Right: the moderation is really to serve themselves including by protecting brands of commercial interests & advertiser revenue, but these platforms have deluded users into buying the pretext that it’s an essential part of a “safe, non-toxic” culture.
Though that may be the case with references to Luigi, they’ll happily abide by much senseless moderation like
With newer platforms like mastodon & bluesky, it seems like more of the same: their advocates often gush proudly of their robust moderation & claim that their extra moderation is indispensable to a safe, non-toxic experience.
I think all we need from moderation is removal of illegal content & perhaps offloading of off-topic content somewhere else. Rather than block offensive content, they could label it & let users decide whether to filter it out. Bluesky already does this, but they hardcode their in-house moderation, so users can’t opt out as we saw when they blocked the Trump toe-sucking Elon deepfake video.
Reddit sucks because of the moderation, yet the current zeitgeist continues to be that this extra moderation is some wondrous, beautiful thing that improves everything it touches, and new platforms need more of it. Fuck that & fuck Reddit.
The guy who said he’d build a wall & Mexico would pay for it doesn’t know why he started a trade war?
That’s a shock.
Not saying you should. The fact remains, though, you’re already investing it in real estate in an all-eggs-in-one-basket situation, inflation & property taxes are real, and insurance costs. Real estate still has some risk compared to low-risk assets that appreciate: do you remember any recent real estate crashes?
Investment accounts are generally insured (against things going missing) up to high limits, and you can split them up to fit in those limits.
If it all goes to shit, practically none of it will be worth much anyway. If armageddon doesn’t come to pass, you’ll be stuck with some property, livestock, crops, so not all bad.
Tax-free growth at compounding interest, beating inflation, diversification to mitigate risk & lessen volatility (eg, not putting eggs all in 1 basket). Markets always have risk: if you’re really afraid of risk, you can shift to mostly low-risk types of investments (bonds, money market, cash equivalents, etc). Real estate is typically considered riskier.
Retirement isn’t necessary: qualified distributions (no tax penalty) only require reaching a certain age or any of the many exceptions (including terminal illness). Early distribution with tax penalty is always possible.
It’s all basic information a certified financial planner or advisor or some articles on the internet can tell you.
Wouldn’t it be easier to disrupt the system by—I don’t know—something old & boring like asking everyone to clean out/close their bank accounts at the same time to cause a run on banks?
Where do people come up with these weaker ideas? Trump’s inanity might disrupt the economy more than these efforts.
Not Nigerian enough.
‘illegal protests’
Then they’re safe, since protests are legal.
Yet people still decided who to vote for & who not to vote against. People still hold responsibility for their vote or failure to vote: they knew who Trump was. They’d seen his shit before.
Also, why do you think the guy in the trucker hat is a leftist?
SSA publishes some cool solvency estimates for proposed policy changes. It looks like for payroll taxes, though eliminating the taxable maximum helps, some payroll tax rate increase is needed to sustain it long-term.
I remember the full-length report on this some months ago. Shit’s legit.
I think even if there’s no absolute “intrinsic” meaning, with sufficient cultural use, that negative meaning is impossible to extricate from an unironic, active use of the word.
I’m not sure of a succinct way to say that, so I see why intrinsic may have felt right. Maybe firmly established meaning?
I think it’s a little academic to say “any offensive word” can be said in an “inoffensive manner”
Technically correct best kind of correct? 😄
I point it out because some people get carried away with bizarrely simplistic claims that make the rest of their argument hard to follow. The best way to interpret their argument is unclear.
we’d then need to debate what it means to “use” a word in an offensive context versus another
I think it could suffice to state it was used in a conventional sense as an insult or to stir animosity. Musk clearly is using it in the conventional, offensive sense to outrage progressive & elicit right-wing support of outraging progressives: classic demagogy.
Back to your contention, yes, he’s using the firmly established meaning to offend & be bad, which bad people do. People criticize him to try to hold him accountable, which he is exploiting to advance his agenda.
While I can’t see the comment you’re responding to, I’m going to guess it concerns the question why do words offend & do we need to let them offend us that much? You wrote
Nobody is making the word bad.
This is the crux of the matter. Conventions change, words change meaning. It’s not instant & uniform: various people influence & promote changes that not everyone agrees with, leading to contention. Some people do make words bad. This case had a campaign to do specifically that when the word was uncontroversial until then. People had to choose to make that word more offensive than it conventionally was, and not everyone was onboard with that with many still holding out.
