kava @ kava @lemmy.world

Posts

0

Comments

1,114

Joined

2 yr. ago

First. You can’t know if it will substantially change under new management. That’s speculation

you would fundamental shift the power structure of the company. in one instance, it's a company that ultimately answers to Chinese investors and the CCP.

in the other, it would answer to American executives and the US government.

the incentive structures are wildly different between these two. for example, if it's an American company and the NSA comes knocking asking for data... they are under much more pressure to quietly bend over.

i think it's absurd to say the company wouldn't change. if the company wouldn't change, they wouldn't be forcing ByteDance to sell in the first place. they are forcing the sell because they need TikTok to change

Third. They can and have already been shown to subtly manipulate the algorithm to artificially elivate China’s image

yeah, they want to be able to subtly manipulate the algorithm to show pro-US propaganda instead.

forget about free speech and rights to association and all that, i guess

well, two things can be true. he could have committed serious crimes and it could be a case of the DOJ being used a political weapon.

realistically most people who do the things Hunter Biden did get away with it just fine. It's perfectly fine to be a criminal when you are part of that group. so if he weren't Biden's son, he would be fine (although he also probably wouldn't be receiving millions of dollars from Russian convicted criminals).

honestly, I think it's one of the final nails in the coffin of our democracy.

i think a lot of people need to start paying attention to what happens in Brazil. I've been seeing so many parallels. We had Jan 6th, they had their own Jan 6th a year later.. except a more intense version

A few years back, the president conspired with the justice department to try and put the opposition candidate in jail. the thing is - the opposition candidate was corrupt. but the whole trial was orchestrated not to seek justice, but to put the guy in jail so they would win the election.

the trump-like candidate in Brazil got attacked in a crowd. helped him win an election. Trump got shot in the ear, helped him win an election. etc

so many parallels

we're seeing similar weaponization of the justice system here

couple of things

1. I'm assuming you mean Trump and as of now he is not the president
2. Once Trump becomes president after Jan 20th, he will be just as much my POTUS as he will be your POTUS, assuming you live in the US
3. I think you are trying to make the insinuation that somehow because I answered the question asked by OP, I am a Trumper

I spent the majority of my life as an illegal immigrant in the US. I didn't become a citizen until well into my adulthood. I was brought here illegally at a young age

do you really think I am a Trumper? that I'm a red hat wearing Maga bible thumper? i would be a traitor to my own kind- being damned to spend eternity in the lowest level of hell freezing right next to Marco Rubio and Judas

come on man stop drinking the koolaid it's OK to admit Biden's son is a criminal.

Let's see. Biden was charged with and pleaded guilty to 3 felony counts. One count of tax evasion and two counts of filing false returns. And then 3 misdemeanor counts of willful failure to pay taxes

Everyone's favorite actor Wesley Snipes got charged and convicted of 3 misdemeanor counts of willful failure to pay taxes. significantly less than Biden was charged with.

he got sentenced to 36 months and served 28 months

this guy: https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/former-baltimore-police-commissioner-darryl-de-sousa-sentenced-federal-prison-failing

baltimore police commissioner served 10 months along with community service and probation. he got 3 counts of willful failure to pay taxes

so what is the typical? it really depends. there's a lot of nuance to it. but Biden is/was facing some serious serious charges. 3+ years of prison would probably be the minimum expected

the police commissioner tried to hide about $60k of taxes from the government

Biden tried to hide $1.4M

so yeah, I'd be really grateful to dad if I were him

such a silly semantic statement

TikTok exists in its current manifestation because it is managed by ByteDance

If you sold TikTok to an American company it would immediately change into a different entity.

If we're gonna play word games I'd call it a "anti-foreign social media ban"

now i'll ask a question

are they banning it because it's competition for our social media companies? so is this an economic anti-china policy designed to protect american company interests?

or are they banning it because right now TikTok is one of the larger social media platforms and it's the only one that doesn't have to bow down to the DOJ or DOD? i don't think it's a coincidence they're banning the platform with some of the loudest leftist anti-government voices

I don't buy the national security angle one bit. It's like pretending the PATRIOT Act was to protect kids. It's a veneer. Scratch off the surface and you realize if China wanted data on Americans, they can just buy it legally and cheaply from American data brokers

yeah i just try not to think about it. I'm glad I was in the myspace generation during my teenage years. so I was actually able to just delete my myspace later on as an adult

i feel worse for the kids growing up today. they don't fully understand the implications of what they are posting online. anything and everything is being recorded forever. my generation got a chance to be a stupid kid and have it be forgotten. today's kids don't get that opportunity

the best you can do, though, is just stop posting potentially damaging things online. you can't change what you already posted. and 999 times out of a thousand, it's not gonna hurt you.

i understand the overwhelmed feeling though

the topic of this thread is Biden pardoning his son, who was guilty of serious financial crimes.

you're the one being selective in your outrage, not me. i disapprove of all these guys.

the thing with Biden though, is that the DNC frames themselves as the good guys. You know, Trump is a corrupt criminal, bla bla bla.

