Even if we choose to ignore how unethical and self-centered this argument is (for any country), a lot of US influence, affluence and indeed global stability right now hinges on the US military might being there to reliably challenge authoritarian aggression on its allies and partners. The second US starts showing cracks in that reliability (with the extremist MAGA wing and all), authoritarian leaders start seeing opportunities to test the waters, literally as well.

This notion somehow assumes that the US achieved and can continue its status disconnected from the rest of the world’s security and it’s bonkers. Even the otherwise sound argument for increased defense spending in Europe is made irrelevant by the Russo-Ukrainian war as it’ll obviously increase spending in Europe. Spending that could be largely funneled in to the US military-industrial complex, recouping from what gets sent if they signal their commitment and keep sending their late cold-war era kit to grind down one of their two most serious threats. Without a single US troop on the ground.

It’s hard to think of a bigger foreign policy W for the US with its otherwise controversial bloated military and more fitting use for what’s already built for this exact purpose, but it doesn’t seem important to the extremist wing.

Skipping straight to “extinguish”.

The trackpad mouse emulation just makes almost anything viable. I played a good 100h of Rimworld until I got too annoyed with the game itself.

I get what you mean, but honestly I’d click through their affiliate links on purpose anyway. No ads, no invasive trackers, just Linux news and discussion.

The map system is so good for this. If you manage to get the bewildering learning curve, it’s so nice to come home from work and spin a few maps to relax and pick up loot. PoE is so overwhelmingly easily my choice as well.

This just the emphasizes how crucial it is for join-lemmy to succeed. If your load balancing hinges on the onboarding experience then it must at the top of priorities, though I’m sure you’re aware and would like ideas instead.

I wonder if the site could simply offer one at random from the list of recommended ones, offer it in a big frame with a “sign up” button.

Below it could something along the lines of “Any of these will also do: they all connect to eachother anyway.” And list the rest of recommended instances.

Below that it would have a “show more” button that would reveal the rest of the instances.

I also feel like the site could start with this dumbed down instance picker. First with an introduction and then the recommended instances. The vast majority joins and the ones who want to run an instance will likely join one first anyway. Skip the two buttons step.

The Communism part seems to be mostly a red herring, it’s added flavor at most. The central core tenet seems to be an anti-American standpoint with whatever authoritarian/dictatorial regime that fits it. Seemingly regardless of political alignments, and regardless of contradicting views from what they claim to represent.

They often purport themselves anti-fascist, but this can be viewed much the same way as the DDR called their Berlin Wall an “Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart”.

Yeah, it really is the UI that does the job. A UI that truncates posts >500 characters behind a “show more” button already gets you closer to a microblogging platform.

I still wonder why Pleroma had to be forked. Now the development is mostly around Akkoma, apparently.

I feel like there could be a button to simply sign up to a random instance from a curated list.

The site could essentially offer an easy (default) path that would tell you in the simplest possible terms (preferably with pictures) what Lemmy is and enough about federation that the user is aware that it’s normal to have multiple web addresses, they all just access the same network. It would then offer two buttons, one would take the user immediately to a recommended instance, the other would fork them to the “advanced” path, allowing them to pick an instance with all the bells and whistle options and access more detailed information about federation etc.

“Sign up to a recommended instance (server)” and “learn more first”/“advanced options” buttons, perhaps?

It’s probably worth noting that getting banned from Reddit means that the majority of Lemmy instances would likely ban you as well.

And to actually answer the question, I’ve never been banned.

I would urge anyone on the verge of quitting Lemmy due to this to check out either beehaw.org or sopuli.xyz. There’s a (still small but) active effort in providing general instances and contributing general content in a less politically hostile environment.

One of the biggest, if not the biggest benefits of federation is that you can easily change administrators while staying on the same network.

Only Gargron wants to run a flagship instance. Lemmy devs have made it very clear their instance has certain specific purposes and that they don’t intend it to be the main instance. I’m just wondering if we should remove the invite-request friction for a little while in Beehaw and Sopuli to take the weight off of lemmy.ml and so that the admins there can keep federating with Lemmygrad if they really wish.

It would probably be best to recreate some of the communities made in lemmy.ml elsewhere and actually contribute there. I really think your best bet is to just contribute elsewhere.

Warm welcome.

100% agree. The original Reddit was a bit of a wild west, but Reddiquette itself is great as a founding document and as a basis for all conduct in all communities.

The claim for “mob manufacturing” seemed baseless, but the ban itself demonstrates said bias when a person with a barrage of hateful comments continues to get nothing. This isn’t the first time I’ve felt ban bias in lemmy.ml, but is definitely the most flagrant example of it.

I should mention that I’m only against comment voting. It makes sense for the content itself, but in discourse it only leads to fights of wits.

Sometimes I get downvotes without knowing why and no one is replying me what’s wrong with my words.

Further ruining the conversation when you can simply press a button to devalue someone’s opinion without contributing anything yourself.

And yes, they’re used as agree/disagree buttons and it cheapens the conversation.

The entire purpose for downvotes in Reddit was to allow people to weed out comments that do not add anything to the conversation, but people of course misused it as an “I disagree” button. All the downvotes contribute is further ruining the conversational culture here by turning them in to gladiator fights of egos. Lemmy is actually just worse than Reddit in this regard when its downvote feature doesn’t even have a stated purpose. Lack of downvotes alone is a good reason to support Beehaw.

Ban editorialized headlines and random tweets and it’s an improvement already.