They need massive amounts of data. There is simply no way to manually curate data on that scale, short of hiring like a million people. It’s very likely that they do use some sort of automated filtering to curate the data though.

If we can throw tens of millions of soldiers into meat grinders for wars, then I think hiring a few million people to curate data is table stakes by comparison.

I use Kagi:

https://kagi.com/

You gotta pay for it, but I’ve found it worth paying for so far.

They can serve you ads just fine on mobile web, that’s not it. It’s that the app let’s them track your behavior far better than the web browser.

It’s both. Firefox for Android lets you run uBlockOrigin, effectively killing the ads.

A lot of this comes from the community from the streamer whose name starts with the v and who used to go by Irish Lassie. His community is especially toxic when it comes to using the term tankie as a pejorative.

And they don’t even keep the smear to people that support the Bolsheviks. They’ve been saying that about Noam Chomsky and Jeremy corbyn and basically anyone that has been critical of NATO in the last few years.

Imagine calling fucking Chomsky a tankie XD

But in terms of “folks I’ve been reading that seem to have decent takes:”

• Roderic Day of redsails.org has put out some really good pieces in my opinion.
• Peter Coffin has a mixture of good takes and bad ones. He’s stubborn on holding onto transphobia – or at least, transphobia-adjacent comments – and his “LGBTQ+ is a bourgeois ideology” take, which, so far as I can tell, may be one of those “okay, ‘technically correct’ under your framing of it, but thoroughly counter-productive seeing as literally nobody else frames the issue in this way.” Unfortunately, he’s recommended stuff from PatSoc Caleb Maupin before too. Basically, I see potential in Coffin, clouded by problems.
• What I have read of Xi Jinping – which isn’t much – has been solid.

So yeah, if you’re looking for heroes, I wouldn’t hold your breath. But there’s life to be found in the world of Marxism.

Who comes next? You do, comrade :)

Awesome!

I wish we had a Parenti bot. Nonfalsifiable Orthodoxy etc etc.

During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them.

If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.

― Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism

The United States is a deeply unserious country.

The Website Formerly Known As Reddit

Pure gold, a consolidation of every opinion spouted by online leftists

*liberals

At this point, I treat anybody calling themselves a generic “leftist” with a dose of skepticism. It gives off strong “I’m socially liberal but fiscally conservative” vibes.

Cue the chorus of lame excuses as for why people are still using Google Botnet instead of Firefox.

“It kinda feels like my filter bubble is being pierced. Can we fix that?”

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Removed by mod

I get what you’re saying, but as of now a lot of people new to the concept of the Fediverse just don’t care. They’re going to join the instances with the most people. Like the Mastodon migration, this will inevitibly result in a “default” instance regardless of how people feel. Not sure if that’ll change, unless something forces people to realize maintaining the decentralized aspect of these servives is very important.

The masses need not understand the importance of decentralization. Only the admins of the instances do. And when admins seek to compulsively accumulate users en masse, rather than close off registration and route to other instances, it’s a pretty obvious tell as to what they’re doing.

Highlighting that we can’t avoid using tech with problematic roots isn’t enough if you’re going to keep pouring fertiliser on those roots to keep the rotten tree growing.

Fucking gold.

What the hell is a beehaw anyway?

It’s YeeHaw appropriation.

Fortunately, I’m not a liberal, so I’ve got no problem readin’ 'em.