So when Trump does, it isn't really a surprise. It's what you come to expect from someone like him. I'm not approving of Trump's pardons because I'm mentioning Biden's

The issue is that Biden promised various times that he would not pardon his son. But now that he has nothing left to lose (his career is over, and probably the country is doomed to fascism anyways) so fuck it. Integrity is for schmucks anyway, right? i guess the moral of the story is make sure you have a powerful dad

personally I'm not even outraged about it. I'm glad he did it so that it's more clear to everyday Americans that they're all a bunch of crooks

there were 6 arrests for social media crimes, including the one for the woman who actually kicked off the protests by sharing a fake name about the kid who attacked the concert

but that's beyond the point. let's look at the comment for Kay, one that you mentioned, that caught a sentence of 38 months

"Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care… If that makes me racist, so be it"

that's the portion that says he "called for hotels to be set alight"

see, to my interpretation he was saying "i would not care if they set fire to the hotels". in the US, this would be very strongly covered under free speech. why? because it's an opinion. in the US you can say "I believe that [xyz] should happen" and that is a belief. an opinion- something that cannot be censored. in the UK, not so much. but even in the US, you could be held legally responsible in some way depending on the interpretation of the law

and likewise, the platform hosting that controversial speech can face legal consequences. from serious fines to potentially even criminal charges depending on the enthusiasm of the government. (governments that are getting progressively more authoritarian and trigger-happy the world over)

the point I was trying to convey is that a website like this instance of Lemmy or any other must follow rules in order to stay out of legal hot water. how can you fault them for that?

if you believe this is not the correct thing to do, then you can pay money to host a website and then you can put your ass in front of the ringer to handle potential legal consequences for not doing your part to stop it. i don't fault the mods in the slightest.

just for reference though, let's compare and contrast the comment that got Kay arrested and put in jail and then some comments in this thread

a lot of comments in this thread are being deleted, let me see if i can catch some before they are deleted

"This bit of news does not bother me at all"

"I mean, I thought we were gonna eat the rich, but this will do."

"this will probably lead to the increased militarisation [sic] of ceo security teams. People can start going after their family"

using the same level of scrutiny, each one of these comments could justify a sentence in the ballpark of 38 months like what happened with Kay

this is what i mean. the internet today is changing and social media admins need to change with the times or the hammer of the law can screw them. users here spamming about mod abuse do not fully understand

mostly egalitarian troupe hominids

"mostly" is pulling a lot of weight in that statement, eh?

sure, we took care of the elderly and others in the tribe. packs of wild dogs and monkeys have been seen to do that as well. share food, etc. but if our early tribes are anything like what we see in primates, and it almost certainly was, the distribution of power was not equal.

there are monkeys with differing levels. baboons have a much stricter hierarchy than bonobos, but the structure is still there

The Haudenosaunee / Iroquois Confederacy is a good example of how to approach such a problem

I do not claim it is impossible, although I also do not believe that the exceptions disprove the rule. My favorite example personally is the brief anarchist experiment during the Spanish Civil War. The anarchists managed to at least for a short period of time replicate what I believe would be the ideal society.

the issue is that this type of society simply loses to other more authoritarian ones in a sort of Darwinist playing field. the vanguard party commies beat the anarchists and then the nationalists beat the communists. bye bye egalitarian power structure

Calling the skill and ambition distribution a pyramid is really an artifact of history, not biology

let's say i am a foot taller than you and weigh 100 pounds more. we have just finished a hunt and we are distributing the spoils. let's say I take double your portion. you speak up "hey I deserve an equal amount" and then I simply look at you and say "no"

what are you gonna do? my genetic makeup (along with external factors of course, like my mother's nutrition while i was in the womb) caused me to have more physical power than you. you have no choice but to bow your head and take what you get.

that doesn't mean it's impossible, for example, to create alliances with others in the tribe and end up with a "social victory" and we actually see these types of behaviors in chimps. but I think that in itself is just another form of power. social intelligence, political and diplomatic maneuvering is a function of intelligence which like physical strength is a makeup genetic (as well as external, like before)

so you may be physically weaker, but mentally stronger. but in the end, power is power.

