No. The instance being killed by the taliban is the opposite of that is happening here.

The taliban has done nothing, in this case. The admins of the instance have chosen not to keep the instance due to not wanting to fund the taliban in anyway.

This phrasing fucks up which way the action flows, which is important for a headline to get right to remain accurate to the story. Does that make sense?

I got a reason! It’s because people are afraid meta is doing what Microsoft did to a much earlier project. The crux of that whole story is that Microsoft adopted the new tech, became the biggest player thus dominating the area, then, when they had full control of the tech they ended up shutting it down. Some people are convinced meta is going to do that to the fediverse.

This is vague and handwavy, I’m hoping someone actually knows the name of the project. It was early 90s I believe or maybe into the early 00s but it was before my time in the tech sphere of the internet.

…there is a joke here that I could make about incel forums. I’m not going to try to because it’s in poor taste, but my point is that I’m pretty sure that does exist…

Also, what’s your actual position if that’s your devil’s advocate position? I’m a bit unsure if the implication there is intentional or not

Interesting, I personally wouldn’t actually accuse the UN of being tankie… Maybe capitalist but not tankie… I think if someone makes a convincing argument about the price of oil, it might result in the US or the UN (most likely UN I would wager though) stepping in…

I don’t think the UN will actually do anything though, this is more just me harvesting some hope/cope

Hah! I see the logic, but I think that happened only because the big powers backing each Korea couldn’t push the proxy war to overwhelm each other either way… But then again, I could be wrong, and that could be a viable option here, I really don’t know… The less buried mines on earth, the better, but when you’ve got 1/4 of the population of your enemy, you don’t exactly have the privilege of fighting traditionally either…

Fascinating, that hadn’t crossed my mind at all. The actual world police could do something probably good (stabilizing at the very least) for the situation.

But that said, I don’t think I would bank on the UN for this one… It seems like Guyana would need continual military presence to dissuade Venezuela because it appears that Venezuela is doing this because Guyana was too fiscally successful over the pandemic. But I mean if the UN does long term guarding like that, then it might be a viable option…

With who’s army fighting though? Guyana seems a bit too small to properly be able to defend itself from Venezuela… Unless Brazil goes full on South America police on the situation (and apparently, they might?), I don’t see how this will end in anything other than Venezuela steam rolling Guyana…

Oh I get that, no problem.

My issue is the characterize seems to be all over the place at best and minorly nefarious at worse, but I think I totally get where you’re coming from.

I do appreciate the second guess though, I do sometimes write things in ways that make people think I actively dislike them when all I’m actually doing is reporting a reaction that I thought was interesting, and I think a little bit of that happened here.

In any case, legit, seems like we’re on the same page now

Oh I see it now, I gave an example of what their writing is leading me to believe about them. Odd that you’re reading that far into it that you’re telling me I doubt them while I’m asking for clarification.

I don’t know anything about this person, what is there to doubt yet? If anything, I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt by asking for clarification rather than joining the dogpile.

But since you’re here now, what do you think about what they’re saying? Do you understand it enough to make conclusions about their beliefs? Because that’s my problem right now, I don’t think I have enough to do it even though I’m interested in what they’re saying

I’m sorry, but your post seems incomplete or I’m reading too far past what you’re actually saying. Are you meaning to say this is what teachers are supposed to be doing (ie, pretending to be jailers instead of educators) or are you saying this needs to change somehow? Something else, maybe?

Like the way you write makes me think a lot of unflattering things about your stances, and I’m not sure why… like, for example, it seems like you’re saying it’s a good thing child labor protections are being taken away in Republican states… is that actually your position though? Or is that sarcasm that’s not coming through very well?

Sorry for the million questions but I see this is already getting quite heated, and I’m trying to figure out if the heat is warranted or if it’s a general misunderstanding.

I don’t think you’re wrong.

