As the title suggests, over the last couple of days there’s been an influx of doomer comments over the SKG petition. While it’s fine to disagree, I’m finding it suspicious that there weren’t comments like this posted a week or 2 ago
One year ago, right at the beginning of the petition, PirateSoftware came out misreading the initiative by suggesting the idea the petition was about forcing indie developer to host their server, at their expense, forever and other stupid idea on this line. A fabricated these narrative to act as the typical popular youtubers that say endlessly: “this is st0pid, they are st0pid”. The fabricated narrative confused other popular YouTubers with mixed feelings; and there was very little support. This assured PirateSoftware the first place on the youtube rankings when you search for “stop killing games”, plus had lot of kids brainwashed into thinking " this is st0pid". This kind of criticism never went away completely, the were partially silenced by the very recent roaring as people understood correctly what it was actually about. As SKG keep hitting its milestone the angered roar did lowered, so now you can ear again the “this is st0pid” team
You can swear on the Internet. The same way I can say that I want to spray pepper spray on your private parts. And you can then cry about me because I said the big bad stupid word, so I have to una1iv3 myself.
I mean, if you wanna KYS because people called you shitty for saying you’re going to do a shitty thing. Then maybe…
Another bot paranoia…
Not every people that disagree with the norm is a bot. The petition got more popular recently, even some news outlet that has nothing to do with games started talking about it in my country in the last week, so has a high chance of a bunch of people that didn’t read much about started to comment with their “protect the billionaires” reaction.
Well certain EU politicians support SKG, so yeah it’s making a lot of corpos uncomfy
Welcome to the age of bots.
Enjoy your perpetual unavoidable and even undetectable bias and opinion influencing astroturfing.
Paid for by whoever doesn’t want the things that you want, to influence the people around you to bite at each other’s throats and work against their own interests.
This is one of the biggest reasons Reddit has turned to shit.
I think suspicious is the wrong word. Suspicious seems to suggest doubt or a lack of certainty, but the criticism is pretty predictable. Industry forces could afford to ignore it when it looked impossible to get the signatures, but now that the signatures are in the bag they’re having to take a different tactic.
SOME of the criticism is certainly genuine and exactly what it appears to be at face value, but it was inevitable that those doubts would be artificially boosted now.
I’m not against the goal. But I have voiced that I don’t think this route/configuration of leadership will work.
I only heard about it once people on Lemmy started talking shit about this pirate guy. I hadn’t heard about him either. So it came on my radar as drama. And I ended up having a rough time sharing my point of view. People are really emotional about this intuitive. They take any criticism as an attack that could harm progress on signatures.
In the end the drama with this pirate dork ended up actually bringing positive attention that helped an otherwise flagging initiative for signatures.
I hope the initiative causes positive change.
But I have voiced that I don’t think this route/configuration of leadership will work.
Could you elaborate on this, beyond the one sentence? The rest of your comment makes it clear that you weren’t aware, and still aren’t about much of what was going on with SKG. Given that you don’t have a clear understanding of what the timeline of SKG was, that does leave room for doubt that you understand the initiative. I would like to give you the benefit of the doubt, so please explain what you meant.
I hope the initiative causes positive change.
We all do.
Because it’s about to affect big money so they sic their bots on it to shape public opinion and stomp it, like everything else.
Not at all.
More attention means more people see it, so even if the percentage of complainers haven’t changed, there are more people who know.
On top of that, there was criticism before. There’s that streamer who was mocked relentlessly in comments and some defending him, there were articles about game developer lobby groups complaining that were posted here, etc.
I don’t find the absence of criticism suspicious. The petition makes sense. It aims to solve a problem that affects many individuals and a significant part of human culture.
What I do find suspicious is the sudden emergence of criticism now that it looks like it might succeed. I smell astroturfing and media manipulation.
I don’t find it suspicious. Bring attention to it and it’ll get more votes. Ignore it and it’ll go away.
Now that it’s passed multiple thresholds and is gained a lot of support. They will not try and stop it.
This is exactly my point for the post, though your take is better worded
As the petition got more successful it became a bigger topic on here. Bigger topics draw more opinions.
I haven’t seen anyone here against it.
Ross got hit with some anonymous legal complaint so I wouldn’t be surprised with astroturfing.
