When will C-suites and shareholders be obsolete?

That would be cool, but isn’t OSM the one with the wonky governance issues? A bunch of devs split from them and forked the source code, which they now develop as CoMaps. It’s a much more solid option for that reason

She should sue the fuck out of them…

That’s fucked up…

No I meant the app repository like play store, f-droid, app store, etc.

You can check whether the app collects or shares any data, and this one says it shares personal info with third parties. It doesn’t elaborate any further than that.

I’m not going to read the entire source code to identify it. Someone else suggested redlib, so I’ll probably go with that instead.

The app repo lists that kind of information about every app.

It’s on a device, it can access IPs, network info, maybe phone number, other accounts. It’s a blackbox, I don’t know what it has access to, but I guarantee it’s more than I explicitly share with it…

There are no more philosophical discussions.

Yeah… if you can’t have a philosophical discussion with someone (or something) that’s giving you false information or using invalid logical structures, without falling for their bullshit by uncritically accepting everything they say, then you’re not having philosophical discussions right, and that’s on you…

Says it shares personal info with third parties?

Oh, hey, you’re much more forgiving than me.

Not particularly. Like I said, unrepentant bullies should receive no mercy. I left “torched” undefined on purpose, to keep it open-ended. It’s only the ones who demonstrate self-awareness and willingness to change who deserve a chance at redemption. Because they’re the only ones who can be redeemed. Redemption can’t be forced on anyone unwilling.

But blanket-shunning everyone including those who want to be better is self-destructive. It gives the enemy a larger recruitment pool, and it dwindles our own.

Many of those people were simply victims in their own ways: bullied and ostracized until they internalized the toxic patterns that were being used against them, and then projecting it onto others as they’ve learned to view it as the “norm.” Those people are redeemable, they just need to be shown a better way. What they’re missing is self-compassion. It’s not possible to love others when deep down, who you truly hate is yourself.

I know, because I was bullied and ostracized throughout my childhood as well. To this day, I have very little patience with bullies and abusers. I often get myself in trouble with my open contempt for them.

But it took me well into my twenties to unlearn the patterns that had been ingrained in me by that toxic environment growing up. It didn’t happen overnight, and it was painful, uncomfortable, and a lot of work. It would have been so much easier had I found a healthy support group or mentor, but everyone rejected me because I “should have already known” the social scripts and how to avoid the faux pas.

I’m not surprised that most people don’t do that work on their own, that many who start don’t see it through to completion, or that most of them end up taking the path of least resistance: moving to the echo-chambers full of people like themselves with similar qualms, who validate what they’re feeling and accept them for who they are. Those are the same echo-chambers where right-wing extremists poach their new victims for negging, manipulation, and eventual radicalization.

If I didn’t hate right-wing abusers and machismo culture so much, more than I hated suffering in isolation and constant rejection by the people on the left whose ideals I actually aligned with, then I may have been tempted to fall back into that trap, too.

But yes, the people orchestrating these right-wing radicalization funnels need to be forceably stopped. I’m not disagreeing with that. We just need to acknowledge that there are degrees of involvement, and not everyone who falls for their grift is a grifter themselves. And when their social structure is dismantled, we need to provide them with an alternative or else new grifters will simply take the place of the old, like a hydra.

In a hypothetical socialist utopia with rigorously defined and enforced guarantees of rights and liberties, government-owned platforms can and should replace corporate-owned ones.

Imagine a concept like facebook/instagram/twitter, except it’s open-source and transparent, and its users are in control of its governance through direct democracy and collective ownership. Plus a set of rules defining explicitly what they can’t do, including all predatory, coercive, manipulative, and profiteering practices that are the industry standard now.

Obviously it’s not a simple solution. Government control ≠ fair, equitable, and transparent. That’s why I framed this as a hypothetical. It requires that socialist utopia, collective ownership, direct democracy, and open-source format. But it is possible, and we shouldn’t let our imaginations be hampered by what exists today, in this system.

So many things could be done better with centralized planning, but that depends on who is in charge of that planning. And that’s why we need direct democracy and collective ownership. Those things can actually be enabled by technology, despite the fact that technology is currently being used to hamper it.

