I said that because they’re doing it, it’s not like I’m psychic lol

And Dems funneled money to MAGA fascists to split republicans. It’s art of war 101: divide and conquer; it doesn’t really reflect on the merits of anyone involved.

Green could be a false flag puppet of the Republicans or they could have a legitimate platform and genuine candidates working to better the world for all the rightwing cares, what matters is that they are popular enough to detract from dems.

Ironically, reacting to this as if Green is the enemy also plays into this tactic: dems become more isolated from other interests and therefore more resistant to change and adaptation to a changing political climate, which makes them less appealing and more likely to die out.

It’s just large enough, however, to spoil the work of those who put in this kind of work.

The big 2 parties haven’t put in more effort, they’ve just put in more person-hours… Because they have more people. Parties aren’t more worthy of votes based solely on how many people are voting for them, that’s tyranny of the majority. And if they can adapt their platforms to appeal to the small portion of undecided defectors from their primary rival party (each other), they damn sure can tailor their platform to the 100,000s that vote independent/3rd party.

Checking biases, the only other article by this contributor is explaining why it’s actually A Good Thing™ that the Harris campaign doesn’t explain their platform in depth… You know, like you would want a leader to do if you were subject to their rules and policies for any length of time.

Once again, the liberals are quick to assign blame for any of their shortcomings, and it’s just coincidentally never their fault nor responsibility to do anything. Their primary guiding principal for decades has been to change the status quo as little as possible to ensure they can’t be blamed for the changes, while accusing everyone else of destroying democracy.

If you think not having sex is so terrible it’s basically torture, the problem isn’t that you haven’t had sex. It really isn’t that great, and you need to stop idolizing these things

What you’re actually missing, and misinterpreting as “sex will fix me” is genuine human connection, and that is a skill that takes a loooot of practice, mistakes, heartache, and even at times, being “cringe.”

But it’s easier to think that sex is some magical experience that a secret organization is denying you.

That’s a very complex question with many, many answers. No individual life can be boiled down to a single phenomenon. A lot of the answers I’m seeing in here are great, ans definitely describe a phenomenon at play, but it’s important to remember that nobody’s just outright stupid enough to fall for a single piece of rhetoric. Instead, them coming into bigotry is the result of a complex web of ideas that brought them to that conclusion.

That being said, I’ll add my two cents that I don’t see anyone saying: privilege. Privilege insulates people from how cold and cruel the world can be; in doing so, they don’t learn the comraderie that grows out of shared hardship (aka empathy). They see others experiencing it, and assume they are weak, both for “allowing themselves” to fall into hardship, as well as for “getting conned” by others who have fallen on hardship. This too adds fuel to the fire that is all the other reasons people get pulled into hateful ideologies.

Imagine being excluded from some perceived secret club based on conditions you didn’t have a choice in, and seeing women or bipoc or lgbt or the working class supporting each other. You too would feel resentment towards those who won’t include you in their circles. Yet you never developed the proper understanding of the ties that bind them, so you only see it as hate towards you and your demographic; this then becomes a feedback loop: your hate hurts thode communities, making them even more interdependent on each other, making you more resentful and frustrated.

You fall in with people you don’t really like because of a shared disdain for The Others, and then, because that’s your only lived experience, assume all identity-based comraderie is necessarily just a loose collective of people that only get along because of a common enemy. This reinforces your belief that The Others hate you, only adding fuel to the fire of your own hate.

This is also why these people are so easily manipulated: all you have to do is control their perception of who hates them, and they’ll do whatever you say to make it stop. This is why politics and religion are such great examples, and no “side” is immune. Want to make a leftist out of a fascist? Convince them that The Jews are actually just the bourgeoisie, who must be killed for the good of ourselves and our nation. An anarchist who fears authoritarians will readily agree to being a part of an exclusive coalition of individuals that determines the way society is structured, so, y’know, the authoritarians don’t get their way.

When I was young, people (read: other kids) would accuse me of being pretentious for using vocab words. I learned to dull down my speech to please them, and lost most of my vocabulary in the process. Now i talk nurmal lik ery1 else

it’s not a “gen” thing. They are still used by bots and scammers and pirates and and well-meaning n00bs who unknowingly abuse the service. They’re just also used for privacy now.

He’s outspoken and the youtube algo seems to be pushing his content to everyone now. He used to be focused on Right To Repair, but has since branched out to privacy and FOSS

He’s not particularly “bro”-y, but with the direction his rhetoric is headed, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see him making guest appearances in the conspiracy corner of the grift-o-sphere

references sexual assault when talking about the behavior of software vendors with their customers

Yeah, that kinda pushed me away too. I get it, it’s an apt comparison for people who feel entitled to completely invade your privacy and do whatever they want inside your home, and it grabs the attention of the people who have just accepted no privacy as the norm… But it still makes me really uncomfortable

I’ll give you the most extreme solutions I can think of, and let you decide how much of each you want to enact.

First and foremost: use a secure and privacy friendly OS—Qubes on a burner pc or GrapheneOS on a burner phone—with secure and privacy-friendly networking—use DNS-over-HTTPS, or self-host as much of the infrastructure as you can, consider a VPN, keep the device on an isolated VLAN—use a secure/private web browser like LibreWolf.

General rules of online interaction apply for maintaining privacy within the servers: e.g. don’t talk specifics about your location, your age, your physical appearance, your childhood, your employer, etc.

