I bet you have more food than some people. Are you giving it to them?
You have a roof over your head, other people don’t. Are you giving it to them?
You most likely have more money than others, considering your access to the internet and ability to think up this post - are you donating all of your excess that isn’t going to your bills and food?
Calling it “hoarding” is just intentionally vilifying having money. Are some rich people bad? Absolutely. Are they bad because they’re rich? No. Do they have an obligation to give their money away? Also no.
I'm sorry, but being able to feed yourself and dedicate decades of your life saving for a home, is not comparable to having multiple homes, and going on holidays for half of the year.
I have nothing new to reply to this with because others who have replied to you have already said what I would have said perfectly. I do want to say I find your reply incredibly ignorant and I hope the other replies have opened your eyes a bit.
are you donating all of your excess that isn’t going to your bills and food?
My 'excess' that doesn't go to bills and food is like 15 bucks, while theirs is several hundred million. Great comparison 👍🏼
I don't think everyone should be forced to give away everything they don't need to survive, I just think (in America's case) if you have enough wealth for several generations to live in luxury while our people are dying from inaccessible medicine and healthcare and more than half of our country has no savings living paycheck to paycheck, we've massively failed as a society to provide basic needs for our people. You could fund universal healthcare with just a tax on billionaires and they wouldn't have to change their lifestyle at all. If I had enough money that I lost 90% of it and I literally couldn't notice the difference, I'd be full of guilt every night watching people die because they rationed their insulin.
Even without a tax in place (and I seriously and truly support putting a tax in place), millionaires and billionaires could take relatively small steps to improve life for a lot of people.
Do you remember last year that news story where a church used the donations from the collection plate to buy up the medical debt for some people? If I'm recalling correctly, the church bought up the debt, pennies on the dollar, and with like $50k were able to help over 100 people. I may have wrong figures for the money value and the number of people impacted, but I think the point remains that a lot of people's lives got better without the medical debt, both financially and emotionally.
Billionaires have the capacity to do this same type of thing. Just pick any city and throw money at a major problem that directly impacts citizens. You don't even need to work with the city or state government there! Get together with your other billionaire friends and strategize to pick a variety of cities. Make a game out of it about who can afford to pay off the problems in Los Angeles or Chicago, and who can only afford to pay off the problems in Sacramento or Springfield.
I 100% agree they could and should, but I don't think it should be made their responsibility. You also wouldn't have to tax very drastically, because replacing the healthcare system with something like Medicare for All would cost less than the overall cost of our current bloated system, so the money could just get reallocated and the tax increases would just shift the responsibility slightly to the wealthiest of us. It should be popular with the "party of small business" and "lowering tax for the middle class" since it would cost businesses and workers both less money for better outcomes, but they only pretend to have principles when it can be leveraged for power. Health insurance is a fucking scam, and the fact that we can't unanimously agree companies making money extorting us with our lives aren't beneficial to society is bleak.
Have you looked up how much a Billion dollars really is? Billionaires are not living paycheck to paycheck. They could do so fucking much with their money and resources, but they choose to invest in shitty submarines and privatized space travel. I am all for pursuing advances in tech and life, but let's solve the issues with earth first like world hunger, homelessness, and climate change.
I suggest to scroll the entire page. Including the 3.2 trillion of the richest 400 americans. And remember that the tiniest scroll you can make would lead to you becoming a multi-multi millionaire that never has to look at their bank account ever again.
I have all these things because of subsidies and welfare, or I'd be out on the street because I'm a disabled older person on SSDI. And even these things are a pittance, barely allow me to make ends meet, and are always in danger of being cut or completely gutted by the rich fucks hoarding all the money. So yeah, I think multi millionaires and billionaires are bad people by default.
I think you're missing the points about scale and marginal utility. If you have more food than 3 generations of your family will ever eat, and continue to take more while others are starving, you can make a moral argument that maybe you shouldn't have so much food. Much less continue to try and get more. It becomes more egregious when you, say, take food from your employees who don't always have enough.
Agree with this. We should remember that doctor-making-150k is far closer to being homeless than they are to a billionaire, with their individual wealth rivaling small countries.
Not looking to be combative, I’m curious: where is your moral line where the scale is too great, and why is it there? A lot of these comments read that that line should be “above me somewhere”.
