It’s a bold move Cotton, let’s see if it pays off

Hexbear had been around for like 3 years before lemmy.world was even created, that’s why they have such high activity numbers. Most of that activity is reactionary memes and rants about the media topic of the week, and hence largely meaningless and irrelevant content several years later.

My server is defederated from hexbear as well, because they tend to disrupt discussions with their aggressive, cultlike behavior. I wanted to like them, but they quickly wore out my optimistic goodwill with their puerile immaturity and unearned self-righteousness.

Sure, but in the context of this discussion I’m responding to someone claiming that Lemmy has more censorship than Reddit. That perception is completely false and detrimental to the growth of Lemmy, which is why I’m trying to clarify the truth of the matter.

I mean… I’m not so sure about that logic. Technically you aren’t wrong, but I think your point is misleading. In order for censorship to be problematic, it needs to be enforced by an entity with a significant amount of authority or control.

A communist newsletter technically engages in “censorship” against conservative viewpoints, but that’s hardly problematic, is it? Parents preventing young children from being exposed to objectionable content is technically “censorship”.

If you voluntarily choose to use a specific server when you have many other options at your fingertips, I just don’t see how the colloquial usage of censorship applies to that situation. Seems like more of a semantic quibble than an actual flaw of Lemmy as a platform.

Bottom line is that anyone can spin up a Lemmy server for free and post anything they want, and others can freely join or federate with that server and access that information without any barriers. That’s why I would argue the platform does not have any inherent censorship.

Lemmy as a platform has no censorship.

Lemmy.world is one specific server among hundreds that has a little bit of censorship.

It just happens to be the biggest as this moment in time, but that could easily change if they were actually censoring things to any significant extent. It never would have become the biggest in the first place if it were as censorship prone as you seem to believe.

Encounter censorship on Lemmy > move to a different server

Encounter censorship on reddit > nothing you can do

Community fragmentation is a feature, not a bug. Your actual complaint isn’t about censorship, but about the small size of the Lemmy userbase. If the userbase was bigger, there would be more active server options, and the moderation of each individual server (such as lemmy.world) wouldn’t matter as much. Ironically, by ignorantly claiming that Lemmy has a problem with censorship, you’re actively working against attempts to grow the userbase.

Not to mention, if your biggest complaint of censorship is that lemmy.world bans discussion of vegan cat food, let me play the world’s smallest violin for you

Instead of having one giant jerk censoring things like on Reddit, there are instead dozens of little petty ones wanting to defederate from other instances.

This false equivalency pains me to my core. I don’t really have anything to say about the rest of your comment, but ffs can people stop with this nonsense take? You’re implying that the difference between centralized corporate authoritarianism and decentralized grassroots democracy is negligible.

Lemmy is free and collaborative, reddit is censored and exploitative. The fact that people consistently try to equate two opposite paradigms is just mind-boggling to me.

(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrington_v._Purdue_Pharma_L.P.)

The very first thing you said was about the Sackler case and how the ruling wasn’t fair. The first thing I responded was that the Supreme Court already overturned that ruling. And after like 5 more comments I still have no idea if you are even aware that the ruling was overturned. You never once acknowledged reading that or clicking the hyperlink

(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrington_v._Purdue_Pharma_L.P.)

You tried to keep the discussion measured??? You never responded to a single one of my points!

In my very first comment, I made a number of points. You ignored them. I copied them into another comment and you ignored them again. I rephrased them and you ignored them again. You’re not engaging in good faith, you’re just ignoring everything that comes out of my mouth because you have no idea how to respond.

You need to admit that you aren’t a very intelligent person. You literally couldn’t even figure out that 4.5 times 9 equals 40.5. That’s basic fucking arithmetic dude, it’s like I’m trying to explain this shit to an 8 year old.

You need to admit that the Sackler case provides zero evidence of judicial corruption.

You need to admit that you are wrong.

clear case of corruption (on an outcome basis)

First of all, this makes zero sense. That’s like saying

clear case of murder (on an outcome basis)

You can’t prove murder based on the fact that someone is dead. You need to demonstrate that the killing was premeditated, the killer planned to kill the victim and executed their plan. Otherwise it’s manslaughter or negligent homicide. Similarly, how the fuck can you claim a case is a clear example of corruption just based on the outcome? Do you need me to provide the dictionary definition of corruption?

The Sackler family are scum, but your understanding of that case seems limited. They utilized financial engineering to move the money offshore, thus placing it beyond the jurisdiction of the courts. As far as the legal system is concerned, that money doesn’t exist, because it can’t be proven that they possess it. This is frustrating, but it’s legally sound. It’s not an issue with the courts, it’s an issue with the legislature and their inability/unwillingness to craft laws to prevent rich people from hiding their money like this.

Furthermore, the achieved settlement of $40 billion over 9 years is absolutely massive, and it would be difficult to argue that anything else would be more beneficial to the victims of the opioid epidemic. Getting the Sacklers sent to prison would feel good, but it wouldn’t directly help anyone suffering from opioid addiction. Additionally, the Supreme Court already overturned the original settlement earlier this year, ruling that the Sacklers were still liable and that the settlement could not proceed as previously agreed. So whatever bothered you about that ruling, it has been overturned. It’s strange how American judges can never seem to agree with each other, despite your claim that they are compromised/corrupt.

