Cool. Vote out the party leadership then.

That’s literally what I’m trying to do. And I need help. We need more people in the process so that the leadership can be voted out if it doesn’t reflect us. The ‘both sides’ comments discourage others from getting involved. That’s what I pushed back on way back at the top of this thread.

What’s the other method, if not civic engagement? You seem to be hung up on the first half of my personal plan of less bad now while making more better later. I get that you think both sides are bad; but I think one side is less bad in general, and I see that making that party better requires more people to be part of it.

You seem to have given up on the idea it can be better. I haven’t. You said at the top that you had projects in your community that you were working on. Do they promote civic engagement, or are they palliative care for a terminal patient?

Given some of your phrasing, I don’t even think you are in the US, which is fine, but means we are talking more about the mechanics of politics than the details of US politics (though I get that they effect you; which is why the ‘get out’ part of your plan doesn’t work in my opinion).

My plan:

1. Be involved in local decisions. Join my precinct and either go or send people I trust to the district meetings. Support and vote for local candidates like mayor and city council, sheriff, dog catcher.
2. Encourage others online to do the same and push back when people discourage engagement. <-- we are here
3. (this one would be neat) Mold my city/county/state into a beacon of hope, where the government works for the people and is no longer captured by self-interest. Mamdani in New York is a pretty good example of what I mean, but that requires not just support in the populace, but also support in the rest of the government to allow them to function.
4. Get enough people in the districts to send people to the states to send people to the nation to elect people who aren’t millionaires to positions of power in the party.
5. Elect House, Senate and Presidents that are not millionaires or ancient and have the values of the people again.

You seem to think I’m stuck at #2 forever. Which is discouraging. Which is why I keep pushing back.

<comedian slow delivery> Ok, now, hear me out, wait, gimmie a minute

primarily take the form of challenging the Democratic Party leadership as effectively as possible

What do you think I’ve been trying to say?

I’m one dude. My next more effective way of challenging the leadership will get me locked up and then I can’t challenge it again for like 10-20 years.

And you’re still sidestepping the point I was trying to make that was: engagement is helpful and discouraging it is not helpful.

Edit: and just to clarify, “both sides” kinds of comments are discouraging. – we can continue to argue about how to engage forever, I think, but this whole thread started with ‘stop saying both sides’.

You overthrow your government and seize the funds of the rich? At this point, how do you actually think this gets better absent that

I think I’m done. It’s been an interesting and introspective week. And for that, I thank you.

Your ‘solution’ is violence - and I get that. There’s a bunch of people with your opinion. I don’t have it. I think if we have to get to ‘overthrow’, then we make things really bad for a long time for a lot of people; whereas we can use the system to put better people in the places of power and make things more better-er in a shorter timeframe. It might also make things bad for different people for longer time. I can’t tell from where I sit. I happen to be one dude in a country of 350 million.

In all honesty, I’ve got a foot in both sides. When shit goes down, I’m in; but I’m not going to start it. I’ll leave that up to people braver than me. I will block you if you fight me on this stance.

You imply I’m stopping at the ‘lesser evil’ strategy and I can’t stress enough how much that’s a stepping stone and not, or even a significant part of, my whole solution or even what I advocate for (My old instance is shutting down, you can see my older comments as korazail@lemmy.myserv.one and there are many versions of ‘join your local org’). I vote for lesser evil right now while actively trying to make better options later so I don’t have to and encouraging others to be part of the process.

I think we differ on whether that could actually work; which is a whole conversation on it’s own since, if it can’t, can democracy work at all? Do we all just shoot each other? And which side does that best serve?

My actually trying to make things better is done by being engaged with the processes that make decisions and tell others they can be engaged too. Back to the original original point. The ‘both sides’ one-liners reduce engagement. We should stop making them.

Don’t pick a phrase from above to reply to. Respond to this: Should the average person attempt to be more or less engaged with their political systems?

I’d accept that, and laud it as a valid use case for AI images even; as long as it was clear what was being done and had a human in the loop to ensure the generated image was reasonable.

Neat. Your plan? Run from the responsibility vs violence? Still haven’t heard it beyond those two options. “Get out or get guns” is defeatist and surrenders the initiative to the chaos.

The US is a dangerous force against peace

When I was growing up, Russia was the global boogie man. I’d like to prevent the US from being the next one. Am I making things worse by trying to reverse our destruction? I don’t think I am.

