No worries. I think the more interesting discussion that I’d like to have at some point is how a good system for immigration actually looks. It’s not a trivial problem to solve and can’t be done in isolation either. Societies are systems where everything is interlinked in one way or another.

Thanks for a well-written reply. Here’s some quick responses:

1… as mentioned the primary costs here come from increased crime which is hard to document. In high trust societies (which social welfare countries usually are) this has a disproportionately negative impact on the economy. Also, in several Scandinavian countries everyone has a right to emergency healthcare, regardless of their immigration status.

2… I believe you’re correct when it comes to countries with less social welfare such as the US, however, this isn’t the case in countries with robust social welfare systems. As recently as 2023 Denmark assessed the net contribution of migrants and their descendants on the public finances and published the results. The sum total effect of migrants was negative (-19B DKK). Per capita the average Dane had an impact of (22k DKK) per year and the average migrant (-21k DKK). Some migrant/migrant descendant subgroups were better or worse than others (best 52k DKK, worst -109k).

3… Sure, I assume this accounts for other societal costs such as law enforcement and crime?

4… See the response to #2. The taxes don’t cover the costs.

If you have a society with robust social welfare systems - education, healthcare, social security, pensions, childcare, housing etc. etc., mass immigration becomes a massive problem.

Everything is taken care of via taxes, and those taxes come from a productive working population. Slow population growth (whether from births or immigration) allows social institutions to expand at a matching rate over the decades.

Rapid population increases from migration can overwhelm the systems in place and put society in a spot where it is no longer able to maintain them.

Furthermore, when it comes to illegal immigrants, it gets doubly bad. They can’t hold down a legal job (at least in my country, and thus not pay taxes either), which inevitably pushes them towards crime or illegal jobs which brings a whole host of other issues.

for the sake of clarity, honesty and responsible communication

No? We’re already using pseudonyms, which is intentional and has a purpose.

at least have that vote public, IMO

It already is public, just not easily accessible. Why do you want to know all the votes? A voter is not an active part of the conversation. I’d equate it to the audience cheering or booing on a talk show.

For the ones actively participating you can read their comments and it’ll be obvious what their stance is.

Ideally, votes wouldn’t exist

Absolutely disagree on that one. Votes are a fundamental part of this type of social media, and the low-pressure interaction of up/down votes encourages a large number of people to interact and rank content. This shifts focus from the loudest/most active people dominating the space to the most widely appreciated content dominating the space. This is explicitly one of the parts I like about it.

Also, more replies are not necessarily useful. Consider all the “This!” or “Same!” comments from Reddit. An up/down vote is much more information dense.

Honestly it sounds to me like you actually want a forum based on fundamentally different mechanics. Technically it wouldn’t be that difficult to create a Lemmy clone that just scraps votes entirely from the UI, but you’d need a new way to rank content.

In an ideal scenario I’d actually prefer the votes be entirely anonymous, but that’s just not feasible with the fediverse system.

95% of the time when downvoting content it’s a question of…

Disagreeing/considering the content bad/thinking the user is behaving poorly.

Also, writing comments takes a lot more time, which (believe it or not) is a limited and valuable resource for most people on the internet.

The solution here is obvious - creating an instance and/or community with stricter moderation rules, much like blåhaj.zone.

Each instance/community has the ability to set their own general rules and whilst (yes) this means that an individual person can’t guarantee their “safety” everywhere it does mean anyone can create their own little bubble and then pick & choose which parts of the fediverse to connect with.

The fediverse is at its core a free speech project, which is why I like it. There are many other platforms out there that focus on safety.

Is it because I’m (probably) autistic?

No, it’s a basic human decency thing. No man I know would (intentionally) touch without invitation (whether verbal or body language) and if someone does they deserve a smacking.

The most common gray area is tight crowds where some assholes try to get away with groping disguised as “accidents” which is disgusting.

Besides, alcohol and drugs are no excuse. If you can’t control yourself under the influence, don’t use them.

First time I’d seen it used as a verb and yet is made complete sense. Language is a wonderful thing.

Heck it even looks like some of those crashes that make you go “heh wonky physics” (the roof fold)

Mint is a great starting point. I might also recommend having a look at KDE (the desktop environment) which will feel very familiar coming from windows and is available on quite a few distributions. I use it with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed - less beginner friendly than Mint, but still an ok plafe to start.

People being fine with higher taxes is a function of a trustworthy system where tax money actually goes to spending that benefits the tax payer.

If the expectation is that the funds get misplaced/pocketed/diverted along the way your average citizen will be far more willing (and view it as far more morally justifiable) to make efforts to avoid/reduce paying taxes.

Probably:

K>B>H>E>G. They all have decently developed countries whilst ensuring that you don’t end up born in a developing country.

For the big slices, F should be best (guaranteed to avoid the worst outcomes).

What I did was mass edit all my comments. According to reddit customer support (about a year ago at the time), they do not retain old versions of edited comments.

Meanwhile google slapped me with nine captchas to fill out a form like wtf?

hadn’t heard of that one, sounds like a fun comedy series

sent a message

Yes, it can be a way of exploring various social situations without pressure whilst also having fun.

There aren’t any particularly good forums for it on Lemmy unfortunately but if you like I can send a discord invite to a community for finding people to rp with on DM.

Short answer: No

Long answer: Nooooo

If irl feels difficult one thing you might try is actually online roleplaying with real people (via text or voice). All the time in the world to overthink and process anxiety and allows building a bit of confidence before trying the real deal.

The 5 yrs I was on apps I’ve had maybe 3 or 4 dates (no second dates) from maybe 3x as many matches. Meeting people irl during the same time maybe 9 dates with some resulting in follow ups, and maybe 2 dates from people I met online from other spaces.

Yes on all accounts - I think freedom of thought and expression are linked to a great extent. We form and develop thoughts and ideas by expressing and discussing them, especially when it comes to more advanced concepts that benefit from group insights.

They are tied, because the other two freedoms are intrinsically linked to the first. If a thought is not permitted to be expressed, then it is, for all intents and purposes, prohibited.

Consider how often you forget something. I write things down to remember them. If that thought, expressed, were considered criminal, then it becomes a limitation also on thought itself.

calls to violence, hate speech, and medical misinformation in the name of protecting its citizenry. I don’t think it can ethically suppress other kinds of expression, especially political express, most especially criticism of the government.

…and yet political expression and both “calls to violence” and “hate speech” are overlapping. Is a call to revolution not the ultimate criticism of the government? (but also inherently violent?)

Who gets to decide what is hateful, violent or misinformation? How do we prevent the tools used to regulate dissemination of these types of expression from being applied against other things, or the definitions of the terms from being changed/drifting over time? (Consider for instance statements regarding transgender individuals somehow getting covered by medical disinformation laws…)

I think a voluntary community, however, can ethically set much narrower limits on expression within community space.

I agree, I think this could be applied even regarding non-voluntary spaces.

However, if a forum has a sufficiently large number of members amongst the population, I believe it should be considered a public space (and have these freedoms apply), hence taking away the power of controllers of large platforms to dictate/limit/direct the public discourse.