What I meant by that was that many tech companies hire people, who frequently perform these tasks on a project basis for only short periods of time, and pay them a pittance for their work. Their numbers are likely to fluctuate greatly.

I was by no means trying to emphasise the fact that these people mostly live in countries where wages are particularly low and where there are virtually no labor protections; I was simply pointing out that they are usually hired on a short-term basis.

This exploitative practice, as well as other “gig-work” arrangements, is unfortunately quite widespread, especially in the tech industry, and serves to increase corporate profitability. Many tech companies use this approach to reduce the number of permanent employees—a practice that, of course, isn’t unique to the tech industry—but using these practices there are many tech companies that generate astronomical revenues with a comparatively small workforce.

Mechanical Turk

I don’t understand what you’re getting at. Of course tech companies have a lot of employees if you count all the “mechanical turks”. That’s simply misleading.

None of that has much to do with what my original comment was about.

You’re saying that it’s impossible for powerful, completely degenerate people to be capable of playing their power games.

My take on this is that a look at the history books proves you wrong. LinkedIn-style fairy tales about leadership and all that bogus doesn’t change much about that.

Because they have the money to do so. Those who have it simply pay good people. You should know this if you’ve ever dealt with large companies. It doesn’t take good management—just the money to pay the people who do the work. You should also know that giant online corporations like Meta have an incredibly small number of employees compared to industrial companies, and labor is the biggest cost factor in any business.

What do you actually do for a living? You claim to have insights. Where did you get them?

I’d be an idiot to say here what I do for a living, but yes, I regularly deal with CEOs -and it’s precisely this experience that makes it all the more likely to me that a conspiracy like the one mentioned above is underway. While I’m nowhere near that level, I’m still quite familiar with the politics in companies with 500 or more employees. For me, this is all the more reason to entertain such thoughts, because I know of hardly any company where performance or competence is even remotely appreciated. The people I know as “the decision-makers” should actually be the very last ones to make decisions—they’re self-absorbed, unscrupulous people.

This is a conspiracy theory, but is it really so far-fetched to assume that the most powerful 1% of the populations are joining forces worldwide to establish something like a global feudal regime?

It’s entirely feasible, since we’re talking about just a few thousand people here.

In any case, these people have one thing in common: they view democracy as a problem. This applies to Trump just as much as it does to Putin and Jinping. The same goes for their henchmen, such as Merz in Germany, for example.

It’s not that unthinkable when you consider the fundamental idea behind fascism, as shaped by Mussolini in his day: a brotherhood of the elites striving for absolute rule.

It seems to me that this is now the agenda, especially since in the U.S., with the pseudo-intellectual concept of “Dark Enlightenment,” there doesn’t even seem to be any attempt to hide it.

I’m not usually a fan of such ideas, but it does seem very, very suspicious to me, given that the leaders of the world’s most powerful countries are apparently doing everything in their power to undo the civilizational progress of the last hundred years—and are clearly doing so in a fairly well-coordinated manner.

Are you serious? So you’re saying mods should be able to do whatever they want?

Yes, but a Tag wouldn’t restrict freedom in any way. It would just make things easier.

By the way: You should make a post out of your blocklist and include the keywords in the description - I think that would be very helpful to a lot of people, since it’s pretty obvious that something like what I’m suggesting here will never be implemented.

Yes, but is it really necessary to go to all that trouble?

I think the Fediverse would be much more appealing to new users if they could just tune out all the hate and the utter absurdity of the US—then there would be relatively few posts left, but at least those that remain wouldn’t portray the world as the US billionaires want it to be.

It would also be a step in the right direction, because it’s completely obvious what the US oligarchs’ tactic is: distracting from the real problems through misinformation and hate.

So why shouldn’t people who don’t want any of that have a very simple way to avoid it?

If the moderators are doing their job, there shouldn’t be any problems. As I’ve said before: Many communities have a “no politics” rule that actually causes more problems because it’s so arbitrary. The reason for this is essentially the completely absurd U.S. discours. It’s all about the insane spectacle that the U.S. regime passes off as politics. If that can simply be filtered out - provided no relevant tag has been assigned to a topic concerning the U.S. - then fruitful, civilized debates will once again be possible.

I think the Fediverse would simply facilitate better discussions if we could effectively filter out the clown show in the U.S. - those who are interested in this could still participate in it.

Why is that? It should be very easy for the mods to see whether a post deals with U.S. issues and whether the appropriate tag was used.

In large Lemmy communities, there’s a “no politics” rule that’s so broad it’s completely absurd. It would be much easier to simply remove all posts that discuss U.S. politics and don’t have the tag. That would make a lot more sense.

That man deserves life in prison for his war crimes.

It was never a secret: it’s still the Mechanical Turk, a historical model that, for example, the Amazon company of the same name is based on—and such services are part of its business.

Mr. Oizo - Moustache (Half a Scissor)

I realize that’s superficial, but someone with a beard like that can’t possibly be up to anything good…

Yes

My fault: I had assumed that the people at Lemmy were capable of thinking abstractly.

I’ve added an edit that might make it clearer.

Experts undoubtedly agree on many points. The fact that they have differing opinions—and indeed should have them—is part of their craft, something on which they are in complete agreement, regardless of the field in question.

Here’s an example: A craftsman knows what a nail is, but how, when, and whether it should be hammered in is a matter of judgment.

Edit: To put it more clearly: Someone who doesn’t know what a nail is has no say in whether it’s a good decision to use one.

That’s not to say that the opinions of laypeople don’t matter, since they may very well be affected by the issue. My point is simply that nothing is less productive than someone trying to tell a craftsman how to do his job without having even the slightest clue about the subject.

In this analogy, imagine a client who hires craftsmen and stands behind them the whole time, offering his uninformed opinions on everything they do—that only shows a lack of respect for the work of experts; it’s absolutely counterproductive.

It would make much more sense to clearly state what you want and simply let people do their jobs.

That’s true, but only for ordinary people like us…