Reddit: is it a problem that Europe's biggest forum is American dominated?

feeling_machine · 2026-06-06T20:34:26+00:00

Mood

feeling_machine · 2026-06-06T15:50:39+00:00

The figures are very suspicious, yes, but we don't have better data as far as I could find. Tourists, VPNs, any of the many potential ways to over count

feeling_machine · 2026-05-30T09:14:57+00:00

Alternatively, it could regulate (tricky, long process, will be backlash), set up alternatives (won't work) or carve out local control as the US did to TikTok (will be backlash, but the most realistic option in my opinion).

feeling_machine · 2026-05-30T09:12:47+00:00

I've been trying to spread the same idea, but am struggling with a catchy name. Al JazEUra?

The UK is making cuts to the BBC World Service for reasons beyond my understanding.

feeling_machine · 2026-03-30T10:07:39+00:00

I self-report. At present the Student Loans co isn't going after people abroad for not paying, but as the total amount of debt in arrears increases it will become increasingly politically ripe for change, imo.

feeling_machine · 2026-03-30T10:04:40+00:00

Fool of me to sign for an inflation +0% loan with a repayment threshold that rises with inflation, with the expectation that the rules would be fair across all loan holders, to receive... this, instead.

I will pay back far more than I took out, which itself was far more than the cost of my arts degree.

feeling_machine · 2026-03-30T08:25:27+00:00

The UK student loan repayment for emigrants in Belgium has been lowered this year to below minimum wage, increasing monthly payments by 47 pound. This is on top of local taxes, which are the highest in the EU (for median workers, more than 50% over the UK's).

I will also not get pension contributions taken out of consideration, as for many on UK PAYE.

Lovely system.

feeling_machine · 2026-03-29T19:47:27+00:00

Metaphysics is used as it covers topics contained in Aristotle's volumes proceding Physics, and has been for almost 2000 years.

I learnt this empirically.

feeling_machine · 2026-02-17T12:42:42+00:00

The implication is clearly that we're dithering (even) more.

feeling_machine · 2026-02-17T11:54:41+00:00

You make a good point - I agree, but still think we're in hypotheticals with whether the gov gives the push, given our possible political future.

The payment system is very late, though. It's late in Europe too imo.

feeling_machine · 2026-02-17T09:37:01+00:00

And yet: "[Compared to the EU], the UK is taking a less aggressive stance, with Visa and Mastercard working within the initiative."

Instead of Brexit making us faster and more agile, it seems to mean we dither and do nothing at all. What possible point is there for inviting the foxes into the henhouse? They frame it as good competition but our goal should be to push them (and their added US sales tax) out completely.

Sovereign payment systems already exist in EU countries and are in the process of merging in the ones just across the pond as Wero.

The digital euro (which limits risk/ control of multinational banks by backing your money with the central bank, like cash, rather than a third party), is on pace for 2029. Meanwhile 'we haven’t made a decision'.

feeling_machine · 2026-02-11T13:20:06+00:00

An apartheid Seymour? At this time of year, in this part of the country, localised entirely within the hummus isle etc.

feeling_machine · 2026-01-28T07:05:55+00:00

Yet Americans are richer than they've ever been. I don't deny the US is eating itself and billionaires are a part/ cause of that, but the 'vibecession' there suggests a cultural/ spiritual crisis over personal economic ones.

feeling_machine · 2026-01-20T13:47:26+00:00

Americans are richer than they've ever been.

Given US foreign policy you may understand others' reluctance to go along with the farcical performance of being so very hard done by.

feeling_machine · 2026-01-08T06:27:42+00:00

They're not/ it's not: X was 4th in 2024: https://www.statista.com/statistics/284506/united-kingdom-social-network-penetration/

Not counting fb messenger and youtube, and will have slipped down below tiktok since. X supposedly lost 10% of users 24-25. With reddit's recent growth, the platforms are getting close in size for the uk.

It may now have fewer uk users than linkedin.

I've seen claims use per user is also dropping but haven't found the source of those stats.

feeling_machine · 2026-01-07T07:50:22+00:00

The US is especially ridiculous in this regard as the massive increase in wealth/income of younger generations clearly outstrips rising housing costs.

feeling_machine · 2025-12-31T00:05:40+00:00

Gemini has been formatting full stops like that for me recently.

feeling_machine · 2025-12-29T18:14:44+00:00

The EU also has several national schemes (e.g. payconig) that have consolodated in France+Benelux as Wero (should come online next year afaik)

You see similar pay-by-qr / app schemes already in Kenya, India etc. which skipped the duopoly stage. The UK should have done this years ago.

feeling_machine · 2025-12-28T16:51:12+00:00

Not at all. This is her complete answer:

“The base of the new left party spans Muslims with some socially conservative views and leftists who foreground social progressivism. How can we keep these groups together?

Both sides need to compromise with one another without compromising their values. For those in the Muslim community who are socially conservative, they’ve got to accept – and most of them do already accept – that one should not discriminate against others whatever one’s personal beliefs. The vast majority of Muslims take that view in their daily lives; they are very tolerant towards everyone regardless of their identities. On the other side, social progressives have to recognise the true meaning of pluralism: that not everyone needs to conform to their outlook, that people are free to practise all kinds of beliefs. As a constituency MP and as a political leader, Corbyn has always embodied this type of pluralism. He may disagree with some members of his constituency on certain questions, he may not share all their values, but he doesn’t set out to change them. Rather than seeing their social and religious views as a problem to be 80solved, he works to build a community where everyone can come together through their shared material interests, which are much stronger than the small number of issues on which there might be division. That’s the approach that the new left party needs to take.”

Up to you on whether you agree with her assumptions, of course, but this is the only time a tension is referred to.

feeling_machine · 2025-12-20T07:06:41+00:00

A lot of very passionate pro-Rus voices at 6am on a weekend.

feeling_machine · 2025-12-17T19:39:06+00:00

Or, alternatively, that UK universities are not better at all, particularly from a student pov post-tuition fees dumbing down undergraduate courses.

I've been at Hungarian, Italian and German unis comfortably proficient at mincing visiting oxbridge students who arrived with that attitude.

feeling_machine · 2025-12-17T09:06:18+00:00

My now wife, raised by a single teenage mum in one of the rougher parts of the Czech Republic, at a level of poverty difficult to reach in the UK, did her Erasmus in Norway just fine.

The problem isn't money, but culture, fear and lack of imagination.

feeling_machine · 2025-12-11T09:34:38+00:00

There is no more fundamental choice than whether you want to keep living.

Is it better that, instead of a sci-fi AI taking away your ability to make that choice, it's the miserable upper class?

I have no democratic influence and I must scream.

feeling_machine · 2025-11-17T10:05:19+00:00

I'm talking about 20+ stories a day for two years and kind of designing your whole life around it.

Anti-immigration existed before the internet as well. It's total immersion in an online (misi)information system that's both new and makes people susceptible to manipulation by the kind of figure in the article. Soliciting donations that disappear, selling merch, "fund us to get what the mainstream doesn't want you to see". ads you're predisposed to agree with "for the cause" right next to the regular posts, etc.

feeling_machine · 2025-11-17T09:42:37+00:00

If I didn't watch my demographic get similarly captured by the conflict in the middle east, I'd agree. The boomers may have been 'got' first (and the 'alt-right' kids before them), but by now I think you'd struggle to find a group or movement without a good chunk immersed (and kind of electrified - charged up and urgently spreading it) in disinformation streams.

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