All I know is he officially left the platform by choice. Even if I did know more, it’s probably not my place to say.

Guess it’s up to me now that we lost Squid. Here ya go:

101 days. That’s 9.2 Mooches or 2.3 Trusses if you prefer the metric system.

They can still reply, you just won’t see them or get a notification.

So there is a bit of FOMO to get over when blocking, but it’s not too bad. Kind of like realizing you have no control over what people say behind your back. I’m just like, “If I cared what they had to say, I wouldn’t have blocked them in the first place”

I can only speak for myself, but the quick settings menu has been terrible (IMO) since 12. They’ve gotten worse each release. So the “overhaul” is mostly just going back to the way it already was before they made it garbage. The exception being it’s still oversized and unwieldy.

Peak quick settings (A11):

I just don’t know a good way to deal with that, TBH. I wish I did.

how to make them be honest about their motivations

It’s tough. If I get a funny feeling about an account and think they might be a concern troll (I think that’s the term that applies here; if not, someone please correct me. I think “false ally” is a sub-class of that, but I’m shooting from the hip here),

I’ll typically look back through their history, try to put things in context, and get a feel from there. The ones I blocked were pretty much all one-trick ponies, so that was easy (though tedious as it took a while “vetting” each one).

The problem there is, yes, you’ve identified that person. But everyone else needs to do the same legwork and come to the same conclusion. You can’t just put up a sign that says “Troll” lol. Depending on the community/instance, you could report them, but that often puts mods in a sticky situation because they usually don’t want to suppress anyone’s viewpoint as long as it’s not violating any rules.

or, in the case of those few who are genuinely being taken in by this garbage

That’s even tougher. First, you have to figure out if they’re the troll or the one who was trolled (troll-ee lol?) . And one, very rightfully, can’t /shouldn’t just start calling people trolls or shills. For one, they might be the troll-ee; going out of the gate with name-calling and accusations is definitely not the way to convince them to re-evaluate their views. For another, it just sets a bad tone and gives the impression that “everyone who disagrees with me is a troll”.

But sometimes they are. What do you do then?

Wish I had an answer that didn’t involve writing multiple theses on a number of topics as they try to sealion me into submission lol.

• Claiming to be leftists
• Encouraging leftists not to vote or to vote for third party candidates
• Highlighting issues with the Democratic party as being disqualifying while ignoring the objectively worse positions held by the Republican party
• Attacking anyone who promotes defending leftist political power by claiming they are centrists and that the attacker is “to the left of them”
• Using US foreign policy as a moral cudgel to disempower any attempt at legitimate engagement with the US political system
• Seemingly doing nothing to actually mount resistance against authoritarianism

Except for the one example you listed that I omitted here, you’ve just described, like, at least 1/3 of Lemmy, maybe more.

The obvious ones I blocked long ago. There were some I didn’t block, but a good chunk of those up and disappeared right after the election in November, so that was not suspicious at all.

Frankly, I’m just about done with anything “political” on social media and am just going to start employing keyword filters. I’ll just have to find some other void to shout into when I need an outlet lol.

They just keep making the quick action buttons worse, don’t they?

I miss the Android 11 style ones, myself.

Happy Birthday 🎂

I remember being that O’Brien…before I became this O’Brien lol

Well, minus the beard haha. 20 years in isolation, and I’d still come out looking like Joe Dirt.

Oh, I didn’t realize that (Just though you were the most active).

I always appreciated that it was smaller and was a bit of a hidden gem. This community gets…charged a little too often (that’s an intentional understatement lol). The only other one I kind-of liked was Beehaw’s, but lately it’s just a lot of knee-jerk comments of little substance.

If you ever decide to re-open it, I’m not interested in modding, but I can be sure to report things.

That’s why I like the rule you put up in your politics community about only posting things he’s done or actually doing.

I’d write my House reps, but…

My House rep (left). The other one is just as awful, but not in the spotlight as much.

My senators are old money + age and coal baron who doesn’t pay his bills.

“Instead of meeting with him in person, I’m talking to him on the phone, but it’s the same net effect,” White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles told the New York Post

So he’s still doing what he’s doing, just working remotely. Despite no other federal employees getting to work remotely.

Looking at the bigger picture should have been enough, and they simply refused to do that.

I said it last summer that we were going to single-issue our way to authoritarianism, and yep, here we are.

Lazy, entitled, and just…not even living in the same reality it seems.

Like, instead of compromising ever so slightly to get 80% of what they want, they refuse to budge and get 0% of what they want. Worse, even, because now we’re losing what we already had.

Thanks for letting me vent lol.

How fucking entitled, and spoiled are you, that you let perfect be the enemy of good? Get out of your privileged bubble, and actually pull the fucking dog sled with everyone, instead of standing off to the side preaching about how you’d do it better.

👏

My favorite excuse I’ve heard is “Well, Trump getting elected isn’t my fault. I didn’t vote, which means I didn’t vote for him”.

If the technology existed for me to punch someone via the internet, I would have used it. And I’m a pretty peaceful guy lol.

Yep. All or nothing, perfect or bust, nothing is ever fucking good enough. They’ll screech for that last 20% (fair enough) but when they realize they might only get 80%, they’ll sit on their ass on election day or vote 3rd party to “teach them a lesson”.

I agree with them on pretty much most things, but my god, they’re fucking insufferable.

I mean, yeah, I got that lol. My suggestion was to add vegeta’s “I did that” image next to the tariff price (like they display the badge for Prime price).

If Amazon had any balls, they’d display the cost without tariffs, then the costs with tariffs and use your “I did that” image pointing to the tariffed price.

Hell, every retailer and business should do that.