The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. People fought wars to end monarchy, slavery, fascism. Wanting to be left alone isn’t the mark of a good person. Good deeds are what make a good person. It is your actions, not your beliefs, that make you a good person.
You don’t need to bombard people with your ideas. You need to stand up for them.
I find it hilarious that the reason these payment companies requested sites pull their NSFW content was due to direct action by a puritanical activist group but people upset by it not only don’t care enough to participate in direct action themselves but won’t even put their real name on a petition. Recently signed by: Crazy crazysmile. Thanks for the support Mr. Crazysmile!
Say what you want about right wing nut jobs, but they at least care enough about their ideas that they go out and make a difference.
Change.org is a private, for-profit, venture-backed company. Your money goes to their executives.
I have a friend who is a solo dev. He applied for some funding once and was denied because he said he intended on using it to pay himself. They told him it’s not just free money for anyone saying they’re making a game; it’s meant to support businesses. He would need to incorporate, have monthly expenses, and multiple employees. I’m assuming this funding also works like that. It’s stimulus for the economy, not funding for art projects.
Maybe an issue with federation? Heres the link https://lemmy.ca/comment/10932620
I don’t understand why there’s such a hyperfocus on petitions. The only thing being attempted is signing petitions in various countries. Every country has declined to do anything and the last hope is the EU parliament which is being treated like some all or nothing final bet. Why just petitions?
Why not directly put pressure on some of the worst offenders like Ubisoft? Lots of people are saying they’re not buying another Ubisoft game again. Cool! Start an official boycott. People who cant sign the EU petition can sign a boycott promise. It wouldn’t be binding or anything but it could create more solidarity around not purchasing their next big release. Companies care about their bottom line.
You know the hate campaign against piratesoftware? Why not do that to the official Ubisoft account instead? They’re the company that is actually causing the problem. You might not like piratesoftware but he’s not the enemy. He hasn’t killed any of his own games. He didn’t make the decision to shut down the Crew. The offical Ubisoft account shouldn’t get to post a single thing without pressure from the movement. Critical memes should be made about the company and shared on social media. The CEO shouldn’t get to speak to an audience without being booed. Companies cave to negative PR all the time.
These things can be done in addition to the petitions. Personally, I don’t think any petitions are going to bring about the change people are looking for. Governments rarely listen to them and the EU isn’t much better. There are just 10 citizens initiatives that have passed and all their responses have been pretty lack luster. Even if the EU enacts the exact laws people are hoping for, what about everywhere else? The idea seems to be that other countries will get trickle down consumer protections. Americans are pushing Europeans to petition the EU parliament to make law changes hoping it will cause American companies to change how they sell products to Americans. It’s just such an odd strategy to me. Again, it can be done, but there’s no reason more direct action can’t be taken in tandem with the petition.
I get lots of downvotes and angry replies for this take which I’m not sure why. I can only assume people don’t like hearing that petitions are largely useless.
A boycott of the worst companies. I’ve seen lots of people commenting they’re never buying an Ubisoft game again under pretty much every article in relation to them. Perhaps boycotts haven’t worked in the past but this seems to have enough support and momentum that it could have a real direct impact. Recently, boycotts have been pretty impactful as the world has stopped buying US products and within the US, conservative groups have influenced many companies with boycott and social media campaigns against companies. It’s also something that all supporters globally can participate in rather than everyone just hoping a European law might affect products purchased elsewhere.
The petition was a great way to gauge support, but I feel like people are going all in on its success and when the EU parliament likely issues its “we take consumer protection seriously which is why we already have the best laws in the world and don’t need to change anything” statement, people are just going to act defeated. There’s going to be a doomer post about how the EU parliament is corrupt and piratesoftware is the devil that gets 1000 upvotes and then that’ll be it instead of using the support and momentum in a more direct and impactful way.
There are lots of ways to make a change. It shouldn’t be all in on a single petition and that’s it. That’s not how social and political changes happen.
Most of those resulted in “the laws in place are already good enough” responses. From your links
The EU response to stop vivisection:
The Commission considers that the Directive on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes (Directive 2010/63/EU), which the Initiative seeks to repeal, is the right legislation to achieve the underlying objectives of the Initiative. It sets full replacement of animals as its ultimate goal as soon as it is scientifically possibly, and provides a legally binding stepwise approach as non-animal alternatives become available. Therefore, no repeal of that legislation was proposed
The EU response to Save the Bees:
In its reply, the Commission underlined that rather than proposing new legislative acts, the priority is to ensure that the proposals currently being negotiated by the co-legislators are timely adopted and then implemented, together with an effective implementation of the CAP.
