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.

Knowing the Dutch, I would be incredibly surprised if they didn’t have their fair share of appropriate words for this asshole.

I can almost see him sitting there, disgruntled over his orange and looking like an overgrown infant.

I mean, progress is slow and they don’t have the president. Of course things will not be ideal over night.

But they stopped sliding into authoritarianism, at least for now. That is something that has changed.

You could read this as a vote for alignment with Russia vs Europe, in which case I completely agree.

In another reading, it’s a pretty huge decision on changeing the status quo and giving up a significant amount of sovreignity to join a powerful supranational union of states. It’s not necessarily an obvious decision, and reasonable people might vote no.

I’d argue voting to enter the EU is quite different from voting to leave it, as there will usually be a chunk of relatively reasonable voters who are decently happy with the status quo and reluctant to change it.

We’re talking a lot about how democrats can reach out to middle aged men, but how can democrats reach out to people who are batshit crazy?

I think his last two braincells just died in a head-on collision while partaking in a fatal debate with a twelve year old. We sadly have to write him off.

I think the “whatever dude” walking away at the end is really what makes it.

And it’s what the media should learn from this kid.

These weirdos are not worthy of our time. They thrive as long as you shove a microphone in their face. Walk away.

What is it with these guys anyway? Is that what happens to your voice if you perform fake macho deep voice for everything you say 50 solid years in a row? They speak as if they’re children trying to pretend to have hit puberty, just with the gnarly voice of a 70 year old chain smoker.

I’m happy it’s working for you! Communick also seems to be a bit of a different concept than paying a monthly fee for a user on a Mastodon instance.

At least personally, I’m willing to give a monthly contribution to my Mastodon instance to keep it up and running, but if it started charging its users (even if it was a smaller sum than what I currently contribute) I would cut the donations and flee elsewhere. I guess I’m neither a rational consumer nor a “good” supporter, but that’s just who I am I guess.

Of course it’s great if people can have healthy transactional relationships. And we need to normalize paying for products like software and social media, even if it’s available for free. But having the user-generated internet hidden behind a paywall will not, for me, ever be an acceptable solution.

I don’t even disagree, but the amount of left-wing misinformation posted around here is astronomical.

It’s also well known that Russian misinformation campaigns are seeking to increase polarization, so they are actively producing bullshit media on both ends of the political spectrum. Their goal is not (exclusively) to push European societies to the right, but to sow division by pulling people to the extreme on both sides. The bad actors don’t care which extreme you go to.

I personally think centrist are cowards, and right-wing people are either naïve or evil. I’m firmly planted on the left. But that’s exactly why I consider the main threat in my media stream to be disinformation targeted precisely at people like myself: Left wing, believable, almost completely correct, but tailored for radicalization.

And by god, there’s a lot of it. I’m being told on a daily basis to hate; that voting for Harris is the same as murdering children; that all Israelites are full of hate, never mind the huge protests in Tel Aviv or any of the numerous accounts of internal resistance; that the UN cannot be trusted, despite them being under constant attack by Israel, not Palestine; that Ukraine is responsible for dragging on their war against Russia.

Reality has a liberal bias, but that doesn’t mean it’s not incredibly easy to produce misinformation with a leftist spin. And it’s being spread like wildfire in certain corners of Lemmy.

Careful with the word “liberal” around here, it’s used as a slur for people who occasionally interact with reality.

Well, there’s a whole horde of people seeking to discredit Wikipedia as well, whining as loud as they can about its bias in one direction or another.

It’s information warfare, and it’s pretty exhausting. And it’s impossible to tell who has ulterior motives and who’s just a moron. Creds to the Lemmy.world crowd for putting up with it at all.

Of course this media fact checking site is not perfect. But if your conspiracy revolves around every single well-reputed news source in the world refusing to communicate the truth… Maybe check yourself.

If other people want to pay and be paid, that’s fine, but for a lot of people in the open source sphere it leaves a bit of a bad taste.

Basically it becomes something very different once it’s a product you’re selling. I’m honestly not sure it’s a good advice - your users will rightfully expect a lot more from you if they pay for the product, and you’ll probably not make enough money for it to really make sense. So it’ll be more work, more obligations, and monetary incentives won’t be strong enough for it to make sense.

Encouraging users to make donations to cover the cost of operation, on the other hand, makes all the sense in the world.

Then again, if there’s a method to it and logic behind it, maybe these active downvoters are doing everybody a favour by screening content and downvoting things they consider to be of little value?

I don’t know. It would be interesting to hear their motivation for sure.

PieFed shows us that he has an “attitude” of -40%, which I guess means that of 200 catloaf votes 140 will point downwards. So I guess at least it’s nothing personal, he or she is just an active downvoter of things. I guess we all enjoy spending our time differently.

A cool potential feature would be weighted downvotes - giving downvotes form users with higher attitude scores (in PieFed terms) greater significance. But I’m derailing.