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Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

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131–140 of 216 posts

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#131
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand this point other than that you think only left-wing people are polyamorous? The first poly person I ever met in tech was conservative.

My point is I don't find it plausible the mob that attacked the capitol was motivated by liberal college professors or race crime statistics, or various progressive cultural victories. I think it's reasonable to assume a bisexual poly woman would not be concerned with those specific matters to the point where they'd be willing to participate in mob violence to overthrow the government.

Maybe not motivated by, but this is certainly an escalating culture war. Part of it has its roots in academia, yes. These professors, and former academics, some of which now hold high profile jobs at big tech companies like Google, definitely play a role in inflaming tensions between these people.

You're assuming that people fit molds a lot more than they actually do. The reality is that there's a fair number of people who buy into race statistics, want to do something about racism, but also don't buy into the narrative books like White Fragility have proposed. That book is especially steeped in academia and it's proponents have large Twitter accounts where they feel emboldened to say detestfully broad things about large groups of people. Some of those posts end up on here, so how you've missed them is beyond me.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both spellings of that word are acceptable. Get off of your high horse, especially if you can't even ride it yourself. Your depictions of the very disturbed, impoverished and desperate people involved in the DC/Capitol building fiasco are heartless, cruel, and completely uncivilized. You clearly have no idea what is going on in their lives, just as so many of them were unaware of what the BLM marches were all about.

I'm with you, but I will say I'm currently dealing with a codebase that spells "organization" half the time, and "organisation" the other half of the time. Yes, variable names, and since it's JavaScript, it doesn't actually error out until the code is executed... Not super related, but it's caused me a number of problems...

Sounds like TypeScript could be a solution for you :)

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#133
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crazy thing is that the Q-Anon people will inevitably see the spate of arrests and censorship as "The Storm" prophecy coming true but in reverse, an "Anti-Storm". I have a feeling this will only make many of them even more committed and possibly now that they can point to something real, could even grow the movement. Crazy stuff.

People seem not to realize that every action spawns a reaction by the other side, especially extreme ones. All this censoring will almost undoubtably cause some people on the other side to double down, unfortunately. :/

People also don't seem to realize that the action does not need to be real to cause a reaction by the other side. I'd provide an example, but to do so would just inject my own biases.

I'm sure anyone reading this can think of at least 5-6 "reactions" by the other side which had no precipitating action -- regardless of which side they're on. It starts to seem a little silly to worry about the reaction on the other side, when that reaction is likely to happen anyway.

There are good, principled reasons to avoid censorship. Concern about what irrational actors will do in response is not one of them.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've had an entire year to understand that people's lives are being wrecked senselessly and needlessly by unprecedented, totally illegal government mandates. The lockdowns caused the madness of the BLM summer, and it caused this thing that happened last Wednesday. People are at their buckling points, and that is a thing ripe for malicious actors to take advantage of. Even you: > drooling, bearded gun-monkeys clambe…

Even that short reply suggests we have very different views on about five big issues. Let's just agree to disagree.

Yeah, what a shocker. The guy who labels their enemies as drooling monkeys has severe disagreements with me.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#136
post #3

The predictable [and unfortunate] side effect of censorship on private platforms is it creates the illusion that the truth is being covered up. I have no doubts the next surveillance and encryption backdoor bills will be based upon the incidents happening right now. It's far better for society to keep discussions in plain sight, even if they are woefully misguided.

You say this as if there aren't millions of people who are willing and eager to assume the truth is being covered up already.

Come now, that withstands zero investigation. Even with zero censorship, millions upon millions would fall into terrible rabbit holes already. The sad fact is some people love conspiracies and love thinking they're the real informed ones amidst the sheeple.

The real effect of censorship on FB and other insanely wealthy and powerful social media would be forcing the platforms to reckon with the garbage collection they've never solved. If Zuckerberg can donate 99% of his wealth to charity, maybe he can apply that to his own company and use those resources to stop problems at their inception.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I hear these comments I wonder what the recommendation is to shrink the movement. Obviously open conversations did not stop the movement from growing.

That would be difficult. I personally believe Q is an organization of trolls. They exploit/prey upon people's desire to be a part of something larger than themselves. I wouldn't be surprised if there's merely a couple handfuls of people all trying to outdo each other developing these conspiracies that keep to the Q lore/universe while spreading like fire. I don't think these people actually believe any of these consp…

Is it surprising to anyone that Q hasn’t been unmasked at this point?

Presumably there’s an FBI investigation into it and it seems unfathomable to me that intelligence agencies can’t figure out who is behind it.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#138
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is I don't find it plausible the mob that attacked the capitol was motivated by liberal college professors or race crime statistics, or various progressive cultural victories. I think it's reasonable to assume a bisexual poly woman would not be concerned with those specific matters to the point where they'd be willing to participate in mob violence to overthrow the government.

Maybe not motivated by, but this is certainly an escalating culture war. Part of it has its roots in academia, yes. These professors, and former academics, some of which now hold high profile jobs at big tech companies like Google, definitely play a role in inflaming tensions between these people. You're assuming that people fit molds a lot more than they actually do. The reality is that there's a fair number of peop…

I can assure you Peter Norvig had nothing to do with anyone's radicalization.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#139
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a huge exaggeration, I'm sure you'll still find millions of Trump supporters on twitter and facebook.

I’m pretty apathetic about these bannings (so hopefully this comment doesn’t read as support or opposition), but “not all conservatives were banned” does not refute “only conservatives were banned”.

They said "only banning one side" which reads to me as "all conservatives were banned"

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#140
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not motivated by, but this is certainly an escalating culture war. Part of it has its roots in academia, yes. These professors, and former academics, some of which now hold high profile jobs at big tech companies like Google, definitely play a role in inflaming tensions between these people. You're assuming that people fit molds a lot more than they actually do. The reality is that there's a fair number of peop…

I can assure you Peter Norvig had nothing to do with anyone's radicalization.

I have no idea who that person is. There's a number of posts on here about NeurIPS with some links to archive.org that features a Twitter feed where a number of people were encouraging harassment of each other. Watching how they postulate against each other using their various ideologies is shocking to say the least.
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