Three years ago, lawyer Jordan van den Berg was an obscure TikTok creator who made videos that mocked real estate agents.

But today the 28-year-old is one of the most high-profile activists in Australia.

Posting under the moniker Purple Pingers, Mr van den Berg has been taking on the nation’s housing crisis by highlighting shocking renting conditions, poor behaviour from landlords, and what he calls government failures.

It is his vigilante-style approach - which includes helping people find vacant homes to squat in, and exposing bad rentals in a public database - that has won over a legion of fans.

Some have dubbed him the Robin Hood of renters.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
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    6 months ago

    Because there are already communities for American news (News) and American politics (Politics), other communities were needed to give non-US centric news room to breathe.

    The last thing anyone wants is another community that’s Donald Trump and Elon Musk top to bottom.

    • Mango@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      There are already communities for news for literally every country. Why is America left out with North Korea to be excluded?

      • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
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        6 months ago

        America isn’t left out. “News” is exclusively US News. “Politics” is exclusively US Politics.

        • Mango@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Ever heard the arguments against segregation? America goes on an island while world news is just “everyone but America”?

          How about everyone gets their own news community and world news is whatever affects more than one country rather than whatever happens in a not-America country?

            • Mango@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              And this one here is for haters to specifically exclude a specific group.

          • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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            6 months ago

            Ever heard the arguments against segregation?

            Right? Why should I be subbed to a different community to get my latest sports news? Or to hear what’s happening in Helldivers? That’s news too! Segregation is bad!

            It’s all on Lemmy dude. People can freely access any Lemmy community and add it to their feed to access that news. You’re just complaining you can’t force something on them that they aren’t interested in (because if they were they’d already be subbed to the appropriate communities).