Well, many Germans also thought at the time that they might be able to get rid of Hitler in the usual way - unfortunately we all know how that turned out.

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Where I come from (Germany), Sanders would be a moderate left-wing politician. What scares me most is that Trump & Co. are using political pressure and economic sanctions to extend the inhumane conditions in the USA to democratic countries where there is still a halfway fair welfare state (this is a competitive disadvantage in hard-core capitalism that no longer cares about people).

I’m not from the US, but I still think it should have been Bernie. If he had become president, we wouldn’t all be in trouble now.

Should have been Bernie.

Yes, that’s true. I just find it funny that Amazon named this line of business after a fraudulent device. For some of the things you can do with it, it’s probably quite the fitting name.

A perfectly legitimate question, especially since this misleading approach is precisely why Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is named like that.

The Mechanical Turk, also known as the Automaton Chess Player, was a fraudulent chess-playing machine built by Wolfgang von Kempelen in 1770. It appeared to play chess autonomously but was actually operated by a skilled human chess player hidden inside. (Source)

I don’t know the answer, but I assume that it probably has something to do with money and power…

The pronunciation typical of the country makes it clear what a fucking Kant the usual philosopher from Germany is.

My mistake - corrected.

Cool. Bonus points for the MF DOOM tape

That’s all well and good, but the problem remains: Namely, the fact that Meta earns far more every day than all companies worldwide earn from the sale of T-shirts put together - much, much more. And Meta pretty much doesn’t even sell anything physical (Oculus, c’mon). They mainly just sell massive reach for advertisements and PR (influencing opinions). In addition they sell, the personal data of users to make that work devilishly acuarate. As long as the vast majority doesn’t care how this business model works and what power the centralization of attention actually means even for their own reality, nothing will change, I’m afraid.

Yes, just terrible management. They could have just made good money, but no, there has to be more. So excessive greed at any price - now it’s just bankruptcy. But I’m sure that won’t bother the senior management: they’ve already put their millions in a safe place and will simply move on. The next company that needs their outstanding leadership is bound to come along…

Perhaps old games with poor graphics are so popular because people are particularly fed up with reality these days.

Yes, indeed. RIP Grumpy Cat and all the others.

Is the lifespan of cats in this scenario 1,000 years or 9 x 1,000 years because of their nine lives?

Yup. Just imagine what the seats would look like if they were white. Probably also a graffiti pattern, but an extremely unpleasant one…

I think what makes most people pessimistic is not technology itself, but the realization that it is always embedded in existing conditions and cannot change these conditions of its own accord.

The internet in particular has shown very impressively in the lifetime of many how quickly promising technology geared towards the common good can actually make life worse instead of improving it for everyone.

Because the advertising business is highly centralized. Getting sponsorships is not as easy as you think.

An example: YouTube pays content producers per click, so to speak, a ridiculously small amount, but in total, with billions of clicks, a crazy amount. The money to finance this comes largely from advertising revenue (also Google’s main business model). They are the Gatekeepers so to speak.

But the content producers can’t live off this because Google keeps most of it for itself. They do give people the opportunity to find sponsors themselves tho - and that’s how people actually make the most money. But you have to find them for yourself or through intermediaries (that’s an industry in itself). This is only realistic if you have sufficient reach (subscribers in the example). And that, in turn, is only possible if you have already invested hundreds of hours in the production of content (you can’t make a living if you don’t get paid for that).

So I think it would be best if the platforms themselves were powerful enough in terms of reach to be able to negotiate well with advertisers. But not as powerful as Google, for example, who can afford to pay content producers a pittance because - unlike small platforms - they are not dependent on them.

I think we should be realistic. Content costs money because it requires a lot of effort. It’s naïve to think that content would just be created because people feel like posting something. If the Fediverse is to compete with companies like meta, this is only possible if there are opportunities for content creators to earn money. That should be self-evident, but it obviously isn’t here.

I’m not saying it’s necessary, but it is if the Fediverse is to have mainstream appeal.

Simply because the absolute majority of people are out and about where everyone is. And that’s where the content is. That’s the point: if you want good content, it costs money. It’s not just corporations that make a living from it.

What I want to say is this: The Fediverse could provide fairer conditions for the people who produce content. That makes sense and is necessary because the Internet lives from that.

I just don’t understand why people here don’t want to realize that work has to be paid for. That’s really strange.

Yes, can always be more relaxing tho