Well kind of yes and kind of no. I never closed my R account, and I still check there maybe once a week. So in that since “yes”. But on the other hand, the quality of posts and discussion is pretty low. It feels like a lot of the content there is posted to meet some goal, such as selling a product or influencing opinions - rather than just sharing thoughts and ideas. I find that pretty off-putting. Despite the very high comment counts, genuine discussion there is almost non-existent. But the one bit of value I do sometimes get is it often has some piece of niche news that I’m mildly interested in.

My understanding is in the case of lemm.ee they were getting enough donations to cover the technical operating costs, but they did not have enough high-quality volunteers for admins (and presumably not enough money to pay admins. It would require a lot of money to pay fairly for that work).

In 10 days my account will be 2 years old.

I’ve enjoyed it, and this has been one of my most visited websites during that time. But I’m still not sure I’ll stick around after lemm.ee shuts down at the end of this month.

Well sure, they knew this was a likely outcome - because they know the Israel government is batshit. The purpose of the mission was aid and activism. They definitely knew that arrest was likely, but that’s not why the did it. They didn’t want to be detained. They just want to help the people of Gaza in whatever way is within their power. This is how they chose to do it.

It may not be perfect, but it’s definitely more effort and effect than doing nothing. And the more people who get on board with some actions, the more likely they are to succeed.

It has already been renamed to Microsoft365.

And the whole set of problems only exist because there are too many cars.

Counterpoint: I haven’t noticed that being a trend until this thread.

yeah, it’s pretty common for AI answers to feel very accurate and useful on topics the user doesn’t know much about, but highly error-prone and unreliable on topics the user is an expert in. … … …

Probably, but the stink will linger for quite a long time.

There’s a burger place near my house that I use to go to almost every week. But then the quality started going down, and I stopped going there. That was two years ago. Maybe they fixed the problems, but I’m not going to know - because I no longer go there. Snap is like that.

I honestly don’t have a strong sense of how Tate can be so popular. But if I had to guess, I’d say the “no sense of community” is probably the biggest thing.

The internet has become a gathering place where communities and social bonds are formed. I can imagine a heap of people who are struggling socially in the real world seeing, and then seeing Tate and his community offer an ‘answer’ to that - supporting those who feel rejected, and putting the blame squarely on others. That’s what I see as the draw that brings people in. They feel safe and secure in their haven of hatred. Any opposition to them is from people that are weaker and less important. – Which then makes leaving the group almost impossible, because you’d have to degrade your own view of yourself - joining the people who you think are weaker and less important.

So this Tate thing is rot that has taken root because of a gap in more healthy support structures. (I don’t see an easy solution for it though!)

Fair call. It didn’t occur to me to do that, but I understand why you’d prefer it. Originally I was actually naming the groups; but I changed my mind.

It’s pretty standard to play both extremes simultaneously, and people just pick whichever they want to relate to at any given moment.

eg.

• (such-and-such group) are lazy, but also they are taking all the jobs.
• They are stupid, but also have secret organisations that control the world, with mind-control, and lasers that control the weather, etc.
• They are snowflakes obsessed with inclusiveness, but also they want (target-minority-group) to take over.
• They are against free speech; and we must silence them.

I’m sure others can think of more, and variations on those.

I’d try this, but I don’t know what address to email them at. All of the support / contact instructions are a labyrinth of automated systems, with the fallback option of using the ‘community forum’. Google doesn’t seem to want anyone to contact them for any reason.

I thought that too at first, which is why I tried every other available option first. But that theory is disproven by the fact that the first attempt with the number told me that the given number was not registered to the account (and so I still couldn’t log in). Clearly they were comparing the entered number to something they already had.

I didn’t get technical on you - that’s kind of the point. But whatever; I was just trying to help with some context. Ignore if you like.

Look man, from a technical language point of view there is nothing whatsoever wrong with calling people ‘females’. However, by speaking to such people face-to-face you quickly learn that basically not one likes to be called that. The reasons are subtle, and frankly not very important. But the fact remains that calling people ‘females’ is now seen as a sign that you don’t understand or respect them - on the grounds that you are using a phrase that you’ve been asked not to use. Just say ‘women’ instead.

That’s true on face value. The issue is that accusations of misandry are almost always unfounded, and only made as a way to deflect and to attack women. So when people start talking about misandry, that’s generally a red flag.

It’s similar to how “all lives matter” is definitely a true and good value - but yet it is almost always said as a way to divert support away from vulnerable groups. So although the literal meaning is good, it is fair to assume that people saying it do not have good intentions.

It’s pretty harsh to just casually suggest that a person be a TERF without any specific evidence.

Sure. I agree that’s the problem; and none of these analogies really help make that any easier to understanding. Certainly they don’t have a “murder as much as you like” policy! (I find that analogies are rarely useful - except for manipulating how you want people to feel.)

Perhaps murder is a bit extreme. It’s more like “we’ve noticed you’re taking woodchips from the playground. That’s not allowed. We wouldn’t mind if you were just taking a few chips, but you’ve taken 2 tons.”

[edit] But putting analogies aside, the service really should make rules and restrictions like this clear in advance. That seems like the real failing here, rather than the rule itself.