Chances for the fediverse? Elon Musk takes hit as Europeans ditch X in droves
Elon Musk takes hit as Europeans ditch X in droves – POLITICO
cross-posted from: https://europe.pub/post/372863
cross-posted from: https://metawire.eu/post/61363
The right-wing billionaire’s platform has recently lost about 10 percent of its European user base.
Europe doesnt want federated services, they want censorship.
Saying that oil production lowers emissions by displacing coal will be called climate misinformation, saying immigration needs to be lower due to a housing crisis will be called hate speech, using Bitcoin instead of the digital euro will be called terrorist financing. They're already arresting people who do something as benign as retweet things, its a slippery slope.
Meanwhile, in reality, the EU funds lemmy's development.
Christ, this is such a stupid take. You'd think that someone who was around on the fediverse would have an inkling about just how many instances are based in the EU and Germany in particular.
Just because a country or userbase wants a degree of moderation and accountability, and doesn't tolerate hate speech, doesn't mean that views are censored. Basic Popperism stuff right there.
saying immigration needs to be lower due to a housing crisis will be called hate speech
Yeah, that's kinda hateful. True, it really would make things easier for EU citizens if less people were using the limited housing. But it would make things harder for the immigrants. Putting citizens over immigrants is... xenophobia.
Why waste the government's time solving the problem at poor people's expense, when the government could instead tax rich people more to pay for housing?
Putting citizens over non-citizens is called being a government.
Xenophobia is the irrational fear of foreign. And fear in this context usually shows up in the form of hate.
Putting citizens first does not mean hating the rest. Being a citizen of a country means that your government should represent you and your interests. It's only natural that it develops into benefits for citizens.
Xenophobia on a person level is when you see a person that you think is not part of your same origin, do you cross the street, or attack him or whatever. Of course this is not even close to being an exhaustive list.
Xenophobia on a country level is when you punish foreigners irrationally. Not letting foreigners into your country because you have a housing crisis is not irrational, it is a valid reason.
I find it hard to find examples of country-level xenophobia. Even if the act itself may seem xenophobic, the government may want to gain popular support of their xenophobic population, which would be a reason and thus non-xenophonic.
Of course, not being xenophobic does not mean it is good. For example Israel genociding Palestinians is horrible. But their reason is that having a neighbor that claims the same land as you do is problematic, and they figured if they just kill everyone the world will forget in 100-200 years (or less) while the land will be theirs for longer than that with no revels, since they genocided them. Of course, having a reason does not mean that it's not many other bad things (in this case, genocidal, which is worse than xenophobic).
You would fit in nicely in israel
No I wouldn't. Just like arguing a murder is not illegal grafitti, doesn't make you pro-murder. Arguing that a specific genocide is not xenophobia does not make me pro-genocide. I absolutely hate what Israel is doing to the Palestinians and I believe that someone should assassinate Netanyahu and all of his pro-genocide people on power of the Israeli government. Or imprison them for life.
But you can miss my point all you want.
Being a citizen of a country means that your government should represent you and your interests.
I'm interested in everyone's wellbeing. Also, the government should represent its citizens' moral interests. It should teach them kindness by being an example.
Not letting foreigners into your country because you have a housing crisis is not irrational, it is a valid reason.
Not valid. It's discrimination.
The results of an action being done for a reason being discriminatory does not make the reason invalid.
Almost any policy is discriminatory.
Taxing the rich more is discriminatory against the rich. Helping women out is discriminatory against the men. Ending segregation is discriminatory against people that don't want be near people different to them. The list is endless.
I assume you agree with all 3 of those policies. Yet they are discriminatory. Those 3 policies are done because of very valid reasons.
There are very few policies that I'd say are not desceiminatory. Like universal basic income or universal healthcare. And even then, by your definition of discriminatory, those would be discriminatory. Since they would still discriminate against non-citizens.
There is no world where a person born in X country that has never left X country to receive income from a UBI policy of Y country. Unless X and Y countries have some sort of deal where that happens.
I don't think that's why we're having this conversation. Seems like you're talking about technicalities and I'm talking about values. I don't think we can have a conversation like this.
This specific technicality is important for your point though.
I'm gonna explain my reasoning so you can choose whatever you want have a conversation about.
