I appreciate your message at the end :) One of the things I appreciate about lemmy is the conversations are not assumed adversarial like they are on most socials.

I see what you’re saying, and I agree microtransactions deserve to burn in hell. I also realize that people have an issue with realizing an addiction, even their own, and even when they’re “aware” of it. I don’t want to point the finger at other larger societal issues as a default strategy, but we do have hard evidence from other countries where these issues get caught earlier because of public campaigns combating the stigma around such problems in tandem with the social safety net required to truly fix them.

I don’t think gambling is good, I’m not even fully convinced that the csgo cases should persist, and my intent is not to convince you they should. My stance is purely philosophical/logical in the sense that limitations should not be placed on the public with the sole justification of protecting a subset, especially children, since it is the parents’ entire role as guardian to protect them from the hardships in life. I’m sure I’m ignoring the nuance in my stance by saying that, but the general idea is there; something being bad for some people should not be the only reason nobody can have it, and that goes for drugs, art, communication, bed times, expression, etc. I know they’re problems worth protecting the affected subsets from, but legislative blanket bans are not the correct tool.

Glad to hear all is well, by the way. Addiction is a hell of a disease and gambling especially can have quite the blast radius. I hope you don’t see me as an enemy

It’s good you’re consistent in your beliefs.

I don’t believe things should be illegal only because a subset of the population cannot handle themselves. I’m sorry to hear about what happened to your brother, that really sucks and I’ve seen it first hand; I know it’s devastating and I’ve felt the anger towards the beneficiary of such products. It’s a thin line to walk, though, because what happens to the rest of the population that has no issue with it? I’ve found myself addicted to weed before, and it’s had a meaningful impact on my life going so far as to dropping out of school because I wouldn’t allow myself to drive to class while high and I had bad priorities. That, though, is not grounds for everyone else that can handle themselves responsibly to be prohibited from that. With Pokemon cards I see the same problem, I don’t think irresponsible parents are sufficient grounds for regulating what the rest of the public can and cannot do. It is the exact rationale used to require age verifications online, in the OS, and a growing number of other places. In my other comment on this thread I talk about it a bit more.

TL;DR, I empathize with you and your brother. Having said that, the weaknesses of a few should not dictate the liberties of the whole. A much better and proven effective method would be social measures like public, free, and well-researched rehab and safety nets to prevent the effects of gambling addictions from ravaging the lives of those affected and their loved ones.

Yeah I’m getting pretty tired of the “everyone must pay the price to protect kids”

Why are kids able to access adult sites without ID? Everyone must prove they’re an adult online to read books with adult themes. Why are kids able to use installed applications that could have some forbidden social features? Everyone must prove their age to their operating system to use an electronic device. Why are kids able to access alcohol at their homes? Adults should have to keep their legally purchased alcohol at government approved holding facilities, where they may take a drink after proving their age. Why are kids allowed to stay out after curfew? Everyone must wear a shirt with their name, address, and birthdate printed after 11pm on week nights.

This is a new trend in law and we need to stop getting tricked into allowing it. It is the parent’s responsibility to be aware of what their child is doing and either allow or prevent it. I don’t want parents spying on their kids and think there’s an element of trust for sure, but I’d much rather have the parents spying on kids than the government and their contractors spying on EVERYONE. It’s ridiculous and infringes on rights established through rigid SCOTUS precedent including Stanley V. Georgia, and NAACP V. Alabama.

We’re a bunch of pansies now that lick the boot with ID verifications online in red states and OS-level requirements in the blue ones. The internet and all of its offspring are not meant for children’s unsupervised use, but it isn’t the public’s responsibility to bear the burden.

You drew a really strong link between what EA did and what Valve does, and that gives me the idea that you build your stance on that. EA lootboxes gave you nothing of monetary value, whereas that’s objectively untrue with valve.

You can say that the items are virtual so they’re not really valuable, but you can say the same thing about baseball cards in a sense; they provide no tangible value, only monetary value from sentiment, which is either real and applies to virtual items equally, or it isn’t in which collectable cards are in the same camp as weapon skins.

EA’s lootboxes gave items that could not be transferred, that’s also different from csgo boxes.

EA’s lootboxes locked core gameplay content behind them, and went so far as to reduce the playtime of people without them because the contents of the boxes were so overpowered making them a must have. I don’t recall ever having a noticeably worse experience playing CS because I didn’t have a skin, and I’m not already $60 in on the game y’know?

I agree that kids should not be able to buy cases unsupervised, and parents should be aware that this exists. But I also think that about pokemon and baseball and MTG cards as well, for the exact same reason.

I know I’ve done a lot of writing, so to summarize I’m not convinced by your logic. I believe CS cases are much closer to opening a pack of cards than you’re giving them credit for, and I think they’re an entirely different product than EA’s infamous lootboxes for a number of reasons.

The big short Wake up dead man Knives out Glass onion 2x, but close enough Lot’s of Disney movies like cars, monsters inc, etc. Inside man War dogs Definitely others

I saw this and sound “holy shit” aloud. If this sketchy source is legit, this is probably pretty big. The stock market has been wobbly the last few days.

Part of their next gen release, so probably 1 year after their most recent refresh cycle

Yeah cause when I instinctively click the Microsoft learn link below the Azure error it takes me to copilot instead of documentation.

Those people are not told anything otherwise and have no convenient access to alternative view points or reason to seek them out. There’s a non-zero chance they’d gain an understanding and legitimately risk being outed from the social groups they’ve known their whole life. Visit small town southern USA and you’ll see what I mean. Many republicans are, very sweet people that truly mean well. They’re involved in their community and probably don’t even have cable; they just receive local news over the air. This is probably part of the issue You’re not going to see clips of these people, though, you’ll only the see the occasional racist from a modern sundown town that will get a rise out of you, just like they only see that Pretti was armed to the teeth with malicious intent. Stuff like that always gets the most attention, even in the fediverse.

I’m not sure what the fix is, but demonizing these people that are unknowingly the voting engine enabling this when they truly believe they’re in the right will only exacerbate the issue IMO. They’re victims of the same system we are, they’re just steering the ship in the direction they think is right instead of rowing.

I think this song serves to pull the blindfold down a bit and place blame on the government committing the violence in a way that doesn’t vilify the ordinary people that were fooled by a professional fraud. It may be the only way people some people get an outside perspective without active effort, and at a community level instead of an individual level. This is important in reducing the social risk.

Those both require some level of awareness. A sing literally named after modern events is pretty clear cut imo. The dumbest kid I knew in HS could figure it out

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I am not your lawyer and this is not legal advice for you or anyone who reads this.

Nextcloud encrypts data e2e, so your point there is misguided and not really relevant. You can’t be compelled to provide a password/decryption key as long as it doesn’t exist as physical evidence. This is why lawyers advise clients to use a PIN instead of face ID or fingerprints; biometrics, like all physical evidence, can be subpoenad.

Self hosting services like matrix or email is a bad idea if you don’t really understand what you’re doing, like many other things. If you keep you stuff updated and are intelligent in how you structure your network there’s not really anymore risk here than paying someone else to host it. If you keep you stack simple and follow best practices, code and configurations written by industry experts do most of the heavy lifting.