I think you can also see something fundamentally positive in the critical attitude of many Lemmy users: namely the fact that criticism of undesirable developments in politics, society, the economy and so on is practiced here at all. In my opinion, this is important and should not be taken for granted. If only because it is impossible for so many people in numerous countries around the world to express their opinions freely and criticize their governments or powerful people in their society.

In any case, I think that a certain fundamental skepticism towards the existing power structures in politics, media and business is something of a unifying element that motivates many people to participate in Fediverse, after all, this platform is an alternative to the centrally managed social media providers and their functional logics.

Nevertheless, I think your post is important because it shows that all the negativity that goes hand in hand with a critical examination of the numerous problems in the real world is extremely off-putting for many users. This is of course problematic both for the mass appeal of the Fediverse and to a certain degree probably also for the mental health of the user base.

Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer as to how to deal with this in a meaningful way. However, I try to stay positive and hope for the best.

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Straight to jail.

Trump is directly responsible for these excesses. In the press conference right after the conviction, he said:

This was a rigged trail by a conflicted judge who was corrupt. (…) This was done by the Biden administration in order to wound or hurt a political opponent.

These are, of course, allegations that have no basis in fact whatsoever. So I wonder: are there no legal means to prosecute Trump for these blatantly false allegations?

Shouldn’t the mere allegation that the judge was corrupt be enough to sue for defamation? I mean, it has to be enormously damaging to the judge’s reputation if someone makes such serious accusations against him.

Yes, that’s probably true. For me, however, neutrality presupposes diversity - at least to a certain degree. As in the maxim of quality journalism: the assumption here is that a journalist can never be truly objective. This is why an attempt is made to allow opposing perspectives on a topic to have their say, so that the reader or viewer can form their own opinion.

Of course, this principle does not work in an environment in which differing opinions or perspectives are generally unwelcome. This is probably the case with Lemmy and other Fediverse applications for some topics. But I think that this doesn’t just apply to the Fediverse, but to social media in general. It seems to me just as you say: if you only encounter rejection on a platform, in a community or on an instance if you disagree with the majority, you will move elsewhere - which in turn will probably lead to you eventually finding yourself in an environment where the majority of others are of the same opinion.

Of course, it would be highly desirable if people were more open-minded, but I’m afraid that’s a utopia. In any case, I don’t have the impression that the advent of social media has fundamentally brought open exchange forward.

On the contrary, I have the impression that political discourse in many countries, for example, is now characterized by the very strategies that make social media posts successful: the abbreviated presentation of complex contexts, the invocation of enemy stereotypes, sometimes even straight-up trolling. But perhaps this is just a perception error on my part.

I’m not sure whether there can be an ideologically neutral social media platform at all. I think there will always be a significant proportion of users who are not interested in discussion, arguments and open minded exchange, but rather in seeing their world view confirmed by others or simply being part of a perceived in-group.

What’s more, the sheer mass of content makes an attention economy necessary so that one can deal with this flood of information. In my opinion, the content that is easy to consume will always prevail over content that looks at a topic in all its complexity (hardly anyone is willing/has the time to read up on it). So it’s often not about who has the better arguments or actually knows something about a topic, but about who sells their posts better. In this sense, it seems to me that social media in general is not really social, but to a large extent a competition for attention.

I am not aware of any platform that could solve these problems. In my opinion, this is not really the aim, as pretty much all platforms are not really about objective information, but rather about passing the time and entertainment. Of course, that doesn’t mean that you can’t find good discussions and serious information. But I think that this kind of content will never be the main focus of any social media plattform. The fediverse approach seems like a good try to me tho, because there can be “special interest instances” that can make their own rules to focus on whatever they are about.

Indeed. I’ll get to planning then. Maybe we can work together sometime.

We understand that your culture just has a strange lust for genocide which even the shame of the Holocaust couldn’t quell. We understand that Germans are just like that.

Thank you, dear fed up American. I always wondered why I felt this constant urge. I thought there might be something wrong with me. But now that I finally know it’s just my German nature, I feel liberated and full of energy. Oh, what a wonderful time to be alive!

I suppose that was to be expected from a country that has never recognized the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

If the Lemmy admins can’t make a living from it, that’s the Lemmy community’s fault.

?

This doesn’t seem like an open question to me.

I would be really interested to know if there was ever a company that tried this - a company for the people, so to say. As I said, I’m not aware of anything like that. Of course, there are also privately owned companies that are less focused on the logic of short-term profit maximization. But even these companies, such as Valve, can ultimately only apply the same standards, because otherwise they would be at a competitive disadvantage. That’s why I find it interesting to wonder whether there might have been a company at some point that, despite all the resistance, managed to assert itself with an alternative logic. It’s very unlikely, of course, but I’m asking anyway because it would be very desirable imo.

Are there any examples of large companies, especially stock corporations, that have voluntarily given up short-term profits in favor of long-term calculation or sustainable management? Or examples of cooperation between competitors outside of common (short-term) profit interests? I am only aware of “sustainability campaigns” that have been staged mainly for publicity purposes, which in the vast majority of cases are nothing more than a drop in the ocean.

As far as I know, it has always been necessary to use legal regulations to force the companies to pay even the slightest attention to the common good. One example of this is the ban on CFCs to protect the ozone layer - and that took more than a decade (from 1987 until 1999).

This argument is dangerous and in fact generalizes in an anti-Semitic way. The horrible actions of the state of Israel are not in any way representative of Judaism. How would you like it if I quoted biblical passages to portray you as a fascist conservative US ultrachrist? Your reference to the Throa does nothing more than that: equate a religious group with the actions of a state. Please think before you post on social media.

I think the message of this post is pretty clear: it refers to the simple fact that legitimate criticism of the actions of the state of Israel is quite often and often quite deliberately dismissed as anti-Semitism. That is ridiculous. There is nothing anti-Semitic about criticizing a state for its criminal actions. What is even more ridiculous is the attempt to even try and silence Jews who criticize the state of Israel with crude concepts such as Jewish self-hatred. This is not about religion, but about the rejection of crimes against humanity, for which not a religious community but a sovereign state is responsible.

“According to the brands website” might be an important hint, tho. I mean Trump and his minions are not exactly known for making correct statements.

Very helpful, thx. I might just reconsider.

Alrighty then.