I’m also an American so I can’t help.
The entire complaint was based on nothing too. They claimed he’s orchestrating some crazy financial scheme, and getting paid 6 digits from it, when he’s not only doing it for free, but can’t even participate in the initiative to begin with
If he helps bump the gaming industry in a better/healthier direction, he deserves 6 figures imo
Are people criticizing it? There is a certain critical mass that when something becomes popular enough a subset of the population will automatically oppose it.
There’s also a threshold where Industry Groups will start astroturfing. Especially when it comes to worker’s rights or consumer’s rights.
It seems like it’s a bit too late now to start astroturfing this though
It’s a fine line because if you do it too early you’ll just add more attention to it. They probably predicted it would stall out.
Why would they? Most people didn’t know about the petition until a few weeks ago, and I think people are largely knee-jerk supporting their favorite streamer (in this case, PirateSoftware). I don’t think there’s a concerted effort here to kill it, just people coming out of the woodwork now that it got a lot of attention.
This may have killed piratesoftwares career
Perhaps, which I think is really unfortunate. I think he misread or misunderstood what the petition was about, and doubled down instead of taking a step back.
But he’s not going to be making a bunch of accounts on random message boards like Lemmy to try to kill it. The more reasonable argument is that some of his fans and other people who disagree w/ the petition are attacking it, not that he or the games industry cares enough to come here and spread FUD, I think regular people are dumb and emotional enough to do that for them.
Perhaps, which I think is really unfortunate.
I’m not concerned with it. I’ve looked into it a bit, and it seems like PirateSoftware ruined his own reputation. It just took his very visible cockup in that WoW raid for people to realize that he lies a lot and refuses to acknowledge when he’s wrong.
I think he misread or misunderstood what the petition was about
Possibly. I’m not going to speculate on that because it’s not really important.
But he’s not going to be making a bunch of accounts on random message boards like Lemmy to try to kill it.
I doubt it as well. I’m more suspicious of corporate astroturfing. And Lemmy isn’t too small of a target for it, since astroturfing is pretty cheap.
Perhaps, which I think is really unfortunate.
I’m not concerned with it. I’ve looked into it a bit, and it seems like PirateSoftware ruined his own reputation. It just took his very visible cockup in that WoW raid for people to realize that he lies a lot and refuses to acknowledge when he’s wrong.
I think he misread or misunderstood what the petition was about
Possibly. I’m not going to speculate on that because it’s not really important.
But he’s not going to be making a bunch of accounts on random message boards like Lemmy to try to kill it.
I doubt it as well. I’m more suspicious of corporate astroturfing. And Lemmy isn’t too small of a target for it, since astroturfing is pretty cheap.
Does anyone else find it suspicious there wasn’t any criticism on here about Stop Killing Games until after it hit 1.4M signatures?
Nobody here disagrees with any point of the petition. I signed it. Even if gaming companies were rushing to send shills to raid discussions they would have done it months ago and last places they would go astroturff for is this Kazakhstani anti-whaling forum. Especially when their target now is the Eu bureaucracy and MEPs. Where I might say they have not a bad chance of succeeding.
Kazakhstani
? Is lemmy.world hosted by Borat?
I believe it is hosted in Germany. Not sure though.
Domain and IP resolve to California, but it’s a cloudflare IP, so who knows where it actually is.
I’ve made some comments critical of how relentlessly PirateSoftware is being harassed and how annoying it is and how distracting from the actual movement it is.
Nothing wrong with the petition itself, and I haven’t noticed any negative astroturfing about it.
PirateSoftware is being harassed for a whole lot more than just his SKG misinformation campaign.
Perhaps, but the most I’ve seen are some tenuous “evidence” about him being a little selfish in WoW, not finishing games, or using his dad’s influence to land a job at Blizzard. Neither of those are particularly bad, and certainly don’t warrant the negative attention he got. It really seems like people are looking for dirt just because they don’t like his position on SKG.
Then again, I didn’t hear about him until he came out against it, and I saw he defended Godot, which is pretty rad. That’s the extent of my knowledge about him, other than the handful of hit pieces against him people posted here once he got negative attention.
I support SKG and don’t think PirateSoftware is a bad dude. I say just let him be, and don’t watch his content if you don’t like it.
