Good fucking riddance. (No offense cool innocent Russian people.)

Good. Let it stay that fucking way.

Raise your hand if you want to read the suspect’s manifesto!

One doesn’t have to go far to find a boot-licking class traitor who thinks if they run the rat race well enough they’ll get a piece of cheese.

But to be fair to the McDonalds worker, the cash reward is designed to do just that.

That’s fucking crazy. Anyone notice how AI has only made everything shittier?

Fursan al-Aqsa was released in 2022

You’re clearly not very well informed, because the source of the controversy here is an October 7th themed update that came out in late 2023.

Yeah, actually after taking a look at your profile, you’re not the kind of person I want taking up my mental energy.

What kind of person would that be?

“Freedom” is a concept, it’s neither something unique to America nor is it reliant on any document.

You are either free to express yourself without persecution, or you are not.
The press are either free to publish without persecution, or they are not.

You see, there’s this thing called the Theory of Forms. You probably wouldn’t get it.

Until we have a voting system where 3rd parties are viable (for example. Ranked Choice Voting, Star Voting, Approval Voting, etc.), we absolutely do not benefit in any way for the existence of more parties.

Whether intentional or not, America today is a two-party system by design. If you want more choices beyond the Democrats and Republicans, you need to help us enact voting system reforms which are necessary to allow 3rd parties to exist legitimately. We aren’t joking when we say that voting 3rd party is throwing your vote away; it very much is.

Before we get to the changes, we want to remind everyone that we are not a (US) free speech instance.

I’ve never understood this concept. There is no such thing as “(US) free speech”. Threats, coercion and blackmail obviously notwithstanding, you’re either free to express yourself, or you are not. Of course I understand that right of free expression isn’t something that applies to many European people, and there may be pros and cons to that, but nevertheless there is no middle ground on free speech–you’re either free or you aren’t.

But regardless of that, this is your own private community and you’re well within your rights to moderate it however the hell you want, “free speech” really doesn’t come into it at all. That’s one of the main benefits to federation.

Do you think Palestine sprung into existence on October 7?

No. I think most people know that Israel and Palestine were both established by the League of Nations back in the 40s post the fall of the Ottoman Empire, after which they proceeded to start fighting each other for fucking decades of pointless holy wars.

I’m not sure how that’s relevant to the discussion at hand, however.

Why does every discussion of Israel being genocidal colonizers come down to an incident that happened decades after their oppression of Palestine began?

Uh, are we not currently in a thread specifically talking about an October 7th game or…?

Any support for Palestine is being called “terrorist” these days, so I’d rather make the judgment call for myself.

So what is your judgment call? Was the October 7th attack terrorism or not?

TTT was so fucking great back in the day.

These guys smell like CEOs, and we all know what happens to CEOs.

This is a slippery slope argument.

The “problem” re TikTok is that they are a Chinese company with ties to the Chinese government who have managed to get a closed source black box app on millions of Americans phones that servers as about the most perfect avenue for social/political manipulation as any adversary could dream of.

The solution to that problem that was offered to TikTok more than a year ago was to simply sell to an American company (and thus a company that could in theory be held somewhat accountable, but probably not if we’re being honest) for doing bad things here in the USA. ByteDance would have made billions of dollars selling the American version of TikTok, but they knowingly chose the other option, which was to face a ban at the end of this year.

FWIW, American companies cannot operator or sell product in China without going through a Chinese company, and social media platforms like Facebook are banned in China, so in my opinion some degree of reciprocity here is at least warranted.

TikTok could have sold to an American company (read: a company that we can hold legally accountable for bad things that their product does) and made billions of dollars in the process. They chose not to, for some reason, and thus knowingly opted to face a ban in the United States. Those were the options and they knew it.

As I understand it American companies doing business in China almost always have to go through a Chinese company in order to operate legally and make products available to the Chinese market. Platforms like Facebook are already banned in China and must be accessed through a VPN because they don’t play ball with the Chinese regime, so why should it not be reciprocal?

Until TikTok is being managed and operated by a company that can be held legally accountable here in America, they are nothing but a security threat and a backdoor for the Chinese government into every cell phone of every person who is dumb enough to install that shit. Is that what the people want to hear? Probably not, but it’s the truth.

I wouldn’t install TikTok on my phone any sooner than I’d install RedStarOS on my PC, because the implications of using a proprietary, closed source application with ties to the Chinese regime should be fucking obvious to anyone with bare minimum technical knowledge. Likewise, I wouldn’t blame a Chinese person for being skeptical of Microsoft Windows or X.com for their close relationship with the American government. To think otherwise is just not smart.

From China’s perspective, Facebook probably IS a “national security risk”, which is why it is already banned over there.

For American to do business and sell products in China, they almost always have to go through a Chinese company. I’m sure that’s part capitalism and part accountability theater, but it’s just a fact. So why is it such an outrage for America to ask TikTok to do the same?

It’s not “censorship” to ban a product like TikTok any more than it’s censorship to ban any other product. TikTok had the opportunity to sell to an American company (the same way all products on the Chinese market are forced to go through Chinese companies) and, for reasons that only they can explain, they chose not to do that. They would have made billions of dollars selling, but perhaps money isn’t their primary concern…

At any rate, we absolutely need to have a separate conversation about all social media in terms of privacy and data rights (though it’ll never happen under Republicans), but that doesn’t mean TikTok is free to continue being a completely opaque and unaccountable backdoor to the Chinese government.

They’re allowed to “complain about Israel”. They aren’t allowed to fire missiles or wage attacks.

Hope that clears things up for you.

The right thing is to enact a ceasefire in exchange for the immediate release of all Isreali hostages.

The US was right to veto this unenforceable, performative UN bullshit on the grounds that it didn’t call for the immediate release of the hostages.