Snot Flickerman

Our News Team @ 11 with host Snot Flickerman


Yes, I can hear you, Clem Fandango!

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: October 24th, 2023

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  • Snot FlickermantoNews@lemmy.worldThe Authoritarian Stack
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    2 days ago

    Some thoughts regarding the ideas explored in this article:

    1. Computers and computer networks are inherently anti-democratic. They are built from the ground up with completely hierarchical controls. There is always an admin with complete control, there are always users at the mercy of the admin (at times there is a mod team with quasi admin powers that are under the control of the admin but also have control over the users). There are no voters voting for administrators to represent their needs in the computer world. There are no computer systems built with cooperation, socialization, and democratic norms built in, arguably it might even be very difficult to do so without entirely compromising security for the foreseeable future. This anti-democratic nature of computers and their networks is part and parcel to why this group of tech barons have grown accustomed to the idea that they should be the kings of the new world they want to forge, they have spent a lifetime as the admins and have never had to be merely a user.

    2. The hacker ethos of “routing around bad legislation” that started with various iterations of media piracy where centralized servers that could be shut down were replaced with a decentralized protocol that couldn’t (Napster -> Bitorrent) is present in how these giant corporations continue to operate, but now they are no longer lone hackers and script kiddies just pirating media. These are organizations that route around any legislation that would slow down or interrupt their goals for power, control, and dominance. It’s the same ethos taken to it’s most extreme conclusion by the most corrupt shitbags imaginable. Laws mean nothing to them except as a system in which they intend to find an exploit, and they aren’t doing it in the prosocial “data wants to be free!” ethos of the early piracy communities. This is highly evident in the growth of the AI sector where companies are essentially profiting madly off of mass piracy, the kind of piracy that must make the admins of The Pirate Bay feel very much like maybe if they just had no principles and actually had done nothing but make a shitload of money maybe instead of being sent to prison they would have been patted on the back and treated like captains of industry.

    3. This is part of why the Fediverse and it’s federated nature are so important. It gives the option of everyone becoming an admin of their own instance, the option of every user having the power of an admin is freely available. It’s still quite a lot to ask of every user to run their own instance of numerous services, but in practice that doesn’t actually need to be the case as long as there is a large enough vibrant community of interconnected instances with different philosophies and userbases. It’s imperfect, but it’s a passable first attempt at giving users back a potential route to their own control of their internet experience instead of being dominated by a small number of increasingly monopolistic tech companies whose goals are misaligned with those of the public at large.

    Arguably, leaving the corporations who would dismantle democracy and replace it with their absurd and despotic “Network States” should be a major priority of every internet user who cares about human rights. That’s why independently funded Fediverse may be one of the most important movements on the internet despite it’s imperfections.





  • This erroneously assumes conservatives care about their own constitutional rights.

    This is the party of “the only moral abortion is my abortion” and “I hate the gays until my kid comes out gay.”

    They have no ability to actually visualize it happening to them until it is already too late. Until it is directly happening to them, in their view, it isn’t happening at all.

    Even when it happens to friends and neighbors, they will find ways to rhetorically and mentally justify it.

    Until their own constitutional rights are being impacted directly and personally, they don’t give a shit and trying to tell them that they should be concerned is a fools errand.





  • Yet the guy who called Trump a pedo protector got more money way faster.

    American priorities are fucking stupid shit.

    https://phoebewallhoward.substack.com/p/ford-worker-pauses-gofundme-campaign

    Fundraising on his behalf collected $810,000 from Tuesday through Wednesday.

    Seriously raised twice as much in half the time. What a fucking joke this shithole country is. Some guy in a good paying fucking union job gets money handed hand over fist and he didn’t even lose his job he was just suspended and his union had his back. Yet a fucking innocent kid whose rights were viciously violated made half as much in twice the time.

    I mean, fuck me, I’m so tired. I’m so tired of expecting better of people.

    I guess the silver lining is that TJ Sabula isn’t a selfish person and is giving away the money he got to charitable organizations.





  • That’s the equivalent of 32.5 8-hour workdays for a total of just over a full month of work for one year. Must be nice essentially having 11 months to fuck around doing fuck all for $3 million. It’s also roughly $11,500 an hour in terms of pay.

    The thing is, this is actually how all the high level jobs are. A bunch of do nothing fuckwits.

    They bitch about nobody wanting to work anymore because they are projecting their own lack of desire to work onto others. They think poor people must be shiftless layabouts just like them because they have no empathy or imagination to put themselves in someone else’s shoes.

    All high level executives should be required to work as many hours as their lowest level employees and bullshit meetings that could have been an email or zoom meetings where they say “nothing to add on my end” don’t count towards that total.






















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