redwattlebird

You can still think he's grossly incompetent without dismissing him as a threat. I don't care about his IQ since he's never done any tests to prove anything; his actions alone tell me that he's a dangerous moron.

He's not playing 4D chess here. His goals are to increase control, enrich himself and punish opposition. He's done this before with Xitter and Tesla. There is literally a pattern.

How about the government and the different departments move away from big corporations like Microsoft and ditch Windows, Office, Teams etc and go for open source programs?

We're deeply embedded, yes, but we'd be able to drop them just like that if we really tried. We're just too happy with the status quo to do anything about it.

Exactly. In every crisis, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Out of the last several financial crises, who's come out for the better? All I see is the widening of the gap between rich and poor.

Makes me wonder about the rhetoric against violence and how 'we need to be above that'. Where has that message come from?

Surely the fact that he's 19 and a senior advisor in a state department is more damning than his lineage? And that Trump is very obviously friendly with Putin?

I think this familial connection is just a storm in a teacup which is sitting inside a much larger storm.

I also have family in the US, most of whom voted for the Republican party and, therefore, Trump. Their argument was that the Democrats tax too much. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Considering the current context of the political climate in America, if you didn't want to associate yourself with Nazis you would steer clear of anything that might associate you with being a Nazi. Especially while on a public podium.

I've been playing Love and Deepspace but I've taken a few days off because I'm finding the latest event and content extremely boring, and off putting. We had such a great start to the year too with the spicy banners and lunar new year events.

Perhaps dismantling the social media oligarchy by ensuring that companies cannot expand to sizes where they can influence policies? I'm open to ideas. Social media has become a huge psyop tool.

Before the rise of corporate social media, yes. It was easy to speak with people who had different opinions on things because of their life experience.

Now, absolutely not because everyone is in some way connected to a stream of misinformation that is social media, which dictates the news cycle and determines what the talking points are for the day. But if society weaned itself off this social media drug, there is a better chance for improvement. At the very least, rage bait would be a lot less effective.

Getting back to what the discussion is though: you don't want censorship of certain ideologies because you believe that's a form of control that society doesn't need. You want a 'free' flow of information to allow the user to decide for themselves.

But that information isn't free flow. It's controlled by corporate interests. And removing fascist content and ideology on Tiktok and X from the general uninformed public? Hell yeah. If they want to look it up, they can read it in a history book and see what has actually happened under fascist regimes, then decide for themselves if they want that.

That's was the original intent of social media but it doesn't function that way now. It's also filled with bots and you've got no idea if you're actually talking to a human being. The only way to be sure is to touch grass so you're actually outside the sphere of influence of misinformation and those that control the algorithm.

Let's go back to the topic at hand, which is whether or not we should remove fascist content from social media like Tiktok and X. These platforms are not a gateway to that library you linked to and you have to go out of your way, i.e. purposely search for it, to access it. Tiktok and X are full of sound bites that do more harm than good; posts with links to your library, for example, would not get the same exposure as, say, a sound bite promoting fascism. Case in point: the article.

The generation that has grown up with 24/7 access to the Internet have no idea what it feels like to not have information streaming into your brain everywhere you look. When information is fed and available to you 24/7, you can't learn to tell the difference between what's bullshit and what's not because the 24/7 stream is so overwhelming, all you have left is the will to scroll for sound bites. The only way to counter that is to step out of that stream and slow down the incoming information so you can process it and critically analyse it. Our brains can only process a maximum amount of information that is far below what an algorithm can do.

And that library link, what are you reading on there right now? Are you researching talking points against fascism? Are you looking at the history of previous fascist regimes and how they came to be?

And social media is not a library. Tiktok and X is not a library. It's a collection of thoughts of humanity and bots controlled by an algorithm where it's purpose is to manipulate you to consume. The Internet is not a library but it can give you access to libraries. The Internet is also now colonised for the purpose of manipulating people to consume.

Right now, we are not debating. You're telling me your opinion and I'm telling you mine. You want to be informed? Touch grass. Engage in human communication. Go. To. A. Library.

My counterpoint to that would be that social media is a psychological drug with negative effects and if people want to be informed, they should go to a library and read.