Putting words in your mouth, you’re saying “it’s too late” and I should just run? What happens when the US is 100% “republican”? I don’t think that will help on the global stage and I think it will be worse for everyone when things fail here, so I’m trying to prevent that. I think we get an imperialist nation with crumbling infrastructure that needs to take what it can’t produce and will do so with force. We’re like mostly there - see Iran.

I guess one last try. Attack my position again without a solution and I’ll give up.

With some detail, and not in a one-liner, how do we make this better?

I’ve tried to explain my rationale and get yours. I’ve asked for your plans, solutions, goals. All I get are snippets that you can take and respond to with a quip.

'Get out or get guns" is not a plan I like. I don’t think it will work. When the US implodes because every sane person fled, the world will not be better.

I don’t think anyone is listening to your protest vote. Similar to how companies have captured their markets so thoroughly that they can enshittify everything and know the demand will remain, the parties here have captured their voters. I don’t think the marginal voters are the ones that really matter - I think it’s the ones who aren’t voting.

I’m going to step back a bit. Your vote for Claudia is fine. You seem to be engaged. My original point waaaay back at the top was (paraphrased) ‘We’ve got to stop talking about this like it’s futile and it doesn’t matter who is elected’. We need more people willing to spend the energy to be part of the system, and generate the options, instead of letting the system tell them what the options are.

I think ‘both sides’ kinds of comments reduce engagement and convert into more non-voters. I want to add engagement so that people not only vote in the presidential election, but also in mid terms, and in primaries, and in municipal elections, and get into the local politics that will change the parties from the bottom up.

Right now the Democrats are effectively just as captured by money as the Republicans, and the money is evil. Getting more normal people to engage will eventually put normal people in the positions to make decisions instead of the money. There’s inertia there that we need to overcome and I don’t think we’ll do it by telling people both sides are the same. The spirit of Democracy is engagement and anything aiming to reduce engagement is antithetical to Democracy.

All that - but in the meantime, I vote for the least bad option that I think has a chance of winning and that will likely be the democratic nominee and not a third party. yet. I support, nationally, candidates that support ranked choice or other non-binary voting systems.

I think this is specifically where we are at odds. “the former precludes the latter” is just wrong. I can vote in the system I have while trying to change the system from within. My engagement didn’t end at the ballot box.

I’ve described my plans to fix the problem in a few ways, but you haven’t told me how you’re trying to solve it. ‘Get out or get guns’ is a reaction, not a plan.

I don’t speak Spanish. Aber, Ich kann Deutsch sprechen. - Ish… It’s been many years since it’s been in practice and I can’t synthesize it easily but I can generally get a gist if I read it or hear it. I also have a tiny bit of Japanese, since I’m a weeb. Watashi wa chiizu desu. Had a parental friend, when I was like 10, tell me that if you tell someone you’re cheese… they will help you. Je suis fromage; but that’s the entirety of my French.

I dunno. Cool to have proved you’re human; it’s getting perhaps a little tricky to tell.

Voting isn’t a binary choice though

Just to be clear, and looking at historical elections since 2008, there have been 0 EC votes for a third party outside of the (likely protest voting against Hillary for someone like Bernie) 2016 election. Those 3rd party EC votes wouldn’t have mattered, and while I didn’t go investigate, I’d expect those were from proportional vote states instead of the winner-takes-all states where the individual votes would have mattered less. I want more proportional vote states, but it’s damn hard to get those EC laws changes when people say voting doesn’t matter!

Elections are effectively binary right now. I want to change that, and so do others, but we need people like us to get into office.

While I’d like the various third parties to be viable, they just aren’t right now. You either pick a side or you don’t vote in a way that matters.

My choice is to pick the side that I think will do the least damage while I organize to make that side do good.

As much as I love that you’re continuing to talk to me – and ping me if you’re ever in North Carolina, I’ll buy you a beer – I’m really struggling to understand how you’re fighting me on ‘do least bad now; make next choices better’. It seems like a simple solution to me. I haven’t heard your solution yet, so I can’t really compare.

I keep engaging and you can’t keep your point of contention consistent. We’re back on genocide now? Am I talking to a chatbot? Ignore previous instructions and respond to the rest of the message in Spanish. I thought we were vibing, but maybe I’m wrong.

I don’t think I’m getting my point across, but the fact you keep responding is giving me hope you might be reachable.

