Personally, I’m asking it because I’m considering running an instance of my own, and I want to know what to expect. This is an issue that concerns me.

I wonder what it is that an instance may offer over others

Here is a non-exhaustive list of things that I think are important when considering an instance:

• Stability — eg uptime, how quickly outages are addressed, etc.
• Speed and responsiveness — eg how quickly one can download resources from the instance, how quickly pages can load, etc.
• Accessibility of the admin(s) — eg how easy is it to get in touch with the instance admin(s)? are they open to communication?
• Cost sustainability — eg how is the instance funded? Is their model sustainable?
• Infrastructure sustainability — eg how is the instance powered? Is it in a stable location?
• Local Laws — ie what laws is the instance subject to?
• ToS — ie what rules does the instance impose on its users?
• Who is the instance federated and defederated with, and what is their criteria for federation?
• Other smaller things like ability to upload media, number of local communities, number of users, front-end/appearance, etc.

I think that It depends on the instance, but I would argue that, generally, yes.

I don’t understand how exactly this differs from something like Tor.

When I actually post something informative, it seems crazy to not include the links I already have anyway. And make sure it’s viewable in the wayback machine if it’s something so predictably ephemeral…

Citing sources is a practice that I think is sorely lacking in public discourse currently. I appreciate all efforts to quell misinformation and disinformation.

[…] for […] brevity. […]

I don’t agree that citing sources affects that. For example, anecdotally, a citation can just take the form of a footnote in the document.

[…] for practicality […]

Imagine having to document every bit of background research in a presentable way.

Well, presumably, that’s their job ^[1]. Being responsible takes effort /s.

Their reputation and past reporting is supposed to back up things they state as facts […]

Imo, this in an example of an appeal to authority — an argument isn’t sound because it should be, but because it is. I believe that it’s a disservice to the truth and constructive public discourse to not cite one’s claims.

Good catch. Given that that it’s currently still available ^[1], I would guess that it’s likely not the case that Google is purging reviews. Imo, one review is hardly review bombing, but at least that’s proof of one claim made by a news outlet ^[2] (It’s terrible, imo, that we have to be the ones fact checking claims being made by news organizations. Doesn’t that make us the journalists?).

If you’re willing to believe a couple of random news outlets:

https://www.axios.com/2024/12/09/altoona-mcdonalds-luigi-mangione-unitedhealthcare

https://www.ibtimes.com/altoona-mcdonalds-flooded-angry-1-star-reviews-after-arrest-suspected-unitedhealthcare-ceo-3754683

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/dec/9/altoona-pennsylvania-mcdonald-reviews-go-negative-/

Thanks for the sources! I wish that news articles would actually cite how they know things — it’s annoying to me that their statements regarding the reviews are essentially conjecture — I don’t want to have to feel like I need to just take their word for it.

Not hard to imagine thag G**gle would be on the case, deleting reviews by now.

Fair point.

What does your instance (I’m presuming redlemmy.com) offer that sets it apart from the rest?

Is that true? I just checked the reviews for all of the McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania on Google Maps ^[4] and none of them appear to have been review bombed recently or have any mention of the UHI shooter ^[1][2][3].

Because I believe in the idea of the Fediverse and I want it to succeed.

An issue that I often find is that misinformation is often spread under the guise of innocent humor. If information becomes oversimplified to the point of becoming incorrect, and it’s shared as such, I think that some people may not internalize that it’s incorrect and will take it at face value. I do think that people have a responsibility to be skeptical of what they read, but I think that the people sharing information also have a responsibility to ensure its accuracy to the best of their ability to, at the very least, reduce the burden on those consuming information, and to reduce the impact of the extremes of people that consume and spread information without any thought given to its accuracy.

This meme seems to be logically flawed — essentially, it’s an example of a faulty generalization: Let A be a set containing “Elites”, “Oligarchs”, and “Plutocrats”, let B be a set of things that are considered “bad”, and let C be a set of things that are considered capitalist; if A is a subset of B (ie all things in A are “bad”), and A is a subset of C (ie all things in A are capitalist) (assuming that those are correct subsumptions), that doesn’t imply that C is necessarily a subset of B (ie that things that are capitalist are bad, or, more generally that capitalism is bad) — there could be elements of C not in B. C is a subset of B if and only if all elements of C are in B (ie all things that are capitalist must be bad). So, for the meme’s logic to be sound A would have to equal C (ie capitalism only contains elites, oligarchs and plutocrats).

Of course, to avoid forming an argument from fallacy, I would like to clarify that this isn’t to argue that the final implied claim of “capitalism is the problem” is wrong, nor the explicit claim that “socialism isn’t the problem”, or, rather that “socialism is the problem” is wrong, but, instead, simply that the argument used is unsound.

[…] lemmy is a bunch of teenagers […]

The average age of lemmings has actually been found to be around late 30s ^[1][2].

I don’t really understand why people are downvoting this post. I think this might be a symptom of the, imo, rather nebulous interpretation of the use of upvotes and downvotes.

No: Imo, this is up to the discretion and responsibility of the parents.

I’d biddy biddy bum.