Did you have difficulty understanding what I wrote? Let me clarify.

THE SUPREME COURT OVERRULED THE RULING THAT YOU CLAIM DEMONSTRATED CORRUPTION. IF THE COURT IS CORRUPT, WHY ARE THEY OVERRULING THE OTHER COURT THAT YOU CLAIM MADE A CORRUPT DECISION? WHICH COURT IS CORRUPT? BASED ON WHAT EVIDENCE?

Because he’s the exception that proves the rule. If he in fact is corrupt, it indicates that it’s very easy to catch a corrupt justice, because they have to disclose all of their gift, income, etc.

Look into Alito? You look into Alito, bitch. Have a report on my desk first thing tomorrow morning.

Because I don’t like ignorant Americans calling Ukraine (or any other country) a “corrupt shithole” while arguing that’s it’s OK that criminal oligarchs (who organized a massive drug cartel with deaths in the 10s of thousands) should avoid all criminal liability and retain enough money to live opulent lifestyles. You are really in so deep that you can’t understand this?

No one has said any of this. You’re arguing with an imaginary straw man. None of this is okay, but if it were simply due to the American justice system being corrupt, it would be a much easier fix.

You’re basically looking at the roof of a house leaking water, and your proposed solution is to put a bucket under the leak. While I’m trying to explain to you that the whole damn roof is falling apart and just putting a bucket in one place isn’t really going to help in the long run.

Of course it doesn’t preclude corruption, it just makes it incredibly difficult to pull off. There’s no way to make it illegal for Supreme Court justices to have friends and family, is there? But when they start trying to bend the rules, they get caught very easily. Clarence Thomas is certainly suspicious but that’s why there’s public outrage and he’s being investigated.

Indeed, FixTheCourt, an organization dedicated to greater court transparency, found that Justice Clarence Thomas had received some $4.2 million in gifts and luxury trips over the past 20 years, much of it from Republican megadonors. In contrast, FixTheCourt reported that the other eight justices, plus the eight retired or deceased justices got gifts that altogether were valued at roughly $600,000 over the same 20-year period.

So aside from Thomas, the other judges received an average of $37,500 in gifts each over the past 20 years. Not nearly enough to claim widespread corruption. The reality is that corruption is unecessary, the judges argue in a certain way because that’s what they believe.

They were appointed to the Supreme Court in the first place because of their established judicial records which go back decades. There are several justices that frequently argue against government oversight because that’s the kind of judges that Republican presidents have decided to appoint, because they believe in the same things. It doesn’t always need to be some grand conspiracy, it’s usually a much more banal form of dysfunction.

I never equated anything lmao. Are you incapable of responding with anything besides inane gotchas and straw men? Jfc

4.5B X 9 years = 40.5B

Of course it’s not fair that they still have generational wealth. But if you have no way of tracing the money, there’s nothing that the courts can do about it. Again, that’s the realm of the legislature, FBI, CIA, NSA, IRS, etc. It’s not that the prosecutors didn’t want to take away all their money. It’s that it’s literally impossible to trace.

The 9/11 attack and Islamic terrorism in general is well known to be partially funded by wealthy Muslims, many of whom reside in countries which are nominal allies of the US. Pakistan was sheltering Osama bin Laden for nearly a decade, during which time they received around $10 billion in economic and military aid from the US. We were sending them billions of dollars which they were using to train more Taliban fighters and send them into Afghanistan to fight US troops. There’s no need for pretend excuses, there is the very real excuse that this planet is insanely massive and complex and even the mighty US government can’t control and dictate more than a fraction of what is going on.

You have a very naive view of the world if you think the judges are merely implementing the law. There is a massive feedback loop between the oligarchs, politicians and the judicial system. It’s a bit supremacist to think that Americans are inherently incapable of such corruption constructs.

Judges are charged with interpreting the law, the police are the ones who implement it. The feedback loop between politicians and big business is very real, but there are a ton of restrictions in place that make it difficult to influence the judicial system in the same way. Judges are subject to intense scrutiny and they’re not allowed to do anything that might even suggest the possibility of a conflict of interest.

As I continue to read, you’re making less and less sense, so I’ll just leave you with this. If I started expounding on the intricacies of the Ukrainian government, you would rightly call me out. Why do you feel so confident in your understanding of the American government based solely on what you’ve read online? Ukraine is corrupt, I get it. But stop talking out of your ass regarding America.

Yes you are. If the allegation is false, then you’re actually the one who is victim-blaming right now. But that’s a possibility that you refuse to consider, because you seem to think it’s sexist to suspect one individual woman of making a false accusation. If it was a man filing a lawsuit that he got beat up or robbed 25 years ago at that same party, I would be equally skeptical of his claims.

I don’t want to. You could stop trying to avoid the topic at hand, but I understand that you find it very hard to ever admit to being wrong or making a mistake. You should try it some time, it actually feels good.

Because the allegation is either true or false. Either it happened, or it didn’t. If it didn’t happen, then there’s no reason for you to be disappointed in Jay Z.

I didn’t say he probably did it. I said I wouldn’t be surprised. I said I don’t know the facts.