There are two issues I see here.

The first is that WPA’s (Word Prediction Algorithms) don’t have any insight into topics; they just find probable matches for candidate words based on training texts. In fact the text pasted here, by making transparently irrelevant points, demonstrates its lack of ability to offer value.

The second is that the general attitude in most spaces in general is not strictly in favor of either more censorship or less censorship. Rather, the attitude that most people show is a fear that views they believe to be harmful will be promoted, while views they believe to be helpful will be either censored or placed at a comparative disadvantage. It would be natural for Lemmy communities to have the same attitude as most other humans.

It does not appear to be a criminal case.

(2) the prosecution getting the full resources it needs to go hard in 100% of cases, and the defense only getting those resources if the client is wealthy and otherwise “lol good luck sucker.”

What would you think of a rule giving a person charged with a crime a voucher payable to their lawyer, where the amount of the voucher is equal to the amount spent against them times a factor based on their income?

If people with this mindset could be happy with just having their own thing, not polluted with the ideas of others, there would be no conflict. Unfortunately the mindset requires that there can’t be other people in the world doing their own thing.

The judge may well have deserved a life sentence for all the harm he did, so please don’t think I’m defending him, but the reporting on this story has been disappointing.

Conahan was released from prison in 2020 due to Covid-19 and placed on house arrest, which had been scheduled to end in 2026.

So the previous administration decided he didn’t need to be in prison, which is worth explaining. What was the reason? Did they find him to be reformed and worthy of living at home?

Conahan’s sentence was one of about 1,500 the US president commuted – or shortened – on Thursday while also pardoning 39 Americans who had been convicted of non-violent crimes.

Doing the math, he has served a little more than 13 of his 17 year sentence. How many years did Biden commute? Is he being released within days, or did he only have one year taken off the end of his sentence, so that he gets out in 2027 instead of 2028? The article doesn’t say.

In response to Conahan’s pardon

Guardian, you just said that it was a commutation, not a pardon. How can you get it wrong in the very next sentence??? The most basic standards of accuracy would demand that you not contradict yourself so quickly.

And if the media wants this to be a scandal, they need to investigate the reason for the commutation. Did Conahan make contributions to Biden’s campaign? It would be easy for a newspaper to find out one way or the other. Or was he asked to pay a cash bribe for a reduced sentence? Or did he spend the last 13 years volunteering and living a life that we’d admire if it wasn’t for the things he’d done before? Or does he have a terminal illness and won’t live past March? Or is he a close friend of a top official? We don’t know… because the media wants to publish the story without first doing their job.

I don’t think it’s fair to blame the company. The employees’ wages went up by 500%^[1], so prices also had to go up by 500%.