we live in a system that puts immoral people in power

Not just that, it pressures people to act immoral.

but I also don't have to make excuses for those immoral people acting immorally.

First of all, explaining isn't excusing. Second of all, one perversity of the system is that it makes everyone complicit by forcing everyone to participate, as consumers, participants in production, as participants in the political system, etc.. If you push that to it’s logical conclusion, everyone who isn’t committing their entire life towards overcoming the system can be blamed to act immoral, depending on how strict your morals are.

Putting too much focus on blaming people’s morals instead of focusing on the system that corrupts people’s morals is counter productive and creates a culture where people trying to do the right thing burn out and adopt an attitude of indifference because no matter how much you are trying to do the right thing, there are always more things to do. It also creates a culture where people compare and compete with eachother’s moral worth, which can lead to fracturing and infighting.

some of them do have a sense of shame

Shaming people into acting moral is not very effective imo.

There were plenty of things that she spoke out on

She sounds like a decent person, but my point is that if you look hard enough, you will find moral failings (same as with every human). I could blame her for not speaking out against Israel, for eample, and condemn her for it.

To be clear, I’m not in general against applying pressure on people in power by voicing disapproval or outrage where it is effective. What I find moderately annoying in this example is that people seem to focus more on Ed Sheran instead of focusing on the people with the actual power behind the decision to kick him (like Robert Kraft)..

If becoming one of the world's wealthiest musicians requires prioritisation of your brand over improving the world in ways

There is no if, that's generally how it works. As I said, there are always exceptions, but when you are a super famous pop star on a major label, you probably ended up there because you do what your label/manager tells you to do, not because you alienate part of your fanbase/boss/business associates.

becoming a wealthy musician is absolutely a sign of moral failure.

I don't even fundamentally disagree, I just think you are setting a moral standard that unfortunately will not be upheld by a majority of people if they were given the chance, which means you are setting yourself up for disappointment. Most people would choose not to swim against the current and take a "neutral stance" (or whatever stance their boss wants to them to take) over risking their career, that’s just how most humans work.

That’s why it is useless to expect CEO’s, politicians, business owners, etc, to act according to your morals. They act based on incentives, and the only way to make them act according to your morals to some degree is by forcing them to.

It's also not even necessarily detrimental to the brand to associate it with acting morally

If your entire brand is “I’m a pop musician who makes unprovocative pop music for everyone and don’t make public statements about controversial political issues“, it can absolutely be detrimental..

I really don’t think it’s that surprising: Venue owners band together and tell that multiple concerts of your huge tour with 15 support acts is essentially chanceled unless you kick one support act. For pretty much any tour promoter/organizer/manager, the decision is obvious..

that only made Dolly Parton more beloved.

To be honest, I’m hardly familiar with Dolly Parton, but wasn’t she famously silent on controversial political issues? At least I found this quote from her sister

"You know, I’ll tell everything, and I like everybody know what I think about it, not her. Because she’s a good businesswoman. She’s a good businesswoman.”

I also didn’t find any comment on Israel or Palestine from her, so I’m not sure why you are using her as an example, maybe I’m missing something? Because it seems to me that maybe she was beloved across the political spectrum because she didn’t publicly speak out on controversial issues..

I don't really care about him, but this line of thinking creates assumptions and expectations that are almost never going to be met. He is one of the wealthiest musicians, he isn't just a performer, he is a businessman. If he was willing to risk or limit the success of his brand for his views (assuming his views are pro palestine), he probably wouldn't be in the position he is in.

At the end of the day, it is a mainly systemic issue, not an issue of moral failiure. Some individuals will push against the systemic currents, but this will always be the exception, not the rule.

The only way to combat systemic issue is by changing/replacing the system through collective action, not individual action. Ed Sheeran chancling his tour in solidarity with Palestine would not stop western nations from supporting israel. The only way is a nations citizens collectively applying pressure.

Unless you have a system without a GUI, you don't need to open a terminal in order to update or install stuff. There is a GUI for that. And no, you don't need to build stuff from GitHub for normal user stuff..

Nah, there is definitely a truth to this. I grew up in a working class family who moved into a wealthier region at some point and I would never trade places with people who grew up wealthy. Pretty much all wealthy people are constantly unhappy, are obsessed with control to the point where they alienate their families, they are constantly scared of losing their control, status and wealth, constantly paranoid towards everything and everyone and often engage in self-destructive behaviour.

Of course, not having enough money sucks, it generates stress and restricts autonomy. But a similar thing happens at a certain level of wealth.

Probably neither:

"I think the way she referred to a fellow member was probably not the way we expect our members to refer to other fellow, especially female, members," Harris told Politico, referring to Greene's profane exchange with Boebert.

"I think the straw that broke the camel's back was publicly saying things about another member in terms that no one should."

Why?

Before last month, lemmy was very very small and comparatively inactive. Lemmy admins are hobbyists who run the server in their spare time, most did/do not want to deal with pornographic content on their server as with it come a lot of potental moderational and legal challanges.

Why would we want to do that instead of just dealing with them one by one when needed or just individually blocking communities/users?

Who would be "dealing with them one by one"? People seem to keep forgetting that lemmy, both the code and the infraatructure, is developed and maintained by hobbyists, not by a company.

I'm extremely uncomfortable with an authority deciding for me what I may see in my feed and what not.

You should really think about this, in my opinion, entiteled attitude.. You are not the one paying for the server, you are not the one running the server you are certainly not the one who will have to deal with potential legal actions if illegal shit is going on on your instance..

You are not entiteled to any of this.. You don't have to pay in any way for any of it and lemmy admins don't earn any money from you..

Imagine not only getting into trouble for a hobby, but have random people complain about "authority" because you don't want to/can't deal with potentially illegal shit on your server..

If you are so concerned about "authority" and about "what you see on your feed", start your own server and federate with whoever you want, or start a server that is collectively owned and controlled by it's users or something like that.. You can very very easily do that..

Many tech companies were overvalued for a long time. Everyone was happy to invest and pump money into those companies because "those platforms are going to be the future and I want to be part of it when they are starting to make a ton of money". It didn't matter that many of those companies were not profitable because they always promised to make up for that in the future.

This classic idea is starting to break down a bit. Many Tech companies have become profitable in the meantime, but many of them also have various troubles like moderation.

So why are so many media companies making "shitty decisions"? Well, because from a business perspective, they aren't necessarily "shitty decisions", they are kinda smart decisions. Reddit makes money by gathering data and by showing ads. They cannot show ads on apps they don't control. So they have to handle a lot of traffic for which they get nothing back. That's why they are trying to push as many people to use their app as possible. They know that the hardcore oldschool community won't like that, but they are probably pretty sure that enough will switch to the app to make it worthwhile for them.

Meta is fighting to stay relevant as well. Facebook was the foundation of social media for a long time, but in the digital space, this can change very quickly, so they constantly have to try new things.

And if we look at games like the Sims, the game who really escalated the whole DLC thing, it's a similar story. From a consumer perspective, what they are doing is bad. From a business perspective, it's smart. And that's what it ultimately comes down to.

Companies' main goal isn't to satisfy their customers, it's making money. If fucking over customers makes them more money, they do it in a heartbeat.

Originally, it was used to describe communists who followed the party line and supported suppressing Hungarian workers with tanks.

Today it means ultra-authoritarian marxist-leninist.

Westerners slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Iraqis for decades on end, and it was fine because we labeled them all terrorists.

No, it wasn't fine, that's kinda the point.. It isn't fine when the west does it, it's not fine when others do it too..