The SKG thing was just the latest L in the series he’s been collecting for a while now. Similar to his wow raid there was another MMO when his party wiped due to someone accidentally aggro’ing a mob. He did the usually “that was moronic, whoever did that is kicked from the raid, etc”. Then he reviews the footage showing it was him that aggro’d and completely 180s, saying the wipe wasn’t on him. As evidenced in his SKG video, guy is super happy saying nasty shit about people but cries toxicity when it’s reciprocated. Guy just can’t help himself. Has to be right on everything and when it’s proven he isn’t, either doubles down or just simply denies being wrong.
Even the wow roaching thing, it isn’t so much the raid but the demanding everyone listen to his side before talking over others when it’s their turn and then leaving before they can have there say and tripling down. I used to appreciate some of his content but given his pattern of behaviour, including bullying, the negative attention he’s gotten is pretty deserved.
The WoW thing wasn’t about being selfish, it’s just one of a dozen or more incidents of him being a narcissistic bully who screws other people over and can’t take accountability for anything.
And nobody is giving him too much shit for simply being a nepo baby. The Blizzard thing is about him being a fraud who’s been caught repeatedly lying and misleading people about his credentials and work experience in order to appear like an expert. He uses his time at Blizzard like a magic wand to expel criticism, going so far as to misrepresent what he even did at Blizzard to appear like an authority when people criticize him.
The backlash against him has been well earned by bad behavior over a long period of time, most of which involves him treating other people poorly for his own benefit.
misrepresent what he even did at Blizzard to appear like an authority
Isn’t that par for the course for streamers/youtubers though? I’ve seen people claim to be “indie game devs” when they’ve never actually released a game, or if they did, it made so few sales as to be little more than a hobby.
After some very quick research about him, it seems his dad helped him get a job as a QA at Blizzard, and then he worked his way up to doing something cybersecurity related. That doesn’t scream “nepo baby” to me, that’s just a dad being awesome helping their kid get their foot in the door, and my dad would do the same for me if I expressed any interest in his career. If he was given a project lead role or something right out of school, then I’d agree w/ your assessment, but a QA a not a very glamorous job, he’s probably testing some boring component of their stack. Likewise, cybersecurity also isn’t very glamorous, he probably ran pen-tests or something on their servers (maybe not even game servers), it’s a decent job, but not something that would give him any authority since he’s not making important gaming-related decisions.
That said, having worked with important people probably gives him some valuable insight, and I’d like to see him expound on why he thinks things are problematic. All I saw in the videos I watched is some hand-waving and inaccurate statements (i.e. studios would need to release code or some nonsense), which tells me he didn’t actually read the petition. I didn’t watch the full thing, but apparently he read the FAQ where Ross explains what the petition is not about, and he probably just skimmed that. I think that’s unfortunate, since he actually has industry experience and might have something valuable to add to the conversation.
narcissistic bully
Again, I haven’t watched much of his content, but I did watch what I think was a relevant part of the original VOD. Here’s how I saw the WoW thing (I have never played WoW, so I’m probably missing something):
- they’re all working their way to the boss together
- they start getting wrecked, so some (all?) decide to bail
- he casts some spell to help his team get out, using up the rest of his mana
- his teammate is about to die and asks for help
- he keeps running, as was the plan
- he gets roasted for not helping out, and explains that we has out of mana and couldn’t do anything even if he wanted to
That sounds pretty reasonable. Maybe he could’ve said it better (seemed to be playing the “cool and collected streamer” role), but I think his actual actions were reasonable.
But maybe there’s something he could have done. I don’t know WoW well enough to know what options he would have had, but from my perspective, returning to help would’ve just meant he’d die too. And my understanding is that in this game mode, that represents a lot of investment, since the character would be deleted upon death, so it makes sense to be careful. I hear they worked it out after the stream, so his team apparently didn’t think his behavior was all that bad.
And then I look at the reaction. I see several articles slamming him for his behavior in that VOD, and a lot of the backlash citing that as justification for hating him. That seems way over the top, so I think the only rational takeaway is that other streamers are making a big deal out of very little, and people are latching onto it w/o actually looking at the facts and taking what they read for granted.
