this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2025
1373 points (98.8% liked)

Political Memes

9817 readers
2292 users here now

Welcome to politcal memes!

These are our rules:

Be civilJokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.

No misinformationDon’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.

Posts should be memesRandom pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.

No bots, spam or self-promotionFollow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.

No AI generated content.Content posted must not be created by AI with the intent to mimic the style of existing images

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Lack of text or a link to (archived) source creates a usability issue: we can't quote the text without pointless bullshit like retyping it or OCR.

Other issues when image lacks text alternative such as link

  • usability: can't reflow text to varied screen sizes or vary presentation (size, contrast) or modality (audio, braille), we can't find by text content
  • accessibility: some users can't read this due to misleading alt text, users can't adapt the text for dyslexia or vision impairments, systems can't read the text to them or send it to braille devices
  • searchability: the "text" isn't indexable by search engine in a meaningful way
  • fault tolerance: no text fallback if image breaks.

Contrary to age & humble appearance, text is an advanced technology that provides all these capabilities absent from images.

Text is useful.


As I wrote in a deeper comment, the post mistakes the concept of & philosophy behind inalienable rights with legal rights.

The Enlightenment Era thinkers who developed these ideas were entirely familiar with governments legally oppressing their people. The most common governments at the time were absolute monarchies justified by divine right.

To challenge unjust governments, they worked on a more rational definition for legitimate authority. They settled on the idea that governments exist for the people & have legitimate authority only when they protect the inalienable liberties & rights of all people. When a government lacks legitimacy, the people have a right to alter it to or replace it with a legitimate one.

So, while a government can suppress inalienable rights, no government can legitimately (ie, should) do so: that would be immoral (and a violation of natural law they claimed). It's moral & political philosophy concerning legitimacy.

Contrary to the post, people do have inalienable/universal/inherent rights: those inform us whether a government is legitimate. It's still up to the people to obtain legitimate government.