I agree the wording in the article is weird, but you have it backwards. Doggett (D-Texas) was an example of a Democrat who flipped their vote to oppose the bill. His quote goes on to say “America is stronger when we protect dissent in all its forms”.

The rest of Texas, though…

“Trump now hard-pressed to come up with an even worse option, but experts predict he is more than capable.”

Come on dude, take the L.

I would say it’s one of the first, but not THE first. Lemmy.world is definitely the most popular instance (to a problematic degree).

But I don’t think expressing one’s love of Spongebob inherently “excludes” anyone from using Lemmy. I don’t think the Lemmy devs have any duty to anyone but themselves. And any interest they have in user adoption is for their own reasons.

Nothing would stop someone from forking Lemmy and making an alternative with different ideologies. I assume the license would ask them to use a different name to not cause confusion, and I would hope that they don’t break ActivityPub or federation compatibility with existing Lemmy instances. But at that point, what’s the difference between a fork for ideological reasons…and just spinning up your own instance?

A house flipper would do everything they can to avoid having to do something like this. It’s primarily a normal home owner who would have to shell out for this.

Ex. when I bought my house, they told me the roof had recently been redone. I didn’t know enough about it, but the pre-inspection didn’t see any issues. Fast forward a year later we have someone look at it because it isn’t looking right in some places. Turns out it’s a very old “torchdown” roof, and by “redone” the previous owners had someone spray it with a silvercoat paint. This is something you do maybe 2-3 times in the life of this kind of roof. The inspector said there were at least 7 layers of paint, the roof itself was way past its recommended lifetime, and if there were any issues it would be impossible to know without taking the whole roof off. They said we could just wait until we have a leak, and then get it replaced, but (given several weather and money factors involved) we chose to go ahead, bite the bullet, and have a new roof installed. This was enormously expensive, but if I were to put the house on the market right after it was done, the state of the roof was already priced in. If someone wanted to pay $X a year ago thinking the roof was already recently “redone”, me getting it actually redone isn’t going to move that needle for anyone. It was purely for my peace of mind as the home owner who wants to continue living here. Sure that has value to me, but no tangible value that I can use to justify the purchase vs renting. I could have rented in this place for well over a year for the price of that roof.

A house flipper would have said “well, let’s try to get rid of this thing before that becomes a problem for us to worry about, shall we?”

If you don’t like SpongeBob, pick a different instance, that’s federation.

To me this is like having a problem with the flags someone else has in their yard. Not your yard, not your flags. You’re free to not like their flags, but if your grievance is with the action of them peacefully demonstrating free speech, that’s a you problem.

Sure, maybe that guy also happens to work at the flag factory down the street. Probably explains why he has so many flags. Doesn’t mean he’s going to make you put the same flags he likes in your yard.

Edit: for the record, I’m not downvoting you, I think you’ve been very reasonable in this discussion

Anyone wanna bet on how many days Trump is at Mar-a-Lago during his presidency?

Excluding mortage, the montly cost of owning my house is 275€ which includes water and electricity.

That’s also excluding regular maintenance or emergency repairs that a landlord would be (often reluctantly) responsible for. It is also possible to do big, expensive, necessary renovations on a house and have it hardly affect the value at all.

You’re just restating what OP said. I refer you to my original post.

If they’ve been trained to immediately recoil at the word “communism”, and don’t understand how federated moderation works, then yes, it’ll probably scare away a good number of users. But on the flip side it’s not a for-profit business trying to hook DAU using predatory and emotionally exploitative patterns, so who cares about first impressions? The people who use Lemmy know why they’re using it.

If you have an email address, you’re already used to the federated service pattern. When you sign up for a gmail, you’re making an account with Google to be able to send emails to anyone else with an email address. And there’s nothing stopping Google from making you fill out a “sketchy” application to get an account.

On Lemmy, each instance has its own set of rules, and if you don’t like them, you just make an account on a different instance.

As far as censorship, each “community” (analog to subreddit) lives on a certain instance and the rules of that instance apply.

