Depends how the eggs were cooked, really.

Good thing we’re on a service fighting back against algorithmic control in the service of greater profits, where more nuanced takes are not buried by algorithm-served emotional sound-bites.

It’s a legit argument. Though I would counter by saying it was hamas’ goal to further strengthen the right-leaning elements in Israeli society, and it was successful in that regard.

Netanyahu was in a very ugly position, and it was looking like he might finally be succumbing to his own corruption, which would open things up for his leftist opposition. The leftist opposition wanted peace, while Palestinian militants did not want peace, they wanted a continuation of violence. The best way to secure the continuation of violence and halt any peace progress was to empower the Israeli far-right towards ultra-violence, to further inflame the whole region towards a future of war.

So that’s what they did, to wild success.

Regardless, blaming all of Israel is unproductive. The real blame should fall on the Israeli Netanyahu government, and far-right settler movement.

Before Netanyahu took over, the Israeli military was evicting their own settlers, which Netanyahu put a stop to, if memory serves:

https://youtu.be/ZSGjBr_c_QM

Not my job to agree with people.

I don’t know, some analogies are better than others. People that just nod along with all of them are just weak-minded yes men. So, I guess it depends on the analogy.

Fair point. But I do think it is important to protect Lemmy’s reputation. It’s less about salesmanship, and more about standing up to bad takes and random, misc bullshit.

Agreed. Even in those threads though, in my experience. Even if the op is asking, op is not the only one in the thread. More often than not, people will jump in specifically to badmouth us.

I always see a lot of pushback against any alternatives proposed on reddit itself. There’s a pretty strong, probably multi-faceted resistance any time anything new is mentioned. So, it’s good to keep in mind you will face that, and be prepared with some patience and counter-arguments.

Pandaplomacy is absolutely a thing. That said, much like in the Cold War, it’s good for nuclear superpowers with big armies to have a certain degree of open communication and, if not warm, at least cordial relations. Helps defuse potential problems early, before they turn into news articles.

So, I welcome the move on that basis alone.

On top of that, the move does have symbolic power, as the panda occupies a similar place in China as bald eagles do here in the US. Anything that warms feelings between Chinese and American citizens themselves is probably a good thing.

One of the big disadvantages we have is that we’re still somewhat under-developed, due to being newish still, alongside not having corporate-levels of resources to pour into development.

This leaves us open to things like the recent spam flood. These things will get ironed out over time, but until they do, they’ll inevitably harm the platform’s growth.

In just the past 6 months though, apps have rolled out and steadily improved, some security issues have been addressed, and larger communities have built-out their admin capacity. So, we’re approaching being primed for growth, but that recent spam flood took me aback for a second.

You want to make a strong first impression, since it carries a lot of influence and you only get one shot. So, before we really do heavy campaigning to try to draw people, we want to make sure they’ll have a good experience while they’re here. I think we’re close, but not quite there yet.

Progress has been steady and overall positive though. One thing I think that gets underestimated is the importance of the size of our body of old content, and how much it helps to grow that. The meme communities having pages and pages of memes to scroll, the news communities having articles on everything in triplicate, the tech communities having thousands of interesting old convos to look at, the art communities being crammed full of art, etc etc.

That body of old stuff ends up being a kind of bedrock that future users will be more interested in building off of. Then the niche communities will start to pop more imo.

Peppercorns?

Whole and spherical, not particularly tasty. Changing their shape via grinding, however, unlocks fought-wars-over-the-stuff levels of tastiness.

Please explain.

You think memes being used for low-effort propaganda is new?

Which is why diplomatic tools should be attempted first, then escalation to economic tools. Military deterrence is too big a jump, currently.

I agree, it’s a very big deal. I never said it was nothing and we shouldn’t respond. I said we should respond in kind, as we can.

I merely draw a distinction between these kinds of attacks, and the actual invasions of places like Gaza or Ukraine. Information warfare has a culpable deniability to it, similar to espionage, that makes it inherently harder to tackle.

It’s just not so simple as bomb the people that fuck with us or something like that. That would not fix the problem. It’s trickier.

Fair arguments. I would say, though, that none of these rise to the level of military hostility, they’re still forms of economic and social contest, with a healthy dose of espionage. Thus, we can respond in kind. This will not prevent their rise, nor the return of some kind of Cold War mentality. But it will still allow us to protect ourselves as an alternative to authoritarianism, which is what is most important.

Nothing wrong with self defense, or defense of ones allies, or responding to subtle hostilities with other subtle hostilities. The key is to understand how different these are from outright, full-blown warfare, and to maintain that distinction for the sake of planetary stability and not all dying in a hot war, potentially going a little extra-hot.

The trickiest part is the information warfare, since we can’t always respond in a similar way due to intense authoritarian controls of their local information spaces. We’re largely on the defense in that arena, though we should counter as best we can while we build up our own defenses. Economic counters like Trump’s trade war are an option, but need to be more carefully calculated at strategic “chokepoints” than just broadly slapping down a bunch of tariffs and calling it a day. The microchip restrictions were a good move in this direction.

An important thing to remember is we can’t control everything. There is zero possibility of success for a ground invasion of the Chinese mainland, for instance, so we do need to work within what is realistic and able to be accomplished.

In India’s case, I think careful diplomacy can still accomplish our goals to the satisfaction of both parties. I would expect any rising power to “test the waters”, so to speak, they’re not supposed to just cower before our might or something. But we can handle this in a more civil manner, so far.

edit: Didn’t expect the complex middle-ground position to be popular, but nobody wants to actually respond?

To be fair, a multipolar world is fine. It’s not in our, or anyone else’s really, interests to try to dictate to other overseas peoples how they should structure their lives and governments. We did give it a shot, make no mistake, but it doesn’t tend to work out all that well.

We have no ability to stop the rise of places like China and India though, so fine, rise. We’ll only run into problems if this whole “spheres of influence” thing makes them think they can attack someone we have a security treaty with. That would be a problem.

You want to use economic or social power instead of military power though? Try to convince people instead of force them at gunpoint? Fine. No big deal. These methods honor their freedom. That’s a multipolar world we can work with.

Tucker is our most famous right-winger. That’s basically it. He can say whatever the hell he wants, due to our first amendment, which protects both freedom of speech and freedom of the press. This includes a freedom to willfully lie, unfortunately, unless one has been placed under oath.

Sounds like a fantastic option for folks that don’t like any mandatorily enforced censorship.

They should all go there.

They’re pretty unpredictable when it comes to sides.

Depends on the game. Deep Rock Galactic is a good example of a more pro-social game, in the fps genre no less.

Assuming you have not reached the level of actual addiction anyway. Anything enjoyable, even things like sweets or gambling, can potentially become addictive. That’s a whole different consideration.