Youtube is the one google service I still can't give up lol. PeerTube is awesome, but long-form video platforms feel like they suffer from a lack of content way more than any other social media imo. At least there's newpipe for the time being (except whenever google changes something to screw with them).

Have you tried organic maps as a google maps replacement at all? I've been using it for a while now and honestly it works extremely well most of the time.

Yeah, I think the warning signs were always there, especially the whole "threating a black guy with a fucking shotgun" incident, but people hated Oz (for obvious reasons) and were super excited for a down to earth, progressive, everyday person. He has said the stroke made him more conservative, but honestly he was always kinda a rascist asshole and just used the veneer of an everday working class Philadelphian for optics imo. Even so, he's a massive disappointment and I really hope PA can primary him in ~~2026~~ 2028 for an actual progressive.

This definitely reads like chat-gpt right? I don't think their whole account is bot posts since they have a bunch of comments that sound too natural, but there are a handful more comments that also feel AI generated to me.

Oh man, I can't wait for the inevitable crossover movie where all of our favorite cops come together to foil generic arab terrorist group #524's evil plot to murder every police officer in America. Just imagine, the rookie NCIS agent finally learns that waiting for a warrant is how the terrorists win just in time to figure out that China was the real bad guy behind the terrorism all along!

I hate how quick world is to mass downvote, accuse of being a russian troll, or just straight up remove comments from people who express any sort of actual left-wing opinion. Reading through that whole comment thread there was nothing you said that came across as trolling. Its kinda exhausting how many people take any criticism of the democratic party as being support for Trump, or believe voting is the most important and only way to change anything. I get closer to just blocking world entirely every day tbh.

Holy shit, can't say I expected to ever see this happen lol. This is great, he deserved a full pardon 50 years ago but even this is still way more than I expected from any US president. I hate Biden for a ton of reasons, but there have been several moments during his administration that he's surprised me in a good way tbh. ~~Maybe the Democrats would stop sucking quite as bad if they did stuff like this consistently and didn't wait until the last week of the presidency~~

One rule I think might be a good idea is that mods aren't allowed to moderate their own posts/comment chains. Not that it's really been an issue on 196 in the past afaik, but there are some communities where the mods will get into an argument with another user and then remove comments for incivility or a similar rule which obviously has massive potential for abuse. Assuming there are enough mods where it's not an issue to do so (which seems very likely based on the number of people interested in moderating) preventing situations like that entirely seems beneficial.

Honestly if this gets all the people who have problems respecting "weird" pronouns/gender identities to leave for .world it'll probably be a net positive for 196 and blahaj.zone as a whole.

Sure, whatever you say. He might not technically be exonerated, but he might as well be. You had 4 fucking years to actually do something about Trump, but this is the system working as intended. The US keeps drifting further and further right with power further consolidating in the hands of billionaires and corporations, while the Democrats sit on their asses and act like they're completely helpless to do anything meaningful to actually help ordinary people while in power. Then when they lose elections they get to blame minorities or leftists and use it as an excuse to drift further right.

I posted this in another thread but I also wanted to say it here so it's more likely one of you will see it. I get the intention behind this, and I think it's well intentioned, but it's also definitely the wrong way to go about things. By lumping opposing viewpoints and misinformation together, all you end up doing is implying that having a difference in opinion on something more subjective is tantamount to spreading a proven lie, and lending credence to misinformation. A common tactic used to try and spread the influence of hate or misinformation is to present it as a "different opinion" and ask people to debate it. Doing so leads to others coming across the misinfo seeing responses that discuss it, and even if most of those are attempting to argue against it, it makes it seem like something that is a debatable opinion instead of an objective falsehood. Someone posting links to sources that show how being trans isn't mental health issue for the 1000th time wont convince anyone that they're wrong for believing so, but it will add another example of people arguing about an idea, making those without an opinion see the ideas as both equally worthy of consideration. Forcing moderators to engage in debate is the exact scenario people who post this sort of disguised hate would love.

Even if the person posting it genuinely believes the statement to be true, there are studies that show presenting someone with sources that refute something they hold as fact doesn't get them to change their mind.

If the thread in question is actually subjective, then preventing moderators from removing just because they disagree is great. The goal of preventing overmodedation of dissenting opinions is extremely important. You cannot do so by equating them with blatent lies and hate though, as that will run counter to both goals this policy has in mind. Blurring the line between them like this will just make misinformation harder to spot, and disagreements easier to mistake as falsehoods.

Oh also something I just realized, they basically want to force mods to debate misinformation, which is literally a tatic used to spread disinformation in the first place. By getting people to debunk a ridiculous claim it lends credence to the idea as something worth discussing and also spreads it to more people. I feel like the intentions behind this are noble, but it's been proven that presenting evidence doesn't really get people to change their opinion all that often. The whole thing is super misguided.

Holy shit this is such a bad policy lol. World is known for being too aggressive at deleting a lot of content they really shouldn't be deleting, but this policy really doesn't seem like it will improve that. The issue is most of the time if they want something removed they do so and then add a policy after to justify it, meaning that regardless of this rule people can't "advocate for violence", but they will be able to post misinformation and hate speech since apparently "LGBTQ people are mentally ill" hasn't been debunked enough elsewhere and a random comment chain in Lemmy is where it needs to be done. Never mind the actual harm those sorts of statements cause to individuals and the community at large.

All I can see this doing is any actual types of that get wrongly overly censored will still do so since the world admins believe they are justified in doing so, while other provably false information will be required to stay up since the admins believe the mods aren't justified in removing it.

This policy seems to only apply to actual misinformation too, not just subjective debates. So if there's a comment thread about whether violence is justified in protest would likely have one side removed, while I guess someone arguing that every trans person is a pedophile would be forced to stay up and be debated. Its like the exact opposite of how moderation should work lol.