this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2026
205 points (96.8% liked)

Europe

10008 readers
666 users here now

News and information from Europe 🇪🇺

(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)

Rules (2024-08-30)

  1. This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
  2. No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
  3. Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
  4. No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism. We follow German law; don't question the statehood of Israel.
  5. Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
  6. If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
  7. Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in other communities.
  8. Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
  9. No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)
  10. Always provide context with posts: Don't post uncontextualized images or videos, and don't start discussions without giving some context first.

(This list may get expanded as necessary.)

Posts that link to the following sources will be removed

Unless they're the only sources, please also avoid The Sun, Daily Mail, any "thinktank" type organization, and non-Lemmy social media (incl. Substack). Don't link to Twitter directly, instead use xcancel.com. For Reddit, use old:reddit:com

(Lists may get expanded as necessary.)

Ban lengths, etc.

We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.

If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 7 or 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.

If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the primary mod account @EuroMod@feddit.org

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Archive link: https://archive.ph/4omFz

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] killingspark@feddit.org 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Just because I am not totally conviced you are in fact a troll I just want to explain to you why I don't find what you are saying very convincing.

The original top comment of this thread said:

Proud of extorting the whole world for centuries for our wealth? No, thank you

You then went ahead and said this:

If you think that what people living here 500 years ago did is a reason for us to feel bad, then you need therapy.

This showed to me, that you think extortion of wealth from all over the world is a thing we stopped 500 years ago. This is wrong on a number of levels, not the least is, that the original colonial age is decidedly less than 500 years ago. The USA is just close to 250 years old.

In response to that honestly already troll-like twisting of reality I just said:

If you think we have stopped extracting wealth from other countries you are the insane one

You then acknowledged that we didn't in fact stop 500 years ago (rendering you first comment completely invalid) but then went ahead and tried to excuse that with this:

Compare us to any other continent or country and not some ideal, imagined perfection. The UAE, China, Russia, the USA…

If you think we’re bad and exploit people, I suppose we should replicate the approach of one of those countries, right? Then we will stop exploitation, wars, everything bad in general and become better people! Is that what you believe?

Never did I mention any of these countries, never did I claim that anyone did a better or worse job. I just maintained that we did not stop extorting money from other countries to benefit our own. Which I expressed thusly:

If your whole argument is “we cant be bad people because look at these even worse people” then I have nothing more to say to you. There will always be someone more stinky than you. Doesn’t mean you’re clean.

You then went ahead with a baffling try to convince me with a list of paywalled financial times arcticles that for some reason only pertain to anti-climate-change measures. Giving you the benefit of the doubt one could interpret this as connecting the fight against climate change with the unjust effects it has on the global south that is typically a target for our extortionism. But that would really need a mention from you. The way you put this it is way too removed to support your claim of us "doing better" with extorting money from other countries for out benefit. Again, you also list articles showing how other counties are doing bad shit.

I'm not even going to explain to you, that everyone can collect 7 positive and 4 negative articles about any country. Trying to paint a picture like this is childish at best. Convincing: not so much.

Anyways, thanks for indulging me in a lesson on how to earlier detect bullshit and disengage.

[–] MacAnus@sh.itjust.works 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Thanks for this, I missed their comments before deletion.

Good on you for your thinking capacity as well, that seems to be getting kinda rare...
Let's hope and assume it's a "empty vessels make the most noise" type of situation.

[–] killingspark@feddit.org 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Tbh after the comment with the ft links I was 50/50 on this just being an AI bot. I am very susceptible to getting sealioned this way

[–] MacAnus@sh.itjust.works 0 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Didn't know sealioning was even a thing until now... This may explain a few interactions I had on Lemmy, I'm also very susceptible to that stuff

[–] killingspark@feddit.org 2 points 9 hours ago

A lot of people are and it's a growing disease in online communities. It's doubly bad because firstly it drains energy and it makes engaging with actually well intentioned but disagreeing people a lot harder because you are always expecting to just waste your energy