That’s why I hesitate to jump on the bandwagon. Maybe he’s as bad as everyone says, but I haven’t seen enough actual evidence of that. Each time someone has provided some evidence, I looked at it and didn’t see anything damning, just normal streamer behavior. I think people are making a big deal about it because they strongly disagree w/ his take on something else (say, SKG) and are digging for dirt.
So yeah, that’s my take.
Isn’t that par for the course for streamers/youtubers though?
No.
I’ve seen people claim to be “indie game devs” when they’ve never actually released a game, or if they did, it made so few sales as to be little more than a hobby.
That would in fact make those people indie game devs. Thats not a high bar to meet. Pirate likes to word it as if he was a game dev in the industry, and often leaves the context of him just working in QA out. As for the cybersecurity role, his role dealt mostly with the human aspect of the business. Compliance, awareness training, etc. the most active things he did were social engineering phone calls. Yet he has explicitly calls himself “a hacker”.
- they’re all working their way to the boss together
- they start getting wrecked, so some (all?) decide to bail
- he casts some spell to help his team get out, using up the rest of his mana
- his teammate is about to die and asks for help he keeps running, as was the plan
- he gets roasted for not helping out, and explains that we has out of mana and couldn’t do anything even if he wanted to
You’re missing a step here. 3.5. He chooses not to use the items he has that would have restored his mana. Which changes number 5 a bit as a consequence.
he gets roasted for not helping out, and
explainslies that we has out of mana and couldn’t do anything even if he wanted to (Even though he could have. He just didn’t want to)Maybe he’s as bad as everyone says, but I haven’t seen enough actual evidence of that.
Well you have done a pretty good job of focusing on just two of the things he’s been in hot water over, and avoiding all the other evidence that’s out there you haven’t seen. So yeah I wouldn’t want you to jump on a bandwagon without any evidence, but at the same time you’ve explained that you haven’t seen most of the evidence. So I’m not sure what the point of you weighing in here against the people who have seen all the evidence, from a perspective that hasn’t seen the evidence is.
There are hours and hours of video, photo, and written accounts of other events so I’m not just going to recap it all here for you, but it’s all out there for you to find. One of my favorites is when he’s playing another MMO on stream and a dungeon run his party does is ruined by someone accidentally pulling an extra mob. Pirate proceeds to be a huge dick about it. He doesn’t give the person who pulled it the benefit of the doubt like you have to Pirate. At the end of his rant it’s pointed out to him by his own chat that he himself was the one who pulled the mob lol. After which instead of apologizing, he then says he’s not sorry about what he did. He’s so unabashed about his view that only other people make mistakes.
The WoW things is the most well known, be he had a similar behavior in another game, Ashes of Creation i think. Doesn’t take accountability for anything. Cannot say sorry.
There’s also stuff coming out here cheated on his former wife. And then was a massive manipulative dick towards the person that he was cheating on with.
Or that all his previous credentials are fabricated. Like he doesn’t like giving details what he’s actually done in previous jobs. He’ll just state that he works somewhere and then let you fill in the blank. Or passing off what someone else did at the job as his own.
In his own channel he purposely misrepresent the recent things about him. And coding Jesus actually put out a video showing that, when he tries to reach out immediately gets filtered and banned. But meanwhile Thor is telling people that all he had to do was try to reach out…
Doesn’t take accountability for anything. Cannot say sorry.
Have you seen a popular streamer that does? If they do, it’s more like “sorry you feel that way.” To get a decent sized following, you need other people to see you as some kind of authority, and most authorities don’t apologize, they do some amount of damage control and move on.
That’s a big part of why I generally avoid popular streamers/youtubers. Most of my favorite YT channels have like 100-500k subs (and several well below 100k), and I only sub to a few w/ over 1M, and most of those are on the more humble end of the spectrum (e.g. Gamers Nexus). I don’t jive well with wannabe authority figures, so I’m not surprised PirateSoftware didn’t appeal to me. In fact, most of those talking head channels aren’t interesting, I want facts, not opinions, and I do validate the more important facts.
Or that all his previous credentials are fabricated
Why would he? From what I gather (from a random wiki), his dad helped him get a QA job at Blizzard, and then he moved up the ranks to cybersecurity. I don’t think anyone would lie about that, since those aren’t “glamorous” jobs, but they are solid jobs. So my level in trust in what he says takes that into account, whatever he learned about the AAA gaming industry he learned by being present, not by being in any impactful role.
coding Jesus
That guy rubs me the wrong way too (assuming you’re talking about Cr1TiKaL/penguinz0). I’ve gotten through maybe 2 min of one of his videos.
