kyub

Basically yes. There is nothing really new or different from the modern right-wing extremist ideology to the old Nazi ideology. The fundamentals are the same, always. They always go after minorities (first demonizing them, then jailing, deporting or killing them), they always strive for authoritarian leadership, they always combat science and education because science/education (or rather the universally accepted truth/facts) is kind of fundamentally incompatible with right-wing extremist beliefs (which are based on fear, feeling, outdated traditionalist values, fundamentalist Christian religious values, and a big load of plain bullsh!t). And of course they're going after everything that's inclusive or social because all they know is fear, hate, division and destruction. It's basically a cult which eventually wages war on everyone who thinks differently. They will always start with the ones who can defend themselves the least well and then move on to bigger targets (e.g. first illegal immigrants, then all immigrants, then people of color, then religious minorities, then political minorities, and so on). Eventually, they will demonize everyone who doesn't think their exact way or is in the political opposition etc.., in an effort to divide people.

It's like a cult and it needs to be stopped. Don't fall for the trap that it's somehow different today. The only thing different is that they now have the internet to rapidly spread propaganda and misinformation everywhere (and all lesser educated or young parts of the population are likely to at least partially fall for this stuff), and that Western countries have stronger constitutions which will not crumble as easily as e.g. the Weimar Republic before Nazi Germany happened, because that constitution had a big loophole to exploit. But they might still find exploits or fill enough key positions with loyal fascists that they might be able to effectively sidestep the constitution, in effect installing a fascist, authoritarian government that can do what it wants, hunt who it wants, and be immune to legal repercussions. Don't underestimate them, they are very good at manipulation, lies, division and in general causing mayhem. They thrive from chaos, because from chaos they can then also create a powerful executive force to "restore law and order". Also they do not care about what you think about them or their actions. They will move quickly and mercilessly to achieve their goals, and so any opposition to them must also be quick, decisive and resolute, and not hesitate.

They also currently gather immense wealth behind them currently because super-rich people/companies like riding on that bandwagon because it will grant them even more power and influence in the short to medium term (this was also true in old Nazi Germany btw), because there are no pesky or costly regulations limiting them anymore, so they will gain short-term economic benefits from siding with the extremists, and as we all know, in capitalism, money is everything, and morals don't matter. Elon Musk in particular is particularly clever and ruthless because he essentially managed to buy parts of the government, meaning he will make the government favor his own companies and plans. It's kind of unprecedented corruption I think, but of course it's a dream for any super-rich commercial entity. No regulations, no fines, do what they want, even direct taxpayer money into their own pocket. As much as you can, stop using, buying from or otherwise supporting big companies who openly side with fascists. You can vote with your wallet. In capitalism, voting with your wallet (what you buy, where you buy from and most importantly what you don't buy and where you don't buy from) is a very effective secondary vote option. Also stop using Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, Threads, TikTok, and so on. In those platforms, you are the product, and when you use them less, they can generate less money from your data, behavior and interactions.

Long-term, Nazi ideology always leads to societal division, hate, crimes, bad living conditions, lots of deaths, and eventually wars. Because once they've taken control of the inner political systems, and jailed or killed enough minorities they think are "harmful", they will always look for the next minority, and then the next, and the next, and then they'll be after you. And there will be very few if any legal ways of stopping them. After that (or even before), they will turn on their neighboring countries and start wars with them. Because they always need a new common enemy to hunt, they live based on the belief that they're more superior than others and that kind of grants them the right to take what they want and oppress those they deem "inferior" (Nazi ideology in a nutshell). When they don't have any easy targets anymore, they will look at other countries to invade. Any neighboring country in particular needs to be constantly aware of that.

Slightly longer term, if the USA fall to the right-wing extremism, it will lead to its weakening and downfall (allies will also turn away), and China will become the undisputed global super power in the world.

Longer term still, climate change will cause massive mayhem planet-wide. Since fascists are anti-science and pro-economy, and economy is pro environmental exploitation, they are accelerating the problem even further. They will deny the problem exists until it hits everyone, including them, in the face. Hard.

Unfortunately I don't think there's a way to save us from climate change regardless, unless the whole economic system drastically changes, which will probably not happen until the catastrophe is there, but we can absolutely fight fascism and extremism, and in doing so this will also delay climate change slightly, granting us a few more years of "quality" time on this planet, before it all goes to universal sh!t.

"Infamous" just refers to newbies who sometimes call if statements "if loops". I've heard this quite a bit.

Well, it'll get much worse on many levels. You should stop expecting things to work out as usual when critical jobs are being dismantled or idiots put into charge. It means that things you took for granted will change for the worse. It means that basic things will stop functioning.

Musk is dismantling lots of government functions without understanding them, like he did with Twitter, only this time it'll have much more severe consequences when things break. And Trump is putting idiots and loyal fascists into critical job roles and blames any negative consequences on his favorite enemies (e.g. migrants, democrats, the disabled, or former administrations). And once this has caused enough chaos, they will have an excuse to cut civil liberties even further in an effort to "restore law and order", because fascists love that and an omnipotent executive power that's fully loyal to the supreme leader. It's 193x Germany history, remixed and remastered, and now available in the US. (sorry)

In theory, the law applies to everyone. In practice, it doesn't apply to rich entities.