Can’t speak for anyone else obviously but for me it’s a not a line it’s a scale, the more you have the more you should give back. Not that I’m religious much anymore but there is a parable in the Bible about this, the rich man giving loads of money (but still only a fraction of his total) to charity is less good than the poor woman who gave a tiny bit, but it was all she had.
As with anything trying to draw a solid line saying this good this bad will just lead to conflict.
The idea that being a billionaire is incompatible with being a good person is that this scale means you should be giving enough away as you approach that point that you never reach it.
Bear with me here, I’m thinking about all this as a thought experiment…please don’t jump on me all at once :)
I don’t disagree with you, there is a difference in utility, however what would you say to someone who has two homes? Say a vacation home on a lake? This wasn’t uncommon for persons of older generations (before shit got expensive). Because while two homes may not seem egregious to citizens of highly developed countries, it is, relatively speaking, a true extreme luxury in many parts of the world, perhaps even obscene if you consider those who live in shanty towns or those who are homeless.
And what about extra cars? Or any other luxury for that matter? Anything that explains why those in less developed countries see middle-class individuals in developed countries as “rich”?
Now these are nothing in comparison to the several orders of magnitude greater that a billion dollars is, but take them as the best examples I can think of off the top of my head lol.
Remember marginal utility is relative. My point is that, who decides what defines excess to the point where you’d make the argument you just made? where is the line? Certainly billionaires qualify, but how many millions does one need to hit that threshold? And who makes that determination? The individual with the extreme wealth will have warped perceptions (“It’s one banana, Michael. What could it cost, $10?”), so then it must be the non-wealthy who have insight, if any, or is it all relative?
I’m not trying to defend or apologise for the ultra-rich, but I think about these things in the sense of: what would I do if I won the mega-millions? Or had some secret unknown relative bestow obscene wealth on me? Never in a million years of course, but I’m the kind of person who likes to have positions that don’t change situationally, I’d like to be confident enough of my beliefs that I’d know what I’d do if the situation were reversed.
Anyway, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk lol. Again please don’t think i’m trying troll or something, this is a philosophical question for me.
I remember often being confused why I was being treated weirdly when I was teaching in a east-central African country.
The disparity of wealth, in absoulte terms, was not that high - I got a middle salary for that country, because I lived on what my country gives for a volunteer. Back home that would be way below substance limit bit there it was a medium salary at that time. But the perception that was prevalent made it so that most people thought that I was, in some abstract order, richer than them. It wasn't really clear by how much or what order - factor 1, factor 10, factor 1000?
I noticed how people who didn't know me or how I lived would always treat me weird and I came to the conclusion that them thinking about this - what order of magnitude is it? - made people treat me weird
Now for the bezos of the world and me, I know exactly what order of magnitude it is. But from which order would I start to see it as obscene?
I could live with someone earning double from me. 10x would start to feel unfair. But that is far far far removed from the reality of the global super rich. That factor is way higher, and it's easy to focus on this really really high factor, but finding the low border up until which it is ok might be hard.
And I remember how people looked at me, trying to figure out exactly this
I hop I explain myself, it's late here. If not I will retry tomorrow
It's important to recognize just how much more billionaires make than millionaires, but at the same time, no, neither of them are good or can be while maintaining that amount of wealth, and the reason is because you cannot make that much money by working. The ONLY way to make that much money is by making profit off of others.
Idk man in some areas a house costs a million. If two people go into debt their whole life and work their butts off to pay for a house that now costs a million, I still think of them as normal people somehow yaknow
A lot of that is because we're in the middle of a housing crisis thanks to enormous companies buying up all the property, pushing normal people out of the house market to renting. On top of that, buying a 1 million dollar house doesn't make one a millionaire.
Most of us don't pay off a million dollars in one payment??? Paying off mortgages takes a long ass time, In smaller increments. You might "technically" be a millionaire, but you won't be comparable to the kind of "rich" we're talking about here. You can make that kind of money by working.
Why aren’t you giving yours away? Same reason as the rest of us. Pretty disingenuous and hypocritical to call people out on that.
The majority of people of adequate means have more than the vast number of people below that status. Most of them are probably hedging their bets against misfortune or retirement, and the former can wipe out most of the advantages they had, and the ability to actually attain the latter is pipe dream for most people.
Point being, there’s a huge difference between someone with multiple lifetime’s worth of money hoarded that would afford food and shelter to tens of thousands of people and still not hurt their ability to enjoy life vs the person who is trying to shore up the minimum barrier between themselves and poverty and prepare for the day they can’t work anymore. For a lot of us that’s a pretty tough goal to reach.