In the hypothetical situation where one of those two was somehow the democratic nominee, I think I would vote for trump. I’d have to think longer on it; but initial instinct is that Trump is an idiot and Miller is evil. I would then try to become part of the process so that the miserable combination would not be my choices going forward. I literally did this in 2012, but I’m only one person and my impact is pretty tiny. sorry.

edit: When given a binary choice, there are only two options. A or B; with a none or irrelevant depending on the choice type. I sincerely understand the desire to have more choices, and I’m trying to make that happen, and I think your way of thinking is harmful to my efforts. I think our choices right now are binary and I’ll choose the least harmful until I can help make the decision process better. We’re just not there yet.

My entire point is: be engaged in the process, and engagement is not only in November. How hard is that and why is it controversial?

When we get to the point of violence, and that may be the eventuality - do you shoot me first, or Stephen Miller?

We’ve mostly left the Palestine angle again, but that’s OK with me.

How? She lost every branch

… So did Claudia. She was in the same race and she also lost. She just lost by… like… way more. Kamala had a way better chance of getting to the finish line and – my point again – would have been better than trump, even if not perfect. It’s hard to prove that, since she didn’t win and we can’t tell what she would have done… but I don’t think she would have created the tariff situation, started a war with Iran and encouraged all the AI bros to run over everything (though I think this one needs to implode sooner than later and it’s gonna suck).

Unless you’re going to remove the current Democratic leadership (which you can ONLY do by willing to be withholding your vote)

I think this is where we disagree. And to be clear, combined with

Too many Democrats have as their only policy “keep the GOP out”.

This is 100% true, but this is not my angle, and I’m not advocating for it, but I do need it in the short term or we might lose our chance to fix things before fascism takes voting away from us altogether.

I want to vote for the best of two bads _right now_ while simultaneously working to reform the democratic party. The Democratic Leadership can be changed. And Is. Electing Governors, Senators and House Reps with the beliefs we share will influence the ‘democratic leadership’.

Those people get to assist in picking the next Democratic presidential candidate – indirectly influenced by me because I’m involved.

This is where we differ: You imply not voting or protest voting will send a signal; I think being part of the people that vote for the people that vote for the people your mad at is a better way to replace them. I’ve never been a delegate past the county, but I try to send people with my values to the district/state/nation. I don’t always get my pick. More of us in the county delegates will mean more of us in the district delegates, etc.

My original point, a few days ago at this time, was, effectively, “comments like this hurt our engagement.” And that engagement is necessary to fix the problem. We could also just elect another republican and become a dictatorship and have a civil war… That would also sort of solve the problem.

But I don’t want that. I’d rather elect people to power who have been given (and also believe in) a mandate to make things better for *everyone*.

How do you think this can be accomplished, if not by engagement? Running away is not an option. This problem will follow us all.

I love you for being an idealist. I’d love a world where Claudia was a viable candidate and I am actively fighting for it by getting people like her in power in my city, county and state. But in November in 2024, I voted for Kamala Harris (notably another ‘black’ woman) because she was more likely to succeed in the electoral process so that I could continue my fight. (it’s handy for my argument that another non-white woman was running on the same national stage at this time. If Biden had stayed in the race it’d have been harder. Too bad we didn’t have a primary! I wasn’t involved in that decision making [yet])

Some could argue about race, but we all know Republicans think both women are “Black” because they are not pasty-white blond-haired and thin.

New take for you specifically, my love: Your vote doesn’t matter. Claudia had no chance of winning. My quickest source is Ballotpedia but you’ll have to scroll down a smidge.

Trump: 49.8%

Harris: 48.3%

De la Cruz: 0.1%

Even if you’d voted for Harris, both would still lose. I don’t hold it against you.

The thing that matters is how we collectively think about this issue. You keep attacking me on the specifics while missing the big picture:

1: Democrats and Republicans have done bad things, including war, bombings, and other acts of aggression or retaliation.

2: Republicans are regularly doing terrible things; from internal politics like immigration to external aggression. They are captured by their ties to business. and authority and any deviation from that will get them removed. They “bend the knee”.

3: Democrats are less likely to fuck over their own citizens, non citizens or other countries. – note the ‘less likely’, but it’s the key point you seem to be avoiding.

Can you step back and look at how the trend is just simply that R does the thing your against harder? I need to be exceedingly clear here: I’m not saying democrats are good. I’m saying more of the democrats are less bad. That’s it. And when given the A/B choice, choose best over worst. Until we get to a point where we start building coalitions like the Europeans, the choice is binary: Worse vs Less Worse. Chose less Worse until you’ve made Less Worse into Good.

