It’s precisely what everyone said would happen.

I don’t disagree with your general point, but I remember that there were many people (on reddit, but also on lemmy) who said there would be lots of power-hungry redditors just waiting to take over and that the admins would thus have no trouble at all finding replacements.

As a centrist

suppressed Hunter Biden story

“antivaxxer”

lmao

According to Wikipedia, it’s not even by Mel Gibson, but by some Mexican guy named Alejandro Gómez Monteverde. Apparently, Mel Gibson endorsed it and the lead actor previously played Jesus in the Passion of the Christ, but that seems to be the limit of that connection.

Yeah that’s what woke is. It’s believing what Americans have always said about our country and demanding it do that.

I’m afraid that the word has long since transcended the borders of your country. In fact it has even transcended the English language and found its way into the language of right-wing culture warriors all over the world.

Also, while I think I know what you’re trying to say, “traditional American values like the idea that all people are created equal” sounds a bit funny considering that your country expressly allowed slavery upon its foundation.

Yes, my list is by no means complete. I’m sure there are many more things any of us could do, it’s more meant as a list of some examples to give people starting points for practical things to do.

Not sure if this will give you hope or not, but one thing to consider is that we could still make it far worse, or put differently, that it’s still in our power to stop that from happening. We can’t change the fact that climate change already has noticeable negative consequences today, nor that global temperatures will rise by at least 1.5° towards the end of the century (compared to 1950-1980), probably more. But we do have a somewhat realistic chance of keeping it at around 2° or below (see e.g. here or here for easy simulations in your browser). The point is that every tenth of a degree counts, and our action or lack thereof now might well make the difference between it “just” getting bad with regular droughts, crop failures, some regions becoming temporarily uninhabitable due to wet bulb temperatures and so on on the one hand, or all of that on a much larger scale leading to societal collapse if we don’t act at all. We live in the worst extinction event the earth has seen since the asteroid that killed the non-bird dinosaurs, but we can still keep it at that instead of turning it into the worst extinction event the earth has ever seen. Luckily, governments (and industry) largely have at least accepted that climate change is a thing, and in Europe and the Americas green-house gas emission have actually already been sinking for the last 15 years or so. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not great, and these governments still should do much more, but it could also be worse, and the fact that we’re lowering emissions despite our politicians generally being very friendly with industry could give at least a sliver of hope. The emissions of China and India (and the rest of Asia) are still rising, but show signs of decelerated growth at least, and in Africa emissions are still fairly low and rising rather slowly, with a chance that some less developed countries might more or less just skip a big chunk of carbon-based industrialisation in favour of renewables. Altogether this means that we’re already on a way to avoid the worst possible scenarios, and still have the power to keep it towards the lower end of the scale as far as terrible outcomes are concerned.

In addition, while individuals have always less power than whole governments or industries, there are nevertheless things anyone reading this could do, e.g.:

• Voting for parties that favour stronger climate action, and perhaps even more importantly, not supporting those who do less or even nothing. You can also protest or try to influence your government in some other ways.
• Reduce your personal impact by not consuming animal products (in particular meat and dairy), not flying if you can avoid it, not buying stuff you don’t really need, and not having (more) kids. Edit: Also try to favour public transport over driving your own car, and if you need a car, try to use a small, electrical one to reduce emissions.
• Tell other people you know who might listen to do those things. Many people favour climate action in principle, but are too lazy, scared or just otherwise preoccupied to actually start doing stuff on their own. You kicking them in the butt or leading by example can motivate them and in turn other people they might now.

If you’re reading this and whether or not you’re already doing some of those things, I’m sure you can find at least some things you could do (I know I can, and I’m trying to put it into practice), which might in turn also make you feel less depressed about the situation. As mentioned before, I’m not saying that we’re in a great situation, but whining about it helps nobody, and we’re still in a situation where we have the power to stop things from getting even worse.

Not sure if this will give you hope or not, but one thing to consider is that we could still make it far worse, or put differently, that it’s still in our power to stop that from happening. We can’t change the fact that climate change already has noticeable negative consequences today, nor that global temperatures will rise by at least 1.5° towards the end of the century (compared to 1950-1980), probably more. But we do have a somewhat realistic chance of keeping it at around 2° or below (see e.g. here or here for easy simulations in your browser). The point is that every tenth of a degree counts, and our action or lack thereof now might well make the difference between it “just” getting bad with regular droughts, crop failures, some regions becoming temporarily uninhabitable due to wet bulb temperatures and so on on the one hand, or all of that at a much larger scale leading to societal collapse if we don’t act at all. We live in the worst extinction event the earth has seen since the asteroid that killed the non-bird dinosaurs, but we can still keep it at that instead of turning it into the worst extinction event the earth has ever seen. Luckily, governments (and industry) largely have at least accepted that climate change is a thing, and in Europe and the Americas green-house gas emission have actually already been sinking for the last 15 years or so. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not great, and these governments still should do much more, but it could also be worse, and the fact that we’re lowering emissions despite our politicians generally being very friendly with industry could give at least a sliver of hope. The emissions of China and India (and the rest of Asia) are still rising, but show signs of decelerated growth at least, and in Africa emissions are still fairly low and rising rather slowly, with a chance that some less developed countries might more or less just skip a big chunk of carbon-based industrialisation in favour of renewables. Altogether this means that we’re already on a way to avoid the worst possible scenarios, and still have the power to keep it towards the lower end of the scale as far as terrible outcomes are concerned.

In addition, while individuals have always less power than whole governments or industries, there are nevertheless things anyone reading this could do, e.g.:

• Voting for parties that favour stronger climate action, and perhaps even more importantly, not supporting those who do less or even nothing. You can also protest or try to influence your government in some other ways.
• Reduce your personal impact by not consuming animal products (in particular meat and dairy), not flying if you can avoid it, not buying stuff you don’t really need, and not having (more) kids.
• Tell other people you know who might listen to do those things. Many people favour climate action in principle, but are too lazy, scared or just otherwise preoccupied to actually start doing stuff on their own. You kicking them in the butt or leading by example can motivate them and in turn other people they might now.

If you’re reading this and whether or not you’re already doing some of those things, I’m sure you can find at least some things you could do (I know I can, and I’m trying to put it into practice), which might in turn also make you feel less depressed about the situation. As mentioned before, I’m not saying that we’re in a great situation, but whining about it helps nobody, and we’re still in a situation where we have the power to stop things from getting even worse.

[…] often with hostile, mocking, or derogatory commentary. The accounts have featured hate speech and false claims […]

Or even better: install the libredirect extension to do this automatically, not just for reddit.

https://the-federation.info/platform/73 also shows close to 60 000 monthly active users, of above 2 million total users (accounts). It should be said that a lot of those 2 million accounts are on instances with above 50 000 accounts and only a handful of active users, so probably bot accounts due to no captchas or other barriers on those instances. On the other hand, not all real accounts are active if they’re just lurkers, so actual number of “real” accounts could be quite a bit higher.