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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: February 10th, 2025

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  • In the literal sense that is true, but trivially so.

    Every computer program and application is a collection of algorithms under the computer science definition of algorithm. In the context of Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, TikTok when I said algorithm I mean a recommendation algorithm and, more specifically, recommendation algorithms that are intended to recommend you news or information.

    If Mark Zuckerberg wants you to see a specific kind of content he can unilaterally make that happen across the planet by adjusting the parameters of the various recommendation algorithms that he controls.

    That is not possible on Lemmy, as it does not use a recommendation algorithm controlled by a single individual. At best someone could attempt vote manipulation using a large number of bot accounts, but that would be detected if it is used at scale.

    If you’re reading Meta, your worldview is largely controlled by one person. You may think that you’re smart enough to avoid misinformation or that your own research counters the misinformation that you see every day, but you are being psychologically primed to create mental associations which happens below the level of consciousness and is not a process that you can control. The very fact that you think that you’re immune and that your reasoning can protect you is weaponized against you.

    Delete them, there is absolutely nothing on those platforms that is worth the damage that they’re inflicting on democracy around the world. These are the handmaidens of fascisim, the 21st century propaganda machines that are pumping custom designed poison into your mind.

    Delete them

















  • To the people that don’t get it. Censorship is when the government oppresses or modifies speech.

    What the user above is talking about is when social media companies like Twitter banned Donald Trump and neo-nazi accounts.

    Social media companies are private entities that you have a contract with where they provide you with service and you agree to abide by specific terms of that service. Hate speech and promotion of violence are things that you have agreed to not do on their services. If you do those things, then you agreed that your account could be terminated. That is what happened to Trump and the neo-nazi accounts (but I repeat myself).

    I can agree that social media companies have too much power over public interaction and media consumption but I also agree that a person or organization should not be forced to host and broadcast messages that they disagree with.

    Ironically, this standing legal interpretation is due to a right-wing lawsuit widely celebrated on the religious right about a cake baker who didn’t want to make wedding cakes for a gay wedding. The ruling is what affirmed the ability of private entities to regulate speech on their platforms.

    Complaining about being banned from a public platform and also celebrating the victory of the cake baker is a situation where their side wants to have their cake and eat it too.


  • This brand of argument is basically ‘If you can’t do everything perfectly, then it is pointless to do anything especially the thing that you’re suggesting.’

    You see this person in every thread on every topic where people discuss things that they can contribute their expertise to. Their message is ‘it is hopeless, your plan won’t work, give up what you’re doing, you don’t stand a chance’.

    Honestly, and forgive the langue, but fuck those people. You know what your strengths are and what you’re capable of, not some faceless bot pushing violent political rhetoric who is, by its own admissions, not in the US.

    If you don’t want to participate in the tech landscape as it exists today, there is absolutely nothing wrong about avoiding it entirely and building something else. Companies will not be so complacent about their position in the market if they know there’s a completely Free alternative that does everything that they charge a subscription for.

    The people who are doing self-hosting today are exactly like the early adopters of the smartphone or any other technology. There’s always people trying new things and sometimes they succeed.

    People who are using privacy focused approaches to personal technology, like self-hosting, are beta testing the ability to use cheap, mass produced hardware and open source software to build a product ecosystem that meets their needs. That progress is enjoyed by anybody in the future who decides they also want to leave the walled gardens of Tech Giantopia.


  • Once Wine made about 50% of my games playable I was dual booting because I liked the environment and customization.

    Once Valve started contributing to the WINE project and released Proton most of my games were working and I was only swapping back to Windows to play a few games.

    Now, I don’t have a game that doesn’t work on Proton(-GE-10) and exclusively use Linux. HDR was really the last item that I was missing and with the newest KDE/Wayland/Wine changes, it works with little fuss.

    I cannot think of a single reason to recommend Windows if you’re even moderately technical. The problems you’ll have with Linux are different than the ones you’ll have with Windows but the big difference is that they are not happening in a black box and so you can troubleshoot some issues A LOT easier.

    A crash happens in DirectX? You don’t have the symbols, nothing you can realistically do.

    If you have a crash in Wine, not only do you have access to the full source code and the ability to write the patch and compile it yourself. You also have access to developers that are not bound by NDAs, a public issue tracker and the ability to use fixes made by other users without their risking prison time for copyright law violations.

    There is no privacy destroying ‘telemetry’, no advertisements disguised as system messages, your data isn’t automatically uploaded to the cloud where you have to rent access to it, your encryption keys are not stored in on someone else’s computer, there are not mystery closed-source modules running in kernel space, the developers cannot force your system to update or deny you the ability to, and they do not force you to buy a new computer who’s only new feature is the ability to more strictly enforce IP laws and further tie your technological dependence to one of the 5 tech companies.

    But, you can’t play Valorant, have to learn GIMP and you may one day have to type a terminal command… so, I mean, there’s that too


  • Yes this.

    The US Military is setup to fight and disable entire countries, not to sustain a ground occupation contested by native guerrilla forces.

    Urban warfare and the fact that native attackers can hide in civilian populations will grind any army down. There are simply too many avenues of attack in an urban environment.

    The Army wants to draw a line in the ground and completely dominate one side of the line and then deploy the capability to rain death on anybody within 100+ miles of that line. They don’t want to be clearing a neighborhood house to house and trying to detect every IED and ambush when any civilian could be holding a grenade or gun and any pile of rubble or trash could be an explosive.

    The only way this has been avoided in modern times is when Israel completely flatted most of Palestine, killing a large amount of civilians in the process. I don’t think Donald Trump would try to avoid that option.