I like to look at this through the cult lens though, (because that’s the process outlined in your 4 bullet points, that’s how you get sucked into a cult.) With that, it’s not a matter of empathizing with the people in the cult so much as I don’t want the cult to exist in the first place to suck people in.

I think I personally call people stupid as a frustration outlet, usually after surrendering them to their own hopelessly staunch position. I try not to do this to their face though, because for all I know that’ll just make them double down again. Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug, and insults tend to only make it stronger.

I think the majority of people are at least ignorant, but it’s mostly ignorance of the consequences of whatever action or topic is at hand. Most people don’t know most things, so logically, most people must be ignorant of most things. The trick is realizing that I am also no exception: I also don’t know most things. From that, I can extrapolate how a cult leader or cultish ideology may feed on my paranoias to create cognitive dissonance within me. (One thing I can’t figure out how to mention is that loneliness as well as feeling lost plays a major part in this process)

I guess the point of my rambling is that while empathy is good as a starting position, I think those under the hypnotization of cognitive dissonance need to be shown the dissonance so that they can snap out of it when they choose to (gently, though, certainly don’t call them stupid). This is overly simplistic and doesn’t cover anything like the issue of leaving false beliefs involving getting rid of entire social circles formed around and maintained by the false beliefs though.

Tldr; I don’t think you’re wrong, but I think this is only 1 side of the entire issue. I think the entire issue spans cult like recruitment and maintenance tactics, at the very least, if not more that I haven’t covered here.

Hijacking my own comment in case anyone else is interested in this, apparently it’s called e ink, and they’re just now starting to come out with full color monitors using it. Very cool stuff!

I’m not sure if this would accomplish what you’re looking for, but it did give me an idea: wouldn’t it be cool if they had a monitor that used the fake ink effect (that thing that non-backlit digital books sometimes use) to make displays look “more natural” (read: different in an interesting way)

I think that’d be cool at the very least, and, due to it not being backlit, it would possibly get rid of the blue light issue (i’m not an expert in this field so idk how much of an issue blue light actually is when it comes to dopamine overdrive)

I might try and make a monitor like this if I can gather the skills to do it, I am only getting more excited about this idea lol

Ty for the inspiration!

Well I mean, that does make sense. I still believe tiktok [https://youtu.be/Ti8v4eL8oIE](really is a bit of spyware) (sorry for the longish YouTube video) but that could definitely be a contributing factor to this case

Ah I can’t really argue with that.

Republicans “trust me, bro”'d the US into shitty situations time and time again, and I’m slightly worried if we give them the ability to ban apps, they will not stop until the only shit left is Truth Social. They love their fucking echo chambers, as much as they used to rail against them.

I think that’s why my kneejerk reaction is to distrust their reasoning, but I did get what I was looking for in another part of this thread:

If the CCP can monitor you indefinitely, and have enough man/ai power to pull it off, they could theoretically social engineer infrastructure attacks without actually putting themselves at almost any legal risk (blackmailing is always illegal, but the methods used to get the blackmail would be hidden in the tandc’s)

Unfortunately, all I hear from republicans is tiktok=China, China=bad without any of these sorts of details, which is why I approached this with such skepticism initially

I literally can not imagine what life in China must be like. Especially for someone of about my socioeconomic class. I may have seen American Factory a while ago, but in case I’m thinking of the wrong thing, I’ll check it out again. Thanks for the rec!

(Also, in case it’s not clear, I wasn’t saying the US was anywhere near as bad as or better than China in regards to anything, just that I couldn’t tell if this specific rattling was just republican red scare bs or if it actually had substance to it. Turns out, there’s some substance to it, they’re just not articulating a position well on it, imo)

I would say malicious malware shouldn’t be sold on the app store and that anyone who hosts it should suffer whatever fallout it comes with (not the end users, the apk providers). However, due to the US being The Way That It Is™, we don’t actually have any recourse like that for providers of malware. As for spyware… I guess it probably should be handled like malware too. Eh you got me lol

I’ve said a couple different places in this thread I support a ban of tiktok on government phones and in at least one other place I support a ban of it on military bases, but my main issue was that I couldn’t figure out how it could be used for nefarious purposes outside of government phones or areas.

