Did you read this? This article is about the pro-Russian separatists’ conscription of Ukrainians to fight for Russia.

From your source:

The Guardian recently reported that men in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine are being forcibly conscripted into the armed forces of the self-declared Donetsk Peoples Republic (DPR) and Luhansk Peoples Republic (LPR).

From the Gaurdian article they’re referencing:

Pro-Russia separatist forces have stepped up the forced conscription of men – including Ukrainian passport holders – in occupied areas of the Donbas region, amid mounting evidence of the scale of losses on the Russian side.

According to credible evidence from the region, forced conscription – already a feature of the Russian-backed separatists’ rule before the Kremlin’s invasion on 24 February – appeared to have picked up again in June, with checkpoints and patrols, some reportedly involving Chechen fighters allied to the Kremlin, on the lookout for men to recruit.

From another article cited by your source:

Russia justifies its invasion of Ukraine arguing it is defending the “Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics.” Mere days before Russia launched its attack, when tens of thousands of Russian soldiers had been amassed on Ukraine’s border, these self-proclaimed “People’s Republics” beyond Kyiv’s control launched major mobilization drives. Men between the ages of 18 and 55 are no longer permitted to leave.

Even if Ukraine is using conscripted soldiers, you just proved that A) pro-Russian forces are doing the exact same thing and B) you don’t even look at the articles you’re sharing.

I certainly hope so; I’m on Wolrd, and most of my favorite communities are located on World, but I often find the admins’ decision questionable, and I have just as many reservations about ml. I hope I could put together a good group of communities without either instance, but sometimes it feels like they’re necessary to a good Lemmy experience. But either way, I think you’re right, most instances won’t defederate.

Look, the question was, “Do you think Lemmy and other parts of the fediverse will eventually enshittify? I think this would be an interesting discussion to have.” I gave an answer explaining that I didn’t think Lemmy would enshittify, but pointing out another senerio where Lemmy could collapse. Sorry if you found it too pessimistic, but if you didn’t want to hear negativity, maybe this wasn’t the discussion for you. Also, if your solution is, “make multiple accounts to get around defederation, start your own instance, or GTFO,” that’s going to be a problem for growth, because most users will pick GTFO.

Also, I think hyper-specialized instances will only exacerbate any potential schisms. Tribalism isn’t necessarily political (although that is currently the central conflict on Lemmy). Admins could find divisions over rule enforcement, fediverse philosophy, or just get into good old-fashioned pissing contests. The admins on my instance recently created a real mess with the moderators of their own Vegan community, overriding their moderating decisions and then retroactively changing their own rules to justify it. Now imagine that conflict was between two instances, and you need to make a separate account just to talk about veganism. If anything, it seems like having an eclectic group of communities on each instance would be better than specializing, since admins would really have to consider whether it’s worth cutting their users off from multiple diverse groups over a conflict.

I don’t have the time or interest to do that, and it wouldn’t fix the underlying problem of tribalism that I’m concerned about.

Fair enough, but the point is that the instance would still be cut off from a large portion of most users’ content if it were to defederate from ml or world. And while tankies and centrists libs are the schism developing right now, it seems like that’s a symptom of tribalism people have around instances, which I think could undermine the entire principle of federation in the first place.

sh.itjust.works seems to be doing well, playing nice with world, ml, hexbear, and grad, I just worry that a culture cliqueish I’ve seen so far could keep fracturing Lemmy so it can’t develop a sustainable user base. But as I said, I haven’t been on the platform that long, and this is just my guess of what Lemmy’s version of enshittification might look like after being here a short time.

Right, and as long as I’m wrong about petty tribalism fracturing Lemmy, that’s good. But if your insurance winds up cut off from World or ml because of petty infighting, that will be a problem

Yeah, if I were ever to switch instances, that would probably be my next move. It’s still really small, though. Green Text seems like the only decently sized community.

I’ve only been on this platform for a little less than a year, but my guess is it will be brought down by petty infighting, not financial incentives. World and a few other instances have already decided to defederate from hexbear, and there’s enough tension between World and ml that defederation seems like a real possibility. While the goal may be a decentralized platform, the largest communities are on these two instances, and it they break apart their might not be enough content to keep new users’ interest.

Even if Lemmy gets past the infighting between the liberal Reddit refugees of World and the, “old Lemmy,”" communists of ml, users seem to tie their identity very heavily towards their instance. I’m worried that in the long term, that will drive people away from committing to cross-instance communities; even now, I hear people brag about how they’ve blocked entire instances because they’re full of, “centrists,” or, “tankies.” I think the downside of federation is that it leads to tribalism, and enough of it could kill the momentum Lemmy needs to grow.

I don’t mean to sound down on Lemmy; it’s the most interesting platform I’ve seen in years, and I’m curious to see how it develops. But at this point, I’ve abandoned Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and MySpace; I’ve learned that social media accounts are not permanent parts of your life. I’m having a lot of fun with Lemmy, but I don’t expect to be using it in 5 years.

…and that still doesn’t change the fact that the headline is using passive language to lessen the impact of this boy’s death. You see this shit with police killings too; they say someone, “Died in police custody,” rather than, “Killed during a violent arrest.” Betty White died, this kid was killed in an air strike.

Wonder what he died of? Weird that the headline phrasing is so vague and passive.

That’s horrible, but I was relieved to learn that CPS doesn’t stand for, “ChIld Protective Services,” in the UK. I was expecting a much darker story when I clicked.

Yeah, you know what’s great for global political stability? Assassinating the heads of state of countries with massive nuclear arsenals.

I still get emails from my dormant account, and according to my Gmail, the sender is, “X (formerly Twitter),” so I don’t think we’re done with that yet.

I mean, fair enough, but I’ve never heard anyone use tankie as…well, not a pejorative. Like, I’ve never heard a liberal call themselves a, “libtard.”

The worst thing for a tankie like me was running here to get away from the insane msn-pilled discourse, finding some actual leftists, only to have have leredditors chase me down sayin’ i am following them.

Uh…tankies and leftists are not the same thing (though the liberals on Political Memes don’t seem to understand the difference). Tankies are authoritarian-apologists. It was coined by British communists who wanted to differentiate themselves from pro-Soviet communists (specifically, communists who were defending the Soviets sending tanks into Hungary). In the modern sense, it’s used to describe communists who defend authoritarian socialist or communist states. If you don’t feel compelled to justify Stalinism, the Tiananmen Square massacre, or the Uyghur genocide, you’re probably not a tankie.

Later on Tuesday, Biden appeared to tone down his criticism of Netanyahu. Asked whether Netanyahu was “playing politics with the war”, Biden said: “I don’t think so. He’s trying to work out a serious problem he has.”

Every time he starts to give something halfway close to a good response to something insane happening in Gaza, he walks it back within days.

It’s amazing how Google thinks giving you the content you actually want to see is some kind of punishment, especially when 90% of the other content is sweaty needs whining about how woke Hollywood is.

Oh, don’t worry, reccomendations will be dead too! Fun fact, I turned off my Watch History 5+ years ago, but 6 months ago YouTube decided they, “needed,” my history to give me recommendations. I decided that was fine, so now the Homepage tab is disabled, the Shorts tab is disabled, and now I just have a subscription list from creators I like! I still get related videos when watching a video, and that’s more than adequate to discover new content. I don’t have time to watch all my subscriptions anyway, so if YouTube can’t reccomend 30 videos I’ve never seen before under every video I watch, what do I care?

Here’s my secret trick for making YouTube usable again:

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