It could, I mean, we don’t know the politics of the covid dead, but look at the numbers:

Pennsylvania:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election_in_Pennsylvania

Trump - 2,970,733
Clinton - 2,926,441
Difference: 44,292
Covid deaths: 51,344
Source: https://usafacts.org/visualizations/coronavirus-covid-19-spread-map/state/pennsylvania/

Michigan:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election_in_Michigan

Trump - 2,279,543
Clinton - 2,268,839
Difference: 10,704
Covid deaths: 44,728
Source: https://www.michigan.gov/coronavirus/stats

Wisconsin:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election_in_Wisconsin

Trump - 1,405,284
Clinton - 1,382,536
Difference: 22,748
Covid deaths: 16,723
Source: https://usafacts.org/visualizations/coronavirus-covid-19-spread-map/state/wisconsin/

Jill Stein is a Green candidate which means she’s going to pull left leaning support away from Kamala Harris.

If she pulls away enough people in a handful of states, she could throw the election to Donald Trump.

2016 is a primary example:

Pennsylvania:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election_in_Pennsylvania

Trump - 2,970,733
Clinton - 2,926,441
Difference: 44,292
Stein? - 49,941

Michigan:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election_in_Michigan

Trump - 2,279,543
Clinton - 2,268,839
Difference: 10,704
Stein? - 51,463

Wisconsin:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election_in_Wisconsin

Trump - 1,405,284
Clinton - 1,382,536
Difference: 22,748
Stein? - 31,072

If Clinton had won those three states, Trump would not have been President.

Stein is not the only factor, Clinton had other issues. She badmouthed coal miners which guaranteed a loss in PA and utterly failed to campaign in MI and WI which was not helpful.

But the Clinton fans who can’t accept how deeply, deeply flawed Clinton was as a candidate want to blame Stein…

And Putin. There are issues with Stein getting support from both Republicans and Russia, anything to hurt Democratic candidates.

Clearly we just turn over moderating to ChatGPT, what could possibly go wrong? ;)

IIRC that pod was largely an art installation, but it was apparently legit used just recently?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce8144v9pveo

It’s an incredibly contentious topic.

Here in the states we had two states, Washington and Oregon vote on it more or less at the same time.

Washington banned it in 1991, Oregon approved it in 1994, and it was further complicated by the fact that we share a border.

https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Initiative_119,Physician-Assisted_Death_Measure(1991)

The Oregon legislature referred it back to voters a 2nd time in 1997 in a “hey, are you SURE?” kind of way and we passed it again by an even larger margin.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Oregon_Ballot_Measure_16

Meanwhile, on the Washington side of the border, when court cases blocked the law and it went all the way to the Supreme Court who ruled in 1997 that it’s a matter of States Rights and they can do what they want.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/521/702/

Which made it hilarious when people sued to block the Oregon law, it went to the Supreme Court in 2006 and the ruling was (paraphrasing) “Bitch, we told you once!”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Oregon

Washington later reversed their decision in 2008.

https://doh.wa.gov/data-and-statistical-reports/health-statistics/death-dignity-act

Mod tools are pretty limited.

We have a queue of reported posts and reported comments, from there it’s a manual lookup of user history in their profile and on the public modlog.

For actions, we can remove comments and posts, lock posts, ban users temporarily or permanently, feature posts in the community, and promote users to mods.

Removed as a duplicate. Op beat you by one hour!

https://lemmy.world/post/21116661

For local, lemmy.world users, yeah. I think the confounding factor is federation, but like I say, I raised the issue and we have people way smarter than me!

Yup. In 90% of cases the answer is “don’t engage and block them” but not enough people do that.

There were several posted here that were removed for misinformation.

Looking at some of their threads, the trolling type behavior seemed directed at users who were already fairly antagonistic to them to begin with, then it turned in to trolling back and forth all the way down.

I asked in our Discord. I think the limiting factor is federation. I’m not sure how it’s possible to rate limit things in a federated environment.

Fortunatley we have smarter people than me around!

“please stop replying because I feel compelled to say something in response.”

Modding at that point kind of becomes:

I’d rather be on Snoopy’s side than Lucy’s. ;)

Ditto!

There are multiiple Stein Stans in the community who report anything remotely anti-Stein, even (especially?) when it’s true.

Well, it’s always been left leaning, look at .ml ;)

Well, yeah, and I did that when I raised the issue with the other mods and admins multiple times. ;)

This needs to be marked as another case in point for all the people who want to argue it’s not a genocide.