Fair, but those were volunteers. Obviously he is referring to Americans deployed by the government in some form, nobody died in the line of duty so to say.

So you replied to the first sentence and ignored the paragraphs in which I describe why supporting either is misguided to malicious.

I understand the arguments that are constantly being spewed about the evil western imperialists, and they are of course true for the most part. Only that this doesn’t in turn validate or justify the human rights violations, atrocities or even genocides committed by either Russia or China; they cannot be guides or aides on the path to the desired egalitarian utopia.

If either of them had their way, would that do us in the west any good? The answer is no.

China desires a global hegemony under their sino-centric ideology, and to extend its control structures outside its own national borders. They employ the same imperialist strategies and methods to acquire influence and resource access in emerging countries as the west has or is doing. Russia currently displays its own imperial ambitions by its war of aggression on Ukraine. At least they don’t even bother with any greater good pretense, and are straight up about it.

The only real option is to consolidate the west in ethical and ideological opposition to these totalitarian parodies of their former goals, to create a new economic system that works for the people and not the reverse, without sacrificing our freedoms and individuality in the process.

One that truly represents what socialism is about.

Tankies are so fucking weird to me, and I would consider myself a progressive socialist as well.

How can they so unapologetically support Russia and China, when both nations are objectively not socialist in any sense of the word.

China does state capitalism, just because they have a one party state installed by the communist party doesn’t automatically mean they still are. All that is left is intense authoritarianism, with dystopian ambitions on global hegemony.

Russia is a failed state in the grasp of a kleptocratic oligarchy, with an extreme degree of corruption and disturbing moral decay in all levels of society. The only thing communist about it today is the old soviet ordnance they make their conscripts die in at the ukranian front.

Modern China and Russia are antithetical to actual leftist ideals, and any tankie supporting them just screams misinformed idiot or foreign propaganda shill and should be dismissed by default.

There isn’t a product in the world, even my most used and beloved, that makes me care enough to bother looking up beliefs of involved executives.

That’s not how capitalism works. You already bought the product, they have your money. You even spent enough time on the game to have an opinion on it, so it’s a win for their engagement metrics as well.

Why invest in fixing a product you have already been paid for if there is no legal obligation to do so, and you can alternatively make another product and get paid again? Star Wars games always sell enough to make them net profits.

Go to the voyager page, press the share button. Then select add to Home Screen, and it should look and be useable like your other apps

Thank you for enlightening me to my inner workings! It is always a revelation to have an internet armchair psychologist give you a diagnosis.

For that matter, I am german myself and thus have a “passing” familiarity with the legal situation surrounding nazism. I am specifically referring to Christianity in the west, with an exception to America due to their own regression in that regard. You are of course right that certain re emerging right wing parties are sometimes tied to conservative Christianity like in Poland, but that doesn’t somehow negate the danger of allowing a new and radically violent religion to take hold and carve out space in a free society.

Also, your paradox of tolerance is not actually a paradox, people just like to parrot that to not be made to change something.

Tolerance is a social contract that says I accept you to live and be free as you are or want to be in this society, as long as you treat me with the same respect. Islam does not subscribe to this notion, there is no room for acceptance of LGBTQ people, the equal rights and opportunities of women, not even for non-Muslim beliefs (infidels) or atheists (apostates).

Which in turn means Islam is not covered by the social contract of tolerance.

Why is being disrespectful towards religions even an issue? I do not respect them and have in fact strong contempt for religions. I consider islam a new cancer growing, after we finally managed to largely push Christianity out of policy making and into the realm of personal choice in the west.

There cannot be topics forbidden to be made fun of in a free society. If we cannot make fun of Muslims and Islam in any way without causing religious riots and violence then current form Islam has no place in a free society. The difference between Islam and the other monotheistic abrahamic religions is that the older two of the three have had enough time to go through cycles of reformation and ideological modernization, making them somewhat compatible with a modern pluralist society. Islam still insists a bunch of fables from when the book was written are literally true and valid today, and not just apocryphal advice on how to be a decent person.

