Are we playing a game of "non sequitur"? If so, here's my move: "I've got new socks on."
Because the article I read didn't say Meta was deleting (only) Canadian government posts. But hey, why read the article before commenting on it! That's for pussies!
Twitter was never a particularly big brand. Even in just the space of social media it was an also-ran.
At its peak (and it's nowhere near its peak now!) Twitter had ~400 million monthly active users. Reddit has ~500 million. Snapchat ~750. Telegram ~800. LinkedIn ~930 (!). Messenger and TikTok ~1 billion each. Instagram and Whatsapp ~2 each. Youtube ~2.5. And Facebook ~3 billion.
Twitter at its peak is just barely outside of rounding error territory compared to Facebook and Youtube.
And here I've compared Twitter against its "peers": international social media sites. There are regional social media sites that are bigger than Twitter was at its peak. QZone is ~500 million. QQ and Weibo are ~575. Kuaishou is ~650. Douyin (Tiktok's origin) is ~725. WeChat is 1.3 billion. These six sites are in one country only ... and each of them are larger than Twitter's highest ever count. (And note that in China Weibo is considered largely a joke. At 550 million. Larger, again I stress, than Twitter was at its peak.)
The only reason Twitter has ever been treated as anything but a loser's game is because lazy-assed reporters found reading sound bites on Twitter was easier than doing actual reportage. As a result Twitter has had outsized visibility for its rather pathetic actual participation.
The same reporters who report on China by looking in on Weibo (the "joke").
And where are you going to find an A"I" that's not the product of corporate greed literally stealing from the rest of humanity?
The modern approach to artificial "intelligence" is basically n-dimension mad-libs where n is five figures or more. It can only work with truly awesome (in the original, literal sense of the word) amounts of training data which is first a) stolen, then b) categorized by biased reviewers (often exploited people doing that last job). There is no ethical A"I" and only the greedy corporate world has the resources to do modern A"I" at all.
Because truth matters. I know that's a radical thought, but it remains true. The truth matters. If you say there were students massacred in Tiananmen Square in 1989, you're saying things that are untrue. You're not only spreading a lie, you're also erasing the people who actually suffered under the thumb of the tyrannical authorities. Not to mention what spreading lies does to credibility.
Consider, for example, the plight of westerners who try to come to China and teach the locals a "better way". They mention the "slaughter of students" and get blank incomprehension. Their credibility is blown, their message falls on deaf ears, and they make life harder even for those who aren't ignoramuses because now "westerners just make shit up".
And if you can't see a difference between nationwide protests viewed as a literal existential threat to a tyrannical state and a bunch of cute kids cosplaying democracy advocates in terms of perceived threat and response, well, I really don't know how to explain this to you. So let's just stick with "truth matters". Though I'm going to predict even that falls on deaf ears because you'd much rather believe the bullshit that doesn't challenge what you think you know than change your worldview.
I asked where the victims are in, specifically, drawn porn, given that the person I was responding to so histrionically said, and I quote:
Except, you know… The victims
What the fuck is wrong with you
I fully agree that finding drawn paedophilia attractive is symptomatic of a huge problem. As I said in my opening sentence:
I’m absolutely, 100%, postively not on-side with paedophiles.
But to claim there's victims in drawn pornography indicates either a serious deficiency in vocabulary or a serious deficiency in the capacity for thought in general.
"Something must be done! This is something, ergo it must be done!"
Hitting Ryan Reynolds makes absolutelyzero sense in this, unless there's evidence I'm unaware of that he was a) aware of, and b) on board with these legal actions. Randomly spraying bullets in a crowd that might have a murderer in it isn't how you punish murderers. I find it really hard to believe I even have to say this.
I'm absolutely, 100%, postively not on-side with paedophiles. But ...
In drawn porn … who are the victims precisely? I mean that's the question:
So is drawn young porn more like murder or more like soup?
(Emphasis mine.)
I'm tempted to turn the fantasy Internet point counters back on just to watch people who aren't capable of reading comprehension hit the downvote button so hard it crashes the servers (all of them) … but nah, fuck that shit.
I'm reminded of old games that insisted you couldn't sign up with an email provider and had to use an ISP email ... which kinda screwed over the literally BILLIONS of people whose ISPs don't give email addresses...
And then there's those of us who don't use email for all practical purposes. I haven't sent an email in anger for a donkey's age; the only reason I have an email at all is because of all the people in North America who think email is the wave of the future.
Are we playing a game of "non sequitur"? If so, here's my move: "I've got new socks on."
Because the article I read didn't say Meta was deleting (only) Canadian government posts. But hey, why read the article before commenting on it! That's for pussies!