Until now !superbowl@lemmy.world has been my source of uplifting content of last resort. Sadly I have woken up to the realization that owl pictures might not be enough going forwards. Appreciate the thread.

They elected the candidate backed by Russia, which is still the shining beacon of a global superpower for the Tankies out there. So I guess Trump is a perfectly fine representative of fascism, left or right.

I think we have to accept that the American electorate actually wants fascism.

In the event of a tight race, the Supreme Court can decide to speed up the process by not counting black votes.

I meant to say that I would never have believed back then that Lemmy would become as popular as it is today.

My point is that it’s a moving target. Reddit has a billion active users. Instagram has two billion. I don’t think these make sense as targets.

Does it currently make a profit? If not they will find ways to make it worse. And even if they do make a profit chances are they’ll want to increase their margins.

Maybe stuff like the Google deal could keep money pouring in while keeping usability at a respectable level though.

I’m gonna say yes, for the exercise.

Four assumptions:

1. Reddit will keep getting worse, due to the nature of enshittification and venture capital. Eventually enshittification reaches a breaking point where people leave or stop arriving.
2. Lemmy (in a broad sense - et al!) will keep getting better, due to.the nature of open source software.
3. Non-free alternatives to Reddit will eventually enshittify, law of enshittification.
4. Free alternatives will use ActivityPub for the obvious advantages.

If these assumptions are met, given infinite rounds of enshittification and unhappy users, eventually a federated and free alternative will be the most lucrative option for the majority of users. Eventually Reddit will Digg itself a hole. Maybe Lemmy won’t take over then, but it’ll stick around.

The most unrealistic assumption is of course that the federated solutions will keep getting better indefinitely. Maybe they won’t. But as long as people keep developing and contributing to the Fediverse, it’s alive and improving in a way commercial alternatives cannot in the long run compete with.

If I saw this question posted the first time I visited Lemmy (some months before the Reddit app drama) with “popular” being defined as the current level of activity, my clear answer would be a loud and clear “probably not”.

That’s super interesting, thanks!

I find the last point particularly fascinating - that memes might have been replaced by God somehow. I feel like this resonates with an impression I already had, but that I haven’t thought consciously about before now. Tucker Carlsen’s demon attack story seems symptomatic.

I find this to be incredibly interesting. It’s like 2016 saw online polarization, but it happened on the same platforms. Today, there’s a polarizations of platforms - we exist in different realities online.

I wonder if this split would have happened anyway, or if it was motivated by American politics. And I wonder what the consequences are.

It seems like a pretty fundamental development in how our information channels work, and I haven’t seen it been discussed much by commentators.

Maybe my question cannot be answered because ‘online’ today just means something completely different than it did in 2016.

For sure.

In terms of rallies Trump seems to attract comparable crowd sizes, but at much fewer rallies. The number of rallies can probably be explained by age and energy.

How energized the crowd is compared to 2016 I have no idea.

Yeah, this is a solid insight maybe we’re all just locked off into our walled gardens now. But the Fediverse crowd is a bit of an extreme case - surely there must be some sort of vibe going on on the more popular platforms? Instagram, Reddit, TikTok, I don’t even know any more.

I don’t think that’s the question I try to ask, though I probably struggle to formulate myself well. It’s not really about comparing to Harris.

It seemed that Trump engaged a lot of people who would not usually bother with politics in 2016. He ran a campaign that completely dominated the Internet. People seemed to have nothing better to do than to create right wing memes in half serious, half joking support of him.

I don’t see that any more. What I see is a more normal campaign ran by a guy frequently making fascist talking points. He could still win, and maybe it’s still a successful campaign, but it feels very different to me from the 2016 one.

But then again, I have changed my Internet habits so that I wouldn’t see it anyway. Maybe there’s still hordes of 20-something incels posting frog memes for the masses to be offended by, it’s just off my radar.

I can’t even enter Truth Social from Europe. I see Wikipedia estimates 600 000 monthly active users, which is of course a lot. But I struggle to wrap my head around how important it can be. Isn’t it potentially a bit self defeating for them to close themselves off in a closed forum?

The Trump subreddit in 2016 seemed to have a cultural impact. Truth Social seems to be more of a footnote?

In a way Twitter is bad enough, but my impression there before deleting my account was that most of the Trump spam was Musk posts that appeared on my profile for no good reason.

I would guess, if it’s solid empirical work behind this, that there’s just greater differences internally between German and Italian speakers than for many other languages. Having lived in both Germany and Italy, I do not struggle to believe this is the case.

I guess it does. I feel like Scandinavia only half belongs - as a Norwegian living further south the last half decade or so, it’s a long way home. And in Norwegian, we refer to “down on the continent” as being the “proper” European countries, excluding ourselves.

I also didn’t feel comfortable bringing up Norway as it would feel like I was just bragging about my country. ;)

Yeah, Macron is not the worst. Macron called to halt arm deliveries to Israel in the beginning of October this year, which is quite little quite late, but again better than Germany and the US.

Here’s a case about a Norwegian student who was appealing being expelled from Sciences Po over pro-Palestinian protests. She was not alone, but I can’t find international media coverage. This was in August. The crackdown against pro-Palestina protests at Sciences Po was actively pushed by Gabriel Attal, so I think it’s fair to hold the government accountable for campus controversies in this case.

I think Macron is not a far right prick; he’s merely a centre right prick. He’s not actively on the wrong side of history in this case, but he’s very reluctant to be on the right side as well.

When I singled out France along with the two others it’s because they’re a huge player in Europe, and I find their response disappointing. But you’re right maybe I was unfair listing them next to Germany and the US.

In general I think continental Europe except Spain has been a gigantic disappointment.

It’s like they mistook “never forget” for being a useful advice from history - “never forget how to legitimise mass murder before your population”.

They’ve been arresting people for wearing keffiyehs. They also took part in the banning of protests, and they’ve been pushing to expel students from Sciences Po for protesting (which is pretty unheard of). The recent election was pretty fucked, with the left frequently being attacked for being islam lovers or whatever.

I think it’s fair to say that both French/Israeli and US/Israeli relations are suffering from Israel’s genocide, but actions speak louder than words. And in terms of actions, France has sadly been quite shit.

Arguably not quite as shit as Germany though.

If nothing else, maybe it could make the US, Germany, and France to stop for a brief moment and wonder if they’re really on the right side of history in this one.