SamYourEyes

@SamYourEyes@mas.to

☭ Communist, doomer

It's all turned out far, far more stupid than I ever imagined

USA / New England

searchable on tootfinder.ch because I always forget to use hashtags

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

SamYourEyes, to random

That was fuckin fast. We're told universal healthcare is a 200-year project due to the impossible nature of mobilizing congress in a concerted direction, and yet...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/23/senate-passes-bill-banning-tiktok-will-parent-company-sell

I've been using/observing tiktok for a couple years now, and I honestly think the platform is past its peak and probably would start declining even without a ban, it's become infested with bots and stuffed with promoted content and tiktok shop ads.

SamYourEyes,

I hope bytedance sticks to their guns and does not sell, tho that will fuck everyone who's using it to make money. Casual users can perhaps use a VPN, although once it's removed from the Play and iTunes stores 99% of ppl won't go to the effort to install a non approved app.

The core feature that made tiktok special was that it did not implement US imperial censorship, as every western owned platform does.

SamYourEyes,

My Twitter account is an excellent example, for many years, nothing I post there has ever reached more than a couple ppl, all leftist accounts like mine are shadow banned.

For awhile now I've been double posting everything here and on twitter. I get way more engagement on Masto, even tho the user base is tiny by comparison. But Masto is useless as a social media platform bcs it has no search function. You can't find anything on Masto except by hashtags which no one uses.

SamYourEyes,

Despite this incredible handicap, Masto still gives my posts more engagement than twitter. This isn't a Musk thing, twitter has always been this way. Shadowbanning is a standard tool used by all western social media to give ppl the illusion of free speech.

Tiktok didn't do this, posting about Palestine doesn't get you shadowbanned, and TT became the premier outlet for spreading leftist messaging for this reason. Biden is about to lose an election bcs kids are taking about Palestine on tiktok.

SamYourEyes,

One psbl scenario is another non-US social media app becomes popular and takes tiktok's place, forcing US govt to play whack-a-mole.

If Mastodon would just add a goddamn search function that would transform the usefulness of the site. As it is now I can't really recommend it.

Bluesky finally opened to the public a few months ago, I haven't taken a look yet but that seems to be the most frequently cited alternative by accounts I follow on twitter.

SamYourEyes,

Which is a damn shame bcs it's basically Mastodon with billionaire venture capital investment. Which will eventually (if not already) mean the same US imperial censorship as Twitter.

At this point the best scenario is probably to go back to local printed newspapers. College radio stations. We need to rebuild real physical communities.

The right wing has always excelled at this. They ruled talk radio. My grocery store carries a homemade newspaper by a local QAnon crackpot.

SamYourEyes,

I don't have a clue what the kids are leaning towards right now but the collapse that's coming will require offline organizing.

Edit: actually, something I learned from tiktok is the kids are using pages like linktree to list out all their various online presences. So rather than investing heavily in one platform, they can jump from one to the next and just add new locations to their linktree. It's an interesting solution, in some ways like an old school geocities site.

SamYourEyes,

One of the biggest social media problems we have right now is that all the really useful accounts are still wedded to just twitter and facebook. Every govt office, climate scientist, independent journalist, etc, they're still only on those 2 legacy imperial platforms.

My local NWS office uses facebook as their primary website. Their actual NWS page just has an embedded frame to repost their facebook posts. On a fucking official govt webpage. It's insane.

SamYourEyes,

The only place you will find Leon Simons posting The Most Important Graph In The World is on twitter. And everyone on Mastodon bitching about "hurf durf only losers r still on twitter" need to fucking get over it.

https://twitter.com/LeonSimons8/status/1767509577656856739

SamYourEyes,

Zack Labe is the only climate scientist I'm aware of making an effort to post on Mastodon. (which btw, big props for doing that Mr Labe)

https://mas.to/@ZLabe@fediscience.org

SamYourEyes,

Unicorn Riot also deserves special mention for posting on Mastodon. They're an excellent indy news outlet that has done fantastic work on lots of important stories.

https://mas.to/@UnicornRiot@mastodon.social

SamYourEyes,

But that still leaves the rest of us in a shitty position. I have to keep a twitter and fb account to get important information. If I want to actually reach ppl I have to use tiktok. Mastodon is good for social interaction but not as an information source or as a way to spread a message.

