• 4 Posts
  • 40 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • You have no data to confirm that the historical data on ticket prices they used is also specific to the Bay Area, only the Taylor Swift ticket price.

    You shared this because it aligns with your world view without taking a moment to consider the validity of the data, which is perfectly ironic considering how full-throated you are to try and make a piss-poor argument that I’m somehow trying to be an apologist for capitalism because I dared to challenge data that’s obviously incorrect.

    Capitalism is plenty bad for a myriad of reasons, it doesn’t require false information to prove that point. Hyperbole does not strengthen an argument, it weakens it.

    Do some self-reflection.




  • The problem is the insinuation made by the infographic is that artists are to blame for ticket prices.

    This would be a much more powerful (and factually accurate) infographic if it focused on fees and how Ticketmaster is largely to blame for the balloon in costs for event tickets over the last few decades.

    But it doesn’t say that, at all.

    Also, the fees per ticket for Taylor Swift were $22. Not cheap by any means, and a total rip off, again, at the fault of Ticketmaster. But let’s not throw around made up numbers if we’re trying to be factual.




  • Yeah but we’re not talking about Ticketmaster fees, we’re talking about ticket prices. If you exclude the fees and just talk about the ticket price itself, they were $79 each, which further invalidates this “infographic” if you can even call it that.

    Ticketmaster sucks fucking ass, no debate, but that’s not the point here.

    And also, saying any artist “chose” to list on Ticketmaster is kind of disingenuous, almost every large stadium and venue (in the US at least) has a contractual requirement to only sell through Ticketmaster, which, again, is proof that Ticketmaster sucks fucking ass, but isn’t really any artist’s fault. It’s the Ticketmaster monopoly.



  • I love the idea and spirit of Lemmy, I think decentralized and federated networks show a ton of promise…

    However my experiences so far trying to engage in intelligent discussion/debate on Lemmy have been far more combative and frankly mean than I can ever recall on even the most “passionate” subreddits I participated in.

    I think it’s a cross-section of the kinds of people who are enthusiastic about federated networks, and people who are knowledgeable enough to be early adopters here. But I’ll be honest, it has definitely cooled my interest in participating in discussion on Lemmy instances.

    I don’t appreciate being called names or being accused of being a bad faith actor simply because I’m asking questions or challenging a viewpoint, and that seems to be the outcome of nearly every interaction here.

    It doesn’t do any favors for changing the perception that Lemmy (and other federated platforms like Mastodon) are populated by terminally online keyboard warriors.

    There’s a distinct feeling that if you support or even just use “traditional” (non-federated) platforms, or otherwise are not fully committed to 100% decentralization or open source, you are the enemy here.

    I don’t want to go back to Reddit, and I won’t because of the absolutely abhorrent things their leadership has done and continues to do, but Lemmy users in my experience are overwhelmingly hostile and it sucks.


  • It’s because the proposed changes would give the UK government de-facto authority to dictate how security and encryption are implemented.

    …a provision that would give the UK government oversight of security changes to its products, including regular iOS software updates. The Home Office consultation proposes “mandating” operators to notify the home secretary of changes to a service that could have a “negative impact on investigatory powers”.

    It would mean in practice that the UK would dictate how Apple employs encryption around the globe, unless Apple was willing to fork their software and build/maintain a UK-only branch for their products.

    Which still wouldn’t solve the issue because if you interacted with someone over any of those protocols who was in the UK, your messages and data would be accessible by the UK government, regardless of the other party’s location.

    I’m with Apple on this. This isn’t a consumer-focused piece of legislation for repairability/interoperability like some of the newer EU legislation, this is a government trying to ensure they have the technical ability to spy on their citizens and others. It’s the definition of anti-consumer.



  • Sure, it’s manageable now, but it quickly won’t be if Lemmy continues to grow the way it currently is. “Add mods in the future” is kind of a hand-wave of the problem, which is that you need mods who are:

    • fair and responsible
    • willing to dedicate (potentially large) amounts of time and energy to moderating
    • willing to moderate for free

    That disqualifies a large swath of people from moderation.

    Now of course, it’s possible and it’s happened before, Reddit has a huge number of dedicated unpaid mods and it’s because of them Reddit was able to grow to the platform it was.

    But it’s a little more complex than “throw more people at the problem” when you need people who are incentivized by something other than payment.

    The unfortunate problem is that once you remove money from the equation, power is the closest great incentivizer. And power hungry mods are bad mods.