Have you seen a popular streamer that does?
Yes. I think a lot of people would reference the MatPat apology.
Why would he? don’t think anyone would lie about that, since those aren’t “glamorous” jobs
That’s your personal bias. He lets people believe what they want. He used it for clout, and while you might not care about game development or cybersecurity, there are many who do. When he did security, he did social engineering. Which is just as valid, but if people are more impressed because they think he’s looking at source code and whatnot… he doesn’t correct them and leans into those stories. Since you kinda hipster-esque view of YouTubers… here’s a guy with less than 1000 subs talking about it, https://youtu.be/oKadi1zy8fQ and he didn’t really do that much at Blizzard either, not in game development either, but again, he doesn’t say what he actually did and has a lot of stories that don’t connect. That’s like if I said, “Yeah, I worked at the White House for 7 years” and just left it at that. But then it comes to light, I was the one mowing the grass, and that’s it. If I don’t specify what I did, nor correct people, and telling stories that I overhear that belong to someone else (and I don’t specify that) or talk about things that happen that I wasn’t involved with… then I’m lying by omission.
That guy rubs me the wrong way too (assuming you’re talking about Cr1TiKaL/penguinz0).
Not even close. https://www.youtube.com/@CodingJesus He’s a C++ developer who got his name because in some older photos of him people said he looked like Jesus. That’s the whole “lore”.
Pirate has done a lot to earn hate over the years from stealing and manipulating a child back in second life to make a quick buck. Screwing over and generally being a major asshole in eve online that screwed a lot of people out of very real money.
Being a general twat, gaslighting and trying to get his community to harass people irl over the wow debacle.
Lying and giving objectively bad information over development and grifting on twitch.
He’s done everything a twat really can do online short of actual physical harm.
People have grudges with him going back like 15 years. This is not his first rodeo.
Screwing over and generally being a major asshole in eve online that screwed a lot of people out of very real money.
Ok but… That’s the correct way to play EVE online.
Really? From the 5-10 min of his videos that I watched over the last 2 weeks when trying to figure out why people dislike him, I didn’t see any of that nonsense. That’s really too bad if true, because he seemed like a pretty level-headed guy who was a pretty laid-back gamer (no yelling or other form of aggression, which is unfortunately common among streamers). I watched some clips of:
- take on Godot - defended Godot despite some missteps and (IMO) correctly pointed out that their PR person probably got overrun after a somewhat controversial comment that was apparently intended to be a joke (the “woke” post)
- take on SKG - got a little unhinged in his follow-up video, but I hear there were swatting attempts after the first, so I understand the frustration
- an “infamous” clip of WoW where he allegedly left his teammate to die (but he was clearly following other orders to run)
That’s about it. He didn’t seem like a toxic person who routinely trolls and screws people in games, just kind of your average, run-of-the-mill streamer who’s a little low-key but still out there to create content to get people to watch.
Then again, he could totally be the jerk you make him out to be. It’s really hard to tell what’s a legitimate explanation of things and what’s people looking for a reason to slander him because they don’t like his take on SKG. The couple of articles I read seemed to mostly be the latter, but they also didn’t mention most of what you did here. So idk, I guess I haven’t made up my mind about him, but honestly, I don’t think it’s really worth digging into because I’m not into his content anyway.
From the 5-10 min of his videos
There’s the problem: you won’t get evidence of a murder if you ask the murderer for it.
He streams a lot, so the things he says or does are spread out, especially if you’re only looking for noticeably damning stuff like the rim job related rant against SKG.His confidence and speechcraft makes him very good at steering conversations by lying or deflecting, as long as you trust what he says.
Good places to start looking may be his conversation with Dr. K or Ross’ “The end of Stop Killing Games” on Youtube, both are hosted by level headed people;
I can only assume you haven’t seen the latter, because at the very least it makes it very apparent why people dislike him.Dr. K
This one? He sounds like an awesome dude according to his bio, but I’ve never seen anything by him, I’ll check him out.
