I don’t think many people have read RFC 5322 (I haven’t), but most non-technical people I know understand these things about email:

• There are different service providers, and people can email each other no matter which provider they use
• There are different email apps
• Some apps are tied to specific service providers and others are not

I do lament the overall level of tech literacy.

The average person understands email pretty well. Mastodon doesn’t require much more understanding than that, but could probably use some UX and messaging work.

That’s a bit of a circular reference: “it got popular because it got popular”. The question remains: why did BlueSky reach that threshold and Mastodon did not?

I’m inclined to agree that’s a problem. Everyone’s first encounter with a social media content recommendation algorithm was one designed to manipulate them into clicking ads, so it caused some backlash. Recommendation algorithms can be tuned to show things people care about and want to engage with.

You can’t middle-click them because they aren’t links. That is to say, they are not a elements but div elements with an added click event handler that navigates to another page. There’s a case to be made for doing things like that on a website that’s trying to behave like a native application, but Ebay fundamentally behaves like a website and building its navigation this way is bad design.

Local elections also need to be partisan. Otherwise how the fuck do you know where any of the candidates even generally stand on the issues?

I’d rather parties have no official role so we’re actually voting for people to represent us. Candidates have a responsibility to get their message out, and voters have a responsibility to do some research.

The story buries the lede: there were 19 candidates on the ballot for mayor and 16-30 for each city council district. Several of the experts cited speculate that the number of candidates overwhelmed voters.

I always go over a sample ballot in advance and research each candidate. I would not have liked to do so for that election; local elections are difficult to research in general with many candidates getting minimal press and some not even bothering to put up websites.

I’d still echo the (current) top comment’s advice to use something open source, local, and encrypted.

They’ve already taken the hard stance. If they roll it back, they will lose the trust of their users.

Biowink GmbH is probably not a corporation registered under US law. If I had to guess, the government of Germany will not be particularly eager to force them to turn over data to the USA. The Germans take their Datenschutz very seriously.

Deporting half the farm workers will surely reduce the cost of groceries.

People who are upset about high prices and stagnating income do have a point. People who think that prices will go down because they were lower last time Trump was president fail to understand cause and effect at a fundamental level and have me thinking some undemocratic thoughts.

Having moderated a number of online spaces over the years, sort of. It’s usually the harshest thing a moderator can do, but it does not have very much real world impact on most people. In many parts of the internet, it isn’t even very effective at keeping the same person from coming back with another account, which isn’t a big deal if they don’t come back with the same behavior.

I’m not particularly shy about reaching for the permanent ban if it seems like someone is being an asshole on purpose. I’m not getting paid for it, and I do not have much patience for dealing with people who don’t want to be respectful toward their fellow humans. There’s usually a way to appeal if it’s a misunderstanding. That’s especially true in systems like Lemmy and unlike traditional web forums where one account and UI provides access to many communities, leading to drive-by comments.

I’m also fond of somewhat ambiguous rules like “be excellent to each other” or “don’t be an asshole”. Without that, if a community gets active enough, someone will show up, act like an asshole, and argue about the rules when they get banned.

What’s funny is I’m not a part of the terminally online left. It would be hard to deny the terminally online part while posting on Lemmy, but I lean more libertarian than left. I voted for Gary Johnson in 2016. Now some reader here probably thinks I’m a terrible person.

Trump’s 2016 election convinced me to compromise a lot and vote for team blue even if I had major differences of opinion of certain policies. His attempt to steal the 2020 election cemented that decision, as that’s a long-term threat to the continued existence of democracy in America.

I think the main thing I can take away from this is I’d be terrible at running a political campaign. I already knew that.

While I can understand how more traditional conservative messages resonate with people, Trump’s are outside my Overton window. I can see the mechanics of how it works, and I can empathize with people who feel like the current system is failing them, but not with those who feel like Trump is going to fix it.

I’m disappointed your comments are attracting downvotes. They are on-topic and well-reasoned.

I’m not going to cop to strawmanning here, but I will grant that people who are receptive to his messaging on immigration might hear it differently than I do.

Perhaps part of my difficulty understanding how someone could resonate with that messaging without being an irredeemable racist stems from it not being based in reality any time there are actual numbers available from law enforcement. Drug couriers are citizens far more often than they are immigrants. Illegal immigrants have a lower crime rate than citizens. Noncitizens attempting to vote is rare and usually results in prosecution. “Open border” means something very different to me, e.g. intra-EU borders than it seems to mean to Trump.

Despite all that, Trump’s supporters feel like he’s telling them the truth about these issues and everyone who contradicts him is lying. The explanations that come to mind for me are… uncharitable. I’d like to hear alternatives.

It seems to me software designed to facilitate discussion shouldn’t have a downvote buttton. There should be a UI for marking comments as inappropriate, but it should require a second step saying why. Perhaps one of the reasons should even be “I disagree”, but that option should have no effect.

It’s not impossible to abuse of course, but it nudges people in the right direction. Those UI nudges can be pretty effective.

Not many, and those who come to mind weren’t receptive to that kind of messaging. Reasoning I’ve heard includes “Biden ruined the economy”, “vote R no matter who”, and “RFK and Tulsi Gabbard endorsed him”.

The statements I’ve heard from Trump himself are “illegal immigrants are going to steal your job, the election, and your cat”, and “trans people want to fuck your kid”, which are about groups of people with very little political power.

It’s definitely true that white collar, urban liberals sometimes punch down at rural, blue collar white people. It does hurt them politically.

I’m having trouble seeing anything Trump says about anyone other than high-level elected officials as punching up though. Attacks on the sitting president are punching up by definition, but the challenger always does that.

It seems more to me that he’s telling people who don’t feel good about their position in society that there’s someone below them. That was the message of slavery, of apartheid, and of Hitler. I find it hard not to condemn those who were receptive to it.

Persuadable voters seemed really focused on prices. It’s hard not to be condescending here. Eggs are expensive because of bird flu. Rent is high because not enough housing is being built, mostly limited by local issues. Gas is high because of Putin’s war. Anyone who thinks electing Trump will bring those prices down because they were lower last time he was president is fucking clueless.

I’m interested to see how much of a factor unenthusiastic Democrats were. Trump got about the same number of votes he did in 2020, but Harris got far fewer than Biden. It looks like a bunch of people who voted last time didn’t vote this time. For them, the concerns the author dismisses might have been more important.