And before someone brings up the inevitable American evangelicals as comparison, they are equally incompatible. Luckily that scourge is largely confined to the United States and not my problem.

I hate the idea that we have different kinds of prisons for different classes of people. In my opinion any kind of tax fraud or financial cheating on the public is a worse crime than most of the ones we currently punish with years of regular prison, except those causing physical / psychological harm to others.

As i argued in another comment, there are many useful bots for certain niche communities that I really think have a place here, even though I am generally wary of AI accounts infesting the fediverse as well.

Good examples for good and very useful, yet not mod work related bots are on TCG/CCG subs like magic the gathering and hearthstone to provide context to card names, or convert deck codes into a nicely formatted table of the used cards. Or on the Lego sub, returning any set number as a link to the proper bricklink entry. This kind of bot should be allowed and even encouraged to be used where appropriate.

Then there are the plenty of irrelevant and annoying bots we really can do without, like the alphabetical order bot, haiku bot, the dozens of bots quoting LOTR or Star Wars characters, and so on. Like most reddit jokes they stopped being funny fairly quickly and now add nothing to the conversation, but are being kept around for karma.

And then there are the more insidious bots that are about to become widespread, being harder to detect the more their refinement advances. It is going to be a constant arms race between bot detection and bot deception skills.

I really dislike that term, it makes me cringe to be considered part of a group that uses it unironically. That’s 4chan speech, let’s keep it in that cesspool.

Growth at any cost is the mindset that not only ruins anything good for profit, it is also the exact issue we are facing now in real life with the right gaining traction in many liberal and multicultural democracies.

Because everyone is being let in, without a second thought on if they even should be there, we now have massive social issues with not at all integrated subcultures in Europe that embrace values diametrically opposed to our tolerant and pluralist societies, in turn empowering the right to ruin any progress made in an effort to throw out the brown people again.

The right question to ask is not “can we accept this new member to our society?”, the right question is “should we accept this new member into our society based on their beliefs and values, based on if they can contribute anything to the existing society?”

And to return to the matter at hand, this is what the fediverse is supposed to be. A bunch of communities and little realms, each with their own rules and interests but united in their belief that self determination and democratic structures make for a better and more fair internet. And then we have the meta intruder we are about to welcome with open arms, without any rules or expectations of him to adopt our values and culture, so they bring their own, corporate, centralized culture and use their money to brute force that culture into every place of importance.

It is not racist or intolerant of societies to expect newcomers to assimilate, and ignoring that fact brought us a re emerging right.

And it is not fearmongering or small minded to be extremely sceptical of Facebook trying to establish themselves in the fediverse, they are literally the OG data and privacy violating corporation, they invented echo chambers and connecting extremists. There is zero value to the fediverse in welcoming meta. The only one who wins if that happens is meta.

Im on the other end of this. As a recent reddit refugee and general anti capitalist i am strongly opposed to association or integration of tech giants with this fledgling infant of a democratic social network. Time and again corporations have shown that they will inevitably ruin a good thing for their profits. It happens all the time, your food gets more expensive while quality and quantity only decline. Everyday goods are now subscriptions, everything becomes a commodity. Buying a home is a fever dream for the average citizen because commercial entities buy anything and everything even over market rate just to corner the market. And to use some more recent tech examples, look at streaming services. Piracy was a thing, then Netflix came and made it obsolete through convenience and a fair price. Now greed has not only ruined Netflix but also spawned a dozen subpar clones because everyone makes their content exclusive out of greed, devaluing each other. And just these last weeks we can watch what short sighted bullshit happens to social media when billionaires (or spez) feel their fortune is in danger.

Fuck right off with yet another corporation quasi monopolizing internet communities. Any instance that associates with corporations is an immediate quit and block for me.