I had been using YouTube for years without being presented rightwing propaganda in my suggestions. I mostly just watched strategy gaming, history, technology channels and some peculiar travelling blogs. And my suggested was just mostly those things.

Then one day I used my YouTube account to cast kid shows for my niece for the first time. After that I was suggested more kid shows which didn’t interest me personally, but I also started getting suggested cat videos, which I obviously clicked. And the week after that half my suggested feed was rightwing misogynist/racist/culture war misinformation, and it took a lot of “do not recommend channel” to clean it up again.

So now I believe that there is a concerted effort by some malicious actors to train Google’s algorithm to assume that if someone is interested in cat videos, that they would then also be open to becoming a misogynist racist prick.

I remember from an older article that it’s a very small college and the new republican dean/president/chairman (I forgot what he was) is being paid $ 700 000 per year, about $1000 per student. I’m certain that he isn’t the only person making bank from this. It seems to be a grift to funnel tax money into the pockets of friends and sycophants, and while the college board tries to make itself relevant in the eyes of their maga public, the future of the students appears to not be a consideration, because they’re not the ones paying for this circus.

Apparently fighting the republican culture war is very profitable for republican grifters.

According to the headline it’s 20% of those who voted for the mayor, not 20% of the population. So fe a drop from 60% to 48% voter participation.

If a system encourages people to not vote when they have no clue who they are voting for, then that might be considered a feature instead of an issue. Though one problem I can think off is that coaching of voters on how to vote becomes even more effective. I’m on the fence on this one.

Ps: is a 20% drop enough to say that something “cratered” or is this just another superlative clickbait title?

True, headlines matter.

Why “no”? You’re basically saying the same as the summary.

And she also had noone using millions of dollars to bribe voters to go vote, but only voters of a specific flavor. Somehow that was deemed legal, the usa has basically become a banana republic.

They don’t have to prove that someone is not a qualified elector to disenfranchise them, throwing up barriers to make it very hard / impossible to vote is enough. In the past the federal government could intervene if something like that happened, but that’s not really possible anymore thanks to the current scotus, so it’s up to the states.

And this state is now laying the legal groundwork: If “every” persons with xxx qualifications has the right the vote by law and new measures get implemented that make it practically impossible to vote for certain people that fit those qualifications, then those people had a right withheld from them.

If “only” persons with xxx qualifications have the right to vote by law and new measures get implemented that make it impossible to vote for certain people that fit those qualifications, then … nothing. That’s the difference between “every” and “only”. Changing the wording to “only” allows the state to legally pile on extra requirements and barriers.

Examples of groups of people that I’ve seen disenfranchised by state actions: Prisoners, felons who have done their time, college students, minorities, inner city people, military abroad. Some of these news articles will have been attempts that were not (yet) successful.

I haven’t read the full wiki article, but I expect those examples to be in here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_United_States

Unfortunately SCOTUS gutted the power of the federal government to enforce those guarantees based on the old provisions + republicans filibustered the democrat bill that was meant to address that. It’s as if the republicans have a plan.

https://www.democracydocket.com/analysis/what-does-the-constitution-say-about-the-right-to-vote/

“The ability of the federal government to protect voting rights, particularly for racial and ethnic minorities, has been jeopardized both by recent Supreme Court rulings and the failure of Congress to enact new voting rights legislation.”

“With the federal government and the Supreme Court unlikely to protect voting rights in a substantial way in the near future, it’s up to the states to take action to protect voting.”

And now there’s a state changing the law so that they can more easily disenfranchise voters of their chosing. Imo this is no coincidence.

EPP is centrist, not far right, and they work together with greens + socialists + liberals. The national parties that are members of the EPP, that I know, are the old christian democrat parties and in terms of the USA Overton window, they would be to the left of USA democratic party. The far right only has about a quarter of MEPs.

