Are people really still convincing themselves this is a 5D chess move.

After everything else, are we still doing that?

How dare they fixate on topics I think are remedial.

Almost like they are stepping stones.

I think it’s fine what they are doing.

Look, some people are not switching. But if they aren’t going to switch, more negative PR for Reddit is the most they can accomplish. We can speculate all we want about the abstract value of negative PR vs engagement, but at the very least I support this over them being there and silent about disliking it.

The members of a site openly despising the site itself encourages migration too. Keep the attention on how lothesome things are and people are more likely to drift away slowly over time.

If you think their individual contribution there doesn’t matter, why do you think their individual contribution leaving the site matters.

We’re always a minority.

“not into a niche thing” basically

Some block chain thing

Jason Steel is actually pretty based

For the homophobic insult thing, just want to point out we still do it.

Stuff like saying “Trump is Putin’s bitch” or using pictures of them kissing to gross people out for instance. The insult purpose is to alternate you from Trump not from gay people, but it can also do that, and it taps into a knee jerk revulsion to effect those with that specific disgust response.

This isn’t about personally susceptiblity to bigotry. It’s about what the words are doing and achieving socially. There are different things that effect everyone on this level. The aggragate impact is what is relavent.

It sounds like you already have values that align you against him, which makes you not the target of the rhetoric. When people characterize others using ad hominem it’s usually with a subtext of alienating then from empathy.

Calling Musk a Boomer Karen buffoon for example, is much more effective than calling him a hateful fascist to people who aren’t politically opposed to him. Same with posting ugly pictures of him at the beach or calling him super divorced. All of these things are participating in stigmatizing things that should be fine. But they click with people brains and turn society against people sometimes more than accurate descriptors like calling him a fascist.

This same principle applies to the association with reptiles which is stigmatizing neurodivergence.

That doesn’t make all of them the same of course, because people have different priorities and make different judgements on what stigmatizing is too far in different situations. So your assessment of the language accepting a degree of stigma is accurate. Just also want to be clear its a messy layered decision that can’t be reduced to black and white in all context for all stigmatizing, without a lot of tradeoffs.

You’re also right that using rhetoric that throws certain groups under the bus also alienates those groups, and comes with downsides. It can even plant seeds that can evolve into actual bigotry in movements (a lot of the “boomer” talk for example has basically evolved into general ageism against the elderly, and Karen has transformed into something you can call any women who annoys you or is complaining about something).

So there’s a lot of good reason to push back on this stuff. But it can also be effective, particularly with fascists who loath feeling humiliated and form cult of personalities around being charismatic. But also in just turning neutral people into psudo allies. Sometimes. It’s complicated, is all I’m saying.

A weakness of inclusive leftist language is it removes most of the rhetorical shorthand insults that are useful for negative propaganda. What is rhetorically sticky is insulting people looks, behaviors, etc. But it also participates in the stigma of that stuff. Explaining the real reasons your political enemies are bad takes more work, which makes it lose out in comparison to your opponents who don’t have this limit.

There are ways to walk this line, but it’s very difficult. Stigmatizing language is the norm with stuff like “stupid” and “crazy” which are ableist. There often aren’t better alternatives that are equally effective rhetorically.

I don’t really have a point here, just acknowledging that this is an issue that arrives from a conflict that isn’t as easy to solve as it seems at first.

Luckily, we’ll find out not too long from now. Hope you’re right.

1. while it will draw more users into the fediverse, nearly all of them will join directly with threads
2. users who would have joined other instances will be parasited to threads as the safest best supported option
3. whatever threads does, other instances will be forced to copy or risk losing feature parity with the most important player in the space.
4. existing users will get accustomed to the content from threads as occupying the dominant super majority of content on the site.

Threads will essentially be the space, with all currently existing communities left as periphery. Which is very bad on it’s own because the decentralized space is no longer decentralized, and in fact is in the hands of Meta.

Meta will eventually wall itself off because not having control of your users social graph is an unnecessary threat. And since they are the space, so they will lose very little by walling off. When they do wall off, the fediverse will have it’s communities deeply intermingled with Meta, and when people lose most of their friends and content to meta walling themselves off - most are going to choose to relocate to meta.

Slowly growing the decentralized space organically is important to avoid this kind of stuff. If we allow someone to become the hyper-dominant instance, the principle of de-federation ceases to matter because they have so much controlling leverage over the users.

I do still think this is a good thing, but it’s a complicated good thing that could do more damage. I am very worried that they aren’t starting off federated. That also means their internal community norms will develop isolated from what fediverse has tried to establish.

aka: early tech adopters!

these folk are always the ones trying new things, especially anti-corporate things. They aren’t keeping people away. this is just how the bleeding edge of new technology. The communities natural grow out over time as more people show up and start to outnumber them. But it’s thanks to them that niche new stuff gets supported in the first place while it builds up it’s audience (and reduces the friction to joining)

The problem isn’t their intentions, the problem is the moment they join they will have more power and leverage in this space than any other instance. As well as become a magnet for hosting most of the content. Which they will eventually wall off, and when they wall it off people will choose them over federation because they got used to them.

The fact they don’t need us is entirely the danger. They will have a controlling leverage of users and content. If they are the biggest player in the fediverse, the fediverse itself is beholden to courting them.

People don’t want to lose what they get used to. Beehaw defederating from [Lemmy.world] is a good example. The defederation is far worse for Beehaw than it is for [Lemmy.world], because it means people will leave their smaller instance to get the content of the larger instance because [Lemmy.World] is such an enormous player in the space.

This problem would be infinitely worse with Meta if they become the larger instance, who after becoming a mainstay here will eventually be the entire space. and if they eventually wall themselves off - which they will, everyone who has built communities up with them will leave with them. The fact they don’t need us is why it’s dangerous.> eople using Threads are those people who have never used reddit, and never would have signed up for lemmy.

People using Threads are those people who have never used reddit, and never would have signed up for lemmy.

this will only be true at first. afterwards, the people who would have signed up for mastodon will instead sign up for Threads. They don’t just bring in new users, they also parasite users who were at all interested. Long term sabotages the organic growth of the decenterlized space. We build up leverage slowly, but once they are here they have all the power.