Your claim was that putting citizens above non-citizens is xenophobic.
My point is that putting citizens above non-citizens is a natural consequence of a state. And furthermore, that it is a good thing.
Xenophobia is widely regarded to be a bad thing and that we should avoid it.
If both of our statements are true. The natural conclusion is that we should have a stateless society. I don't think that a stateless society is a good thing. Therefore I'm trying to find a flaw in the argument. I think that the flaw is that you are wrong. So I have to have a conversation with you about why I think you are wrong.
If you are wrong, it must mean one of these statements are wrong:
Since 2/3 statements are made by me, of course I think they are true. So I'm going to argue about why the first one is wrong.
The only way to proof your statement to be wrong is by first defining what xenophobia is. Which you might call a technicality, but I don't think it's possible to have a conversation if we don't first agree what the meaning of the words we use is.
After defining what xenophobia is, we have to figure out if the "equation" is true: "putting citizens above non-citizens" = "xenophobia".
I'm a communist and I think we should have a stateless society.
Well. In that case we have to either move on to argue why I believe that a stateless society is bad and you believe it is good. Or just call it here and agree to disagree. Whatever you prefer. Since I don't think I can change your mind (on the basis of past experience about this topic, not something personal about you) or that you can change mine about that topic.
EDIT:
Or you could provide a different definition for "xenophobia". But I don't think I'll agree to any other definition.
If you had a zoo would you continue bringing in animals if they had no space left to live comfortably?
Likely you would call that inhumane, you wouldnt say they were being intolerant of the new animals if they did not.
People aren't zoo animals.
So cram them into substandard housing because they deserve less rights than animals?
You're not offering a tangible answer here, the argument is situational similarity, not ontological equivalence.
And you think telling immigrants they're not allowed to enter the country gives them more rights?
We don't have open borders, so we already do disallow entry. We just used to match it to capacity, which is what I'm saying is logical to do.
Have you been to Europe? They have “walking” cities. You really don’t need a car to get around. My kids backpacked through Europe. The furthest they had to travel from a hostel was outside Amsterdam. 8 km on bicycles! My son just came back from Japan (I know, not Europe). He talked a lot about the “Shinkansen”. A high speed train that travels 280 km/h. They were able to travel all over Japan “without” a car.
As a Dutchman, I agree we have great infrastructure and "walking" cities. But you've only seen Amsterdam. Outside of the cities, The Netherlands is more dependent on cars than you might think. I live on the border of the country and public transport is basically non existent and cycling is not viable due to travel distances, every adult has a car in my area. A family of 4 adults (children over 18 living at home) have 4 cars parked in front of their house here. We're not as car dependent as the US, but we don't live in a fairytale either.
Thank you for the insight. I always appreciate being educated :).
Try to go to an anti-genocide protest in EU and see how fast you get violently beat up, arrested or get cops at your door to have "a chat". All tose things in Amsterdam you mentioned too.
Still not happened to me yet, and that is in the UK which has the far more authoritarian Policing Bill looming over us. That doesn't make as interesting a soundbite though.
Your individual experiences don't negate all the things I mentioned, they are on video.
And whatever bill you're under doesn't matter to other countries, they always find a reason or 'special circumstances' to break their own laws and act like hired goons for the zionist apartheid state.
Yeah, Israel is shit, but unless you have a video for each of these protests being shut down in this way, that just isn't the norm. Plenty of pro-Palestine protests and meetings here; outside Barclays, protesting specific businesses, sharing information in our most popular streets for tourism and shopping, musical protests at art galleries. Plenty going on, never even seen a police presence at these.
Not to say it isn't happening, but trying to paint Europe as some pro-Zionist totality is weird.
Oh boy...
Arresting people for retweeting? Really? Can you provide a source?
The article cites a case of online harassment from right wingers towards an immigration friendly politician that was ultimately shot. Are you seriously using this in defense of "but muh free speech?!"
"No, you have free speech as well, but it is also has its limits."
Which is true. A lot of Europe learnt from World War II that certain types of speech should not be tolerated. In the rest of the article there are examples given - neo-Nazis for one. I am not particularly keen on tolerating the freedom of speech of Nazis or others that call for genocide and killing.
Too true. EC's constant attacks on encryption is worrying to say the least. I hope nothing goes thru.