As with most modern apps, the web app is necessarily less intrusive than the installable binary. Use the web app when you can, and limit your usage to only when you can use the web app on a computer and network you own—privacy enforcing habits are more important than all the software stopgaps in the world.

If you absolutely must use a binary, consider breaking Discord’s TOS and using a modified front-end: I know some people who use Aliucord for Android, and I just this moment learned about GoofCord for desktop

don’t install/run any software without verifying the integrity of the developers/distributors and binaries yourself, or building from source and verifying the code

It’s better to have Discord stealing your browsing data to sell you shit than have some random github malware rootkitting your phone.

I’m seeing a few comments suggesting OpenWRT, which is what I use and love: the correct response to this level of capitalist tomfoolery should absolutely be to 1. buy hardware that supports FOSS out of the box, or 2. install FOSS firmware.

BUT: OpenWRT isn’t for everyone. Installation on supported devices is usually pretty easy, but it does require being invested in setup, maintenance, and understanding of the software. There is little built-in handholding, and most setup beyond basic functions requires reading the docs and wiki; sometimes, some functionality requires running commands directly on the device rather than the LuCI web-interface.

This kind of understanding and investment should be the end-goal of all privacy-oriented tech users. Technology is complicated, and each layer of handholding that devs add also necessarily obfuscates behind-the-scenes functionality, which runs counter to privacy and security. That being said, the barrier for entry to privacy-respecting tech shouldn’t be “a masters in CompSci,” and thus any alternative to major tech brands is still a step up from just accepting what they give you. Just be aware that your current firmware may be a stepping stone towards software freedom, instead of a stopping point.

OpenWRT is really hard to get onto routers

I bought the Nanopi R4S, and it was extremely easy to switch out their modified OpenWRT for vanilla (literally just use a command/program to install the image on an SDcard). Granted, I did have to find a solution for wifi, but even that was easy with the Belkin RT3200s and the instructions (more in-depth, but still hand-holding). I also flashed it onto a Netgear AC1200 using nmrpflash, which sounds imposing, but really just entailed installing the pre-reqs, hooking the router’s ethernet port directly to my PC’s and running the command.

I did have to do my research to arrive at my decision to buy these specific models for their compatibility with OpenWRT. If you don’t, you might end up with something that requires popping open the shell and setting up serial comms, which is a pain.

As far as I could find, out of the three Wifi6 enabled Asus models (RT-AX###) that are compatible with OpenWRT, 2 require ssh and running commands that are given in the guide; the other one, and all of the supported AC### models, seemed to work using ASUS’s built-in web-app to upload the OWRT image. I wouldn’t say any of it is easy, but I also can’t agree with “really hard.”

Another consideration is setup and maintenance. Proprietary firmware tends toward being as “click here to set and forget everything, here are the only 3 pieces of info you need to know from now on”; OpenWRT is definitely more hands on and requires a lot of RTFMing and routine maintenance.

Nah, I don’t feel like starting a new account, nor adding to the unnecessary confusion of multiple users with the same name. I’m kinda happy I’m the only one of me rn

That’s a weird reasoning, as I can find plenty of FOSS that has paid “business” editions

Damn… That’s a good username. Wish I had thought of it

Louis Rossman is my Alex Jones. He’s angry, compelling, and talking about something that makes him seen like a conspiracy theorist to normies. Unlike Jones, though, he’s usually right (if not always, I haven’t fact checked everything he’s ever said). It’s extremely cathartic to see someone use such extreme rhetoric to talk about privacy and software ownership and right to repair; e.g. it’s not “advertiser’s entitlement,” it’s “rapist mentality.”

Ironically, youtube’s inability to completely differentiate between people at the same IP has accidentally gotten my non-techie roommate into him too. I never shared his videos with her, never said anything about him, and one day I hear his voice as she browses the web. I’m so proud of her.

My least favorite thing about the “engagement friendly” slop in youtube’s search results is that it takes up HALF of the results. Because clearly what I expect from SEARCHING for something is to dredge up a bunch of shit that ranges from tangentially related to completely unrelated.

For example, I too just searched a song. Let’s see how that went:

7 results
4 “people also watched” videos
5 results
2 “More from [band name]” videos
2 results
3 “people also searched for” suggestions
2 results
3 “For you” vids (IS IT THE FUVKING SEARCH RESULTS I ASKED FOR??? BECAUSE IF NOT, IT’S NOT REALLY “FOR ME,” IS IT?)
2 Results
3 “From related searches”
2 results

That’s 20 results to 15 irrelevant pieces of ADHD triggering visual clutter. Luckily the results were actually relevant, unlike whatever you’re getting.

To all the commenters saying “I have X, I don’t have this problem”: I have adblock, I don’t have this problem, YOU’RE MISSING THE POINT:

YOUTUBE SEARCH IS BROKEN BY DEFAULT. The largest video sharing site on the internet is BROKEN BY DEFAULT. It shouldn’t require extra software to function properly when functioning properly requires less work on the server’s side

Release software

User finds bug

Find workaround for bug while looking for a fix

Owner/company marks bug “fixed” because a workaround exists

Users implement workaround into workflow

Users find edge cases where bug is helpful

Bug is now a feature

also want to say that this is illegal in most places. The store may or may not press charges, but they have the right to and they will win that case if they do. So only do it if you know you can get away with it or have permission or don’t mind having the stain on your legal record and whatever fine they hit you with