Can there be good billionaires? Maybe. Are there any? Not that I know of. It is conceivable that somebody inherited their wealth and elect to invest it altruistically- in a manner that at least sees it not degrade but still beneficial to everyone else.
I do not see any billionaire acting in such a manner, and “hoarding” is would seem to be an accurate description
Yeah this is missing magnitudes of scale here. Someone with 100,000 and someone with 1,000,000,000 are wildly different scales of magnitude. It's like people who look at a mag-4, mag-5, and mag-6 earthquake. Each of those is on a log scale, so while you're just going form 4 to 5, the scaling means that's a massive amount of change.
Same diff here. The economy is mostly based around the buying power of the median. So every log₁₀ past that point means massive change. So going from 100,000 to 1,000,000 is a pretty big change in the amount of security one has. So going from 1e5 to 1e9, that's a change of 1000 on the scale. The level of change between those two is absolutely astronomical.
I get this facet of mathematics eludes folks. All the while the whole "double the number of grains per square on a chessboard" thing we all like to play with because it's interesting. But this is that IRL. The average person and the average billionaire are on two totally different scales. It's like saying, "why a beetle doesn't glow when the sun does?" Like you can't reasonably compare those two things. Yeah, both contain hydrogen at some level but in massively, massively different quantities. It's like saying, your computer is just an overgrown abacus. It's just ignoring scale so much that it veers into very wrong.
I get what you're trying to say. But you've got to acknowledge the vast difference of scale here and that your point is not just oversimplification of an issue, but a gross by planetary magnitudes oversimplification of an issue. Just mathematically speaking, the average person and the average billionaire are not even close to the same kind of person in economic terms. It's just completely unreasonable to even remotely think they are. The numbers are just too far apart, to even attempt this argument in good faith.
This is a great point, and the same logic applies to someone who's destitute vs someone with the median net worth of about $100,000. The average person could give away half of their net worth to feed a bunch of people in the developing world and it wouldn't ruin their life, but we don't. We're all less guilty of ignoring the suffering of others that a billionaire is, but not without blame.
This is a great point, and the same logic applies to someone who's destitute vs someone with the median net worth of about $100,000.
See this is where you failed logarithms. Let's talk domestic and then we'll move on to developing world. To explain it a bit better here's a breakdown. Let's say I take all my net worth and sell it. Lock, stock, and barrel. Convert it to cash and then take 50% of that dollar amount and hand it to someone. That value will allow a single person to have an apartment, furnish it, and pay rent for about 48 months. Now take the same billionaire and put it towards that same person. That 50% of that dollar amount is 43 times more money than if you completely liquidated the entire town of 12,000 in middle of nowhere Tennessee I live in. The billionaire could purchase forty-three of my towns. I can grant someone an apartment for maybe four years.
It's all the same 50%, but because of MATH, it's wildly different in what is possible with that same 50%. That's the "great point" you should be walking away with. Logarithms and orders of magnitude are wild things!
Now let's move to international. Minus the whole point I just made, one would think, oh if I give some money overseas, they'll be able to go to Walmart and grab some rice. Well they don't have Walmart. If I gave them $50k it is about as worth $0 because there's nowhere for the money to go that'll directly help them. It's not till I give them enough money to actually build the Walmart (or whatever shopping center, or you can call the Walmart farming equipment, or access to seed and fertilizer, or whatever basically enough money to grant them access to a resource that is just removed completely from them).
That's the thing people forget about abject destitution. They are so poor and exist in an environment that is so resource poor, handing them $100,000 might help keep them warm at night by burning the cash. But they are SO poor, you need a massive injection of funds to literally kick start their economy, and surprise $100,000, a quarter million, or half a million ain't going to cut it. You need nine figures to even get started and that massively ignores the complexities of the geopolitics and the fun details of despotism. But I side step all of that for simple fact that we just need to keep this to math and what I had previously indicated.
The economy is mostly based around the buying power of the median. So every log₁₀ past that point means massive change.
A developing nation's economy is in 1e-n territory for the median buying power relative to the US dollar. So for large n, you need large positive exponents to compensate. If some economy relative to the US dollar is 1e-6 for purchase power, then me sending 1e5 in funds is still fractional buying power on the order of like 0.1 relative to the dollar.
to feed a bunch of people in the developing world and it wouldn't ruin their life
The feeding you have to remember is someone here in the US buying the food and then sending the food. We buy the food at US prices, so it'll feed at the same rate it feeds a US mouth, because we didn't buy it at developing world nation price, we bought it at US price. We buy the food in the US because those nations are so poor, they do not even have food to buy for them to eat, you have to bring all the money required to invent all of that there.
