Conservatism.

Just…all of it lol.

Being hesitant to change and wanting to temper out things and make sure things are implemented effectively is one thing. And ensuring we respect tradition and culture is another (though progressives are more in line with that lol.)

Today’s conservatism is just hate and bigotry. And they don’t even recognize it as such.

There are two types of politician.

A representative and a politician.

The former is usually of the working class and listens to their constituents, not corporations and donors. They’re usually more progressive, they call out capitalist BS and they want to deliver for the people they represent.

The latter is only concerned about appeasing their donors. Some may be more evil than others about it, but they all love fascism as it helps them make more money.

We have a 2 party system but we mostly have the latter. Terrorists on the far right and fascist sympathizers in the middle. Gotta love “vote blue no matter who” up until it’s someone trying to deliver for the people. They also love to yell and blame those who don’t vote or vote third party when their candidate couldn’t represent the people and it flips as soon as a progressive starts winning. Some even vote republican instead, fuckin wild.

Make sure you vote for those who don’t take constitutionally protected free speech cough I mean money from PACs and large donors. Does anyone really believe they’ll represent you and not the couple of people giving them millions? It’s a flat out conflict of interest if I’ve ever seen one, but one many voters are happy to look past for some reason (lack of education and introspection).

Does anyone expect an unplanned rapid disassembly?

You pay people more and keep them working at their best by providing them with robuat benefits, time off, and job/financial security so they can account for, plan, and mitigate shit like this.

But noooo, layoffs, and “don’t tax me more, 40% of fed tax is payed by 1% of earners, which I’m not cause my income is 80K suckers! Work fast, break things, die faster slaves.”

Ive just used them by logging in on my pc on a privacy focused browser. Haven’t even tried on the phone.

GrapheneOS is doing fairly well right now for my needs. And I’ve been getting and supporting as many open source, privacy respecting apps as possible.

Honestly, it’s been kind of fun and heartening to learn about all of these projects that people are building because they’re passionate, driven, and want to help people. All without a stupid profit motive.

I so wasn’t sold I’m not an android user anymore.

This is why my glasses now have an IR blocking coating to interrupt facial recognition somewhat.

Not that they don’t have gait tracking or other methods 🙃

Time to start a new fashion trend. Algorithm scrambling cloaks and trench coats lol. Welcome to the bladerunner/cyberpunk era.

Absolutely we would, we’re paying attention. Most people aren’t.

What I worry about is the longterm effects. Look at children who have grown up with iphones. Most of them don’t know that other apps exist outside of their locked down appstore.

What scares me is the normalization through the generations of the surveillance state. Remember what we used to call spyware? I’d hazard a guess that basically every corporate application could be classified as spyware given the amount of data they collect on a user. But we’ve largely stopped using the term.

Chrome is spyware, but if you called it that you’d be met with “bro, what? It’s a browser” or even worse “so? I need it to access the internet”

Yet.

But it doesn’t need to be once the data exists, corporations can build their websites however they like once the data is mandated to exist. Think about how your browser, if not chrome, will often break/slow down on YouTube because google wants you to use chrome/have ads play on YouTube. Or how captcha will just sometimes break and force you to use a chrome browser (which exposes a bunch of data)…cause google again. None of that is mandated by law.

Don’t forget the legislation is funded by Meta. They want that delicious, scrumptious data that will help them legally avoid COPPA and target/collect data on child accounts and get them addicted while young.

And I know we will. We’re cool like that.

Almost like the stock market and “economy” are just terms for how wealthy people’s money is doing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgbckEkyf-g

I imagine that, while good on the surface, the apps that will then require the age information called from the OS will just reject any platform that doesn’t provide it, essentially segregating the internet.

Which, adding more and more friction makes it more likely that users will just give up and submit to giving up their privacy.

We’re not. But, just like AI, executives with the ideology of rapists don’t care about our consent.

