Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats

Bubble181

Bubble181

GasBandit said:
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If or when democrats finally figure out the difference between The Economy and the economy, boy will that be a rough awakening and a game changer.
Republicans are honest in a sense:let everyone pull themselves up by the silver spoon in their mouth (sorry for the mixed metaphor). Democrats genuinely seem to think making the economy grow will benefit everyone in the long run... Which essentially could down to trickle down economics, but they will vehemently oppose that.
The Democrats are approximately a billion times better than the Republicans, but they're still mostly awful.

In the other hand, "any form of financial assistance from their parents" means all the Trump kids would be included too, unless you think they aren't helped along by daddy's fortune.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
You know, I don't understand the whole "Ban TikTok" thing. The reasons I've heard were all easily rebutted and boil down to the main arguments of why JUST TikTok?

  • It's a Chinese owned company. Okay? So many of America's companies are foreign owned. Are we going after them, too?
  • It steals data. Yeah, so does Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and Reddit and...
  • It is harmful to kids. Great. So what are we doing about Snapchat or Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or...
  • The parent company, ByteDance, pays no taxes. Yeah that's a problem. Now do Tesla or Apple or Facebook or Amazon or...
It just seems so disingenuous to say because we don't like the parent company or because the platform is so large, etc that we're banning it if the parent company doesn't sell it. I just don't quite get it. Sure, do something about these troublesome issues, but do so in a fair and equitable way.
 
Frank

Frank



Might be another reason for the sudden and speedy work by congress.

Also, Bobby Kotick, formerly the Satan of Activision, has been scrounging up investors to buy Tiktok. He already was before this whole shebang went down. Seems planned.

Most of congress has vast stocks in tech companies too. Can't enrich yourselves if you aren't forcing corporate money directly into your pockets.
 
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blotsfan

blotsfan

Frank said:
Also, Bobby Kotick, formerly the Satan of Activision, has been scrounging up investors to buy Tiktok. He already was before this whole shebang went down. Seems planned.
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I mean they’ve been talking about doing this for a long time. I’m pretty sure Trump brought it up when he was president. It’s not surprising some rich (AMERICAN) assholes had a contingency ready to go.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

It's like this:

- Dems want to ban it because it's Chinese owned and they have unstated concerns (that I'd REALLY like to hear) about China's influence on the platform. Which... fair, the Chinese government has influence on the platform and does sketchy shit all the time.
- Republicans are using this as a partisan issue because they want young people on their side for SOMETHING and think people will just vote to keep TikTok going instead of just... going to Youtube or something.
- Republicans also want to own it so they have more control over the platform for disinformation uses, but that's kind of just a cherry on top. They already run massive ad campaigns on the platform.

This is also why WhatsApp isn't really a thing in the US. China has significant interest and control over the platform... but it's also got integrated banking and allows free transfers between people on the platform, so the international banks don't want it taking off here.
 
Frank

Frank

Sounds like Bytedance won't divest since it's less profitable in the longterm to sell to the US than it is to just cut off the US.

If that happens and Gen Z loses it's social media, they're going to blame Biden.
 
MindDetective

MindDetective

I have heard TikTok takes FAR more data on you than Facebook and X and the others...like an unreasonable amount. This was back before the talks of banning it that I heard this and chose to never use the app as a result. I haven't followed up in the last two or three years on that claim, though.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Frank said:
Jason Pargin, normally a comedy/sci-fi writer (ex-Cracked EIC and writer of John Dies at the End for example), has a pretty good article on how the isolationism of mass media (and conspiracy shit) is a feature.

jasonpargin.substack.com

Is Modern Mass Media A Mind Prison?

maybe
jasonpargin.substack.com jasonpargin.substack.com
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I haven't read the full article yet, but it's been hard not to notice the same thing happening everywhere else over the last 30+ years. Internet access consolidated down to a mere handful of ISPs, entertainment consolidated to a mere handful of studios, there are only two GPUs worth getting (so far, we'll see what Intel does), two CPU makers, two credit card processors, etc. Everything is becoming a prison of either vendor lock-in or else only two "real" alternatives (e.g., Democrat/Republican), and whatever rules exist to regulate competition (Fairness doctrine, antitrust legislation, etc) keep getting revised/changed/gutted in whichever direction seems to encourage the most polarization. I assume this happens because short-sighted people think of this as "good for business" but can't see that this also further divides and isolates discourse.