So like I said, that whole 50% means vastly different things in terms of different log base. It's all the same 50%, yes, but it's wildly different values.
If the average American gave away half their net worth they would be giving away any hope of retirement. If the average billionaire gave away half their net worth they would still be a billionaire.
This logic quickly breaks down at scale. What we’re talking about is people so rich, that if they payed a percentage of their money equivalent to the average person’s 1 euro, they would create a significant difference in the world somewhere, but they don’t.
This to me is without question being a bad person, no one needs or has any use for such an unimaginable amount of money.
There's a huge difference between having food to eat
And having millions of dollars doing nothing
Or me living in an apartment
And someone living in a building that could take up a whole city block
It's not the fact that they have money. It's how they get it and what they do with it.
I have money, but I don't have enough to save. I don't make enough to do much outside of maybe buy a small amount of food for a homeless person. I'm not solving shit. However, living in the city I have had people ask for some change, and I've done it. But I can't do shit.
However, there are people who can actually help that won't. They get more money than they need and then just sit on it. Many of them get it through exploiting others.
But if we want to ignore things scaling and just reach, if I give a homeless person a dollar, should he not share that?
I'll add on here that there's a major difference between
being able to give a resource and be completely unphased
And
Being able to give a resource and now either having to make do without that resource, or be on the edge of insolvency because you gave away the resource.
Even for Americans who are living a little better than paycheck to paycheck, I have read something like 30% of them are one personal disaster away from homelessness, themselves.
How is the take hypocritical? Having a roof over your head and money to spend on nice things isn't the same as having enough money to live 10 lives and never run out. You've drawn parallels that quite literally don't exist.
Every Noise At Once: Recommend this website to find new music that suits your tastes. Play around with the options at the top, best way to see what they do.
I rage quit Lemmy when I saw the developers of it defending genocide. Previously I had heard about that through the grapevine and thought I could hold my nose and use Lemmy anyway but when I read the actual discussion it made me sick.
Plus I know the language kbin is written in so I can contribute better to kbin.
Yeah I’ll have to look into that as if they are accepting not only Genocide but possibly the Genocide of Trans people then I’ve got to get out quick due to being a Trans Person myself.
This is when I came over to kbin. Never saw it myself but was warned of it.
The kicking-off point was that I actually had created two communities and made a post in each one talking about how I was toying with the idea of using the Reddit API to mirror posts into them from the subreddits of the same name and then they magically disappeared (I assumed deleted by admins). So I dug into it and asked @feditips and was told they don't recommend Lemmy for those same reasons.
Turns out it was a weird nuance of language settings that hid them from me, despite being a mod of the new communities. So they are still there, but now I'm SERIOUSLY questioning the capabilities to moderate if I couldn't see posts because of language selection, especially my own posts.
I've spent a fair number of time in computer and photography shops, and also been in the retail side for the latter. Here're my tips for retail stuff!
Always know what you're looking to get. Do your own research first. If you need to rely on the sales person to make a recommendation, you've already lost. There's always a community of enthusiasts to rely on. Find them.
Always do a price check with various reputable sources first. That way you have a rough idea of the price range.
If add-ons of any kind are being recommended, say no and research first. Don't fall to pressure tactics to get them. If the salesperson is geniunely being helpful with the add-ons, they'll be happy to let you come back another day to get it. If they're saying you have to act now, it's a high-pressure tactic to sell higher-margin products to pad their bottom line.
If a similar but alternative product is being hawked at you, again, do research first then come back. There's always a motive behind that. Sometimes it's just a need to clear stock of an otherwise decent product, but usually it's because the profit margin is higher, there're sales targets to hit etc.
This is great advice. If you walk in somewhere with no real idea what you want and no research to back it up, you’re subject to the bull shit the sales person might tell you. They could also be 100% totally honest as well but, you have no way of knowing that. Do you research.
Yes, even when I dabbled in customer-side of retail, there's alway some pressure to sell the more profitable stuff, even when I wanted to help the customer. Many places will have even less scruples.
@ernest Thank you! Sorry I deleted my reply you was answering to, because I thought my question was useless. I didn't want confuse anyone here. It's just good to know this is worked on and not something by design.
