I’m wondering if I should just delete lemmy to stay under the radar. 🤔 (I’m a US Citizen currently residing in the US, and moving out of the country is not really an option)
I feel so conflicted on this. On one hand, this is kinda like giving in to authoritarianism, but on the other hand, dissenting is kinda dangerous. 😓
Removed by mod
Very unlikely. They don’t have the prison cells to lock up half the population nor the manpower to identify them with how many people DOGE is firing. You’re more likely to just lose your job rather than get arrested.
In the long run, shutting up won’t save you from fascism. Every inch you give is a foot they take, and they will take and take and take if you let them.
If you’ve never wondered whether people living under dictatorships regret not exercising their rights more when they still had them, now’s the time to start pondering.
People in Germany protested in front of a Gestapo building in 1943. Post your posts.
It’s not illegal to have an opinion dude. Calm down.
There was this news report about a french scientist being denied entry to USA, because they critiqued the science budget cuts. While not arrested or something, it’s still telling.
I mean, its hard to calm down after reading the news about Mahmoud Khalil. Sure, online comments is not the same as a protest, but I feel like its only a matter of time before they start digging through the internet.
Nobody said that doing what’s right would be easy. Or safe. Only that it’s worth doing.
Consider this: Like the “Storm Area 51” meme where they said “they can’t arrest all of us!” if all of us keep dissenting and never stop, well… they can’t arrest all of us.
Literally 45 million people are registered Democrats, and while the USA has the largest prison population per capita, that tops out at 2 million. There’s about 1.5 million Law Enforcement Officers in the USA. The US military is about 3 million people, and a bunch of them are stationed worldwide, not here at home.
So tops they could have 4.5 million people trying to arrest/disappear 45 million people.
I repeat, they cannot arrest all of us.
Until the secret police invite you for a round of tea.
At that point, there will be no evidence of your disappearance, so legal details don’t even matter. Anyone who brings up such evidence, will also disappear.
Just enough so you know it happens. It wouldn’t be secret.
that trial balloon is already a-floatin’.
non-citizen permanent resident (aka green card holder) spouting views that the govt dont like? straight to the black hole of ICE detention with you.
This is the correct answer.
The entire country would collapse if they did that. There would nothing to be president of.
Not to mention Jon Stewart, Jon Oliver, and the many other celebrities that shit on Trump. Plus all of MSNBC, CNN, and the other “left” news companies. I don’t imagine they have resources to do all that.
The trick is not to arrest most if the really high profile individuals who are critical of the state, but encourage rumours about why they’ve been spared to discredit them.
Not yet
Dissenting is the only thing that will actually do anything to make things better.
Rolling over and stopping is giving up before the fight has even started.
Further, pretty sure the entire contents of the internet have been sucked down into that NSA Utah Datacenter since it opened in May 2014.
Not to mention the corporate surveillance systems of Meta, Reddit, Twitter, and so on. If you ever had an account, just because you deleted it doesn’t mean the data got deleted. Even Reddit has been seen restoring comments after they were changed and deleted.
If Trump is ignoring the law, he’ll ignore any laws that prevent the government from using that data against American citizens.
If you’ve ever been critical of Trump or Republicans in the last 11 years, just get used to the idea that it’s probably a foregone conclusion and get prepared to be involved.
I don’t mean buy a gun. I mean get involved in community gardens, community support networks and other types of Mutual Aid. We’ll need to support one another and hiding from what is happening and hiding our opinions because we’re scared isn’t going to help.
Do you have respect for the journalism outfits that have already turned tail and given up on seriously criticizing Trump? Do you have respect for every judge who pussed out on holding Trump accountable before the election? Because I doubt you do. Well, history will look at you the same way, if anyone even remembers your name.
Nobody remembers Germans in 1941 as anything but Nazis. The only ones who are remembered for not being Nazis took risks and didn’t lay down and die. It’s different now, the surveillance network is massive, there’s no hiding from it, so it’s pointless to hide from it instead of embrace it and prepare.