It's nice to see a significant portion of people (probably still not enough though) leave proprietary social media. Unfortunately, it took them extremely long to realize why that's a bad thing to use.

So that's one step in the right direction I guess.

On the other hand, there generally isn't much hope for humanity left because we haven't learned from past mistakes, haven't listened to science, and haven't ensured ourselves a decent future on this planet.

I use Aegis for personal and work stuff. Works great, is open source and initiates no network connections anywhere.

All true, except that it doesn't really get better because after we manage to contain or survive the upcoming Nazi/extremism movement, nature will punish everyone on the planet for not having done anything about climate change. So first we have to deal with huge societal and political problems, and then with huge natural ones (which also cause huge societal and political problems as a result). We know the answers to both of these problems, but we aren't changing anything.

Some time ago I would have recommended Mullvad and Proton, but after Proton's CEO publicly mentioned Trump favorably in some way I'd say just use Mullvad.

It's true that both are security risks, and that Tiktok is even worse in general, however other proprietary social networks are also BAD and the proprietary algorithms behind them can all be used for massive user manipulation (control what they see, when they see it, and what they don't see, combined with tons of personal and psychological data about each user). That said, another factor that might be overlooked is that it also depends on how easy a target something is. An app by a foreign government that could be used to manipulate citizens is a much easier target for "banning". There's probably much less legal obstacles in the way in this case, and less resistance against it.

Don't read too much bad news, it's bad for the general mood. But still expect everything to go to hell, because it absolutely will, and sooner than anticipated. But you can still enjoy some amount of non-hellish time. And then make some preparations for an upcoming fascist government, rising crime/vandalism, and for climate change hitting everywhere with full force. Existing systems might not stay functional. Start building up local communities to support each other. Make the best of any situation and make forward-looking decisions. Don't despair, but also don't have false hopes. It will get much worse before it will get any better.

Well, "nice" to have that feature, but you still shouldn't use Discord, or at least limit your time on it as much as possible. Remember, when you use it, you're part of the network effect that makes Discord big. You have to resist that. Take a look how Discord compares to pretty much any other messenger or communication tool in existence: https://www.messenger-matrix.de/messenger-matrix-en.html Avoid it whenever possible, get your friends to leave it and weaken its network effect.

So, some of the drawbacks (there's probably more):

• Discord has weak security (see URL above)
• Discord has non-existent privacy
• Discord has an incredibly vague privacy policy which means they do what they want. Even companies with strong privacy policies screw users over routinely. Guess what companies do who don't even care about good privacy policies. They even weakened it further a while back because they need to train their new AI features on your data as well, and probably even their weak privacy policies were in the way before. Well, good thing that the users agreed that they can change it at any time for any reason and be fine with it.
• You grant all rights of everything you write, say, share or do on Discord to Discord, and everything you type, say, upload or share is being processed by their servers
• Discord tracks what you're typing before sending it
• Discord suspended accounts and required even more user data for "verification", such as telephone numbers which is completely unnecessary except for tracking and data selling purposes
• Discord shares chat logs with law enforcement (and they can share everything because they're collecting everything)
• The Discord client app tracks what programs you have running so it can for example display what games you're currently running. That means it contains a process logger. It has to scan every running application and then finds games out of those, and then you have to hope that only the game-specific bits are uploaded to their servers. Maybe that is the case, but can you trust them, and also to never change that? No.

If you have to use it:

• Never use their desktop app, always use the web version from a secondary browser (web apps running in the browser have much less rights than locally running applications), and even then limit what the site can access to the least amount of stuff necessary. If you never use your mic or camera then block it in the browser settings. Don't trust Discord's own mute setting (this also applies to other proprietary software).
• Use a fake e-mail alias / telephone number when creating your account, generally give them the least amount of data possible. Opt out of any options or features which are tied to you exposing more data to them
• Don't give them additional money e.g. for their premium stuff (you already pay with data they gather from you)
• Block at least these API endpoints which are purely used for tracking purposes (there may be more though, and they might change) [easy to do with uBlock Origin for example]:

https://discord.com/api/v*/science
https://discord.com/api/v*/channels/*/typing
https://discord.com/api/v*/track*

• You can also block these related hosts safely without impairing Discord's main functions (again there may be more):

crash.discordapp.com
status.discordapp.com
b.stats.paypal.com
app.adjust.com
client-analytics.braintreegateway.com

Yeah, I also don't like such general laziness. It's also not just limited to switching to Linux, it's kind of the same with switching to anything that's better but slightly(!) more inconvenient than what you're used to. Well, you can't make or be part of some progress unless you're willing to sometimes get off your comfy couch and do something you've never done before. Like switching to Linux. Like stopping eating meat. Like stopping supporting certain evil companies. Like going to vote for a non-retarded option. Like voting with your wallet for the products you use/buy and also NOT use/buy. If everyone would do it, the world would be a different (better) place. But still too few are doing it. Because it's slightly less convenient. And that would be so damn hard to change. Oh man would that be hard. Not.