And, after enough time, I’ve come to know Harris enough to trust her.
Keep your guard up, pal. Election years are mentally exhausting and when the dust clears you might start seeing things more clearly.
And, after enough time, I’ve come to know Harris enough to trust her.
Keep your guard up, pal. Election years are mentally exhausting and when the dust clears you might start seeing things more clearly.
At the root of this cognitive dissonance is who benefits and who doesn’t. Copyright law is selectively applied in a way that protects the powerful and exploits the powerless. In a capitalist economy copyright is meant to protect people’s livelihoods by ensuring they are compensated for their labor, but due to the power imbalance inherent to capitalism it is instead used only to protect the interests of capital. The fact that AI companies are granted full impunity to violate the copyright of millions is evidence that copyright law is ineffective at the task for which it was purportedly created.
It’s because this isn’t about privacy at all, it’s about a popular social media platform being outside the control of domestic intelligence agencies. The US is unable to control the narrative on TikTok the way they do on American social media, which allowed pro-palestinian sentiment to spread there unhindered. It had a huge effect on the politics of the younger generation (IMO a positive one) by showing them news and first hand accounts they wouldn’t have seen otherwise.
Edit: And yes, China is able to control the narrative on TikTok and that is a potential problem, but so far they’ve had a fairly hands-off approach to US TikTok aside from basic language censorship. I figure the way China sees it is that an unmoderated free-for-all will do more to sow divisions in the US than a carefully controlled (and therefore obvious) pro-China narrative ever could.
Stop concern trolling. The ridiculous nature of the “threat” makes it obvious they’re being completely unserious.
Alright, I’ll play along.
Claim:
The document titled hamas human shields released by NATO Strategic Communications is propaganda.
Argument:
Merriam-Webster defines propaganda as-
the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person
Let’s break that down. To determine whether the NATO StratCom document hamas human shields meets the criteria for propaganda we need to answer the following:
Q: Does the item in question contain ideas, information, or rumor?
A: Without having to verify any claims you can still confidently state that the document contains at least one if not all of these. Statements of opinion can be classified as ideas, and statement of fact can be considered either information or rumor depending upon the amount and veracity of supporting evidence.
Q: Was the item in question spread for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person?
A: By posting the document on a public forum for the purpose of defending NATO’s actions, you yourself fulfilled this criteria. Prior to that, NATO StratCom also fulfilled it, as they have an implicit interest in defending the actions of NATO (which this document serves to do)
For example: I can point to evidence that Tasnim News is propaganda.
I don’t dispute this.
Unless you disagree with the meaning of the word propaganda then everything I said is a statement of fact, not a personal opinion. What do you mean when you say propaganda (and don’t just give examples, actually define it).
there’s nothing “propaganda” about NATO
You can’t be serious. Everyone does propaganda, propaganda is everywhere. Just because you happen to agree with NATO propaganda doesn’t mean it isn’t propaganda. Your original comment is propaganda, the responses to it are propaganda, this entire comment section is full of propaganda. Anyone disseminating information reflecting the views or interests of any doctrine or cause is engaging in propaganda.
Edit:
Decentralized infrastructure can be physical as well, such as microgrids that enable peer-to-peer solar energy sharing.
And sidenote: software engineers are exploited workers like the rest of us, and it’s a respectable profession. The “tech bros” you have to worry about are the wealthy CEOs masquerading as inventors and engineers like Elon Musk.
You’re using an example right now.
I don’t need to present a perfect alternative for my critique of Western Democracy to be valid. Critique is the means by which we can improve upon what already exists. Some short-term solutions could be to overturn citizens united and end legalized corporate lobbying, introduce voting reforms such as abolishing the electoral college and switching from first past the post to ranked choice or star voting, or expanding direct democratic programs like ballot initiatives. All of these have the effect of minimizing the influence of capital and maximizing the influence of people on the political process.
Longer term solutions involve bottom-up organization of things like mutual aid, unions of various types, decentralized infrastructure, community-run libraries (and not just for books), community gardens, etc. These kinds of dual-power structures always start small but have outsized positive effects on the communities they form in. If they were allowed to grow unhindered they would eventually grow together and easily supercede the top-down power structures that pervade our lives today, which is why they end up being suppressed or co-opted by the same.
A good example of how this occurs is how despite the internet providing a way to collect and distribute all the knowledge on earth for free to everyone on earth (the greatest library in all of human history), powerful corporations - with the help of governments around the world - unnecessarily spend vast amounts of wealth and resources to restrict the free exchange of ideas along socioeconomic lines.
I believe there are a lot of government orgs that could be forces for good if they weren’t completely at the mercy of powerful corporations.
It points out the contradiction of being in a supposedly free Western Democracy but still being totally at the mercy of others. It isn’t necessarily that Western Democracy is the cause, but that it fails to address these problems.
My paychecks from the CCP must be getting lost in the mail.
That’s some pretty wild conspiratorial thinking, do you actually have proof or just some anecdotes about people disagreeing with you?
I wish for once I could just have a civil conversation about my views without people immediately jumping down my throat and accusing me of being a CCP or Russian shill, or a dirty liberal, or a filthy communist. This is what I’m talking about when I say I just end up getting shit on from all sides. Every unsavory label in the book gets stuck to me before I even get a chance to clarify my views.
The problem I see here is that you perceive this as being anti-democracy when it really isn’t. Criticism of western democracy isn’t equivalent to a total rejection of democracy in general. Capitalism renders democracies ineffectual, which is what I perceived this meme to be pointing out.
My pet theory for these is that they’re like a test of skill for metalworkers, and that they would be put on display as proof of their capabilities. They were often found in safes with coins, which I think supports this theory. You wouldn’t want some rival metalworkers stealing your skills display and making it so nobody trusts them anymore.
Care to elaborate on that?
Chill out a bit, my comment could not have possibly given you the impression that I’m a supporter of capitalism if you had read it carefully. I began my comment by putting forward the capitalist argument for copyright - a steel-man argument - and ended it by debunking it.
You said yourself that copyright establishes art as private property (or “intellectual property” if we’re being more precise). That does the opposite of fostering and improving the commons and public domain.
Then it wouldn’t be copyright. Copyright is a capitalist construct, not a public good corrupted by capital.