Three years ago, lawyer Jordan van den Berg was an obscure TikTok creator who made videos that mocked real estate agents.

But today the 28-year-old is one of the most high-profile activists in Australia.

Posting under the moniker Purple Pingers, Mr van den Berg has been taking on the nation’s housing crisis by highlighting shocking renting conditions, poor behaviour from landlords, and what he calls government failures.

It is his vigilante-style approach - which includes helping people find vacant homes to squat in, and exposing bad rentals in a public database - that has won over a legion of fans.

Some have dubbed him the Robin Hood of renters.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    LOL - Reported as “not world news”, where the definition is “news outside the US.”

    Being as this is Australia and Australia is outside the US…

    • Mango@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Can someone explain all this “everyone is good but straight white men in America” bullshit to me? How is the world “everything but America”? Why is racism anything possibly negative about a race except free range on white people? Why is it that I’m so privileged that I’m not allowed in a homeless shelter in a small town because they’re all living in grants for target minorities/disabilities/women/addicts?

      If I didn’t know any better, and I don’t, I’d think the world is playing spades and white Americans are the dealer.

      World News should be things that concern the whole world and include things originating from space even!

      • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Because there are already communities for American news (News) and American politics (Politics), other communities were needed to give non-US centric news room to breathe.

        The last thing anyone wants is another community that’s Donald Trump and Elon Musk top to bottom.

        • Mango@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          There are already communities for news for literally every country. Why is America left out with North Korea to be excluded?

          • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            America isn’t left out. “News” is exclusively US News. “Politics” is exclusively US Politics.

            • Mango@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              Ever heard the arguments against segregation? America goes on an island while world news is just “everyone but America”?

              How about everyone gets their own news community and world news is whatever affects more than one country rather than whatever happens in a not-America country?

              • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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                8 months ago

                Ever heard the arguments against segregation?

                Right? Why should I be subbed to a different community to get my latest sports news? Or to hear what’s happening in Helldivers? That’s news too! Segregation is bad!

                It’s all on Lemmy dude. People can freely access any Lemmy community and add it to their feed to access that news. You’re just complaining you can’t force something on them that they aren’t interested in (because if they were they’d already be subbed to the appropriate communities).

                • Mango@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  And this one here is for haters to specifically exclude a specific group.

                  • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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                    8 months ago

                    No, this one is for people who don’t want a feed dominated by US news. If you want that, “News” is available.

      • Gloomy@mander.xyz
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        8 months ago

        Can someone explain all this “everyone is good but straight white men in America” bullshit to me?

        I think it’s a rather natural reaction to strait white males beeing in power for all of the modern time and therefor beeing the ones that were made to set the rules and, even more importantly, decide what the discourse looks like. Hence the view on women, minorities, non “White” countries, etc is heavily formed by their views.

      • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        Can someone explain how you went from “This sub is for news about not America, if you want news about America there’s a whole sub for that” to “straight white men are victims of systemic injustice”?

        • Mango@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          It went to that because you decided to misrepresent what I said. You did that because you don’t have a response for my actual position and needed something easy to attack.

      • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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        8 months ago

        Can someone explain all this “everyone is good but straight white men in America” bullshit to me?

        Yes: when you’ve become accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.

          • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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            8 months ago

            Anyone is welcome to be here. Americans just aren’t allowed to make this another community dominated by American-centric news.

            Why is the “News” magazine for American news and not world news? Why is there no “American News” magazine?