In other, probably completely UNrelated news:
arstechnica.com

“Really bad timing”: Meta is killing misinformation analysis tool on August 14

Replacement tool will no longer allow access for journalists, public.
arstechnica.com arstechnica.com
CrowdTangle has been used by researchers, reporters, and government officials to identify trends about conspiracies and other forms of misinformation spreading through Facebook. Meta is going to replace CrowdTangle with a technology currently under development called Meta Content Library, but it will only be available to academic and nonprofit researchers.
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--Patrick
 
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Bubble181

Bubble181

GasBandit said:
www.businessinsider.com

San Antonio experimented with giving people $5,108, no strings attached. They spent it on housing and school supplies for their kids.

San Antonio is one of several US cities that has piloted basic-income programs to assist low-income residents with housing and combat poverty rates.
www.businessinsider.com www.businessinsider.com
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"you can't watch what you want when you want, but you get free money and housing"

... These are supposed to be the guys against communism and big government and in favor of individual freedom right? Just checking.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Bubble181 said:
"you can't watch what you want when you want, but you get free money and housing"

... These are supposed to be the guys against communism and big government and in favor of individual freedom right? Just checking.
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Most of Texas' big cities (Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Houston, Lubbock, El Paso.... not so much Fort Worth, Amarillo or Corpus Christi) are actually pretty darn blue. It's all the cow pastures voting red, and yes, their state legislators are howling. And 3 other states are so terrified they've passed bans on GBI. Which feels odd to type because GBI is generally the abbreviation of my faction in space games (Gas Bandit Industries) :p
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
I really hate how skepticism about conspiracy theories and Qanon type stuff is being weaponized by the alt-right. "Oh, you think that the police are lying about Nex Benedict's death? That's just some Q level conspiracy shit. I though you lefties said conspiracy theories were bad?!"

Like, holy shit dude, it's not a conspiracy theory that the government of Oklahoma hates trans people. They've openly said that. The police work for the government, and have a long history of lying about the deaths of minorities. It is not a theory that the police have lied about the deaths of minorities. It is proven fact.

Also, it's not a "conspiracy theory" to speculate that Boeing killed a whistleblower. There's a fucking LONG history of companies killing whistleblowers. Maybe Boeing killed the whistleblower, maybe they just drove him to suicide, but it's not far fetched to think a company had someone killed. Especially when a friend of said whistleblower recounted that his friend was fearful of being killed by Boeing.
 
Frank

Frank

GasBandit said:
www.businessinsider.com

San Antonio experimented with giving people $5,108, no strings attached. They spent it on housing and school supplies for their kids.

San Antonio is one of several US cities that has piloted basic-income programs to assist low-income residents with housing and combat poverty rates.
www.businessinsider.com www.businessinsider.com
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UBI has been piloted like 11000 times and is so God damned successful that if it were medical trials it would be considered unethical to withhold treatment from the control groups. Not only do people on UBI end up working more than the control group, they almost all end up with higher paying jobs too. It's incredible what having some agency in your life achieves.

How many more times will it be 'tested' found to be completely beneficial to the people, to the tax burden on society and to the fucking economy and then dropped, only for more 'piloting' to be done.
 
Celt Z

Celt Z

figmentPez said:
It was never fully banned in the United States, but it was heavily regulated... Though Trump's presidency changed that. There was a huge argument on the forum about it. One of the really heated debates that eventually drove Steinman off the forum.
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I don't remember that being about asbestos, thought I vaguely remember the heated argument, but I believe you.
 
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