"Combined, the three political groups on the right have 187 MEPs, just over a quarter of the total, but they are viewed as unlikely to form a coherent and united bloc. Following the election, leaders of the EPP, S&D and Renew Europe groups stressed their commitment to working together as a pro-EU “democratic alliance”. The S&D and Renew Europe, together with the Greens/EFA, also stressed that they rejected cooperation with groups on the right, including the ECR. "

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10068/

I’ve got the impression that Tucker Carlson is going after Alex Jones his audience. Tucker Carlson peddling crazy conspiracy theories right when the chickens are coming home to roost for Alex Jones, imo that’s no coincidence. Tucker never was stupid, he just has no morals, so he never had a problem with publicly stating stuff that he personally didn’t believe in. Grifters gonna grift.

Here’s actual statistics: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1303450/bilateral-aid-to-ukraine-in-a-percent-of-donor-gdp/

Apparently Denmark is leading the pack with 1.83%, closely followed by the 3 Baltic countries. Poland is 7th with 0.68%. The usa is “only” at 0.35%, which is still by far the most of any of the non european nations that have send help, and also significantly more than a bunch of eu nations.

This is all aid, so weapons, humanitarian and financial. With the different kinds split out: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1303432/total-bilateral-aid-to-ukraine/

You’re probably right. Case in point: Linkerbaan was eventually banned, although it did take a long time.

The opinions on this were interesting. My simplified take: One person thinks it’s even worse than I thought. One person thinks it’s not going to be a problem in the first place. And 3 persons think that it’s a problem that will resolve itself, so no reason to worry.

As Hexbear becomes increasingly isolated, more and more of their users will start making accounts on other instances. After migrating, they’ll still have their toxic post truth discource, but they’ll be harder to identify at a glance. I’m definitely not against cutting ties with Hexbear, I was in favor of it when Lemmy world did it. But now I’m dreading the thought of those users trickling back into my feed one by one. For my personal Lemmy experience, the existence of Hexbear was great in that it kept so many toxic people contained in a place away from me.

Is this from Spain?

It sounds like what they are doing is clearly illegal and you probably could do a lot of people a favor by complaining to the authorities.

Generally for the eu: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-8-2017-003934-ASW_EN.html “If users receive unsolicited communications after having withdrawn consent, they can file a complaint with the national regulatory authority. In addition, they have the right to a judicial remedy before national courts.”

The responsible agency for Spain: https://www.aepd.es/

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“A printed mark to designate ownership.” is about trademarks, intellectual property. You’re basically saying that Israel trademarked the skin of those prisoners.

Opening a dictionary and looking up a word is one thing, you still need some basic amount of reading comprehension to interpret what you are reading in that dictionary, which you’re clearly lacking.

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It’s not a trademark and it’s not a mark made with a hot iron, so atleast according to the definition that you tried to use as a gotcha, it’s not a brand.

Edit: After I had commented, the person edited out part of the 2nd definition so that the definition would fit their narrative. What was edited out: " (2) : a printed mark made for similar purposes : trademark".

From Miriam Webster: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/brand

They’re basically using the (edited) definition of trademark branding to claim that these written numbers are a branding.

Trump is happening because far right republicans realized after Watergate that if they wanted to get away with crimes in the future, that they needed to have news that presents “alternate” facts that are favorable to their narrative or that would at the least muddy the waters. Roger Ailes his plan worked basically.

Without censoring his appearances, Trump comes across as petulant/weak/selfish/stupid/hateful/… Without censoring his history, republican voters would have known that he was a serial scam artist, serial adulterer, … Basically without that alternate fact media supporting rightwing skullduggery, there would never have been a president Trump.

Imo it’s nonsense to claim that Trump getting elected, is happening because voters are angry because of mysterious reasons that no one can figure out, when those voters are so misinformed that they consistently vote against their own interests and believe stupid conspiracy theories that are being pushed to rile them up against the “other”. As long as that many people live in an alternate reality based on lies and hate, there is no helping them. So the challenge becomes: how do you bring them out of it and how do you prevent it from happening again in the future.