Thank you so much for taking the time to lay that all out for me. I’m sure you’ve had to do it once or twice already, lol. I’ll absolutely start curating the stuff I’d rather see. Maybe part of the friction I’m feeling is a procedural rub with marxists/leninists, and it would make sense/be hilarious if I’ve wandered into the middle of their space.

Do you have any less political servers you’d recommend? Besides the servers/services you recommended? Or is it largely an issue with the server i’m on?

I think this is a little bit outside of the ask, but I’d like to find a place that is both positive and relatively politically neutral.

Part of what drive me here was that the tip of the iceberg (facebook, instagram, tiktok) feel so deeply infused with ads/ai/influencers that even the content I like is likely deceitful. This bums me out and makes me not want to use social media.

Places like reddit and any of the #chans have less of this, but the baked-in politics in both make of them bum me out.

I like that Lemmy feels like it’s actual people, but the politics and negativity can get to be a little much for me. I don’t like to think about things I don’t like, and while I can the value in being informed of things that I may need to act on, I don’t think that constantly bringing up things we take for granted is helpful.

What I want to be doing is getting to build and be a part of something positive and purposeful, something people do because they’re passionate, something that is so cool that the shitty stuff outside kind of pales in comparison. I’ve met lots of cool people on here that are that way, and I’ve been able to filter some of the negativity out by ignoring posts that I know will bring that out in people, but still, it would be cool to see something like that.

I hope it’s as simple as finding the right instance for me.

I think longer writeups help to provide for the inevitable nitty-gritty (you can’t click the button because it’s not there, etc) while also provide for holistic development, kind of like how incognito mode doesn’t really mean anything because google is still tracking you.

A few things motivate me to move to Linux. I’ve been made aware of the privacy concerns with Microsoft, and since they’re sunsetting Win10, I expect there’s a bunch of security exploits that will be leveraged almost immediately. I also don’t like doing things I can’t lay out logically, and I haven’t been given good enough reasons to get a new OS/machine, especially because tech is a very small part of my life (I have a thinkpad from 2012 and use it like your grandma uses her PC). Improved UI, inclusion of AI, and whatever other capabilities are things I didn’t ask for. That leads into the principle of the argument, I just won’t be in an abusive money-based relationship with anyone, person or corporation. Microsoft doesn’t seem like they’d be a good friend, or even a good business partner, and I don’t like the underlaying vibe I get from the services they provide, so I just won’t participate in whatever they’ve got going.

Linux, on the other hand, seems to be functional enough to meet my needs and comes without all of the other stuff Microsoft does that I’ve already complained about. In other words, Linux seems like a Honda Civic, and I’m good with that.

I appreciated your description of the depression loop that came from the exposé youtube videos on Win11. It’s something I’m deeply aware of within my own life (I started with the Christine Chubbuck thing) and have taken leaps to get away from that whole cycle of mental torture (it feels kind of Plato’s allegory of the cave). Have you been able to develop/connect/apply that line of thought elsewhere in your life?

Saving this to go over later. Thank you for the writeup! I’m also looking at going from Win10 to Mint.

Damn, that’s terrible. Thank you for the links (although I’m not going to read them all, to preserve my sanity)

I’m not very familiar with this stuff, but it sounds terrible. When has this happened in the past?

Google being a little removed and saying it “detected abnormal traffic coming from my IP” (I was googling something I google often) was my last straw, which ultimately led to me being here and degoogling.

Memes aside, my friends and I genuinely would have murdered these things with rocks had they come out before we’d turned 18.

This is one of my (many) issues with reddit. The underlaying structure causes some users to modulate their behavior in order to stay in social good graces. At least a few years ago, some subs would ban you for being a member of a sub they didn’t like, or if you didn’t have enough karma, or whatever. Considering that karma is determined by the community, agreeing with the average opinion is incentivized and the converse is the same. This actively discourages discourse, while encouraging circlejerking. I’m not implying that people are just going around and posting “this, 100 times this” on everything so they can max out their karma score, but I do think it’s leading to an unhealthy smoothing of opinions that’s gone too far into the realm of banality.

While I do think it’s good to run everything we say through Socrates’ triple filter because that’s aligned with the higher ideal of caring for the state of the community, I don’t think we should concern ourselves with the question, “will other people like me for saying this”.

I just wish we could invest the time/money/resources into compressing AI and making it smaller and more efficient. I’d so much rather have a somewhat capable AI that can be run locally and offline, to outsource menial tasks to like alphabetizing spreadsheets and so basic image modification, than to have to upgrade my hardware constantly or use cloud based SaaS and/or have newer models that are more accurate in their predictions.

Of course that assumes a lot of things, like the intent to help people and not make money. Maybe someone in the Linux-sphere will make something.

it’s always interesting to see a sentiment I more or less agree with coming from a source that’s far outside of the things I put much consideration in to. I didn’t read the whole statement, but I liked the sentiment of his opening line. It reminded me of a Jesuit(?) approach, where the sentiment is about being more focused with just helping make the world a better place in the here and now and being less focused on the history and dogma. Like it or not, it’s rarely a bad thing to have an institution with the power of the Catholic church presumptively working in the same direction. Enemy of my enemy and all that.