@mohKohn It is very cool, isn't it? Found it somewhere on the internet many, many years ago and trot it out every so often. There are some talented avatar creators out there.
I don't think that your experience is the standard norm. I've never heard of swing dancing in my city, let alone friends that are all off swing dancing at night. Not sure if you're in a much older demographic but the younger generations are not into that sort of stuff? I think COVID may have also affected a lot of group socializing growth in general too.
But if I had to guess it would be one of two things, one: people just aren't really into it, socially or culturally. Two: you may have meant well but it comes across very negative, and I'd assume many people don't dance because of people like you and your opinions and judgements in regards to gatekeeping what is dancing and what isn't. If I went out on a dancefloor and looked over and saw disapproval and judgement from your eyes I'd feel pretty uncomfortable and remove myself from that situation.
The younger people are totally into that kind of stuff where I am (Seattle). Go to any dance class, and there will be as many young people as old. Well, except waltz. That's still mostly older people.
I just graduated college, so I'm in my very early twenties.
When I went to the first of my friends' weddings, one or two years ago, they announced the start of the dance, and no-one participated for the first two or three songs. I was kind of disappointed, because I was looking forward to dancing the night away. Luckily, some of my friends from swing dancing night were there and we helped get people comfortable on the floor. At one point we even organized a line dance! But at first, it was like pulling teeth.
The next wedding I went to didn't have a dance at all.
I guess I'm just sad at the perceived loss of culture I never got to experience, which is a negative emotion, correct.
I highly doubt were about to have a sad ending to Footloose take over everywhere. People probably dance more when they are happy or maybe when things are really bad as a way to cope. Things haven't really been great for a giant portion of the population. Inflation, food/gas prices going up, interest rates etc. If things improve people will be happy and go dance. In the meantime I think people are pretty stressed and drained from day to day life. End of the day I just think you may have confirmation bias mixed with maybe a narrower world view on why people might not want to dance like you expect as well as many people feel completely opposite to you personally. To each their own.
Yeah because tbh if I went anywhere and someone went "let's have a line dance!" I take that as my cue to leave. I think there just may be less people into swing and line dancing then op wants to admit. I mean go to a club or the right type of bar and you can find dancing no problem, even line.
Though every wedding I have been to there was at least some dancing, though I would guess it depends on the size and the people, if they don't wanna dance they don't gotta dance. Not to mention that in most weddings I have been to the music is more intended for couples dancing, which makes dancing even more awkward if you don't have said couple to dance with, excluding a portion of people I would assume.
I agree with you. Also an observation (not positive or negative in any way) a lot of the younger people I see under 20 persay are seemingly very quiet and reserved, that might be just a social thing and they are much more outgoing in other situations. I've heard that drinking alcohol is also much lower, so if you have quite a few people that don't feel comfortable dancing, are more used to being social online, and drink less then I would assume that dancing might be a little more rare. I think op might just have been in a bit of a bubble growing up where culturally it's was more open to dancing.
I'm late 30s, and formal dancing like this isn't something I'm into or have any close friends who are into - so this isn't something that's just happened suddenly with your generation. I don't think my parents know how to dance in any formal way either. This isn't some sudden loss of culture.
Most of the Western weddings I've gone to have a 'first dance' (where often the couple may have taken some lessons beforehand and which will therefore be more formal) but then after that the band or DJ will play pop/rock/hip-hop/disco music and everyone else will dance along to that. But that's dancing in the sense of how the vast majority of people (who have never taken lessons) know how to dance - i.e. the informal way we all learnt to dance at school discos or student parties or nightclubs - not the more structured dancing styles you're describing.
It sounds like you're quite into dancing as a hobby, given you mention having friends from swing dancing nights - but most people aren't, it's a bit of a niche. So you're disappointed that your hobby isn't more mainstream, but I wouldn't go blaming that on your fellow wedding guests. I'm quite into Star Trek, but when I go to weddings I don't grumble that the bride didn't walk down the aisle to the TNG theme.
My advice would be to accept that your hobby isn't something that most people are in to and not to judge other people for that. Instead seek out clubs and societies for people who do share you interest, where you can ballroom dance the night away together.
Don't worry, there's no blame or judgment or anger. There is simply a misalignment of expectations, and I am trying to derive the source of that discontinuity.