Like, report a pothole on your maps app, and the state repairs it within a week. Go to the open forum section of your social media, and discuss the items on the upcoming bill proposal with the members of your community. Start a citizen’s initiative by filling out a simple form that’s accessible to everyone and posting it in the right section of the platform. Audit your local government’s budget/expenses as easily as navigating to the right tab.

There’s a better way of doing the things we’re already doing. We just have to dare to imagine, to believe, and to persevere until our vision becomes a reality.

Gross.

True, but there’s a line and once they’ve crossed it, they’re the bullies.

Where exactly that line is and how to draw it is a matter for debate. Maybe there’s another line where “This person is a bully, but still redeemable if he demonstrates willingness to change.”

But anyone who’s unapologetic and unwilling to change obviously needs to be shunned at the very least, and see consequences for the harms he’s caused.

That still doesn’t mean the majority of those vulnerable and radicalized people are irredeemable. Some are just uncritically following the trend. Which is wrong, but not as bad as being ideologically devoted to it, and their redemption can be as simple as showing them there’s a different way to be.

The main focus should be on helping vulnerable people before they become radicalized, but at this point I suspect everyone has already been corralled into one camp or another… Unfortunately no one was willing to listen to my soap box years ago, back when it was still possible to avert this calamity, at least to the same degree.

I didn’t say it was the only factor, but it definitely contributes.

Smoking causes cancer, but not everyone who smokes gets cancer, and some non-smokers and even olympic athletes do…

I agree with you, but if the tankies were listening they’d be very upset! (I say let them rupture a vessel but hey)

😳

Life is… brutal…

It doesn’t have to be. We humans are capable of being civilized, we’ve done it before. For a while I thought world peace was within our reach, at least in my lifetime, but now I’m not so sure…

Even on the smaller scale, people don’t have to be so cruel to each other. It’s a choice. A deeply-ingrained, generational pattern, maybe, but a choice to wake up each day and continue living in that inertia.

Of course, it takes more than an individual to break that tide. It’s a collective choice. But collective choices are just the sum of all the individual choices that reach critical mass…

I’m just absently philosophizing… don’t mean to blow smoke up your ass…

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say you probably don’t deserve it. I’ve seen your other comments and you seem conscientious, relatable, and like you’re doing the best you can just like the rest of us…

It’s understandable. I was frustrated, and the italics were meant to express my frustration. I just didn’t intend for it to feel directed at you… my bad…

You’re fine, it’s mostly fartmaster who’s making problematic overgeneralizations…

Thank you for understanding. So many times when I discuss things that are adjacent to this topic, I get flamed in the comments with people accusing me of being some sort of redpiller from the manosphere.

Like, no, social isolation is a problem, and it’s getting worse due to a variety of factors. To name a few, there’s social media algorithms designed to keep people dependent on their phones; there’s the long-standing consequences of the pandemic and the collective trauma that had in addition to the atrophied social skills due to quarantine; there’s widespread political polarization which keeps tensions high and makes it difficult to navigate new situations if you can’t prove you know the right social scripts and avoid any faux pas; there’s the whole toxic influencer culture who are grifting on inflammatory rhetoric, ragebait content, exploiting people’s vulnerabilities, and radicalizing them (which is a vicious cycle, because they prey on people who are already isolated!); and that’s just to name a few!

But if I summarize all that as a “loneliness epidemic,” then people call me an incel and act like I’m trying to coerce women into having sex with me simply by acknowledging the fact that social interaction is a deeply-set human psychological need.

Like, using “incel” as an insult is part of the problem. It feeds into this culture where “if you’re a man, you must get laid, or else you’re worthless.” That’s literally promoting toxic masculinity!

And it forces these people who are already isolated and vulnerable to go identify with these groups of similarly ostracized people in echo chambers where they’re insulated from those insults, where those predatory “influencers” then have fresh pickings of new losers to neg and radicalize.

But somehow, if I point out the problem here (because how can we solve a problem if we can’t talk about it?), then to most people’s view that makes me part of the problem! Even though, why would I be calling out the pattern if it was something I identify with?

The people radicalizing these vulnerable “losers,” yes they should be torched. But the vulnerable “losers” being radicalized need to be treated with compassion if they’re ever going to be redeemed. It should be pretty easy to identify who’s who, seeing as they have an entire social structure based on hierarchies of dominance and submission…