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The Emergency Backup US [Election] 2024 thread: Part Two
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You first my guy, as if you’re post I was responding to wasn’t also condescending.
If there’s no debate, then she can hammer Trump’s cowardice and keep him on the defensive. To say nothing of potentially enjoying completely uninterrupted airtime on the debate stage
If there is a debate, then it’s her time to shine. Her debate performance will be compared to Biden’s, not Trump’s.
Right now, a debate carries much greater risk for Trump. If Harris counters the gish gallop, that’ll be the narrative. If he comes off as old and tired, that’ll be the narrative. If he manages to pull his regular stunt—well, that’s a known a quantity and the narrative goes back to comparing Harris with the man she replaced.
As for Vance, I don’t think Trump has a way out of that narrative. If he sticks with Vance, the negative attention continues—and Vance is guaranteed to have further gaffes or more old quotes thrown into the spotlight. If he ditches Vance, it fosters a Pubs in Disarray narrative. Either way, it keeps Trump on the defensive.
I don’t know if we’ll get a Harris-Trump debate. That’ll depend on Trump’s mood and whether Harris keeps the momentum.
While Trump very well could dump Vance, I bet he doesn’t—if only to avoid admitting that he made a mistake.
Honestly, it's a good point. "Social media" as we generally think of it (Facebook, Twitter, IG, and the also-rans) didn't always involve the algorithmic manipulation that most of us have issues with, but they were still social media. That just says that the meticulous grift of algorithmic content feed manipulation isn't necessarily a load bearing structure in the fundamentals of social media. We can always go back, with the right smart, targeted regulation from lawmakers who actually use and understand social media.
A ) it's not
B ) having foreign governments be able to adjust algorithms to influence public opinion is bad, but that's true of all social media and why most of us don't like it, but foreign governments doing it is arguably worse
C ) some people probably are using it as a dog whistle, sure
In 2016 Trump was a comparatively spry 70 and still regarded as a joke candidate.
In 2024 he's clearly exhausted, Possibly insane, has an absolutely horrific record in public office and had tooled his entire campaign around debating a man who was older then him and he'd been bitching about for 4 years.
Unless Harris has like... a gran mal seizure when he makes his opening statement he's completely fucked in a debate.
So this poll is probably dog shit. But the headline made me laugh.
https://systemicjustice.org/article/facebook-and-genocide-how-facebook-contributed-to-genocide-in-myanmar-and-why-it-will-not-be-held-accountable/
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If there were at least 1000 participants with good crosstabs this is fucking hilarious.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I really want to single in on this. Why is it worse?
Why isn't it?
But in practice how is “make TikTiK not algorithmic bullshit” different from “ban TikTok”. I’m not even sure what it would be at that point, but in any case TikTok will call any attempt to do so the government trying to ban or kill it and that’s the story the media will run with.
I think the musket to AR-15 comparison was really good. Because like guns social media needs reform, but any attempts will be hyperbolically attacked. But worse than guns I think the attempts will also be very unpopular with voters, specially because they will get the news about it from the platforms threatened with regulation.
Maybe we can either get it unlocked or start a new one.
China has a way of disappearing journalists they disagree with, and were definitely using TikTok to track the locations of prominent journalists until that whistle was blown.
Russia using social media to run psyops on America is a big part, though not the only part, of why we got Trump.
We expect the government to defend the citizens from physical harm. I would be fine with the government doing similar for our data and privacy.
We need a stronger GDPR like mechanism here.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I do not believe that the chinese government is necessarily more evil than the united states government. why do you?
But yeah: they're dangerous, they're an iteration on a technologh that was way beyond the standards of the time, they're used as weapons of war by state actors and by nonstate actors through stochastic terrorism or by useful idiots, etc.
600 participants. I don't know the crosstabs.
Still funny.
President Biden stepped down from re-election for the good of the nation. That puts the US ahead, at least for me.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I'd ask the Uyghurs but apparently they are hard to get ahold of.
Regardless relitigating the whole TikTok discussion that previously got the Social Media thread locked seems like a bad idea for the Election thread since it's barely even tangentally related.
do you think our government does not persecute dissidents or use propaganda?
again, the root question is why tiktok deserves so much ire beyond what its contemporaries receive, if not xenophobia?
At the very least get it locked for fighting over something related to the election not going through the whole uh huh nuh uh TikTok argument again?
There's too much going on day to day and I'd prefer being able to discuss it here.
For me it’s their relationship with Taiwan. I don’t think the US has anything similar, and it does push China into more evil.
There is absolutely a difference between the CCP and the United States, not that the United States is a perfect paragon of virtue.
Foreign government absolutely move to destabilize governments in place. Perhaps look back approximately 8 years to get proof of this within our own country. The US isn't going to do that shit to themselves, but has for sure done it to others in the past. That's neither here nor there in terms of "my government isn't currently attacking me directly like foreign governments probably are". Is there an argument that capitalists are? Sure. But Biden and his cabinet aren't putting policies in place to adjust the algorithm and the fact that you think that they're similar in this regard tells me more about you than I probably care to know.
Cuba
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Imo it get so much more ire because it’s more popular and because Facebook, Twitter, YouTube at some point were seen as pretty good. I think if any of those three, specially the first two, had became popular in the state they are now they would be just as hated.
if a campaign of racial violence perpetrated by the state means said state's social media companies must be banned, I again ask why the US is an exception
So, you don't actually know anything about the chinese government.
Here, let me give you an example of them being shitty:
This is a bit less obvious then say... the treatment of the Uighurs, Tibet or Hong Kong but it's a great example of how incredibly petty and shitty china can be at the drop of a hat to someone who engages in "wrong think".
The US just ran a disinformation campaign about vaccines using social media in the Philippines
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/
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It doesn't stand in contrast to it. Biden was on TikTok as well. You go where people are.
Trump joined TikTok too. TikTok loved Trump.
There is no proof they do it and the question stands as to why that's worse than the other companies doing it.
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Currently? I don’t think the US is attempting to annex Cuba, are they? I don’t necessarily think China is going to invade Taiwan any time soon, and I hope they never do. But they openly plan for Taiwan to become part of them. The US has a really stupid embargo with Cuba, but are Cubans worried that the US will invade or take over their country?
Which was done specifically by the Trump Administration, and was shut down pretty much immediately after Biden took office - and illustrates yet another reason he shouldn't be given power again.
The degree of ‘bad’ which a social media site has in the modern era is a product of…
How dominant is algorithmic control of content?
How likely is the owner to oppose the interests of the public?
How capable is the owner of using algorithmic control
TikTok is entirely algorithmic content, it is a stream of consciousness feed
The Chinese government has a strong interest in damaging Democratic societies, it is critical to them maintaining control
TikTok has shown an immediate pivot to issues in support of Chinese government activities in the past, and serves up a regular diet of harmful content designed to promote misery and sadness
All algorithmically backed social media is designed to create misery, but TikTok is so obviously the worst that there’s no question it should be banned, as should all similar imitators.
The Chinese government is actively engaging in one of histories largest genocides against the Uigers, and concluding a genocide against the Tibetans. The concern isn’t the guys search history, the concern is that the Chinese government uses TikTok to control the narrative between young people overseas.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
No clue, but if you ask 10 people 9.5 of them are gonna be kinda leery of another Country fucking with our politics through social media, even if our Country does the same thing.
I don't know how to explain it more clearly than that, unfortunately.