all our brains are pretty dumb and easy to fool.

Absolutely, but I think that when we’re talking to actually smart people in person we at least subconsciously more likely believe the person that actually has to say something (i.e. really knows something we don’t). With social media a lot of these communication factors are missing, so if the text sounds smart, we may believe it. Sure you can fake and lie, etc. but I think (going back in time) we have a good instinct for people that may help us in any way i.e. through knowledge where to find food, find secure shelter etc. stuff that helps our survival, which in the end for humans is basically good factual knowledge that helps the survival of the species as a whole.

Today our attention spans are reduced to basically nothing to a large part because of social media promoting emotional (unfortunately mostly negative/anxiety/anger) short messages (and ads of course) that reinforce whatever we believe which likely strengthens bad connections in the brain.

Also the sheer mass of information is very likely not good for us. I.e. mostly nonfactual information, because well, there’s way more people that “have heard about something” than actually researched and gone down to the ground to get the truth (or at least a good model of it).

This all mixed, well doesn’t give me a positive outlook unfortunately…

Yeah, which actually underlines my point even. We weren’t “designed” for connecting with everyone around the world. Evolutionary there were smaller groups, sometimes having contact with other groups.

Today we can just connect with our bubbles (like here on lemmy) and get validated and reinforce our beliefs independently if they are right or wrong (mostly factually). As we see this doesn’t seems to be healthy for most people. In smaller circles (like scientific community) this helps, but in general… Well I don’t think I have to explain the situation on the world (and especially currently in the USA) currently…

There’s a big difference between sitting around a fire telling stories. And sending pseudonymous click-baity messages (I’m slightly exaggerating) across the globe.

As it’s not guaranteed anymore: Have you sit around a fire with friends? IME it’s so much more fulfilling and less prone to hate. Healthier (apart of the smoke). There’s so much more to communication than text messages.

Make the design 4D, and stack them in multiple dimensions, maybe one 4D guillotine is even sufficient?

I mean humanity survived thousands of years without any social media at all…

For whom?

For their unsatisfiable thirst of power?

I mean they only get power because people give it them, but I think it’s still the fascists who spark this process… It’s a little bit of a chicken-egg situation…

Do you really think that our wannabe-Nazi Elon is yet on the same level as Hitler? (It could develop into that, but that’s a big if)

Then you understand neither.

Oh I do as anarchist… As I say the world isn’t as black and white in reality. The goal of these both are similar: freedom. Albeit different definitions and ways to achieve it.

But it’s definitely different than fascism which is mostly centralized oppression… I.e. oppression of freedom.

I’d say it’s basically a wild mix/spectrum of different ideologies in reality.

I’d agree with (I think) at least one thing the general accepted opinion of liberalism (which is basically capitalism) is definitely leaning more towards fascism than say anarchism, but that probably also has to do with that anarchism in reality is not a model that is achievable at least so far, similar with real communism.

Isn’t loops just the pixelfed instance run by the developer?

There is

Compared to what corporate has it’s basically no money…

Yeah it’s kinda sad, that open source gets so little love in terms of money.

I would hope that the EU may help here, and in very small steps, that is true, but there could be so much more money (which would still be very little to the EU) that would have a significant effect there.

Great, so I can just use any other dating app now, and don’t need Bumble anymore? What kind of genius move it is to kill the signature feature. But oh well the person responsible already left…

That ratio was much higher for me. I’d say about 70% sent a message. Probably work on the profile, make it more interesting? If that is now really gone I’m not sure whether I ever install that App anymore, it was nice not having to come up with first messages with questionable outcome…

After all this text-wall, I’d be interested in your political attitude.

Fascists don’t “concentrate” power - they are HANDED power that has ALREADY been concentrated FOR them.

So you agree with me? I didn’t say fascists are concentrating power, but they definitely maintain it (just look at the third Reich and literally all other fascistic states). (And in reality they definitely sought after concentrating power, yet again just look at the history of the third Reich…)

The world is much less black and white as you depict it here. True, all the (liberal) democracies to date have their flaws and at least traces of fascism (unfortunately) growing this time again. I can rant about it all day if I wanted to (but I consider that a waste of time after having wasted too much with that already).

But (true) liberalism is not fascism, say what you want. After all, it’s about being liberal (I don’t consider our late-stage-capitalism liberal btw. capitalism is as we see right now in the US also concentrating power to the rich)…

I consider liberalism closer to anarchism (not the capitalistic kind of course). There are obviously differences, but as being liberal has to do with personal freedom, and anarchism is about being against all forms of authority, it’s per definition closer to that than fascism.

How it’s interpreted is a whole different story. Same with all the “communistic” kinds of states. I don’t think we ever had “real” communism, only authoritarianism with the label of “communism”.

Nope. We’ve been there for a long, long time now.

To a degree yes, but the intensity changes. And I know there were times, where there was even greater inequality (e.g. Mansa Musa). Yet it’s not really comparable with the modern world, which largely relies on speculative assets, and growth.

becomes perfectly irrelevant

No it doesn’t, fascism is a different level than liberal establishments. Our democracies are far from perfect, but they at least have some form of control by the people, to keep power somewhat in check. Fascism is definitely concentrating on centralizing power, with the tendency to escalate (as obviously seen in the past). Also there are a lot of statistics, which show, that we were in a comparably very peaceful state for some time (since the last world war), but we’re currently getting out of that period again (though still relatively peaceful), into a more autocratic world again unfortunately.

I’m speaking as european, where things are not (yet) that bad. The “democracy” in the USA is definitely less democratic than let’s say scandinavian democracies… And I don’t want to even begin with something like Russia or China.

Yes that’s what we’re Increasingly moving towards.

Beware though, that all of this is a spectrum…

“fact”-checkers… This is probably a good prefilter, but definitely one of the few (or rather many) things that LLMs are pretty bad in…

I think Facebook is popular enough, that this kind of news is actually damaging…