So you'd need mods who (1) came over, (2) believe in the platform, (3) believe in the instance, (4) want to do custom CSS, (5) know how to do custom CSS, (6) are willing to put for the effort for a readership that's still fairly small, and (7) feel that the odds of a change that will break their CSS are low.
That's a tall stack of filters, and you may not have a lot of company yet on the other side of it. /m/neverwinternights looks really nice, though. Well done!
Yeah, I'm at 7. With kbin still being actively worked on, basically still a prototype, and then just being exhausted from full stack web development all day, my desire to make something cool that may disappear in a month is just really low.
I started m/WNC and I have no idea what a CSS is . On top of that I post things to the magazine and they never show up. I have posted like 3 things today and a few over the last few days and the last thing I have that showed up is like 4 days ago. I don't know what I am doing wrong.
Mine is 5, being influenced by 4, all being bedrock by 7. That is I I don't know how to do custom CSS(5), and I don't want to learn (4) right now because it'll probably break sooner rather than later (7)
It's very useful for this. I have a moderately good understanding of CSS styling after spending 2 weeks on a work side project using GPT 3.5 and 4.0. Had absolutely 0 prior coding experience.
@Saturdaycat That's only available from 18 years old+ (you have to give google your age/credit card data) and is otherwise tracked by Google. Is not so much better than the comparatively unrestricted Bing Chat
Imagine every guy of 1000 downvotes would have to explain why they disagree. This wouldn't work well. And also there are platforms without downvotes — twitter, https://squabbles.io/ etc.
Anonymous downvotes are good thing imo - if I want to express disagreement with crazy antivax person, without him starting trolling me, I would be able to just downvote him and go away.
Don't sweat it my guy, some people are passive aggressive and/or won't bother defending a position for character reasons. Most people reading your comment can recognize it as reasonable
Also many people don't realize they aren't anonymous since they are new here, so people are still acting like they were in reddit. Give it time and ignore it regardless
as a matter of fact, I was able to create a fresh Google account, registered from Germany, without any of my data linked, and then I just used a US VPN.
Codecademy can be good if you are just starting out like the first time trying CSS. Probably would wanna do the lessons on html and then CSS but ya. I took already computer science course in school (only intro course yet bc is summer now) and there can teach more stuff, but before then i already did some lessons on codecademy and it helped to have context for the beginning parts of the class.
Yeah, that's gonna be difficult. Lol I want to do it, but it's a tall ask to work full-time, take care of my own personal stuff, hobbies, and then also learn basic HTML and CSS just do decorate a landing page for a forum.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to do it. It's just far down on the priority list and will probably be there for the foreseeable future. Would absolutely welcome anyone to help with it though! Currently best I can do is an icon lol
Come on folks, where's that MySpace/Xanga/Geocities spirit‽ Maybe younger folks here weren't active online at that time. Sad we've lost that a bit online. Lots of people learned lots of stuff to make their pages look cool.
This might be an unpopular opinion, but karma/reputation points. It only encourages hivemind and echo chambers. I'm ok with thread-specific points so that content can be ranked, but that's it.
The reality is those restrictions/gates just became goalposts and frequently moved fairnebough that it was easier for the spammers to get past with a repost bot (or kharma farming sub)
Spammers are not the only thing this is meant for. One example would be the give-away subs. /r/SteamGiveaway etc. Their requirements don’t prevent every malicious post, but it did keep people from just easily creating dozens of accounts to game the system.
Maybe the average Reddit lurker. But that’s the point I- and others- are making.
People who are trying to game the system to get free loot, are…. Going to game the system…. And the karma restrictions made it harder for actual people who aren’t gaming the system
The karma system was not even effective against spammers, while it did block out genuine new accounts and people with unpopular opinions. Bots would just repost popular posts and comments to farm karma and bypass the restrictions.
Anyone with half a brain could spot a karma farming account. When I first became a mod of a very large sub there I looked at the recent ban log and spotted some accounts banned a couple months back for karma farming. They were being used for things like promoting drug sites, crypto, etc.
The algorithm used karma and history to help filter/restrict accounts. The problem was that not everyone was committed to doing that. Most of the meme subs had mods who just didn't give a shit and when you sent them a modmail with: 'Hey these are clearly bot accounts reposting word for word popular posts including the links (which is a really good indication it's a script', they just wouldn't do anything or just very aggressively respond that they wouldn't do anything. Henceforth their subs became ground zero for botters and scammers who wanted to build history on an account.
