You’re missing the point.

Pornography addiction is a real thing.

I don’t think citronella actually does anything.

Advertisers keep pushing for a more and more obtrusive browsing experience, while shoving consumerist junk in my face to try and drain my wallet.

And I’m just supposed to be okay with that?

Nope, I block all the ads I can.

who care much more about whether what you said is polite than whether it’s actually a good thing to say.

This is a great point. So much of the talk around equality is nothing more than pandering to gain social approval.

And when you see people getting their entire careers ruined over saying the wrong thing once, or even something they said decades ago, it just drives people into the political margins.

People are more interested in attacking their neighbors for “bigotry” than they are in building a more just society.

I’m putting bigotry in quotes, because the words and ideas that are considered hateful are constantly changing. If someone doesn’t keep up with the latest fashion in acceptable speech, they may suddenly find themselves opposite to an angry mob.

The social climate surrounding us is not an accident. The way people respond to their perceived political rivals is not an accident. It’s a result of how unprepared our society is in dealing with social media algorithms that promote engagement through division. And a result of bad actors capitalizing on that division to sow greater unrest.

This isn’t new. The evidence has been on full display for years. And yet, the damage has been done. There’s simply no social appetite for those who support slow and steady (durable and stable) policy reform.

The recent political climate on “sides” can be summed up with “You’re either 100% with us, no discussion, or you are our enemy” and that’s where true oppression begins.

This isn’t just a problem on the internet. I run into people in real life who think this way, often.

How many times have comedians or other entertainers come under fire for jokes or other bits they’ve done? It’s a lot. Comedians will all tell you that they can’t perform in places like New York the same way anymore, because half the things they say get booed from the crowd.

“Why should I care about Dave Chappelle, or anyone else, getting slammed for some offensive thing they said?”

Because entertainer’s acts are one of the ways that people come to understand the world around them. Their satire is an important tool for democracy to unravel the bullshit that surrounds them. It’s supposed to be the opposite of sterile.

And if “dirty language” means that you’re okay silencing those guys, along with everyone else, you are engaging in oppression on a far wider scale than you realize.

That page has to be satire… right?

The whole “police your language, so there’s no chance anyone could ever be offended” idea is such an oppressive path to a more equal society.

Isn’t karma just like an anti-spam mechanism that barely works?

And you get karma just by posting whatever the community wants to hear. So it’s not like it shows how enlightened you are or anything.

Anyway, one thing that bothered me about Reddit’s karma system, is that people would delete their comments if they got a few downvotes, even if they had something important to say.

Here on Lemmy, you can quickly see both upvotes and downvotes. So if someone says something controversial due to politics or whatever, they’re less likely to delete their comment because they can see “ahh, I’m not just being mercilessly attacked, 50 people upvoted me.”

That can be abused I guess, but I like that it promotes discussion that isn’t just echo-chamber nonsense. We’ll just have to see how it works in practice.