“Anyone who disagrees with me is angry!” Okay, guy.

Hats off to the downvoter who read this and apparently thought to themselves “hell no! 556 million is a lot more than 3 billion, and definitely more than half of 8 billion!!!”

twitter is where most people are

Twitter is gone. There is only X.

According to Musk, there are 556m monthly active “users”. A year ago Musk commissioned a study that found at least 11% of active users on Twitter were bot accounts. There’s plenty of reason to believe that that percentage has only gone up, especially in light of the fact that there’s been a significant exodus of users due to Musk’s handling of the platform, and that at the time of the study there were about 368m users. So either 200m people who were previously uninterested in Twitter were so impressed by how Musk systematically made X less functional and more expensive, or bot accounts became massively more prevalant.

Regardless, with a global adult population of 8+ billion, in no world is 556m “most people”, even ignoring the bots. Facebook has 3b monthly active users. Tiktok 1b. Instagram 2b.

As for the rest of the argument, the idea that the only way for extremist voices can be held in check is to politely engage them in rational discussion is sadly nonsense. They’re extremists. They aren’t interested in rational discussion. The only way to hold them in check is to deplatform them, whether literally or just by the old fashioned method of social ostracism.

I actually am a developer who works for a hospital. I wouldn’t write articles or otherwise create materials discussing the “nitty gritty medical details”.

Manuel Vonau

From his bio on that site (https://www.androidpolice.com/author/manuel-vonau/):

Manuel studied Media and Culture studies in Düsseldorf, finishing his university career with a master’s thesis titled “The Aesthetics of Tech YouTube Channels: Production of Proximity and Authenticity.” His background gives him a unique perspective on the ever-evolving world of technology and its implications on society. He isn’t shy to dig into technical backgrounds and the nitty-gritty developer details, either.

So he’s a marketing guy with possibly zero tech background beyond watching YouTube videos, who isn’t afraid to discuss “nitty-gritty developer details” despite apparently not actually understanding them.

At this point, I think most people who qualify as merely conservative are Democrats. The Republican party in general has moved far right of “conservative” and well into “fanatical”.

I was being a bit sarcastic, because season 1 was fantastic, but season 2 was (IMHO) absolutely terrible. I couldn’t finish it.

altered carbon was a disaster

Personally, I loved it. I just wish they’d make a second season.

Lemmy: “All of the ways Elon mismanaged Tesla brought the quality of the cars down to the point where the brand’s reputation is sunk. That hurt sales more than people not commuting to work.”

You: “Look at all you on Lemmy saying how you don’t need to own a car any more because you’re using your car half as much!”

Someone complains about one specific thing not being free. You:

I don’t know why people expect to get **everything **for free

Since you’ve started down the road of what people are and are not allowed to do: you are not allowed to participate in discussions if you can’t avoid making shitty logical fallacies in your very first response.

That’s correct. The indicator light was pretty obvious.

I always found it fascinating how upset people get about the idea of a novel device recording them without permission, but it is a complete non-issue that a familiar device (the common smart phone) could also record them without permission with less of a chance of them noticing.

Pretty sad that providing a better life for children than we had is apparently a controversial opinion.

I take great joy in providing my son a life free of the home life experiences that made my youth hell. It still remains to be seen how well he’ll avoid the pitfalls of social interaction I suffered through, but I do feel like I’m preparing him far better than I ever was.

Posting ragebait articles about a platform because you know users will engage.

Lol irony.

There are posts and threads where people say that they can see images when they close their eyes.

I honestly don’t know if that’s just people not being specific with their words. I mean, “I can see images when I close my eyes” is still an accurate statement for me, even if the images don’t appear unprompted. The idea of unprompted images forming every time I close my eyes is frankly rather terrifying. Closing my eyes is part of my strategy for dealing with over stimulation; if I didn’t have calming dark when I closed my eyes, I think I’d freak the hell out.

For what its worth, I definitely do not have aphantasia, but that first description of closing your eyes and non seeing vivid imagery is nonsense. If I close my eyes, I don’t just randomly start seeing things. I only “see” mental images if I think about what things look like. Unless there’s music playing (that I enjoy). If I close my eyes while listening to good music I frequently get all sorts of mental images. However, they don’t start as what I’d call vivid. Instead, they’re faint at first, but get stronger the longer I keep my eyes closed and the music keeps playing.

As a side note, I have prosopagnosia (face blindness), so even though I can visual a tree, or an apple, or even a person, I almost never can visual a face. Like right now, I cannot picture my wife’s face, or my son’s. Sometimes I can, but I’d say that its rare, and I have no idea why sometimes it works and other times it doesn’t.

So yeah, those are terrible descriptions of aphantasia (and to be clear, I’m agreeing with your overall point).

Ironic, considering I’m still waiting to hear who determined mail to be right.

We advocate for freedom of speech, and not just the limited one currently granted by the 1st amendment of the constitution of the USA.

“People should be able to say whatever they want without having to fear consequences” is a garbage take on “freedom of speech”. Even if you clarify it as “people be able to say whatever they want without having to fear consequences from large organizations”, it is still a garbage take.

a “platform” like mail which has been determined to be a right.

When was mail determined to be a right, and by whom?

I’m just arguing that, for certain very large monopolistic corporations, maybe it should apply as well.

Instead of treating huge corporations that actively suppress competition like they’re a de facto form of government, we should instead… prevent them from getting to the point where their size and market share grants them power over the lives of citizens comparable to that of the government.