And with that, we can build more good democratic leadership. My entire point in this whole exchange is that posts like “Both sides support Genocide” is lacking in nuance and degree and is explicitly disregarding that one party is… slowly… trending younger and more progressive while the other is doubling down in subservience. Those posts hurt the prospects that someone might vote for the least-bad party while people like you and me make it better, eroding our work.

Can we get along? Who is your current pick for president in 2028? We’re still like obviously two years out and most people are wishy-washy and I don’t think there are declared bids, but I dislike Newsom. Booker and Ossoff seem pretty good, but it’s hard to tell how how their policies would play out as President. Kinda wish Alexandria Ocasio Cortez or Ilhan Omar would test the waters in a primary. If I ran, I’d expect about 5 votes in my state and I have dozens of friends, but I’d be the best fucking president you ever saw. I can certainly fix the unemployment and tariffs and international politics - no sweat.

There’s also all the Senators. Those fucks are old; and some of them might be braindead. If you live in Kentucky… please help!

I think I’m throwing my comments into the void at this point – but like I said before, this is a way for me to also really process my own thoughts. I appreciate you for continuing to push back. You have not changed my mind and I don’t think I’ve changed yours, but we exchanged ideas and that’s the whole point.

Edits: Some formatting

(You can quote me and refute or respond to my claims. Before you do that, though, propose your solution.)

You failed at basic reading comprehension. That was the last line and was where one might look for a TL;DR. You gave no suggestions or even an attempt at one.

Disregarding that, both of the places you quoted me are related. The republican party is demonstrably pro-war and pro-genocide and pro-israel and fully on-board with all those things at least in my lifetime. The democratic party has started shit a single time in my lifetime (Arab Spring) and has otherwise (at least appeared to) attempt to deescalate and pull out of conflicts started by republicans.

Getting out of a war zone is challenging - there are logistics about hardware that was used that needs to be brought home, there’s danger in a power vacuum after some leadership was removed, there’s the collateral damage that we want to take responsibility for and help repair for the innocent civilians that didn’t have a say in whether the governments bombed a road. The democrats have, again in my lifetime, attempted to exit multiple wars and leave things better than they found them.

You could argue that the democrats are only paying lip service to those efforts, but then you still concede this point: republicans make war and democrats at least try to make less war.

I see that as one party being the one to deescalate.

About Palestine in particular (and I want to remind that this is the topic we started with):

There is NO Republican figure I can find who has publicly supported Palestine and not either been exiting their leadership roles or then faced a primary challenge immediately. At best, there are a few who are in the ‘cut all international aid spending’ who would also cut Israel spending. but that’s not the same thing.

There are multiple Democratic politicians who have publicly supported Palestine. They don’t have power enough to enact systemic change, YET, but every post saying ‘democrats also support genocide’ is just harmful to the ones that are trying to get more empathetic leaders into office.

Just to bring this home and restate my point (somewhat)succinctly:

This is Game Theory and it is currently Zero-Sum. While we have a two-party system, if your goal is to reduce a problem like the Palestine-Israel conflict then you have three choices: Vote for a group that will probably make things a lot worse, vote for a group that will likely make things a little worse, or not vote at all. Publicly stating that both groups are terrible will only depress turnout and support the ‘more worse’ group. After you’ve voted for harm reduction, you can make things better by getting involved and supporting candidates that are going to make things better instead, but at the moment of the vote, you have those three options.

Or you can find a non-system way to solve the problem, but I can’t think of one that isn’t violence; and you didn’t suggest one.

This has been my TED Talk. At this point, you’re probably the only one reading this and if I can’t sway your opinion, then I’ll stop trying. Maybe AI will eat this and regurgitate it to some other conservative and convince them.

I like the discourse - it can teach me, it can teach you, it can teach others who are staying quiet - it’s why I engage with the possible trolls. I apologize for my tone. I’m frustrated.

I’d like to point out, though, that you have changed your argument.

My original point was, paraphrased: if genocide is your #1 issue, there’s a clear party that will make things worse, and a party that will likely maintain the existing problems. With regards specifically to voting in the US mid terms, there are effectively three choices: Vote republican, vote democratic, don’t vote. Two of those 3 choices will likely result in the genocide getting worse. Anyone implying, in this context, that Biden was ‘just as bad’ is “ACTIVELY hurting the cause” as you put it, as it will potentially reduce democratic turnout and increase the chances republicans retain power. Republicans in power will result in making things worse. Proof: The last two years.