the older I get, the more I realize how deeply ingrained this structure is in our societies. I wish it weren't, but it really is. the only way around it, I think, would require a radical restructuring of our society and would necessarily have to be just as dystopian as the opposite extreme

thin line. many people got sent to jail in England for celebrating too enthusiastically online during the anti-immigrant riots. the internet today isn't the same as the internet 15 years ago

the rules aren't because the mods care very much. the rules are so than the website doesn't get taken down and/or the owners/maintainers aren't subject to serious legal penalties

because of a few things

a) when you start a game of monopoly, everybody is equal. by the end of the game, wealth (think of wealth as an analog to power) snowballs and only one or two people will have all the resources.

when you start a communist government, it's not a fresh game of monopoly. it's a continuation of the previous game. and the vast majority of people are joining in after the wealth has been accumulated. therefore, power remains in the hand of the powerful

b) there is a large variance in human capabilities. to be frank, the vast majority of people are sheep. their world view is narrow and motivation stunted. they don't really care very much about things outside of their life and they don't want to learn, grow, etc. there isn't anything wrong with that, and there's sort of a whole religion based on this

but some people are very talented, ambitious, and greedy. these people will end up at higher positions, no matter your form of government. humans tend to naturally distribute ourselves in hierarchies. aka pyramids

this goes all the way back to our primate roots. look at chimps where the male leader of the pack has dibs on which female monkey he wants to mate with. the weaker monkeys have to bow their head and take what they can get.

tldr: hierarchy and pyramids are in the very fabric of human existence. doesn't matter what form of government or economic system you pick. pyramid will develop somehow, someway

the safest perspective to have is this -

every single thing you send online is going to be there forever. "the cloud" is someone's server and constitutes online. even end to end encryption isn't necessarily going to save you.

for example iCloud backup is encrypted. but Apple in the past has kept a copy of your encryption key on your iCloud. why? because consumers who choose to encrypt and lose their passwords are gonna freak out when all their data is effectively gone forever.

so when FBI comes a'knocking to Apple with a subpoena.. once they get access to that encryption key it doesn't matter if you have the strongest encryption in the world

my advice

never ever ever write something online that you do not want everybody in the world seeing.

to put on my tin foil hat, i believe government probably has access to methods that break modern encryptions. in theory with quantum computers it shouldn't be difficult

sad story. it's emblematic of a mentality that is all too common in "ivory tower" positions

whether you work for a university or a news agency or a government organizations, etc. everyone ends up self censoring because they realize that rocking the boat is bad for your personal interests. after working so hard to get into this little elite club, you don't want to jeopardize your position. your identity and sense of self worth is tied up with it

the few that end up trying get quickly chewed up and spit out by the whole.

it's essentially group think and self censorship. too bad this guy killed himself instead of trying to move forward in his life with another avenue.

why the whataboutism? why the compulsive need to downplay the severity of this?

yes, trump is a criminal too. and he has pardoned criminals and will likely pardon more criminals.

Robert Hunter Biden (Hunter Biden) pleaded guilty in federal court in Los Angeles this afternoon to all counts in a nine-count indictment, including three felony tax offenses and six misdemeanor tax offenses. There was no plea agreement.

He pled guilty. Read more: https://www.justice.gov/sco-weiss/pr/robert-hunter-biden-convicted-three-felony-tax-offenses-and-six-misdemeanor-tax-offenses

He was playing money and tax evasion games. Getting millions of dollars of payments from a sketchy sources in Eastern Europe through his law firm and then what would be called embezzling from his company under different circumstances

This is not normal people behavior. This is most likely the tip of the iceberg. It's actually a nice little sneak peek into how much money flows between different oligarchs (including US ones) through these sketchy illicit channels

This guy absolutely is a criminal. There's no question about it. The trial probably is politically motivated too.

and not an actual criminal

yeah it can happen to anybody. sometimes you just forget to pay $1.4M you owe in taxes from the millions of dollars of dubious payments from overseas organizations (Burisma Holdings) owned by Russian oligarchs (Mykola Zlochevsky) that just happened to be investigated, tried and convicted of corruption

you know what message this sends to us plebs? they can do whatever the fuck they want. all we can do is sit and watch

i've used it fairly consistently for the last year or so. i didn't actually start using it until chatgpt 4 and when openai offered the $20 membership

i think AI is a tool. like any other tool, your results vary depending on how you use it

i think it's really useful for specific intents

example, as a fancy search engine. yesterday I was watching Annie from 1999 with my girlfriend and I was curious about the capitalist character. i asked chatgpt the following question

in the 1999 hit movie annie, who was the billionaire mr warbucks supposed to represent? were there actually any billionaires in the time period? it's based around the early 1930s

it gave me context. it showed examples of the types of capitalist the character was based on. and it informed me that the first billionaire was in 1916.