Reddit had an automated process, as far as I could tell, for banning/restricting these kinds of account. If enough large subs banned them in a period of time, it would seem like their accounts would be suspended almost immediately. So if they happened to post in the wrong group of subs when I spotted them, I'd modmail all those subs and they'd all ban them and the account would disappear, but if they hit the right subs where the mods didn't care, then they wouldn't, and it would take a lot more work to get them dealt with.
Karma is a good way to track participation, but if people ignore/abuse the system it falls apart.
The fact that reddit didn't have a process in place to track accounts posting word for word (including link) reposts and immediately ban them was really weak. Also the fact that the algorithm checked karma and history but the admin gave their blessing to subs like freekarma4u because some subs had karma requirements was a bit of a joke.
At the size of Reddit, it's impossible as a mod to keep track of every account's individual activities. A mod of a meme sub with millions of subscribers isn't going to vet every user in the sub. To recognize a karma farming bot, you would have to know that their content is reposted. But if you're viewing the bot's post for the first time, how would you know? You would just assume that the post is original and upvote it. The karma bots also crop or filter their reposted images to make sure "repost identifier" bots don't catch them.
You don't need to vet every user in the sub. It is trivial to write a bot that detects whether or not things are reposts. There was literally a repostsleuth bot that did just that. All they would have had to do is pay attention to it.
I modded a sub of over 25 million subscribers and there wasn't an unfiltered post that I didn't go through. If you aren't checked out as a mod, it's pretty easy to spot the reposts after you mod the sub for awhile. It's also fairly easy to spot a bot that needs investigating if you actually click on their profile.
The bots carried on for years doing little more than simply copying the previous post word for word and even if the image was hosted on reddit, they'd just repost the same link, they were trivially easy to catch and the mods of those subs couldn't even put that little bit of effort in. Right up until the end of pushshift bots were reposting top posts from subs.
trying to dismiss their inability to act because bots have gotten more sophisticated doesn't excuse them because they didn't do anything when they were simple.
I honestly prefer the way Fark handles comment voting. Smart or Funny. No upvotes or downvotes, just whether you enjoyed the comment for its humor or its intellectual content.
Many forums have additional ratings/reactions. Sufficient Velocity has the most I recall off-hand: Like, Hug, Informative, Insightful, and funny as basic reactions. All of them are used regularly by users.
Honestly, SV may be considered overdoing it, though I personally like it. They also have Meow for paid users and Facepalm specific posts in a subforum. Even further, there’s gilding and maybe a dozen more reactions which are only active during specific events. Very much unnecessary to have that much.
That's nothing. There's a forum I post on during the NFL season called Sports Hoopla, which has the following post reactions: Like; Love; Haha; Wow; Sad; On Fire; Winner; Angry; Facepalm; You're Funny; Mind Blown; Boring; Bullseye; Poop; Wondering; Useful; Cake; Clown; Rainbow.
I agree. People can never fully seem to grasp that upvote and downvote do not mean agree and disagree, which discourages real conversation and ferments a hivemind.
People that want to put the effort in to have real discussions also don’t tend to care about internet points. But people that care about internet points are more inclined to only post low effort content and continual reposts.
upvote and downvote do not mean agree and disagree
Oh man, that really angered me with reddit. Make a controversial opinion and you are obliterated. It made subreddits like /r/UnpopularOpinion absolutely pointless, and having a discussion unfun
It's why I personally chose Beehaw. Removing the down vote ability is truly, in my opinion, a wise decision if you want real discussion rather than anger
That's not the fault of people, it's the fault of the UX design. Because psychologically, the most natural interpretation is Like/Dislike.
In addition, while using it as a Like/Dislike can cause valid opinions to be lost when it comes to comments, it's far more useful at the thread level, where you do want thread positions to be based on what the users of that thread want to see versus don't want to see.
However, someone else made an alternate suggestion, which is to have 4 arrows instead of 2.
One set covers Like/Dislike, while the other set covers Relevant/Not Relevant. I'm not sure that applies on the thread level, but it might be a nice enhancement for comments.
It's my understanding that "reputation points" isn't fully implemented yet and means nothing right now. I can't point to a source for this. Something I read somewhere that I've forgotten.
The comment/article up/downvote functions combined with personal filters/ban/blacklist tools is all that's needed. Some kind of strange "karma" or global reputation over time is the detrimental to the site and discussions and encourages bandwagoning users.