Do you have respect for the journalism outfits that have already turned tail and given up on seriously criticizing Trump? Do you have respect for every judge who pussed out on holding Trump accountable before the election? Because I doubt you do. Well, history will look at you the same way, if anyone even remembers your name.
Good point
Wow, one of the few comments on Lemmy I agree with 100%!
Further, pretty sure the entire contents of the internet have been sucked down into that NSA Utah Datacenter since it opened in May 2014.
There is a truly prodigious amount of weird porn on a government server somewhere if true.
I learned a new word today thank you.
This is 100% correct. No notes.
it’s pretty stupid and delusional to think you’re going to jail for posting things on social media. I’m countries where this actually happens (mine for example) you need to be stirring up some viral controversy which directly effects an interest of the government
This analysis is proper and Americans love hyperbolic bullshit…
The trend is concerning nonetheless
People are getting turned away at the border for having tweets critical to Donald trump (terrorism for some reason). It’s only a matter of time before they start making lists of people inside the states as well.
Be careful what you say - don’t call for violence, definitely don’t make threats of violence against specific figures, especially ones in office, and as a general rule don’t spread personally identifying information
Past that? Let’s say there’s a crackdown. They’re going after low hanging fruit to instill fear. By nature, the fediverse is hard to tie back to individuals… But if they’re looking for you individually, they can find you
I wouldn’t worry too much. Dissatisfaction is insanely high… They’re more likely to do a great firewall and kill the fediverse long before they bother looking into lemmy accounts
By nature, the fediverse is hard to tie back to individuals… But if they’re looking for you individually, they can find you
Yeah. Bonus points if your instance isn’t hosted in the US. I’m pretty sure mine is hosted in Canada, and with the way it’s going currently in a year or two Canada wouldn’t be willing to piss on the US government if it was on fire much less hand over a server full of IP addresses.
hand over a server full of IP addresses
well… hacking is a thing.
indeed, but so is Tor. not a perfect solution, but its there and it works well for “casual interactions”.
But again, hacking is a tool when they want to go after something in particular - a single lemmy server is minuscule. Even the full scale of everyone on lemmy is a very small target… They might go after it if they have specific reason to, but they’re unlikely to do so when there’s plenty of work to be done on bigger platforms
Not likely. There wouldn’t be enough working hours in the 4 years available.
Maybe start using tor or i2p. You can use Lemmy over tor, for sure.
yeah, I’ve been wondering how much I should be sharing about my political opinions now… and a little concerned about my 15+ years of social media history.
100% of all of it. You have the RIGHT. Not priviliege, not favor, not permission. RIGHT.
NSA Utah Datacenter has been online since May 2014 and has been sucking down the entire contents of the internet since then…
…so yeah.
Better to just embrace it and be ready for when they come for us, probably.
side note, if you are really fed up with this news cycle, you could take up a new hobby.
drones are crazy fast these days, and cheap to make, and there are SO many ways to build them now. they come with so mant different attachments, especially in the states. you could attach all kinds of crazy things to them. like nerf guns, and paintball guns and do all kinds of fun activities with lots of friends
also i hear the area around mar a lago is beautiful to vacation in, it would be great to get some birds eye view footage of that place. just for fun with a bunch of your friends
i hear also about how good drones are at stabalizing for long distance shots on video these days. you could fly them so high up you could barely see them or hear them from the ground.
some people even use them to drop small, or large packages from the air as well. just be careful they dont land on anyone important
that would be aweful…eh?
KFC
Is one of the
Loveliest places to have
Lunch; But
Never go there during
A very busy day because
Zack would be there and he
Isn’t a nice person
Seriously, just don’t
Hmm, what was that you said about Acrostic Poems?
this machine…
The fact that you are even worried about this says so much.
Love, A european
You know what they called Germans during WWII who just went along with the nazis because why fight, you’ll just lose?
Nazis.