very useful for this type of inquiry.

other things i like using it for are to help coding. but there's a huge caveat here. some thing it's very helpful for... and some things it's abysmal for.

for example i can't ask it "can you help me write a nice animation for a react native component used reanimated"

because the response will be awful and won't work. and you could go back and forth with it forever and it won't make a difference. the reason is it's trained on a lot of stuff that's outdated so it'll keep giving you code that maybe would have worked 4 years ago. and even then, it can't hold too much context so complex applications just won't work

BUT certain things it's really good. for example I need to write a script for work. i use fish shell but sometimes i don't know the proper syntax or everything fish is capable of

so I ask

how to test, using fish, if an "images.zip" file exists in $target_dir

it'll pump out

        if test -f "$target_dir/images.zip"
        echo "File exists."
    else
        echo "File does not exist."
    end


  

which gives me what i needed in order to place it into the script i was writing.

or for example if you want to convert a bash script to a fish script (or vice versa), it'll do a great job

so tldr:

it's a tool. it's how you use it. i've used it a lot. i find great value in it. but you must be realistic about its limitations. it's not as great as people say- it's a fancy search engine. it's also not as bad as people say.

as for whether it's good or bad for society, i think good. or at least will be good eventually. was the search engine a bad thing for society? i think being able to look up stuff whenever you want is a good thing. of course you could make the argument kids don't go to libraries anymore.. and maybe that's sorta bad. but i think the trade-off is definitely worth it

Reddit tries their best to reduce liability. In the past there have been subs that are focused on "raiding" and "brigading" or whatever you wanna call it. They hype up a bunch of easily impressionable users in a fever pitch and they go around spamming and vote rigging.

A well coordinated attack is enough to bring an active sub to its knees. This ruins the experience for the other users.

Of course the real reason, however, is because these types of subs when left unchecked tend to get too enthusiastic over time and create negative publicity for reddit - which of course puts them at risk of losing advertising revenue.

For example, /r/the_donald and their brigades and harassment https://www.wired.com/story/the-hate-fueled-rise-of-rthe-donald-and-its-epic-takedown/ which led to calls for violence and all sorts of tricky potential legal liabilities

or /r/wallstreetbets with their market manipulations https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gamestop-reddit-wallstreetbets-short-squeeze-2021-01-28/ that brought a lot of talk about government regulation

so they try to curb these types of behaviors right at the root and stem, in order to try and prevent it ultimately developing into something that could be a risk to the bottom line

i don't think the always thrown around "more education" is an effective answer to everything

you can educate kids up and down about the harms of smoking- if smoking is advertised as cool in popular media, there are cigarettes with colorful and fruity flavors, and it's easy for the kids to obtain then they will inevitably smoke cigarettes. everybody has known smoking causes cancer for a half century know.

if you don't want kids smoking, then you must act with force to restrict something. whether it's the restriction on subliminal advertising, the ban on colorful cigarettes, or prohibition of selling to underage smokers- you need some sort of ban.

i firmly believe in the near future we will view social media as we know it similar to how we see smoking. addictive little dopamine hits that will over time change the structure of your brain. we look back at the 50s and think it was crazy how they smoked cigarettes on airplanes, drank whiskey at work, and everyone bathed in lead and asbestos. they're going to look back at our time period and see us similarly

so if I were to say "should kids be using social media?" I wholeheartedly believe they should not be using it until their brains are developed. much like I don't think kids should be smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, or smoking weed

but the ultimate question is- what are the potential harms of a government ban and are those potential harms worth it?

that's where I am conflicted. a minor not being able to buy cigarettes is something that I don't really think hurts society very much.

but a ban on a minor accessing certain online spaces.. how do you accomplish that? well, you will need to track people's identities online somehow. this is the part where I think maybe the harms of kids using social media is not worth giving the government power to monitor and regulate social media websites.

American strategic goals and what Ukraine deserves are two separate topics that have no connection with each other

The Kurds have a right to exist, what happened to them once there was no more utility to the US?

The US is participating in the destruction of Ukraine for their own strategic interests. Just like every other thing the US has ever done.