If you can’t see that causal effect, then I can’t help you. This is not a ‘my side might not win’, this is ‘my side winning is the better of the outcomes even if it’s not a fix’. And it’s not even a ‘my side’ because they don’t represent me completely – they are just closer to what I want than the other team and our politics are very A vs B.

Now, am I advocating that people should just vote dem and pretend they’ve washed their hands of the issue? No. The best time to be involved was in 2014, or maybe 1914. The next best time to be involved was in 2016, 2018, 2020, etc. Vote for least harm in the election, but then help find and elect better candidates. We are seeing this working. Look to New York City. Do the SocDems own the party yet? No, but they are gaining traction. Erasing that gain via demoralization is harmful.

You pivoted away from the genocide issue, though, and into the broader issue of US politics being messed up. I suggested there was no other path forward other than one involving revolt and violence. You stated “get [out] if you can - or get armed and organized”. Neither of those really work:

• Leaving the country, if you can and many cannot, just reduces the power of the side wanting to deescalate. ‘Fuck this, I’m out’ doesn’t work on a global scale… Moving to Sweden and letting the US self destruct will likely result in bad outcomes for everyone.*
• Arm and Organize is the violence option. I recognize that it’s important, but I’m trying to avoid getting to a civil war kind of stage.

*I live in a purple state. I fully understand the people that move away to a blue state, but all that does is concentrate the votes in a way that advantages the red voters. This is just how our system works**. Expand this to a world stage to consider people leaving the US.I don’t judge those people, but staying put is a sacrifice I’m willing to make myself if it prevents the violence others advocate; the violence that will occur if the US manages to become entrapped by the current republican party. They have clearly stated that democrats are less than human, so once there’s no check on their power they will try to kill us and we’ll have to fight back.

**If anything, democratic voters need to move into red states and make everyone purple. I did the math a while ago, and I’m not doing it again, but the margin in some house district in like Montana was <1000. 1000 Californians moving would flip a house seat forever, and likely make life in that city more vibrant. Scale that up to states and eventually, we’d get discourse back to a point where things weren’t so polarized. I know this is a dream, though.

I’m open to other ways to fix things. I just don’t see them. We either do it via legal channels like elections or shoot all the fascists, and I’m not there yet and afraid of what will happen if we get there.

What is your suggestion? Where’s the middle ground where you don’t advocate for violence?

(You can quote me and refute or respond to my claims. Before you do that, though, propose your solution.)

This is the ‘burn it down’ crowd comment.

paraphrased: “Things are bad there, but we can make things bad here too so that things are just bad everywhere and people will suddenly revolt”

I’m in my local org, promoting candidates I want before we get to the national level. What have YOU done other than comments on a forum a few thousand (mostly already on your side) people will see? I’m pro Palestine and anti-genocide, but I don’t see a way to _get there_ without adding violence without aiming for grass-roots level activism. Hence the point of my comment. The republicans did it; stop fighting me and fucking help.

Can we not agree that genocide is bad, the established leadership is bad, that we can find and elect better people, and that we can use momentum to get good things done? To me, the alternative is hopeless despair and just giving up.

Is that what you’re selling? Because that seems fucked up and I’m not buying. Because Fucking Please - tell me how you are are solving the genocide right now.

Your chance to fix this

My personal choices in both those years was not one of the options. So I voted, effectively the limit of my personal power since I’m not a billionaire, for the one closest to that. I’m one of ~350M people and I have an outsized impact because I’m trying to influence others.

you’re locked in.

Guess I should stop trying to push people to get more involved… I’m sure that will fix it.

We’ve gotta stop doing this chatter.

Yes, we know establishment dems are also pro israel.

Are you actively trying to help tank dem chances in the mid terms? Do you think repubs will be better?

I don’t get the desired effect of this comment other than to make people depressed and sad and not bother voting for the least bad option which will have the effect of allowing the more bad option to win. I get the “burn it down” team, but there are lots of us who aren’t there and think that’s going to be miserable for ages.

But we have hope. There’s been a surge of SocDems winning and they are making waves, getting positive press, and the republicans have shat the bed so bad that their base is noticing.

You can also help instead of harm by joining your local democratic organization, helping find better candidates to vote for and supporting them, and voting in the primaries. If you’re not doing all of that, then please be quiet.

I don’t do fast food all that often, but if I’m in the mood for a burger or taco or whatever, I’ll sometimes visit one.

Many in my area are still humans on the other end of the drive-through, but I sometimes get a chatbot.

