I said this elsewhere too, but the bottom panel depicts something other than capitalism, since capitalism definitionally requires a competitive market.
Companies that are ostensibly in competition but not fighting each other too hard, is just another way of saying they are not in competition. It’s not capitalism.
We DO have very explicit laws against it, they have just sat unenforced since the 80’s (except for a few brief years in the 2020s).
I don’t want to defend capitalism, but the bottom panel depicts activity that is technically very illegal in the US (but antritrust laws have not been enforced by the FTC since the 1980s, barring a few short years in 2020s under Lina Khan).
Capitalism definitionally requires competition, without it you have… something even worse.
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/10/nx-s1-5428071/los-angeles-protests-national-guard-presidential-powers
Trump’s presidential memoranda argued that the National Guard deployment was necessary and defendable as these […] demonstrations “constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”
This bill creates a task force “The purpose of the task force shall be to detect, disrupt, and dismantle illicit marketplaces.”
Rick Moranis, I’m speaking directly to you because I know in my heart you are using Lemmy.
hi it’s me rick thank you for continuing to believe in me it’s children like you that keep the christmas magic alive
The growth of the network*
There are many platforms in the Fediverse. The fact that the network can survive the collapse of one platform is a strength of decentralization. The Lemmy/mbin/piefed universe can only ever be exactly as big as we, the users, want it to be.
TikTok → Reddit → Lemmy → …grass?
Turns out good web design skills does not always translate into other skills.
Not my instance 🤷♂️
With Mastodon you can migrate your account, Lemmy can’t migrate (yet). But the difference between Fediverse and commercial platforms is that you can access the same network of content from different instances. With Twitter/Reddit etc. everyone is forced onto a single instance (and a single moderation policy).
Lemmy.world is the second largest Lemmy instance, and less than a third of all users. If someone doesn’t like their rules it is trivial for a person to move to an instance who’s ruleset better aligns with their wishes.
It’s entirely possible in the future, since ActivityPub accounts can be “forwarded”. It’s a little clunky but look at Mastodon.
The fact that this is being upvoted so much I think demonstrates a big misunderstanding of how the fediverse works.
Nobody owns Lemmy and if a instance does something shitty it costs hardly anything to change instances. Nobody owns the lemmy software, and other softwares like mbin/piefed exist too with the same content.
There is only one Twitter whereas anyone can start “a Lemmy” (instance). I am using a different instance than you, for example. So if mine enshittifies I can go somewhere else and still have access to the broader network.
It would be weird if a Lemmy instance tried to make itself addictive. Like congrats your users request way more content and it costs 10x more to operate now yay
sick comeback bro that must go over really well in your middle school
Not excusing ignorance but it is wild how different the experience of the average man or woman can be just existing in public. It makes sense to me that a man who is largely a basement dweller would have no first hand exposure to that sort of behavior.
I think it’s silly to get caught up in definitions too. Cory Doctorow calls the bottom panel “techno feudalism” and I think that’s pretty good.