As for “you have the right to work with the data models, but not remove the data from US soil”, that’s a new one, I’ll have to think about that some more. Good point though, I think.

Beautiful, this is what I was looking for.

I think, still, that the best defense against this type of thing is education. Education on what nefarious actors can do with data types xy and z, and education on how to not get owned by a foreign actor.

I still think an app ban is principally un-American, but this is the imagination part that I couldn’t come up with that at least gives what I’m still calling republican hysteria a veneer of legitimacy.

Thank you for that!

I think the paranoia is what I was looking for, so thank you for delivering!

For the most obvious: idk, I think people should generally have a healthy distrust of those in government positions. Maybe ideally not, but in reality, it’s necessary to not be taken advantage of by any manner of power hungry people. If tiktok half truths inspire someone to start actually looking at what xyz government has done, then that’s a win in my book. If they just eat the half truths as is straight from tiktok, that’s when there’s a problem, but that’s what my “why don’t they educate people on how to spot propaganda” is to address.

Less reasonable: I think people should be allowed to do what they want to do long as it doesn’t infringe on the health and safety of another. I guess you can split hairs about it decreasing health due to people working out less or something like that, but I don’t think that’s a good enough reason for government action.

Unreasonable: this actually seems the most reasonable to me, believe it or not. Military people posting the wrong thing at the wrong time from even a personal account can and has had bad effects on security before. That’s why I would support a ban of any spyware-like app on government devices and on military bases (this was originally only support for a ban on gov devices, but I think if we’re thinking about security, banning it in places where leaks may cost lives makes sense)

As for the endless possibilities of leveraging mental illness knowledge of a user, I’m afraid I can’t imagine what one could do. The only time I can imagine that would really matter is if China takes over the US and goes full genocide on the population. I think the world would go down in nuclear flames before that would happen though…

Unfortunately I literally can’t imagine anything convincing coming out of the US’s mouth given that case. It’s not like we can Manchurian candidate sleeper cells in Russia using our influence, and I’d argue China also has similar limitations.

The worst I can imagine is “us bad” with a lot of easily disprovable half truths that only stand for idiots who believe whatever tiktok gives them. And if the politicians who support this ban are arguing that most Americans are like that, then they’d better be pushing for better education or else they are also nefarious (because why else would they want people to be susceptible to propaganda, but not XYZ’s propaganda?)

I guess maybe my issue now is that it almost seems that republicans are trying to do their own propaganda machine, but are incensed that China might be stealing morons who are, as another commenter put it, ripe for radicalization. But that doesn’t seem right because I’d be surprised if they didn’t also have a bunch of outreach shit through tiktok… Idk, this is already delving into conspiracy theory territory so I’m gonna just stop myself here.

But all in all, I totally agree with your last paragraph, especially “if you don’t like it, then don’t use it”.

I argue the government is nefarious for using propaganda instead of the facts of the matter to sway public opinion. (This opinion extends to any government, which likely means every government because, in my general assumption, power holders seem to be unable to not lie to hold on to and amass more power.)

At this point, I can’t really argue with your point, you’re right, but I sure hate it regardless.

As for your edit, I don’t think that really applies. It’d make sense if the issue was voting for someone from China vs someone from the US, but this is more like “who’s allowed to spy on you? Our creepy guy who has a higher chance of doing something with the info they spied from you or this other creepy offshores guy who is less likely to do anything with that info (but the offshore guys are creepier! And worse!!! Trust me, bro!!!)”

In your example, obviously I’d rather the guy who is invested in the neighborhood to some degree so if it turns to shit, he’s going down with it. In my example, I’d much rather the guy who’s not.