Alternate version, which I unabashedly wear out in public:

I had no idea what 'OPP' stood for as a kid, which is funny, because it's right in the lyrics, but I was too young to understand what that meant. So I, too, would just belt that song out whenever it came on. Nobody stopped me, either.

The problem with cosmetic microtransactions is that it gives the creators a monetary incentive to make sure nothing you can earn in the game is as appealing as the microtransaction items, or that their availability (in cases where you can earn the same items in-game) are low enough that you'll never reasonably earn what you want.

You can say 'Cosmetics don't matter!' but the astronomical sales of cosmetic items pretty much proves that to the majority of players, that is not the case.

They also often intentionally create game mechanics specifically to ensure that players who aren't paying see the better-looking players who did pay.

We saw this recently with Ruth Bater Ginsberg, too, unfortunately - she could have chosen to step down when Obama was president and secured a democrat nominee in the SCOTUS for 50+ years, but she didn't, and now look where we are.

no special benefits or privileges based on him being [...] wealthy

That's unfortunately simply not the world we live in.

I mean, to play devil's advocate, it's their job. He's their client, they're supposed to work in their client's best interest, and as long as they're not breaking any laws to do it, they're doing what they're being paid to do.

I think it more comes down to the judge needing to put a stop to the bad-faith arguments; if the judge is accepting them, why wouldn't they keep making them?

This is the stupidest timeline. I hope in 30-50 years' time, this is all explained in history textbooks as the catalyst for why the entire system was re-written from the ground up to root out and prevent corruption and cronyism, but I'm not holding my breath.

They call him a "tech whiz" and "computer genius", but what did he do to earn that designation, really? He made websites? Is the bar really that low?

I love how even in your dream, the third party candidate is still a senior citizen. Couldn't break too far from reality.

my owl language.

Is 'my owl language' the language you're learning using Duolingo? Or is it a typo and you meant 'my own language'? It's interesting because normally I'd assume the latter, but in the context of this thread, the former makes some weird sense.

I strongly suspect that "modernize" implies "microtransactions"...

Did you play Dark Messiah of Might and Magic? This looks very reminiscent of that; the trailer looked very similar in style, lots of focus on the first-person animations, physics manipulation (e.g. kicking enemies off cliffs), the same sort of combat style.

It played more or less exactly like it looked, and for its time, it was fantastic - truly innovative and fresh feeling. With that in mind, I really hope that's what they're using as inspiration here, and that they capture that same game feel.

I mentioned democratic decision-making around defederation but it’s likely other changes will be needed as well.

Be the change you want to see in the world. You don't have to code in an integrated solution; all you'd have to do is set up an online poll, listing all of the other instances up for consideration (such a list can be pretty easily obtained - for example from https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list ), run a new poll on regular intervals, say, every 2 months, and let anyone who is interested vote. Then, you update the defederation list based on the results of the poll.

However, I think you'll quickly run into the other problems I outlined which, unfortunately, can't really be changed. You could require everyone who's participating in the voting to also be contributing time or money to run the server, except that then you're operating a plutocracy, not a democracy, so most likely, you'll need to be giving up your time and money to make your desired server administration a reality.

Not trying to dredge this all up again or restart this conversation, but I thought you might like to know... I went and watched some of the videos and read some of the accounts you've referenced (none of which I'd seen previously), and I can safely say that you've at least in part changed my view on this insofar as it applies to his intentions that day. Thanks for taking the time to discuss it.

I’m not sure why you’re giving a history lesson when I already acknowledged that point in the comment you are replying to.

It's because, despite claiming to have acknowledged the problem, you're still making such an incredible false equivalency - comparing joining a new Lemmy instance to moving out of an authoritarian country - that you either completely misunderstand what you're talking about, or you're arguing in bad faith.

Sure, I theoretically could create my own instance, but then I would have the same problem as current instance admins, even those who are sympathetic to these ideas, as I suspect Lemmy.world and my own are. That there is no structure within Lemmy to enable collective decisions to be made or executed, and I would need to build them from scratch.

You'd have full control over your instance, and could, if you built up a community, use any online voting method you wanted - of which there are plenty - to poll your userbase and gather their opinions.

However, ultimately, you'd be the one paying for the instance, and doing the work to set it up and keep it updated and running. What would you do if you attracted a userbase that had views that were completely counter to your own? What if you attracted the alt-right crowd, and what got voted into place was all hate-speech, nazi rhetoric, and intolerance? (I assume you disagree with these things...) Would you continue paying for and hosting the instance, just because that's what was democratically decided, even though it's no longer an instance that you want to participate in? Could anyone really fault you for not wanting to do that?

A better method might be for you to make clear your own opinions - either via a post explaining them, or via a pre-defined federation / defederation plan - and let people join your instance who agreed with those decisions. Which, incidentally, is how most instances currently operate.

One could also simply move to another country if desired.

That's nowhere near as easy for the majority of people - especially those in authoritarian countries - as you're making it out to be.

North Korean defectors are North Korean people who left North Korea to become citizens in a new country. In North Korea, it is against the law to leave North Korea without permission. North Koreans are also not allowed to change their own citizenship, so anyone born a North Korean must also die a North Korean. The punishment for leaving North Korea without permission is extremely harsh. People who are caught are usually sent a prison camp or put to death in public. Like many other crimes in North Korea, illegally leaving the country may not only punish the accused, but also his or her family up to three generations.

The fact that there I can choose which authoritarian system I want to be under means little when they are all quite similar. I don’t know of any instances that have such democratic governance. They are all run by their admins as they see fit. It would be like choosing if I want to live in North Korea or Nazi Germany. Sure, they might be different in some ways, but I don’t have a real voice in decisions either way.

Anyone can start an instance. Make your own, and federate with whomever you want. Nobody's stopping you.

So, you are right that admins imposing defederation unilaterally is an authoritarian action in line with things the North Korea or other repressive governments have done, though obviously far less severe due to the lack of violent enforcement behind it.

What? It's nothing like that at all. Your instance isn't a country; you aren't stuck there. You can go wherever you want. You can read content on multiple instances.

It's more akin to CNN deciding not to run a story that Newsmax is covering. You can have more than one source for your news.

I think you have a point here, although I think the issue is less with defederation itself, which is an important tool to manage conflict between instances, but rather with the lack of democratic governance in instances themselves.

Instances are run by individuals, who in turn have the power to run those instances as they see fit. If you dislike how a particular instance is being run, move to a different one, it's as simple as that.

Nobody's being censored. Anyone can go to lemmygrad and read their content. They're not even being deplatformed - nobody's preventing them from posting anything their instance allows on that instance. It's closer to curation than censorship... instances are free to curate the content they host. If you don't like the curation of a given instance, just move to a different one.

Alternately, maybe it's the case that doing something bad to bring attention to another bad thing isn't okay just because the thing you're trying to bring attention to is worse.

I actually support the protests where they're throwing soup on paintings or whatever. Those paintings don't really matter, but some people sure think they do, and it's effective to get a dialog going. Libraries are a public good, one of the few we really have left. It's like ransacking a food bank to draw attention to starving people in Gaza; it's not helping the cause they ostensibly care about, but it is hurting others.

I'm responding to your implication that actions in protest that get people talking about the issue are inherently valuable and worth taking. To make the point that that is not the case, I am using an extreme example to demonstrate a scenario where your statement is (I hope) objectively false.

I think I clearly stated my counter-point, which is that just because we're talking about it doesn't mean it is an effective or worthwhile form of protest to be engaged in.

I'm not really sure where you're confused here.