godsammitdam comments on Discord’s Second Attempt To Roll Out Age Verification Is Going Badly

[–] godsammitdam@lemmy.zip 6 points 3 days ago* (3 children)

The upvotes I couldn't care less about lol. I just used it to show that others appear to recognize what I'm saying. It did open me up to being a "polling data farming agitator" I guess, on a niche platform to boot, but 🤷

But "no ethical consumption under capitalism" helps me more than it helps you. That phrase exists to say systemic complicity shouldn't paralyze people into doing nothing, not that individual and collective choices carry zero weight. If choices genuinely didn't matter, boycotts wouldn't be a thing worth having opinions about, companies wouldn't spend money on PR to avoid them, and states wouldn't pass anti-BDS legislation to head them off. Discord rolled back their verification push after backlash. They added the credit card mechanism because of it too, their words, not mine. Public pressure, people being active, brought a material outcome that wouldn't have happened otherwise. You and I wouldn't be conversing if people didn't give a shit because there's no ethical consumption and, according to you, it therefore wouldn't matter.

So which is it? Either collective consumer/user pressure can move outcomes, in which case individual participation isn't irrelevant and the mechanism I described (aware, unaffected, therefore inactive) is worth naming when you see it. Or it can't, in which case the Discord rollback you'd have to explain away didn't happen for the reason it obviously did.

Naming the mechanism doesn't mean every instance of it carries equal weight, and I take the point that reaching for the heaviest possible comparison isn't necessary to make it. But dismissing the mechanism itself with "no ethical consumption, so nothing you do matters" is just a thought-terminating cliche being used exactly backwards.

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[–] CardboardDecoy@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Hey first and foremost I think you're a reasonable person and you took a step back in a lot of those points to prove it and I appreciate it.

I want to take a look at the whole throughline here though, someone made a claim that the problem you're going to run into is large communities that either don't have the means or the organization to relocate platforms. You posted the comic in response and then immediately came out swinging about how complicit consumption enables terrorism. Does this not seem entirely inappropriate to you? Aunt Tracey's knitting group got together and had all of their niece's show them how to use Discord, no one can explain FOSS hosting to them, now Al-Qaeda wins. If I'm being dramatic yes, but only as much as you are in response here.

I stopped paying for Nitro the first time this news came out. I haven't reupped it. Discord is a miserable experience for me now and is an ugly app without the Nitro options. Doesn't chanve the fact that the few communities I do belong to are still central to and maintained within the Discord environment. If they move I'll move but some left infigthing jerk off session isn't going to be what changes their mind.

My real point is I find anything that leads to further alienation is going to be the wrong choice, and that's including, for lack of a better term, libjacketing people who don't have a dog in the race one way or another. We're all looking for a way out man.

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[–] godsammitdam@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 days ago (1 child)

Appreciate that, genuinely, and right back at you. This has been a better exchange than most on the internet lol.

On timing and targeting, I think that's fair. Leading with that comic in response to "some communities genuinely can't relocate" was dramatic on purpose, partly to see if it'd draw more than a shrug, and it did exactly that. I don't think that makes it a good rhetorical choice in that specific spot. The Aunt Tracey case you and described isn't who I'm actually aiming for, of course, and answering it with the heaviest available comparison muddies a point I still think is real underneath it.

Because I'm not walking back the mechanism itself. Aware, unaffected, therefore inactive shows up identically whether the stakes are a chat app or a policy vote, that's not me being dramatic, that's just how scope insensitivity works. But you're right that treating "won't switch platforms" as one bucket is its own kind of flattening. Just like Jewish people shouldn't be treated as a monolith on Israel (exactly as Netanyahu and many others want), not everyone still on Discord is doing it out of laziness or tacit support for what the platform enables. Some are Aunt Tracey. Some have cancelled Nitro and are stuck on network effects they didn't choose. Those aren't the people I was actually aiming at, and lumping them in with genuine complacency is my bad. A bit of that twitter short-form limitation coming through lol.

