The retention is bad because the new user experience is abysmal. It takes a lot of effort, even for a tech savvy user to get Lemmy & Mastodon to a usable state. Most people are not going to do that and will churn out when there’s no interesting content and the app does weird things like shows you the same posts over and over, if you don’t manually change settings for things like “hide read posts” in Voyager.
This quote seemed pretty illumative of the MAGA rush, “It felt freeing, empowering, though perhaps in the same way that bullying someone does when you’re in middle school.” I think MAGAs are very insecure people deep down, like bullies in a school yard. I can imagine them feeling important being able to assert their asinine (and hateful) opinions.
Yes a little known part of WW2 history was when Hitler was defeated by angry phone calls, which drove him into despair and suicide.
It’s not just the US. The far right is gaining momentum in Europe too, and the same will sooner or later repeat there (and I’m guessing sooner). Only a civil war in both the US and Europe will fix this now. Anyone passing the blame and not being prepared to fight themselves is part of the problem.
Yeah the biggest threat are the same corrupt right wing forces in Europe (which are often funded by the US or other adversaries). They will try to chip away Europe’s unity and divide, which leaves everyone weaker in terms of bargaining power or otherwise. Britain already fell into this and they are almost certainly not going to be better off by themselves.
Europe should be concentrating on unity, but also economic and military strength.
How long can they keep doing this without some type of significant action being taken? Couldn’t Russian ships be blocked from the canal?
Ok, that’s fair. I’m of the opinion that people or the European leaders don’t take these issues seriously enough and that private platforms like X don’t serve our best interests. That doesn’t justify misinformation, but it’s also hard to wait for an absolute proof when we see an accelerating deterioration of liberties all around us. The author did give references to the bread crumbs that could be independently verified. And I believe the discussion around it has been civil and good. I’m new to Lemmy and will try to do better on my part.
It’s a fair warning, I have no issue with it. A conversation would be a start.
While both of what you say are true, and it’s possible this report could be false, I’m also very suspicious about this sudden defensiveness and denialism, when you can easily see what’s happening on X, and now on other big privately controlled platforms as well. What are you worried and cautious about precisely? That we could unduly judge X? Even without this report, the world has changed and we are at war in the East and quite possibly soon in the West. We see Musk cozying up to German far-right political parties. And what was that “confusing gesture” that he made? Why are you so interested in pacifying the response to these events? In any event, we need to bolster free public discourse platforms that are not controlled by private interests.
We can already see it in action though, with what’s transpiring in the USA. I don’t believe that people who are inclined against action will suddenly do it even if there was more evidence, that goal post will never be satisfied. Rather we need to build habits and modify our own behaviors on a daily basis.
I’m very sad to hear that. The situation will continue to get more dire as most don’t seem capable of waking up from their comfortable lull and treating the issues with appropriate seriousness, but we must continue to do what we can.
We must stop being complacent and believe our own eyes to see what’s happening in the world. It’s not hard to see. A war always requires some level of effort and sacrifice. Being here at Lemmy is already a good step, but we need to further bolster European unity and choose either decentralized or European technologies. We have real adversaries on all sides now.
Yeah not having stories is a huge shortcoming.