Who would’ve thought that running every industry and business like mini dictatorships would backfire? Thanks capitalism!

Not exactly, but Runescape3 went hard into microtransactions (which arguably generated the revenue needed so they didn’t need to be implemented in OSRS) but they did a pivot abd are rolling back microtransactions, removing gambling loot boxes in some cases and leaving things as direct purchase, etc

https://secure.runescape.com/m=news/the-future-of-mtx-our-approach--your-involvement

They’ve even gone as far as to launch cosmetic free worlds so mtx cosmetics are disabled. Which I, for one, have always enjoyed the visual progression of gear in games, getting cooler gear as you get more powerful and knowing of the really cool items which are hard to get.

https://secure.runescape.com/m=news/mtx-experiment-cosmetic-free-worlds-live-now

I would still say no.

You should have a right to privacy. And there are still ways in which law enforcement could investigate and track perpetrators of crimes and implement “justice,” though as is obvious in America now, justice isn’t ethical either, and what can be labelled as crime, or even terrorism (take a look at NSPM-7.

Even if 100% ethical, I still have my right to privacy. Should I commit a crime, then I would forfeit that right. It would be up to law enforcement to enforce that law. By penalizing a VPN service, which is a leg service, it removes the right of privacy from everyone, not just myself whom they supposedly had evidence of a crime in this hypothetical. Otherwise, they targeted a VPN for their claims alone.

Regardless of that, taking down said VPN will not stop crimes from occurring. Users will simply use other VPN services as more exist.

Given the recent legislation to try an ban VPNs, this could mean that VPNs could be forced to track the traffic of users, which kind of defeats the point of them. Even in this 100% ethical government scenario.

Basically, law enforcement has the tools to individually track perpetrators already, if they were interested. In real life, they’re interested in protecting capital. Individual investigations are expensive. But working with corporations and governments to collect data and track all users? Well then it becomes much cheaper to press a button and arrest someone for whatever “crime” you define.

I think the real questions at hand are:

Is it ethical to remove the right of privacy of everyone in the name of “justice?” (No)

Are the laws by which certain actions are labelled as crime ethical? (Also, no.)

We believe that justice should be ethical. When capital and authiritarians rule, justice has no ethics.

“Democracy” TM

If not outright election fraud, it’s money used to spread info/misinfo. Like the voters who talked about the video they saw of Massie in a threesome with AOC and Ilhan Ohmar. AI generated out the wazoo.

If it’s not money, it’s legal election fraud in red states where voters are suppressed, voter rolls are purged, etc etc.

All of these things combined make for a great recipe of “democracy.” Combine that with the fact that conservatives are, quite literally, not hyperbolic, a terrorist death cult, they truly do follow the leader right off the cliff’s edge.

I’d love if SKG was able to get some wins before they pull the plug entirely. Allow the community to keep it running, let them restore the lost content, unlock/add cosmetics, etc etc.

A guy can dream…of essentially what games were 15-20 years ago.

I guess I’m just oldschool haha. I prefer MMO gameplay, which is very similar, but you can get gear and titles and mounts for clearing difficult content with friends (or have an opportunity to make new ones.)

Runescape deciding to allow you to toggle cosmetics on or off for everyone (via implementing cosmetic free worlds, an actual toggle would be cool too) is an amazing design decision that should be used more often. Because then, the gear tells a story. I miss that in older mmos. You’d see a glowy weapon or cool cape and be inspired to go ger it and/or see the amount of dedication it took for someone to unlock something.

Aint no billionaires there, they’re allergic to working hard after all haha

Any gacha game.

I’ve tried to play them, but many play themselves and are loaded with microtransactions and you’ll hit a wall. I much prefer unlocking things from progressing or doing skillful things within the game.

I’d love if SKG was able to get this before they pull the plug entirely. Allow the community to keep it running, let them restore the lost content, unlock/add cosmetics, etc etc.

A guy can dream…of essentially what games were 15-20 years ago.