The article doesn’t contradict what I said

Yes it does, read it again. It claims homelessness, not recorded, not perceived, not logged, but real actual homelessness went up for reasons other than “when communism fell, the government was replaced by beautiful honest angels who would never tell a lie about their own performance”, namely something along the lines of the housing market being privatized and folks selling homes without being able to purchase a new one.

Academic studies have shown that the Soviet Union in the 1980s not only had homelessness, but they had it at a rate that was higherthan what the US had at that time.

I’m not disputing this. I did have a similar conversation with someone about this earlier, who claimed something similar, and initially the “academic studies” they referred to were a listicle and an article written by someone from an institute whose mission statement was sth like “we’re here to write propaganda against communism”. I think eventually they found something that could more reasonably be called academic sources, but I’m curious what you’re referring to here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Russia

Unless the USSR set aside some funds to have wikipedia run propaganda for them in the future, it seems that you’re wrong.

Blocking them isn’t enough, because the harm they do with the plagiarism goes beyond stinking up your personal feed. This kind of stuff proliferates. People save the image to post somewhere else, and so on. Annoyingly, plagiarism doesn’t seem to be against the rules in this comminity, but I really think it should be.

No, I am here to try to understand. You have to admit that “I’m not a serial shitposter” is much less of an explanation than “ad filled comics”. So I’m a little confused what the ad is that you’re referring to. When you go to a museum, and see a painting has the artist’s name scribbled in one of the corners, do you consider that an ad? Or are you talking about something else here?

That makes absolutely no sense.

Whatever. Why are you going through so mich effort to remove the artist info from comics?

Why is the background smooth behind the swastika?

Sure. But that makes it all the funnier when someone voluntarily chooses to focus on the roommates to criticize the USSR.

Mod action 2 days ago in another community

Banned 
Beep
@lemmus.org
 from the community Technology@lemmy.zip
reason: constantly removing artist info from comic strips

Seems like a good idea

After the fall of the Soviet Union, every single ex soviet state in Europe (outside of Russia and Belarus) went on a spree to “decommunize” their architecture because it’s so soulless and terrible, and they’re better off for it

Their homelessness did skyrocket after the USSR dissolved though. So saying “they’re better off for it” kind of depends on what you value more, pretty buildings or housing people.

Tell me you’ve never been homeless without telling me you’ve never been homeless

I love this kind of thread. It always attracts some guy who finds it necessary to point out that in the USSR people had to endure the absolute horrors of having roommates. I think I saw him phrase it as them having “survived” roommates once.

When i buy games i rarely use steam to do it

I hate to sound like a debbie debater but anecdotal evidence does not really weigh up against the fact that they control like 75% of PC gaming distribution. And to re-iterate the point I made in the comment you replied to, the argument is that they control enough of the market so they could do serious harm. The argument is not that they control more of their market than other monopolies, like the energy providers, or that they control 100% of the market.

Ok sure. But just because other stuff is worse doesn’t mean you shouldn’t fix something. We don’t stop fining drunk drivers just because murder is worse.

“Others could get a bigger bazooka” is also not something that would satisfy me if my neighbor has a bazooka.

It doesn’t matter that it’s not your fault. If you happen to stumble into a situation where you end up being able to do immense harm, it’s for the good of all of us if there’s some mechanism that ensures that you won’t be able to.

If my neighbor finds a bazooka rather than buy one, he still has a bazooka.

Let me ask you this: does it matter? Whether my neighbor buys or just happens upon a bazooka, he has a bazooka, and I don’t feel safe.

They’re very much first world.

Mandatory preface to prevent angry fanboys stinking up the replies: I like Steam. I use Steam. And just to be sure, democrats and republicans are not the same.

Some folks in this thread are using American case law to argue that Steam is not a monopoly, or that Steam is a good (??@#!?!?) monopoly. They look at other cases, like Microsoft, and point out how far Microsoft had to go before it was considered a monopoly by American judges, and then point out that Steam is not as bad. There are two problems with that line of reasoning.

The first is that monopoly law has been absolutely gutted by Reagan, and worsened by every administration (dem and rep alike) up until Biden. In the Biden admin, Lina Khan has made some very small steps to tighten up monopoly laws a bit, but obviously Trump happened (although Harris was pretty much the same as the dems before Biden, so not much hope there either). The bar for being a monopoly is unreasonably high, and American monopoly law is an absolute joke.

Secondly, this line of thinking conflates legality with morality, or being good (enough) for society. I hope I don’t need to convince you that this idea is false. Slavery was legal.

The argument here is not that Steam is, in the current flawed legal American sense, a monopoly, but that it is a monopoly in the sense that it has cornered enough of the gaming market that it could do very serious harm.

Note that “they’re not currently doing harm” is not a great counterargument here. When my neighbor buys a bazooka, I won’t be satisfied by “don’t worry I’m not currently using it”.