It's fucking exhausting and I'm totally ready to scrap the whole thing and just start talking to strangers irl except that no one wears a goddamn face mask in a neverending respiratory pandemic. 🙃

SamYourEyes,

Tiktok ban signed by Biden the next day after it was passed by the Senate. Look at that speed of government

https://www.commondreams.org/news/biden-signs-tiktok-ban

SamYourEyes,

Ken Klippenstein is another example of a highly important independent journalist who uses Twitter and not Mastodon.

His recent airing out of dirty laundry at The Intercept is quite an eye opening account of journalistic malpractice.

https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/why-im-resigning-from-the-intercept

Mastodon has bot services that repost accounts from twitter, but many instances ban them. Mas.to, the instance I use, bans bird.makeup so I'm not allowed to follow the reposts of Ken's tweets on Mastodon.

SamYourEyes, to random

If a bus driver steers a bus towards a cliff, floors the accelerator, and has a hired mercenary kill any passengers that try to stop them, it is reasonable to say that the driver is trying to kill everyone on board. We don't need to know the driver's internal thoughts and motivations. It doesn't matter if the driver is shouting "everything's fine, I'm totally not driving off a cliff!" We can use our brains to judge their intentions by their actions.

SamYourEyes,

For some reason ppl struggle way too hard doing this with capitalist politicians who are steering us towards certain human extinction from climate change. They are trying to kill us all. It doesn't matter what they're saying. We don't need to know their internal thoughts and motivations. We can judge them by their actions.

SamYourEyes, to random

In summer 2020 when American workers (especially parents) failed to strike to demand #covidsafe schools and workplaces, that was NOT a neutral inaction. That wasn't just a failure to make things better. That was an unequivocal signal to the bourgeoisie to ramp up the exploitation to the max. That was the "fire at will" command to landlords, to CEOs, to the entire capitalist machine. That was our last chance to make a difference and we blew right past it without a glance.

SamYourEyes, to random

You move 16 tons
What do you get,
Another day older
And deeper in debt

SamYourEyes, to random

I still very clearly remember all the credulous vote blue people telling me 3 years ago how great Biden's climate plan was. Now, after the obvious bait-and-switch, US is producing more oil than any other country ever.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/08/civilian-climate-corps-was-dropped-climate-bill-now-what/

SamYourEyes, to random

Boeing whistleblower got CIAicided

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68534703

image/jpeg

SamYourEyes, to random

On revolutionary hope:
My hope is for no more CIA assassinations of African leaders. No more Indonesian slaves on fishing boats. No more genocide of Palestinians. No more CIA-ran Columbian drug rings. No more Epstein islands.

All of that is achievable by wrecking the US from the inside.

SamYourEyes,

Ppl always worry about revolution /US collapse plunging the world into anarchy which is silly. If the US collapses China will lead the world. And that would be a good thing. China is the leader in building roads, trains, and infrastructure that actually helps ppl. China is the world leader in renewable energy, in electric vehicles, anything that helps people China is the world leader. US only leads in military power.

"China builds, US bombs"

SamYourEyes,

Cuba (another communist country) has the highest number of doctors per capita, developed their own COVID vax and deployed doctors all over the world during the pandemic, from a tiny country suffering under a US trade blockade.

So there is a story of hope, it's just very unconventional (to US eyes), not something Hollywood is going to produce.

SamYourEyes, to random

Africa, relative size to major countries

SamYourEyes,

If you found any of these shocking this is probably the reason why. The most common map projection massively exaggerates higher latitude land masses vs equatorial zone.

SamYourEyes,

@j3j5
There's an XKCD for everything. I'm a goode homolosine fan myself

https://xkcd.com/977/

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