I've got a story idea for a cyberpunk dystopia. Imagine a world almost identical to ours. In that world, some inventive person creates a darknet website that allows anonymous donations to put bounties on corporate executives. Now, this site's creator wants to make sure their site isn't misused, so they implement guardrails like "Targets would be required to have over $10M in assets" and "each crypto wallet may contribute a maximum of $5 so it better reflects the will of the people."
Then, the site admin adds betting options like "who reaches a $1M bounty first", over/under odds, betting on which target gets whacked first, etc, in order to draw traffic to the site. Maybe there'd also be a percentage of the bounty that's paid out to organizations working to heal the damage caused by the target, so for example if a fossil-fuel exec gets whacked then that percentage goes to orgs working to stop fossil fuels.
How do you think it'd play out in this story? Would the site properly incentivize people to shoot up boardrooms rather than schools?
It'd be fun to watch, it'd be engaging to the crowd, and it'd terrorize capitalists. Especially with real-time updates, imagine a CEO doing a press release and then having their bounty skyrocket as people hear the news.
It's also the reason prediction markets have been so heavily regulated (until recently), because they can easily incentivize assassinations while adding plausible deniability.
It’s not against the TOS. You can advocate for violence against the poor and minorities all day on here. But advocating for them to defend themselves is apparently over the line.
Notice how hard they’re going after the shooter? The NYPD is actually making an effort for once and the FBI is involved even though there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that this is a federal matter (has the shooter crossed state lines? Has the victim’s civil rights been violated?). We’ve always known that law enforcement is for them and not us but it’s pretty blatant.
I’d say “you get what you pay for“ but the C suite doesn’t pay taxes.
I’ve noticed most communities have been overtaken by, at best, centrist mods. Most of whom have power issues, and ban for personal reasons. Looking at you JonsJava, jeffw.
I think it’s a lot of the same problem with every social media platform. There’s simply a lot of government agents and private partners that get into positions to moderate and control online speech platforms. It’s how they maintain their power. By controlling what we are allowed to talk about, which never includes speech that’s a threat to their position and power.
Look at how many executives at Facebook are former IDF or CIA. Reddit admins used to have a blogpost up that their highest traffic source came from a government astroturfing farm at Eglin Air Force base. This isn’t a conspiracy. They’re very open about what they’re doing. They have so much control at this point, they no longer feel the need to operate covertly. They spend a great deal of time and money making sure they own the people who moderate the biggest communities, or the admins who can overrule them.
You can advocate for violence against the poor and minorities all day on here.
Where? Seriously, where is this happening? I'm all over lemmy and any time I see a direct call for someone, anyone, else to die that comment is removed quickly and often the commenter is banned.
I support the idea of giving bunnies to horrible rich people, in order to warm their hearts and get them to change their ways. But it is important to note that even if you successfully bun down one person (that is to say, get someone to stop being evil by giving them a bunny), the system will find someone else to take their place. Ideally, you want to establish a credible promise that you'll provide bunnies whenever they go too far and hurt people with their actions, but that's not really something that can be accomplished on an individual level. That's just too many bunnies for one person to take care of, and if anything happens to you, who will take care of them?
In order to ensure consistent delivery of bunnies, what you really need is an organization and a support network. Of course, not everyone needs to be the one out there handing out bunnies. You might be surprised how hard it is to secure transportation and a safe place to stay when you're travelling with a furry friend, and you might run into trouble if you're trying to leave town after the fact, but your clothes are all covered in fur.
The way I see it, promises are what make the world go 'round. Yeah, you can just pull out a bunny and surprise someone and that's cool and good, but when you only have so many bunnies to hand out, ideally you just want to communicate what behavior will warrant a response so that they can avoid that behavior in the future (in order to avoid ending up getting overwhelmed by joy).
It wasinvented to make executions more merciful as doing it "manually" came with many mishaps and iirc being the dude with the axe was not something many could stomach for long
“THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.” - Mark Twain
Do you really read that and not conclude that we've been living in a perpetual Reign of Terror for the past few decades (or at least since the civil rights era)? This was a response during the beginning of the French Revolution, if we're following historical playbooks than the revolution needs to be concluded.
People say China represses free speech, but at least there they recognize the repression and have a rich lexicon of codewords to get around it already.
The shaping of the western mind has been much more subtle and total that few even accept that it's happened.
There's plenty of codewords, slang and at this point even jargon about this sort of thing in use in the US. It's just not widely shared, for obvious reasons.
It's getting there. The whole "pranked with a bun until unalived, in Minecraft" thing is highly reminiscent of the mud-crab-horse or whatever the Chinese one was.
I guess you have to learn to be more subtle with your propaganda when you aren't allowed to just disappear anyone you want at any moment and create concentration camps for religions you don't like.
You know, I can see the headline if a Lemmy user used a bun on a billionaire. "Fringe social media platform encourages bunnilence towards innocent billionaires"... Actually has a good ring to it, although it reminds me of how people point to 4chan for the start of Qanon. Ugh
Now that I think of it, would they require instance managers to narc over user data? Admins? If someone on a more extreme instance was to bun a billionaire, would everyone on Lemmy get put on a list or just their instance? Hmmm.