To see that choice, consider the words idiot, imbecile, moron. These words had similar origins as technical designations for mental disabilities, they have similar meanings and serve the same role as insults that aren’t that offensive. The current meaning & usage crowded out the historical one enough that it’s effectively forgotten.
The word we’re discussing could have taken the same course & was on track to do that until some well-meaning activists intervened. What good does changing a word objectively do for the subjects they’re trying to support? If anything, it reinforces taboo. And it introduces a new, easy button to provoke moral outrage: if you don’t agree this word in particular is very offensive (unlike before), then you hate people with mental disabilities. Seems like a disservice.
This moralizing conflict over words gives demagogues easy ammo to exploit. Was there a better way to support people that doesn’t do that?
women being fucking horrible communicators
That goes for society in general & we can’t pin that on women. Look at autists try to navigate social situations to observe how complicated neurotypicals make something that could be straightforward. Simple, clear directness often takes boldness & isn’t typically rewarded. Learning not to give a fuck takes effort.
Women & people in general don’t know who they’re dealing with & don’t owe them much of anything.
That’s the good ol’ euphemism cycle/treadmill. Linguists have long observed a process of semantic shift, often pejoration, for words of taboo subjects.
Words idiot, imbecile, moron were technical designations that became offensive yet somehow later softened into acceptable insults.
Words colored people, negro, black went through the euphemism cycle. At some point black was reclaimed & became acceptable. Now people are afraid to say it again.
VD became STD and now it’s STI. I still don’t know what was wrong with STD.
This phenomenon reflects society’s avoidance of uncomfortable ideas by shifting words. The words change, though it’s questionable they objectively change society’s discomfort toward the subjects. The phenomenon might be reasonably criticized as ineffective & distracting.
Can you guess what will happen to today’s euphemisms?
The word is intrinsically bad
While I agree words can offend, I challenge your understanding of linguistics: no word is intrinsically bad. They’re signs & symbols with arbitrary, often conventional meaning.
Usage & context matter. Take any euphemism & say it in a hateful manner: now it’s offensive. Lifewise, take any offensive word & speak of it in an inoffensive manner: not offensive. Language is flexible.
Saying the word is not the same thing as using it. It’s not like the N word that way.
Explain the logic for not quoting an offensive word?
Taboos are weird.
Dude, you do realize I didn’t endorse centralized moderation with a single word, let alone social algorithms or any of the other trash?
They’re widespread varieties of moderation taken to natural limits. And they highlight the weaknesses of thinking that approach will save us when they’re often blamed for doing the opposite.
Clearly, you disagree with that kind of moderation, so maybe you should “no true Scotsman” this & define precise boundaries of moderation you accept. The only type of moderation I might accept is the minimal necessary for legal compliance & labeling that allows the user to filter content themselves.
become an utter pile of trash
abundance of ways to spread nonsense fully automatically
Matter of perspective: that “trash” we had before was beautiful. Sifting & picking through it wasn’t much of a problem. Despite the low moderation, the nonsense didn’t really spread & the fringe groups mostly kept to their odd sites when they weren’t being ridiculed.
Look at Nostr.
Also beautiful: beats bluesky & mastodon.
Given you’re literally starting off with ad hominem
Let’s add hypercritical to the list. I disagree with the alarmism over images & text on a screen, and I disagree with the infantilization of adults. Adults still think and are responsible for exercising judgment in the information they consume. Expressions alone do nothing until people choose to do something.
Pretty much everyone used anonymous handles, so it was hard to be a victim, and very easy to disregard junk we didn’t like.
I’m sensing strong overtones of a victim complex and excessive catastrophizing. You know they’re images & words on a screen, right?
Enlightenment gives us freedom of expression. It seems uninformed & backward to assume faceless moderators of some private organization are the defenders of enlightenment, freedom, & democracy (especially while arguing against too much freedom).
Centralized moderation & curation algorithms got us filter bubbles & echo chambers personalizing the information people consume, distorting their perceptions. It feeds users information they want to see (often polarizing them with extremist ideas) to keep them engaged on the platform & maintain a steady stream of ad revenue. Rather than defend enlightened principles of society, we observe & can continue to expect moderators to serve their own interests.
Internet anarchy is a pretty good answer to that.
Why not instead flood X with tons of pro-Canadian content/shitposting (for great justice)? Maybe they could band together with other countries & do an all-out offensive against X, overwhelming their servers?
I’d bring out popcorn for that.