politics

Your question is so disingenuous that I have a hard time believing you’re asking it.

Trump didn’t win the popular vote in either election. He won because the Democrats don’t ever really seem to want to win. He won because tecdh billionaires pumped money into his campaign and pushed him on their platforms. He won because of The Electoral College and a very low voter turnout on the left, especially. Plus four years of “Fuck Joe Biden” propaganda. The same type we always see and then some.

I kept an eye on right-wing media. They talked about Biden about as much as we talk about Trump, but Biden didn’t harm our country anywhere near the way Trump has. America might not be here in 10 years, and that’s not hyperbole.

He won because of basically every dirty trick in the book that has been hindering our democratic process for at least the last 20 years, if not longer, all culminating in the 2024 election. All of those factors, and more, have been plainly present over the past few years for anyone to see and comment on, especially on Lemmy.

And for all your dramatics the simple answer to why we're having this discussion is because it isn't in everyone's face. The fires of facism are burning in america yes but most people aren't seeing the day to day extremes that we are seeing reported here. They hear about it, they have an opinion on it but they aren't getting arrested, deported, layed off, or starving yet.

But I don’t wholly disagree with you. I am constantly in shock or depressed that the country didn’t vote for Kamala. I don’t think they voted for Trump. I think they just stayed home. I have my own theories about that, especially around the level of canvassing I encountered leading up to the election. Rather than ramble further, I’ll just say I’ve given up, and I’m ready to leave on my terms when the time comes. I had more faith in people in 2024. I don’t have faith in anything anymore.

It’s to make censoring the front page easier, as /popular is sorted by sub popularity, not post popularity. /all was sorted by post popularity, weighted by how many users were in a sub vs how many interacted with the post. For instance, on /all, a post with 1k/1k active users upvoting it (a 100% upvote rate in the sub, but posted in a small niche sub) would get sorted above a post with 5k/25k (a sub with literally 25x as many active users and 5x as many upvotes, but only a 20% upvote rate).

/all has pretty consistently been a thorn in the admins’ sides, because wide scale censorship is really difficult when a tiny niche sub can hit the front page of /all. In fact, /all was fantastic for new subs trying to get off the ground, for this exact reason. If you were trying to start a new subreddit, one of your biggest sources of new users was likely going to be /all users. But it also means that wide scale censorship was difficult for the admins, because any splinter movement could start a small sub and start hitting the front page. Admins delete the sub? Users just make a new sub and repeat.

Removing /all (and forcing users to /popular instead) allows the admins to direct their focus to only the big subs. Because /popular is sorted by subreddit popularity, not weighted popularity. So small subs have basically no chance of appearing there. By pushing users to /popular, they can focus their attention on the large subs (which largely have mods who are cozied up with the admins already) instead of having to moderate a thousand tiny ones.

It’s no mistake that they removed /all right before the midterms, as they can more easily push a certain narrative if they only have to focus on a few subs. It’s also an advertiser thing, as /all doesn’t filter out NSFW or controversial subs by default, but /popular does. Advertisers tend to complain when their ads are shown alongside NSFW or controversial posts, so directing users to /popular allows them to tell advertisers that they’re not accidentally showing their ads next to porn or political posts.

I wouldn't say all of that 30% thought that. There is a lot of purposeful and tactical decisions made by the GOP to prevent democratic votes. States where mail in and early voting are not allowed is an example, another is the polling places that do not allow you to give water to the people waiting in line. Then theres the ad campaigns that targeted black people saying of they voted they were going to be jailed by the IRS for some vague tax fraud reason. Some people are terrorized out of being able to vote.

Thats not to discount that there are definitely stupid privileged fucks who simply chose not to vote and let Trump happen.

The apathy of many us citizens to the idea that their government could possibly matter to them is a direct result of a massive legal, and influence campaign by far right elites, their representatives in government and their allies overseas. A functional state is supposed to have institutions to combat that.

The effectiveness of the current far right coup is a failure of our institutions, and the low participation of many in the US is a symptom of that failure, not a cause.