The EU response to Stop Finning:
the Commission commits to better enforce the EU’s already strong traceability measures by strengthening the enforcement of EU law that applies to the entire value chain - control of fishing at sea, full traceability of shark products from landing to consumer, consumer information, and prevention and redress of illegal trade - and ensuring the collection and reporting of complete and reliable information by fishermen and Member States’ authorities on all these aspects.
Oh I don’t know… how about banning glyphosate,
Glyphosate isn’t banned in the EU. From the EU website: “Glyphosate is currently approved as an active substance in the EU until 15 December 2033”.
There was a petition to ban it, but the response was “On the first aim, to ‘ban glyphosate-based herbicides’, the Commission concluded that there are neither scientific nor legal grounds to justify a ban of glyphosate, and will not make a legislative proposal to that effect.”
the Clean Water Directive received major updates as a direct result of collecting 1.80 million signatures.
You might mean the Drinking Water Directive, and 1.6 million signatures.
I see some press releases on updates, but I can’t find anything outside of government websites saying things have improved. I’d imagine if this was a big deal there’d be news stories on it.
atro_city said it well:
If the SKG movement doesn’t organise, that’s all we’ll get: a communiqué to shut the hell up.
Over a million Europeans have signed a petition in less than a month. Why only Europeans? Big ecelebs like PewDiePie and Critikal have made videos on this. It’s got a lot of people interested. Why not get everyone in on something more direct? Something international? Why does the world need to sit and wait and hope the EU parliament fixes everything? It seems like a waste of momentum. It needs to be more than just a European petition. A call to boycott the worst companies until they change their EULA and TOS would be a great start.
How? I genuinely believe something along the lines of an organized boycott would be far more impactful than a hail mary petition. The reason I think it wouldn’t work is because most people couldn’t commit. That’s why I said this isn’t activism.
It’s not activism if you’re not putting in any effort. I don’t care if people downvote me, but at least post an actual opinion. Have an actual stance. I’m glad others have posted some, although all of them seem to be along the lines of “this petition will definitely fix everything so we don’t need to try anything else”.
Give me an example of a “successful one”. I’ve read only two initiatives have lead to law changes. One on the minimum cage sizes for farm animals being slightly bigger and one on banning pesticides that ended up with slightly more oversight on their use. All the others that passed only resulted in a statement by the government with no legal changes.
Making great progress! Bill is such a great character. He’s turned his town into a fortress occupied only by him. Sounds great until you realize he’s been alone for years. It’s less of a fortress and more of a prison and, with the way he talks to himself, you get the sense that the isolation is starting to wear on him. Even then, when given the opportunity to leave, he doesn’t. He’s going to die alone in that place because he sees trusting others as a weakness. Something he tries to impress onto Joel. But does Joel want to be like Bill? Does he want to be like Tess? Such a great chapter!
I loved this game so much! You’re in for a treat! Last of Us certainly has a way of making the apocalypse look gorgeous. All those reclaimed by nature cityscapes are amazing.
If you like the scenery and gameplay of this one then you’ll enjoy it in the second game too. Maybe lower your story writing expectations a bit though…
I can’t find it on GOG’s but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s in most EULAs. I’ve seen emails saying “confidential, if you are not the intended recipient of this email you must delete it.” There’s no way to enforce that. Ubisoft isn’t coming to your house to review the contents of your drives. I’m guessing it’s to stop some loophole like “you said I can’t resell your game so instead I sold my hard drive (that has the game installed on it)”.
There are 14,000 games released on Steam every year. What percentage do you believe contain in-game purchases? It’s quite literally just the giant AAA venture capitalist backed studios that do this. Just don’t buy them.
It’s like saying if we allow AI art to continue soon there will be no more humans making art. People will always make art. People will always make games. If all the art you see is corporate slop that’s a you problem.
Metal Gear Solid 3, Subnautica, Papers Please.
I love the Metal Gear series but the Cold War setting of 3 works so well with the theme of the game. It also features crab battles and the ladder boss.
Subnautica really captures the feeling of being lost in some alien world and slowly making it your new home. The electronic voice assistant manages to send chills up your spine with lines like “oxygen.”
Papers, Please explores complex moral decisions in such a simple way. I wish to live my life more like Jorji.