too often they escape accountability as people get upset with courts.

@olives I mean... I'd say there are very key lessons in political science, not tech, to learn from that.

Yeah, they pioneered regulations. And showed why some paths shouldn't be uncritically followed.

@hesgen Yeah, but I think that second part really captures the problem with the first part as well.

Humanity eventually will always prevail? No, it will only prevail right until it doesn't.

But that kind of flowery language seems to be what the guy is selling, going right back to this seams is a war against humanity itself.

No, that's also wrong.

@sammi Oh, I couldn't care in the least whether you take me seriously.

However, the things that you're saying here are contradicted by numerous reporting outfits from around the world all independently looking into the claims you're making and finding that they're mere propaganda.

Like I said, if you don't care that you sound like a nut job, great! But if you want other people to come around to your perspective, then you need to realize that you're going to have to make stronger arguments and actually deal with the fact that what you're saying is being debunked on a daily basis by international news organizations.

You have a tall hill to climb here if you want to sound like anything other than a kook.

@Lazarou

@shellheim Well for example, your post was broadcast to me, and I'm not on your instance.

Your post just as well could have been (and maybe was!) broadcast to companies set up on other instances who will vacuum up everything they receive from you and monetize that as they wish.

Once your content leaves your instance it's a free for all. No matter what policies your instance may have, most of the activity here is being publicly broadcast without restrictions on monetization.

@freeschool but a politician ONLY has power to the extent that his rhetoric is accepted by others.

A politician can say whatever he wants to the public, can pass whatever laws he wants, can sign whatever proclamations he wants, but if others don't buy in to what he's saying, he's utterly powerless. Like so many laws that are blatantly ignored, so the politician is blatantly ignored.

Because politics doesn't have power on its own.

So it's not really about politicians telling people to do things like listen to each other, but about politicians seeing people willing to listen to each other, and maybe acting on that to invite them to follow that urge that they would accept, if that's really what you want them to be doing.

But mainly I don't think politicians have all that much room to act in that space. It's a lot different for a politician to ask people to pay taxes than to get people to have a chat. One is public, the other private.

When you mentioned violence and consent, I don't think it's really so much about consent. It's more that the politician cannot instigate any violence, consent or not, if others aren't interested in whatever the politician has asked them to do. It's more than consent to political violence, it's active participation in that use of force.

I emphasize that to emphasize the point: politics and politicians don't have power, power is a separate thing that politics and politicians can try to engage with based on the interest of members of the public in what they have to say.

Politicians only have the power that we are interested in lending them, and one instance at a time. We have the power in the end.

@volkris@mastodon.sdf.org @amerika @wjmaggos @JeffC1956

@Hiker seems to me that if you're the one blocking things on your instance, you have the answer to the question of why it has to be destroyed.

That sort of slicing and dicing and blocking is pretty much the closest thing we have to destruction, so I guess the answer is, some people would rather watch it burn?

@PamCrossland@lgbtqia.space
@Gargron

@shellheim Well it's so important for users who don't want monetization to realize that companies ABSOLUTELY CAN monetize what you post here, and arguably can do it much easier and more effectively since everything you post is probably being delivered directly to them.

A person like me doesn't care, so it doesn't really matter to me, but if it matters to you, then you need to know that it's how this works here.

@selea

@shellheim basically, the instance that you signed up to is censoring what you can see.

Hopefully that is a policy that the particular users of that instance want in place, but that's how it works on this platform, it's all up to the instance.

You go directly to matdn.social then you are bypassing your instances' restrictions.

@selea

@fkamiah17 but then, he's not really known for having chosen particularly competent senior officials...

@derbruesseler I would suggest that the focus on instances instead of users that is fundamental to this platform reflects exactly that sort of space for subcultures.

@randahl

@sammi

If you don't care you don't care. That's fine.

Just be aware that your arguments are weak and you end up sounding like a nut job who can't really back up some extreme claims.

If that's what you're trying to do, great! Enjoy social media.

The other hand, if you would like to actually get some people to come over to your perspective, that should be something you would be interested in working on.

@Lazarou

@markdarb the fundamental design choices behind the ActivityPub protocol lock users to individual instances, and there's really no way to improve on that without really ripping the whole core out and making major, likely incompatible changes to that core plumbing.

So here the devil is in the details, and I would never want to see any promotion of regulation at all without first seeing answers to those questions of what and how.

That those regulations would probably imply a shut down of Fediverse just highlights how important it is to get that right before even talking about moving forward.

@sammi I'm suggesting that maybe apples aren't part of the evil orange regime, and just saying so doesn't resolve such logically hard to swallow bombs you're throwing out.

The arguments you're making are pretty weak to support such an extreme claim, especially considering the broad swath of third-party organizations putting out information that the bunks the factual claims you're making.

In short, you just sound nutty.

If you want to be taken seriously then you'll have to offer more substantial reasoning that addresses the international sources refuting your claims.

@Lazarou

@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.

@wjmaggos @JeffC1956

@sammi given the statistics that have been coming out, how in the world do you figure this?

Sounds like you're pretty much giving Nazis a pass more than anything.

@Lazarou