And I haven’t seen any conversations between him and Ross. I did see snippets of his original reaction, where he seemed to completely misunderstand the petition, and his follow-up, unhinged rant, but I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on the latter because he had apparently gotten a lot of negative attention (swatting attempts, calls for him to leave the publisher he was at, and random negative remarks on his own games), so I think it’s quite possible his attack on Ross was an emotional reaction to that negative attention, and not level-headed attack on Ross (I’ve seen nothing to suggest Ross is anything other than an awesome guy).
So my opinion on PirateSoftware is relatively neutral. He seems to be on the better end of the streamer range, which isn’t saying much (lots of popular streamers are pretty toxic). I don’t think he’s anyone to look up to, and I wish he’d either have Ross on to discuss the petition or thoroughly read and understand it so he can elucidate his opposition to it, both of which I think would be helpful for his audience to form an actual opinion instead of borrowing his. But maybe he’s on the worse end of that spectrum, I don’t know, since again, I’ve only watched a few minutes of his content and he seemed like your average streamer who exaggerates their credentials and leans into “content,” and I’m not surprised clowning on people is part of that.
I literally had not heard of him a month ago, so I’m missing a ton of context. However, nothing I’ve seen makes me want to watch more of his content (he’s definitely not my style), but nothing makes me think he should be “cancelled” or whatever. Aside from some offensive remarks, I don’t think he’s really hurting anyone.
he’s repeatedly refused to talk to ross;
after the first video pirate software uploaded about SKG, ross left a comment offering clarifications and a chance to talk about the petition and surrounding misconceptions.
ross was refused an answer.
then PS uploaded more videos, and streams, with even more misinformation.
ross ignored it at that point and just continued doing his thing, advocating for the petition, giving updates, etc.
then it looked like the petition would fail, so ross decided there’s nothing left to lose by talking about the drama with PS, and lo and behold, suddenly all youtubers and streamers were suuuper onboard, helped spread the drama, and as a consequence SKG reached its goal… because of the drama.
so a net positive overall, but sad that it’s only because drama sells ads on streaming and video sites…really just a dumb state of affairs…
and to be clear: ross wasn’t at all vindictive in his video. frustrated by the situation, yes, but ultimately it was a very fair and sober response.
highly recommend checking it out; from what you said so far, i think you’ll enjoy the level-headed approach ross took!
You watched 5 minutes of his own verbal diarrhea and formed a full opinion on him?
No, I explicitly said I don’t have a strong opinion on him. I’m not going to knee-jerk follow the hate train just because of a bad take on SKG and a couple of emotional videos where he said some moderately offensive things. Maybe he’s really a bad dude, idk, but I’m not going to jump on the bandwagon.
I have posts being critical of it from over a year ago. I’d assume most people who have criticism don’t leave a comment because it’ll get you massively downvoted and your inbox will be flooded with angry replies.
I have posts being critical of it from over a year ago.
Not on this account…
Maybe an issue with federation? Heres the link https://lemmy.ca/comment/10932620
I can’t see comments there, but I can see there are 16 comments. So yeah, probably.
To be fair, I only checked your posts, not your comments
What are the criticisms? Genuinely curious, have no idea what problems anyone might have with it, other than some quotes from the Ubisoft exec trying to act like implementing user run servers is borderline impossible
People don’t have problems with SKG. They have problems with reading and/or comprehending its goals.
In my experience about half the posts about it (since the start) have some dummy saying it’s unreasonable for devs to support games forever.
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.
Even if mostly useless, not doing anything is even more useless. At least that petition shows support for changes, which may influence some executive to rethink what they think is acceptable from their userbase.
not doing anything is even more useless.
I agree. I also think if you’re not European, you’ve not done anything. There wasn’t even a petition made in the US so Americans haven’t done a single thing, yet are the most vocal about it. That’s the part that confuses me.
It wouldn’t work in the US because the movement doesn’t have lobbyists, and even if it did they would be massively outspent.
Yes, that’s why I didn’t suggest Americans start a petition. A boycott and/or social media campaign is something Americans could do rather than just hope and wait for Europeans to fix everything.
A social media campaign by an American is exactly what SKG is…
The EU initiative was chosen specifically because it actually has a chance to get traction there, and the market is large enough that it can’t just be ignored by publishers.
“Thoughts and prayers!” 😏
