I was thinking that since most people here left Reddit for whatever reason - despite it being inconvenient - then having strong principles and actually sticking to them might be a common theme among the userbase here.
Somewhere between principled and petty. I’ve got a mental blacklist of places or brands I won’t buy from because either they’ve wronged me, given shit service or done something I don’t agree with. And in recent years I’ve added countries to that list too.
Same place I’m falling on the spectrum. Some things I stand by on principle, and execute alignment to the best of my abilities. For other things? Spite.
We should be friends.
If I had the courage of my convictions then I wouldnt be on here either.
I do that with eating meat. I can’t defend it but I keep doing it. At least I do it knowingly.
Probably not as much as I think I am.
Yep. I left Reddit during the initial API crisis. I’ve left jobs because of my principles, even without backup jobs ready. There are tons of places I won’t shop (including Amazon), and it makes finding things I need difficult sometimes. I’ve also been vegan for over 20 years.
My mom’s the opposite. I grew up seeing her hypocrisy, and it upset me. She’d outright tell me, “Do as I say, not as I do.” Such a rich lesson for a young mind! I realized that a lot of people become hypocrites by repeating what others say without critical thought, and it turned me into a skeptic. So many people jump on the emotional bandwagon (see any hot button political topic for reference), but then later after hearing someone else confidently spout an opinion on it, they will stand with the opposite conclusion. If they’d stopped and thought the first time they heard about it, before opening their mouths about it, they wouldn’t come off hypocritical later on. But the distressing part is less that they changed their opinion, but that they still haven’t put any critical thought into why they hold it - it’s all just repeating others’ words. Which is why if a topic is brand new to me, I will refuse to take a side in it until I research it and come to my own conclusions. There are enough parrots repeating propaganda thoughtlessly, we have to be very careful with whom we trust.
My principles uphold the person I am. I came to them on my own, often going against the tide I grew up in. To me, the hardest part about having principles isn’t upholding them, but in dealing with those that can’t believe you actually have them. So many people seem to float on seemingly without a real sense of self, swayed more by those around them than by any sort of inner compass. I can’t fathom being like that, and those people apparently can’t fathom being like me.
All the more reason Lemmy is such a good place to be. We might not all hold the same principles, but at least many of us seem to have them.
I’d also like to note the seeming overlap of Lemmy’s populace with neurodivergence, which can coincide with, well, being a principled weirdo like me. ;)
I think most people would consider me highly, perhaps obnoxiously principled.
Tricky question, because the people who directly conflict with MY principles, probably feel that they are the one with principles, and I’M the immoral one.
Even bad principles are still principles.
I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.
It’s not an ethos, though? They abandon all principles for dear leader, as well as holding contradictory principles simultaneous. They don’t stand by anything, because it’s ultimately mental illness. Their only principle is that they have none.
That’s just, like, your opinion, man.
I strive to be, but I know I fall short of living entirely true to my values. I think we all do. But I at least try.
I think I am principled in some things and not so much in others. Reddit has nothing to do with it. I left Reddit because it was no longer fun. I don’t want to scroll reposts of engagement bait and read the dumbest bot comments under it. I would happily keep using it if it was fun.
Very. Unfortunately, that drives me to making choices that make my life very hard.
I don’t think I am, particularly. More like I am finally in a place where I can make principled choices - kids grown, stable living situation, working, feeling mentally settled, not as anxious or struggling as before. Like from this more privileged space I can avoid more of the bad choices that I might have made out of desperation.
Lemmy I just like because it’s smaller and not corporate. Reddit was like that once too. I don’t find it inconvenient to be on this platform.
depends.
is it a topic I care about? probably.
it’s not? probably not.
people here left Reddit for whatever reason - despite it being inconvenient - then having strong principles
that’s a VERY low bar.
I guess it depends with me. There’s things I have a hardline stance against like AI and bigotry and do everything I can to not support either, but I’m also too lazy to do research into if anyone involved is part of that. Like if I know a game or movie was made by a bigot like Rowling or used GenAI then yeah I won’t support it, but there’s often been times I didn’t know till after cause I didn’t care to look more into something.
I didn’t leave Reddit for principles though. I was forced off.
Yes but also no. I’ve come to the conclusion that being too extreme is just stupid. You always need a little bit of wiggle room.
I don’t think it necessarily implies extremism. It just means someone holds themselves to their own standards even when it’s inconvenient or when no one’s looking.
“It’s not a principle if it doesn’t cost you anything”
I got kicked off Reddit for daring to speak my thoughts regarding Stephen Miller.
Duty now demands that I never look back.
What did you say?
Alluded to that if he was going to act like a selfish spoiled child, maybe he needed to be treated like one and spanked. It was in a thread where everyone was making allusions, including the guy that started the thread off by calling his actions immature.
I think it was more the tone of the whole thread, god knows I did not have the nastiest reply by a long shot. Would be interesting to see who else got turfed from that conversation. It happened within 30 seconds of me posting. So there was definitely some bot-involved housecleaning going on.
I kept my account - did not delete it - and it’s weird that even though it’s a banned account, I am still getting replies to ancient posts now and again, that I think are bot training efforts. When I get those, I can actually get to the otherwise inaccessible threads - which are ostensibly archived - and I go through the post and look and see if I made other comments and delete them. There is definitely some shit going on with banned users data. If you delete your account, your comments become nameless and “lost property”.
Naah… fuck that shit. I’ll hold onto my account, banned or not. At least I can rip out anything they open up and make accessible again.
And I will… with a vengeance.
Your comments about the bot training reminded me of this article. There’s definitely some shady stuff going on behind the scenes
Indeed there is. Initially I tried to delete my account and I wrote in the “why are you leaving?” field when you close an account that “Hup-ho, it was time to go, good bye and good luck…” It was NOT a “please reconsider” appeal.
The deletion would NOT go through, then a day later I got the “appeal rejected” letter claiming it was approved by a person. I did NOT appeal.
So at that point I realized that something was definitely up with AI on the site beyond the comment bots and I pivoted to removing every bit of content I put in.
Got all my posts, but the comments on other users posts - well you only get access to what you put up in the prior year - a change that dropped with the IPO. before that, you could tunnel down into your comment history all the way back to your first one.
Also, as I was deleting, there was a weird resistance where I only got access to three pages worth of comments before the browser would get locked out and I’d get the account banned page with nothing else. I had - at the time - multiple junker laptops with active logins - so I’d switch up to those devices and continue on. Took several hours over three evenings to clear out that full year of comments I’d made that I could still access. Everything before October 2024 however, is inaccessible… unless a bot (it HAS to be a bot being trained, nothing else - certainly not another user - can access archived posts and unarchive and comment on them…) happens to reply on a comment.
At that point I’m on it like a terrier on a rat.
Got all my posts, but the comments on other users posts - well you only get access to what you put up in the prior year - a change that dropped with the IPO.
I didn’t realize they did that, that’s super shady. They also made it so you can choose to make it so that other users can’t see your post history. Makes it difficult to find out who the bots are