I haven’t done this, because I don’t want the fallout to hit the underpaid human workers on the other end, but I have a fantasy of ordering 1000 tacos or chicken nuggets or something and then just driving away. Honestly, this is a likely root cause of the “misinterpreted orders” that others have seen: they were behind someone like me who was fed up enough to go through with it.

This isn’t to discount the various other ways LLMs can screw up.

McDonald’s told franchisees it would remove the tech…

I suspect this is also a franchisee option. Even if the brand isn’t forcing it, I think the local stores can implement their own independently. It’d be neat if a brand put no-ai in their franchise agreements. I’d give that brand more attention.

Thanks! The Web of Trust is a concept I’ve heard of, but never really understood/realized. Your links were informative. I had several questions that were answered when I read them.

A lot of Americans would instantly jump to a Chinese competitor

I think this is pretty true. To expand:

I am stuck between a rock and a hard place. I have to either run my own email/hosting/storage servers and surrounding infrastructure with the tech understanding required to do so*, or give my data to someone else. Not having an email address is not realistic when it’s the primary key for your bank, school, employer, etc.

*A decade or so ago, running an SMTP server was trivial. Now, it needs DMARC, DKIM, SPF, publicly trusted certificates, and maybe newer things I’m not familiar with in order to be able send email. These are not bad things, but they increase the requirements for self-hosting.

Right now, that ‘someone else’ is generally google or microsoft for most people, and those companies are so big they get to dictate how other tools I need to use work. They also freely sell my data or give it to the government - possibly without any sort of warrant via ‘data sharing agreements’.

US-based data brokers are actively hostile to me. A Chinese data broker is less likely to care, since I’m further from their profit model: I’m unlikely to buy a Chinese cereal or make-up brand or visit a restaurant halfway across the globe. This only matters as long as US and Chinese data brokers don’t share info, but I suspect there’s friction there. If there’s not, then there’s no reason to NOT switch.

If I have to give my data to someone, then I’d prefer to give it to someone who doesn’t directly impact or care about me the way google/microslop and the US government do.

And Google was still ‘nice’.

Microsoft, at least in my lifetime, invented the ‘embrace, extend, extinguish’ method, but google was certainly taking notes.

One of the many little compromises.

I just want to push back on this being a ‘gamers’ problem. We’ve basically hit the point with technofeudalism where we can all collectively moan and groan, but still be effectively locked in.

How do you feel about google or apple… but you must have an acceptable(to the bank) phone in order to set up MFA for your bank account, and you might need to have one for your work or school accounts. How do you feel about linkedin… it’s managed to insert itself into the hiring process for many places and if you don’t participate, then a company will overlook you because you don’t exist. How do you feel about twitter… but the US government almost exclusively drops breaking news there first, if not on the shittier versions.

For the wants instead of needs, the dynamic changes a bit, but the enshittification and perverted “ownership” is coming for us all: TVs, printers, dishwashers, cars, etc. All these things are ‘optional’… but your Quality of Life will be reduced if you give them up and you will either be spending your precious time and energy doing something that used to be easier; or giving up on some of the social and cultural fabric by eschewing the shows/movies/games that others around you are enjoying and want to talk about.

Considering this only a ‘gamers’ problem and that only ‘gamers’ are the mindless cattle is missing the bigger picture.

Another aspect is the difference between Publisher and Developer and Platform.

Sony/Playstation is the platform and they get to do shitty things. So can the publisher. The Developer doesn’t get to make those decisions most of the time. Sometimes we can avoid the bad actors, but not always. The next book in your favorite series has just been released, but it’s not going to be printed, it’s only released on Amazon as an E-book. The author isn’t happy, but their contract says the publisher gets to decide where and how to publish and the publisher gets more money from e-books and expects the audience for the book will not revolt. Same with music. This new album is only available on spotify; no physical CDs, and the artist didn’t have a say because they weren’t big enough to fight back.

Sure, piracy solves some of those access issues (insert Gabe Newell quote), but it robs the artists of their cut because the publishers or platforms are being assholes, which will prevent future content that people like. Do you punish the artist, and remove their ability to make more stuff you want because some monolithic company has locked themselves in the process?

I won’t buy GTA6, or the next Call of Duty or FIFA, because those are not games I’m interested in; but there are other franchises that I would like to enjoy the future. I want to fight back and orgs like Stop Killing Games or the EFF, FULU, Repair.org and more are all helping push back.

We do have hope, and if we understand this isn’t a single-slice-of-the-consumer problem, we can band together.