i wish facebook killed newspapers. then we wouldn’t have to deal with blue check marks
We can have democracy or we can have Facebook
361–370 of 520 posts
Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook
#362Earlier quoted context omitted.
Religion is already banned in places such as France. Did not do them much good. A ban on free speech will be equally as effective.
Religion is not banned in France, that's a great misunderstanding of the concept of laicity. Laicity means that religion is kept away from the State, it has no impact whatsoever on private practice and definitely nothing to do with it being 'banned'
Indeed the less the state has to do with religion; the more religious freedom everyone has.
Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook
#363Earlier quoted context omitted.
We had widespread belief in Trump-Russia collusion despite no hard evidence too. There's a word for a baseless conspiracy theory that implicates the right: "fact".
I’m not sure that you’re very well informed - your opinion is that theories of trump Russia collusion were baseless? Is that what you believe the Mueller report said?
It did say that they couldn't find hard evidence of collusion, yes.
But "baseless conspiracy theory" is practically a term of art. There was sufficient evidence of election irregularities in key battleground states to at least warrant a proper investigation. The same media companies which reported Trump-Russia collusion as hard, settled facts, however, rushed to call any suggestion of fraud a "baseless conspiracy theory" and reassured us that the 2020 elections were absolutely airtight, which -- I don't know what you have to be smoking to believe that last bit.
Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook
#364Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where can you buy assault rifles?
In 43 states. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_weapons_legislation_in...
The person you're responding to asked about assault rifles, and you responded with a link about assault weapons. They're very different things, and this has led to a lot of confusion.
Generally, when people talk about "assault weapons" they're actually thinking of automatic, military-style weapons with large magazines. Those are "assault rifles", which have been legislated at the federal level for a long time. The laws are indeed complicated, but in general these weapons are hard to get legally.
Here's an decent explainer: https://www.ajc.com/news/national/assault-weapon-assault-rif...
Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook
#365Earlier quoted context omitted.
Immigrants are required to possess a modicum of knowledge about the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the system of government, not to mention some level of command of the English language (my wife teaches citizenship courses to immigrants). I, myself, am a naturalized citizen, from Canada, and I had to swear an oath to uphold the Constitution, forbear allegiance to foreign powers etc. It's a ritual,…
Unpatriotic college grad here, I think you're missing the "most basic fact", that the government obviously doesn't work for you and me. What's the point of getting involved with all this political junk, spending my time on it, when they're all in it for themselves, for their donors? That's a real question that's totally legitimate for most people. They're busy, the issue isn't education, it's a totally corrupt system…
That disinterest is part of what drives the issue of poor electoral choices. The most radical candidates can draw the most support in primaries since the voter turnout is so low.
I also feel the disenfranchisement that you talk about. I think non-electoral civic engagement is also an important part. I try to write my representatives on some issues. It seems largely futile, but often times you get a more detailed response from them than you see I'm the media. I also try to right the wrongs I encounter in my community. For example, a police department was wrongly stating that a specific summary offense was a misdemeanor and I was able to correct that. I also encountered a state trooper that was doing things that violate civil rights, like lying to a judge. I filed a complaint and he was counseled (should have been fired but the investigator covered for him - only so far up the chain you can chase corruption before your life/safety becomes a concern).
Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I understand, you claim there is a clear legal category of "assault weapon" you base the definition on. So where is that defined? Your link only talks about fully- vs semi-automatic, the NFA linked from there doesn't use the term, ... Whereas past laws that used the term clearly considered it not to be fully-automatic only. E.g. the law that's commonly known as the "Federal Assault Weapons Ban" (1994-2008)…
The "assault weapons ban" basically cosmetic features illegal. Which is silly. This is precisely the problem that people have with the term "assault weapon". If you are using the words "assault weapon" you are basically saying that you want to ban guns that look scary, because this is what the original assault weapons ban did.
You'll note that the comment blisterpeanuts objected to didn't include any cosmetic features (unless you consider "compact" to be cosmetic I guess), but somehow that wasn't ok either. And note that he didn't object to the term being used, but to the term being used incorrectly.
But after a bit of googling I guess I found the missing context: "Assault weapons" being full-auto amounts to a US gun scene shibboleth to make it easy to dismiss anyone making the mistake of using the term without having to engage the substance, even if many people, including law makers, define the term differently.
"People call all kinds of things assault weapons based on stupid criteria, what specifically do you mean" would have been a far stronger point than this "haha, semi-automatics are normal guns and not assault weapons" game.
Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook
#367Earlier quoted context omitted.
I tend to agree actually, and would go a step further and suggest that citizenship should be a requirement to vote in any election, and that persons born in the US should not be granted citizenship without being able to pass the citizenship test. I'm less comfortable granting people a bid based on general knowledge and intelligence though, I think the uninterested citizenry is a far larger problem than the uneducated…
The problem with this is that you find yourself in a position where you're adding educational access as a means to manipulate the voting base. Want to disenfranchise people (as an example) from rural areas in your state over the long run? Funnel education funding away from school buses and into schools that offer wide varieties of academic programs (that can only be offered in large schools). Before you say "that wou…
All you really to do to fix that is have the ammendment require the test study material (small book) be provided via mail upon request. Or some other means. If you have an ammendment that requires this, anyone targeted by manipulation can sue for their constitutional rights. Most of the past manipulations are attacks on older laws that were less specific and required judicial interpretation to determine applicability.
Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook
#368What a bizarre set of beliefs and claims. 1. That Facebook is maliciously and mostly singlehandedly responsible for the death of the newspaper and journalism. Except newspaper readership has been on the decline since the 90's. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/01/circulation... - the article frames Facebook's grand plan as taking money from newspapers, but Facebook's revenues in 2019 were nearly twice wha…
I generally believe Facebook and other social media platforms are bad. I can also absolutely recognize that most people complaining about them don't seem to articulate their reasoning well or in some cases at all.
In the article, Matt claims
>There's a lot more that you have to do than just break them up. But the answer is, it would improve things dramatically if they were broken up, and you don't have to imagine it.
Facebook has been doing their practices that deserve criticism before they became a "financial conglomerate". If they are broken up, they will not stop poisoning people's news feed overnight. Things will NOT dramatically improve.
In fact I believe if Facebook is forced to break off instagram and other companies, things may get worse. They would need to try harder to make more revenue using less users / screen time.
Breaking up Facebook would most likely be a good thing, but I personally believe as long the news feed exists, the negatives that Facebook brings will be there.
Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook
#369This is absurd. Just stop using Facebook yourself. It's by far the most democratic reaction you can have. Arguing for bringing in the use of government violence against them is unethical to the point of being evil.
Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook
#370What a bizarre set of beliefs and claims. 1. That Facebook is maliciously and mostly singlehandedly responsible for the death of the newspaper and journalism. Except newspaper readership has been on the decline since the 90's. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/01/circulation... - the article frames Facebook's grand plan as taking money from newspapers, but Facebook's revenues in 2019 were nearly twice wha…
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