The people I'm actually talking about are the ones who know exactly what's wrong, have the means to leave, and just won't be bothered. That's a much smaller and more specific group than "everyone still on Discord," and I should've said that the first time instead of making you drag it out of me.

For what it's worth, I cancelled Nitro the first time this news broke too, and that's what got me actually researching this instead of just being mad about it. I started building a homelab finally, part of which is a Discord alternative. I know not everyone has the hardware, time, or funding to do that themselves, which is exactly why I'm trying to build a bridge between the two, a frontend fork plus a bridge so people can message across both while a community migrates, so nobody feels cut off or left behind in the transition. It's also why I'm trying to learn Nix flakes and documenting my process and thoughts so I can more easily share it with others who can benefit from my time put in. That's the actual lever for the Aunt Tracey case, not arguing with strangers about it. FOSS is one of the better arguments I've got against the "individual action doesn't matter", people building real alternatives because they saw a problem, not because there's money in it. And that's what gives me a lot of hope today when we all need it more than ever. All the better if it takes a swing at the bottom line of big corpos, even more so the ones that fund genocide 😉

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[–] CardboardDecoy@lemmy.world 0 points 3 days ago

Taking all of that at face value is absolutely great, good on ya. I don't have the skills or the spoons to pretend like I'm going to be upheaving any industry so I just can't be bothered. I'm a workaday schmuck who had no preparation for the world we're in and am just trying to figure it out piece by piece.

Although I do feel like at the very least I can advocate for better strategy and arguing with people on the internet is something that at least makes me feel like I can at least maybe change a mind or two for what I think is for the better. I acknowledge though that there's plenty of judgement to levy at that.

I have a parallel comment thread here that addresses this specifically but I do think that people are putting absurd weights on the moral outcomea of everyday consumerism. I am anti-consummerist, if I can help it I just don't buy anything. The people that accuse me of being a priveledged funko pop hoarder always confuse me because that's such a strange charge to levy but that seems to be the baseline, like people can't help buy but the latest marvel Funkpop. If that's rrue I'm already way way out of touch with the average, but there's a hotdog stand I like I have no idea what the dude who owns it voted for and it would be nice to replicate that sort of ideal.

Boycotts work when they're organized. BDS is a movement with a strong boycott focus. I follow along with that as much as I can and some of it's easy, like I've never owned an XBOX and MS is a monster to the gaming scene I don't support. Sodasteams are stupid, Disney+ is not interesting to me, easy. I'm struggling to fully de-Google myself but we're, like, a personal tragedy away from my becoming a feral techno goblin and just abstaining from everything due to discreet madness. None of these decisions are moral, I support the movement and I don't like 98% of the stuff on the list, easy, just takes the extra step of not choosing it when I have to make a choice, or just delaying whatever it is (if it isn't an emergency) indefinitely.

I do think that the constant call for boycotts for every headline is a mistake and an ongoing tragedy. It is without exception that every single company and every single product has some kind of dark presence in its history. Can't fucking buy a box of Cereal without wondering if a priest developed it to keep me from jerking off. The entire world is a clusterfuck of dubious human decisions. Casting aspersions and drawing fucking lines in the sand for every single trespass is an excercise in social atomization and I have come to my personal conclusion that you let them win the more we seperate, so no, I don't give a shit if a CEO shot the last gazelle in Uganda so now anyone who bought shoes with laces in the last 10 years has the moral respinsibility to divulge their stance on the issue and condemn them daily or face ostricization because they haven't bought shoes with velcro instead.

You can make your own decisions but no, I don't think failure to immediately seek alternatives in the time of peak enshittification or not being the personal savior of telecommunications is a moral failing. I am not rushing anybody to it and if they ask for my age verification I'm going to lie like a decent citizen should and encourage others to do the same. I've lost friends for less and it's actually just the stupidest thing in the world.

Sorry that was way more writing than I expected.

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