Why are American conservatives such a bunch of loonies? Conservatives in other developed countries allow abortion in cases of clear danger to the health of the mother and/or the fetus/baby. American conservatives is as bad the Taliban.

And yet they wonder why populism and extremism is on the rise…

For example, I definitely see the decrease in frequency, or not at all, on Reddit philosophy getting into frontpage despite having millions of subscribers. Many posts from r/philosophy often would gain thousands of up votes landing them into the front page. However, since Reddit’s crack down on bot activities, I see r/philosophy posts getting only a fraction of the number of up votes they used to get, which makes almost none of the posts go into the front page. It is clear evidence that bots manipulate the votes.

I don’t know about you, but others also noticed completely innocuous and benign comments just getting a downvote. Before I would chalk it up to people just down voting for no reason or to downvote others to propel their own content at the expense of others; but after what transpired with Reddit’s crackdown on bot activities and user participation just so happened to decreased significantly? One would have to admit or acknowledge there is deliberate manipulation on what contents get to be seen or promoted long before and even as we speak.

I know some people down vote and don’t discuss, but it’s very strange in a political discussion when you don’t get a pushback but getting so many downvotes.

My dude, there are plenty of actual automated bots on Reddit. IIRC when Reddit cracked down hard on bot accounts recently, over half of users and participation in many subreddits also decreased. That alone says that there is artificial engagement on Reddit rather than genuine human interaction (which vindicates the dead Internet theory). It explains a lot as to why a very innocent and neutral comment somehow gets a downvote: they are just bots downvoting.

Even here in Lemmy, there are downvotes on the same benign comments and no explanation as to why someone would disagree. But even if the comment is political in nature, there are downvotes but no feedback as to why one would disagree. There is a post on c/climate on European Greens calling for Jill Stein not to run for US presidential elections because she would just siphon the votes from liberals and progressives even though she will not win. And many comments on that post are getting half or a third of downvotes, but there are no accompanying disagreeing comments to explain the disagreement. It is clear that there are bots in that post who are trying to downplay the repercussions of Stein running to US elections and democracy.

I just want to say, what’s up with the comments here getting copious amount of downvotes but no feedback as to why they disagree with the comments? Could it be bad faith actors trying to downplay the criticism of Stein, and wants her to stay on the race?

I was going say that maybe Putin has a kompromat on Stein which is why she is buddy with an autocrat, but now that you mentioned she took away with donations, Stein is just a genuinely greedy thief.

Of course there is more tit for tat deal, but North Korea will not send troops to combat if they think they will not gain anything from it militarily.

Right, people scoff at North Korean presence, but I doubt the North Korean soldiera would be used in human wave tactic as the Russians do. North Korea is still an independent sovereign entity, and the last thing they want is to let their troops be used by Russians in a shitty way. It obvious that North Korea will want to gain combat experience, the same way that South Korea sent troops to Vietnam fifty years before.

Literally everyone else: “It’s bad to arbitrarily arrest someone for criticising corruption and send them and their family to labour camps.”

Tankies: “That’s just, your opinion, man.”

Being a huge nerd on certain topics tend to ruin the fun of watching movies.

Apartheid ended in 1994 with the election of Nelson Mandela, which is 4-5 years after the fall of communism.

I wonder though, maybe South Africa was easily made a pariah state in the 90s because it was the end of the Cold War. SA’s utility in geopolitics to contain communism had run its course. Meanwhile, Israel is situated in still tense Middle East, and the main reason US still support Israel is because the latter provides excellent intelligence gathering which they provide then to the US and the West.

As much as I dislike Obama’s drone strikes, at least he could stand up to Netanyahu.

It’s up to the medical practitioners to decide.

Jacob Hersant

With a name like that…

Many mosques in Xinjiang are reportedly damaged or destroyed though. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-67483202.amp

I watched “The Man in the High Castle”, and the Christian imagery and symbolism in a former Christian Church were replaced with Nazi symbolism. I thought it was a bit farfetched, but now hearing something similar being done by China as part of totalitarianism, it is rather spooky. I’ve heard religious buildings being destroyed, but converting places of worship and blatantly removing its past to align with state ideology is far more surreal and haunting, and I am an agnostic atheist.

It obviously reeks of desperation. Would Taliban forget how Putin was friendly with the West, and allowed US through their airspace in order to invade Afghanistan in 2002?

Found a Singaporean.