@arth or a race to the top with the wittiest one liner. Or a serious thread just consisting of one liners. I've loved kbin for how verbose people can be on here, really getting into the spirit of discussing and debating. Proper conversations, not just pun after pun
But never on a serious topic. Let’s add to the list, that “this is the way” bot that the dude then botted comments in a restricted (or was it private?) just to “win” on the bots leader board.
God yes. Not even close to unpopular. I've been going back and forth about it because it was sold as a barrier for entry to bots but, as was already noted, they just all hung around that damn free karma sub or reposted a single meme and then it was off to the races.
I get the feeling behind including it, but its only inarguable value is sorting the feed. Easy enough to just hide it outside of articles and then we'd all be better off.
Came for the UI. Stayed for the granular settings (including turning federation on and off) and the content just seemed higher quality (though that is very subjective)
It seems like there is several buttons at the top that confuses me as well as it seems to have lots of features that I’ll have to learn. I wouldn’t mind learning more of it especially if it brings a overall better experience in the end.
For me it’s more straight forward than Lemmy, possibly because of the UI. I still can’t find content I want, but overall it’s easier than lemmy and I can’t really put my finger on why. It’s interesting to me that you have the opposite impression!
I guess my thoughts are I can deal with the simpler UI, It doesn’t have anything on the screen without a specific use. I guess Kbin would be the same just has so much more on the screen than Lemmy does what I guess would overwhelm me.
I'd say the best way to look at it is if you're enjoying your experience over on Lemmy, then there's absolutely nothing wrong with sticking with it! c: This is one of the major upsides to federation, since different places can appeal to different wants or needs from their users!
That said, if you are curious about Kbin and wanna learn more about it, don't be afraid to! The extra toggles or buttons can certainly be intimidating at first when you aren't sure what they do. But in my opinion, one of the biggest draws for a website is having options! There's a whole lot of good in a site that lets you make your experience more your own than simply being one-size-fits-all, and Kbin certainly offers that in a few different ways! I can't speak for Lemmy on that front, but maybe they have similar options as well.
Apologies for the rather lengthy reply, but if you're still curious about Kbin and some of its functionality, there is this post https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/52838/A-starting-guide-to-kbin-social-support-thread-for-new-users over on the KbinMeta magazine. It is a smidgen dated though since there have been some updates since, so if you still have questions or are still confused by something on here, don't be afraid to ask! People are very helpful on here c:
Considering that the big majority of Threads' users are cringe influencers, brands that are ads themselves, and celebrities who don't want to interact with anybody but their bootlickers (who are also celebrities), I would say it's detrimental to the fediverse.
You're judging the platform based on the earliest of early adopters. Yes, people with nothing to lose and everything to gain by being on the ground floor of the platform have joined, but general adoption will take a little while. It will grow and normalize. They do have an uphill battle convincing people to leave Twitter, and frankly, ActivityPub isn't a big selling point. Being able to talk to nerds who left Twitter and Reddit isn't going to drive the average Instagram user or current average Twitter user to a platform - or else they'd be here. Yes, that's the side many of us know, but we are not average users.
Judging a platform by its users or vis versa is really shitty unless it's something truly extreme like Nazi's. "Do we really want normies who mostly follow celebrities and l brands?" Yes, we do. I'd love to follow Matt Mercer and Wizards of the Coast on here. I'd love to follow my favorite youtubers and politicians and game studios. That probably sounds pretty palatable to many users here, but if my mom follows movie stars, TV networks, and crafting influences because those are her interests, how is that any less legitimate? And is it wrong for me to want the accounts she's interested in to join the fediverse so we can have a common platform to share things with eachother?
I am fine with them, especially since they can be used to indicate the tone of a comment that would otherwise be difficult to discern. However, when you do that every other word as emoji thing (like the various copypasta that go around) or you put hand claps after every word, then I will hate you for the rest of my life and haunt you from the grave.
Despite Ocarina being my favorite game ever I still haven't beaten Majora...
That being said I respect anyone who favors it over Ocarina. It's incredibly imaginative, the way it takes Ocarina and spins it. I don't think we're going to ever see something like that in gaming again in a long time. It's really something special.
Honestly, I just didn't like the hub-wield element of MM as much as the geography of Hyrule in OoT. It had much more interesting social quests, and combat was smoother, but it just wasn't what I was there for.
It probably didn't help that I didn't have a Memory Pak, and didn't get to play MM until I got the GCN Collectors Edition disc like 10 years after it originally came out.
Moving to: m/AskMbin!
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