Rottcodd

As with so many such things, it's only a mystery if you start with the presumption that official narratives are true.

If you start with the presumption that official narratives are not true, then the supposed mystery immediately vanishes and everything just falls neatly into place.

Would you refuse to visit websites that force registration even if the account is free?

I already generally do.

What’s all the fuss about, you don’t care?

I honestly don't much care, but that's because western civilization is circling the drain, warped and undermined at every turn by wealthy and powerful psychopaths, and it's just not worth it to care, since there's absolutely nothing I can do to stop them

Is advertising a necessary evil in fair trade for content?

Some sort of revenue stream is potentially necessary, but that's the extent of it. Advertising is just one revenue stream, and even if we limit the choices to that, there are still many different ways it could be implemented.

The specific forms of advertising to which we're subjected on the internet are very much not necessary. And they don't exist as they do because the costs of serving content require that much revenue - they exist as they do to pay for corporate bloat - ludicrously expensive real estate and facilities and grotesquely inflated salaries for mostly useless executive shitheads.

Would this limit your visiting of websites to only a narrow few you are willing to trade personal details for?

Again, that's what I already do, so it would just add more sites to those I won't visit.

Is this a bad thing for the internet experience as whole, or just another progression of technology?

At this point, the two are almost always one and the same. Internet technology is primarily harnessed to the goal of maximizing income for the well-positioned few, and all other considerations are secondary.

Is this no different from using any other technology platform that’s free (If it’s free, you’re the product)?

This is cynically amusing on Lemmy.

Should website owners just accept a lower revenue model and adapt their business, rather than seeking higher / unfair revenues from privacy invasive practices of the past?

Of course they should, but they won't, because they're psychopaths. They'll never give up any of their grotesque and destructive privilege, even if that means that they ultimately destroy the host on which they're parasites.

Except that Lemmy did catch on.

It didn't catch on to the point that it got as big as Reddit, but anyone who expected that is a fool. It caught on to the point that it's viable - it's not going anywhere. And as time goes on, it's going to continue to grow. And that's sufficient, and really IMO to its advantage. Lemmy has a different feel from Reddit, and I like it better. And the new users it attracts over time are going to be people who appreciate it. And if the bulk of the meme-regurgitating karma whores stay on Reddit, all the better for Lemmy.

why do people need so much money

Mental illness.

Really.

I find that the most dependable way to make sense of Trump's statements is to start with the presumption that, contrary to the physical evidence, he's actually about 10 years old.

Like with this one - just imagine him as a fat, spoiled little 10 year old, out on the school playground at recess, dejectedly kicking at rocks and whining.

"I think some financing should be investigated."

So do I. I want to know who's paying Pelosi.

This behaviour makes you and by extension mbin seem like a bunch of unhinged petty drama queens.

Personally, there's already absolutely no way I'm ever going to use mbin, no matter what, just because these people nauseate me.

All I see in mbin is concern trolling, bitching about Ernest and creepily stroking Melroy's ego.

But FDR style Dems don't collect big piles of soft money, and collecting big piles of soft money is now the one and only goal.

The mere existence of the Thomas More Society - just the mere thought of an ideologically-driven and intellectually dishonest organization named for a man who was notable specifically for the fact that he refused to subvert his reason to political expediency - fills me with rage.

Of course there are psychopaths out there and they truly are a different breed, but that is not a significant factor at a nation state, ethnic, or theological level.

I don't think that's true.

The thing is that, all other things being more or less equal, psychopaths have an inherent advantage in competitions for position in hierarchical systems, since people with empathy and morality will have choices they will be unwilling to make in pursuit of power, wealth and status, while psychopaths will not be so constrained - they will be willing to do absolutely whatever it takes to succeed, guided only by their desire, with no concern for any moral or ethical questions or for the well-being of others.

That means that psychopaths are over-represented among the wealthy and powerful.

And in fact, one need not look far at all to find wealthy, powerful and influential people who are rather obviously psychopaths, including but by no means limited to Netanyahu, Putin and Trump.

That's what initially set me on this line of thought - the observation that Trump and Putin, and later Netanyahu, are bludgeoningly obviously profoundly mentally ill, and mentally ill in very similar ways - all defined by their complete disregard for the suffering and deaths of those against whom they very obviously very deliberately direct the hatred, violence and murderous tendencies of their followers. They very obviously sow hatred and violence - feeding it and directing it in ways designed solely to further their own ambitions - their own lusts for power and wealth. So by any reasonable standard, they are each and all very obviously profoundly mentally ill, and specifically psychopathic - completely devoid of moral constraint or concern for others.

And they're not even notably anomalous - they're exceptional really only by the relative degree of their psychopathy and the notable positions they've attained, but the basic dynamic of willingly bringing harm and death to others in pursuit of their own ambitions is a thing one can see over and over in hierarchical systems - governments, corporations, religions... It's arguably even more the rule than the exception, with those who are highly ranked in such organizations who display actual empathy and moral constraint being very much the exception.

I grow more convinced every day that I've somehow been stranded among a bizarre race of insane savages.

That's really the only feasible explanation I can come up with. There's no way that a race of even reasonably intelligent and rational beings could fail to recognize that Netanyahu, for example, is profoundly and dangerously mentally ill - a clear psychopath - and shouldn't even be allowed out in public unaccompanied, much less granted power over others. So it can only be the case that human beings by and large - at least the not inconsiderable portion of them that support Netanyahu (or Trump or Putin or any of the other vividly insane people in power) - are both stupid and insane.

And somehow, I, with a working brain and an actual set of functioning moral principles, have ended up trapped among them.