Edit: also on the topic of communism, however you feel about communism in the physical world is irrelevant when it comes to the digital world. Free and Open Source Software makes the world go 'round, and is often communist in nature, even if done unintentionally. The pattern of people developing software for their own purposes, and then sharing it freely with others is the purest form of “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.” That said, running an instance isn’t free, so make sure to kick your instance a few bucks if you appreciate their work.

There was a time when the federal govt deploying the military to the states to enforce laws would be the worst case scenario in the eyes of the Republican party.

You know it’s fascism when you’re ok with the govt doing the worst case scenario, as long as you’re sure they won’t target you. I feel like even Reagan would have voted for Harris at this point.

I’m not sure what you meant about rounding up jews

It honestly feels like you’re not even reading your own comments. Scroll up and re-read what YOU just said to me.

Trump isn’t demonizing immigrants in the same way as Hitler.

He is. He labels them rapists, drug dealers, “the enemy”, he is about to use them as an excuse to deploy the military domestically to round them up. You can guarantee that if you try to hide anyone in your house or otherwise try to impede the federal govt from deploying the military in your town, you will also be labeled as a criminal.

Are you saying you think Trump will make concentrations camps and start a genocide?

This is already in motion. Currently they are labeled as detention centers, but they will inevitably become slave camps (which is literally a protected case of actual slavery in the US), because they are privatized and slavery is lucrative. But their home countries will refuse to take them, the camps will become overpopulated, and each facility will be tasked with “taking care of the problem” without being given instructions as to how.

People are publicly decrying them.

But on the note of genocide, Rubio (Trump’s pick for secretary of state) has already stated plainly that he is against a ceasefire in Gaza. Isreal is going to eliminate every Palestinian they can, and the Trump administration will support it. And don’t play dumb and say “he said Hamas”, Isreal has so far not discriminated between soldiers and literal children, and they’re not about to start.

I find it ironic how you act like you know what Lemmy users believe, but then appear to be completely oblivious of basic current events. It honestly feels like I’m talking to someone who gets really opinionated when they’re high, not even able to keep up with what YOU just said let alone what others are telling you.

Basically, pre-2008.

Wars in the middle east were the norm, but they were always elsewhere, and the govt sold us that they were fighting the bad guys, that everything was under control, and that home would continue to be safe and prosperous. There basically weren’t any other militaries that could reasonably rival the US World Police. Yeah, it was seen as problematic, but in a way that seemed TOO safe, never unsafe. Random acts of terrorism was sold to us as the only real threat (even though it realistically wasn’t).

As kids, millennials were told that the American dream was real, that if you go to college you will get a good job and be able to provide for your family. It wasn’t until around the time of the 2008 recession that people really started noticing how worthless a lot of their college degrees were, and how much debt they had been saddled with.

Similarly, climate change was being successfully sold as “maybe a complete hoax” in the media. Even if you did believe it was real, it wasn’t crazy to feel optimistic that there was still time for the science to settle, and voters/politicians to make the right decisions before things got too bad.

Putin, Trump, and Covid were all solidly during Millennial adulthood, not representative of their youth.

“Can I delay my trial until Jan?”

If you’re arguing that Trump won’t invade Poland, we’re in agreement.

But no one is arguing that he’s going to round up jews. And he’s already demonizing immigrants and political rivals in the same way Hitler did.

Lol you tried

“You’re hate isn’t welcome in our city!..that’s what our voting booths are for.”

Some people on Lemmy seem to think he’s literally Hitler. He’s not, even if he turns out to be just as bad.

So let me get this straight, when you hear people say Trump is “literally Hitler” you think they’re saying he’s actually the original real-life Adolf Hitler, somehow still alive, clean shaven, wearing a Trump disguise? Is that what you’re saying right now?

You don’t think that people actually just mean history is repeating itself, and Trump could turn out to be just as bad? That’s not what you think people mean?

This is literally the same argument being made by “thin blue line” apologists.