291–300 of 501 posts
Good luck America, you really need it.
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In the US I’m not really afraid of China. There are some people who should be, but I’m not. I’m annoyed at American companies who bow to their wishes, but I’m also annoyed at American companies who censor to advertisers so nobody says “fuck” on YouTube and my level of annoyance is about the same. Some other places would do good to ban tiktok and people concerned about national secrets and the like sure should, but I’…
TikTok is a massive platform that can be used to subtly influence popular opinion through its algorithmic feed. That should make you afraid, even if you don't believe you'll ever be targeted as an individual by China.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the US I’m not really afraid of China. There are some people who should be, but I’m not. I’m annoyed at American companies who bow to their wishes, but I’m also annoyed at American companies who censor to advertisers so nobody says “fuck” on YouTube and my level of annoyance is about the same. Some other places would do good to ban tiktok and people concerned about national secrets and the like sure should, but I’…
TikTok is a massive platform that can be used to subtly influence popular opinion through its algorithmic feed. That should make you afraid, even if you don't believe you'll ever be targeted as an individual by China.
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>>which is why you vote regularly to ensure that your rights are represented and those agencies aren't able to abuse their power That never works out in practice as the administrative state (which includes the FBI and CIA) are soo far removed from representative government they are basically unaccountable at this point, that is with out even getting into the idea that 1 vote in a nation of 350 million plus holds no r…
> "Democracy" is more or less an delusion those in power perpetuate to ensure the cattle think they have a choice I had a much larger post, but I'm going to only respond to this one now, because it sums up basically off the disagreements and no further discussion is going to resolve anything. I don't agree with this sort of cynicism at all, and I very much do believe that while it is very flawed, democracy ultimately…
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I often wonder why the average american should be more concerned about China than the CIA or FBI? the FBI has the power to put me in a cage, China does not... I am confused as why china is a bigger threat to me personally than the FBI?
Depends hugely on who you are and what happens with the politics. CIA and FBI are very big threats to you, which is why you vote regularly to ensure that your rights are represented and those agencies aren't able to abuse their power. China is a much more distant and abstract, but much more serious threat. If the FBI or CIA fucks up, they will put let's say 10% of people in prison for opposition to the state. If Chin…
Haven’t the Twitter files proven unequivocally that is not true?
I agree that we should worry about both. I’m honestly unsure which of the two is a greater threat.
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>>which is why you vote regularly to ensure that your rights are represented and those agencies aren't able to abuse their power That never works out in practice as the administrative state (which includes the FBI and CIA) are soo far removed from representative government they are basically unaccountable at this point, that is with out even getting into the idea that 1 vote in a nation of 350 million plus holds no r…
> "Democracy" is more or less an delusion those in power perpetuate to ensure the cattle think they have a choice Like him or not, Trump was very much not the preference of those in power, and very much was the preference of many people in America. That shows the people do have power.
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I often wonder why the average american should be more concerned about China than the CIA or FBI? the FBI has the power to put me in a cage, China does not... I am confused as why china is a bigger threat to me personally than the FBI?
You and I, we're nobodies with no power. We share a country with people who do have power. The power they exercise impacts our lives. Those people have weaknesses. Those weaknesses can be exploited. If you ran an intelligence service, you might want to identify targets, prioritize targets, and potentially create a graph of social connections. Tiktok provides picture data (geolocation, timestamps, hashes, potentially…
> I think the answer is pretty obvious, but I'm open to an explanation of why it is not.
Who has the motive and opportunity to do things that screw over regular folks? It's a lot easier to think of cases where the CIA has something to gain by keeping someone in or out of jail who shouldn't be, or routing money or weapons somewhere they shouldn't be, than where China does. Low-level disruption would be a poor use of their assets that's not worth the risk. CIA employees have a lot more reason to be in zero-sum competition with regular Joes.
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In the US I’m not really afraid of China. There are some people who should be, but I’m not. I’m annoyed at American companies who bow to their wishes, but I’m also annoyed at American companies who censor to advertisers so nobody says “fuck” on YouTube and my level of annoyance is about the same. Some other places would do good to ban tiktok and people concerned about national secrets and the like sure should, but I’…
I am afraid of China. China has developed missiles that can evade our ability to detect them until it's too late. Meanwhile our military is busy with initiatives like... declaring "Sir" and "Ma'am" as gendered language that should be eliminated. The fact that American boys are increasingly preferring video games to sports should also worry you. There is a shortage of fit young American men for special-ops programs li…
You should not worry about the fighting ability of the average Chinese man vs the average American man. U.S. has the most violence-ready population of young men on Earth, and it's not close.
Maybe Latin America or parts of Africa and the Middle East beat us in terms of willingness to commit violence, but we have much more resources, training, and equipment. China has none of this.
In fact, you should be worried about our young men choosing to exercise this violence against you here before you worry about some kind of military defeat at the hands of the Chinese.
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Because the statutory (not to mention constitutional) implications are staggering: what about our government's structure do you think gives it the authority to outright ban social media companies? Do you want it to have that power, or do you just want to government to casuistically ban the things you think should be banned? Note: this is entirely independent from whether TikTok is bad, which I'm more confident than n…
You don't need to ban it. Just forbid US companies from doing business with TikTok, and their users will plummet when they can't pay for CDNs in America.
It worked for limiting cigarette use and TikTok is at least as bad for you. I think it’s worth a try and the legal precedence is already there.
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I mean, your govt is banning enough of the shit with some real questionable reasons(while keeping some actual questionable things/traditions alive) that being skeptical is probably still the best bet. and let's not pretend that the UA govt has had a history of transparency lol. Being better than Russia has been a low bar in the eastern bloc. -30 is better than -70 but it's still far below 0.
I see UA before Zelensky and after as two completely different countries politically. Most of the things UA gov was criticized for seems to be mostly an effect of Russia's influence.
As I understood it, before the war he was sliding down in the polls, becoming unpopular because there haven't been the massive crackdowns on corruptions he was campaigning for (like in his TV show), with him also being uncovered in the Pandora papers as having various hidden assets [1] and only his resistance to the Russian making him the most popular leader ever.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/oct/03/revealed-anti-o...