At least two brands have said they will suspend advertising on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, after their ads and those of other companies were run on an account promoting fascism. The issue came less than a week after X CEO Linda Yaccarino publicly affirmed the company’s commitment to brand safety for advertisers.
Free speech is good and must be protected, that’s clear. But it should not be virtually limitless. The US played a major role sorting out the negative consequences of the Weimar republic, which did not contain fascist ideology, which then lead to WW2.
It still baffles my mind how the US cannot see that tolerating the intolerant must inevitably lead to an intolerant and possibly facist society.
I have thought about it for a while but the US is basically in a cold civil war, with a significant chance of it becoming hot. And it looks very similar to their previous one. Neither side seem to have a charismatic enough leader.
It’s easy to look over the pond and think it’s none of our problem. But if the US falls to chaos a lot of other countries will follow suit. We can already see this influence in the UK and I’d argue many other EU countries. Russia probably saw this weakness, bet on it worsening much quicker than it did, but lost that bet (so far).
With that said, addressing the US as a whole no longer makes sense. I’m sure plenty, plenty of Americans see what is happening.
It’s unfortunate that one of the wealthiest people on this planet has taken the anti-democratic side, but it’s not the first or the last time in history a powerful man, rich beyond measure has done so.
Very much so, the Bavarian Conservative Party literally has gone to have talks with republicans to use their election strategies, the German-wide AgD has ramped up their Anti-LGBT campaigning and started to use similar messaging to far-right propaganda networks, e.g. “protect our children”, “pedophiles”, photoshopped images of CSAM at pride events, etc.
All the conservative parties in the west seem to be pushing the same thing. It seems pretty co-ordinated which is even scarier. Every country is hearing the same talking points.
Yep, it’s very clear. Far right parties are growing, conservatives are running after them trying to keep their voters by using more and more populist tactics, often crossing the line to keep up with far-right talking points, since they can’t keep their voters with their status-quo, corporations-first policies that they’ve been pushing for decades.
It’s safe to say Russia and China have actually helped contribute to a lot of the issues in the last decade by holding a lot of soft power online. The US government can’t stop an enemy that blends in with their sovereign users, advertisers, and content creators.
My country (Australia) has tied itself to you guys so if you go down we definitely go down with you. I’m 100% hoping the US doesn’t fall into chaos. We also birthed Rupert Murdoch and he’s played a huge part in heating up this civil war.
They are but things are definitely getting hot with China. There’s also been some issues with trade and diplomacy since our ex PM publicly called for an investigation into the origins of covid. China did not respond well to that and our previous government’s approach to diplomacy didn’t help. At one point China actually wasn’t answering calls from us.
We are walking a very fine line because we absolutely depend on trade with China but we’ve also entered in an alliance for the explicit purpose of preparing for a potential conflict with China. There’s absolutely no reality where we side with China over America. We would destroy our economy before we back out of our alliance with the US. We have followed them into every war since ww2.
You’re partly right. But it’s the job of the citizenry to stand up to this stuff, not the state. We can’t keep our heads down and hope it goes away on its own. We shouldn’t allow the state, with its monopoly on violence, to fight our social battles for us.
I dislike the idea of the state getting to start making decisions on what is “hateful”. And I’m disgusted we don’t have more people standing up and loudly declaring how wrong the hateful viewpoints are. It is our responsibility and we are failing.
It is a tempting proposition to let the state handle hateful speech, but we don’t have to look much further than Florida to see what happens when the shit side is in power and starts redefining what is “hateful”.
Free speech is good and must be protected, that’s clear. But it should not be virtually limitless. The US played a major role sorting out the negative consequences of the Weimar republic, which did not contain fascist ideology, which then lead to WW2.
It still baffles my mind how the US cannot see that tolerating the intolerant must inevitably lead to an intolerant and possibly facist society.
I have thought about it for a while but the US is basically in a cold civil war, with a significant chance of it becoming hot. And it looks very similar to their previous one. Neither side seem to have a charismatic enough leader.
It’s easy to look over the pond and think it’s none of our problem. But if the US falls to chaos a lot of other countries will follow suit. We can already see this influence in the UK and I’d argue many other EU countries. Russia probably saw this weakness, bet on it worsening much quicker than it did, but lost that bet (so far).
With that said, addressing the US as a whole no longer makes sense. I’m sure plenty, plenty of Americans see what is happening.
It’s unfortunate that one of the wealthiest people on this planet has taken the anti-democratic side, but it’s not the first or the last time in history a powerful man, rich beyond measure has done so.
Very much so, the Bavarian Conservative Party literally has gone to have talks with republicans to use their election strategies, the German-wide AgD has ramped up their Anti-LGBT campaigning and started to use similar messaging to far-right propaganda networks, e.g. “protect our children”, “pedophiles”, photoshopped images of CSAM at pride events, etc.
All the conservative parties in the west seem to be pushing the same thing. It seems pretty co-ordinated which is even scarier. Every country is hearing the same talking points.
Yep, it’s very clear. Far right parties are growing, conservatives are running after them trying to keep their voters by using more and more populist tactics, often crossing the line to keep up with far-right talking points, since they can’t keep their voters with their status-quo, corporations-first policies that they’ve been pushing for decades.
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It’s safe to say Russia and China have actually helped contribute to a lot of the issues in the last decade by holding a lot of soft power online. The US government can’t stop an enemy that blends in with their sovereign users, advertisers, and content creators.
My country (Australia) has tied itself to you guys so if you go down we definitely go down with you. I’m 100% hoping the US doesn’t fall into chaos. We also birthed Rupert Murdoch and he’s played a huge part in heating up this civil war.
y’all can just flip to china and they’ll treat you really nice to try and placate future potential allies
at least… for like a decade or two
Nah we just signed a big pact with the US and UK and now we’re buying all their hand me down helicopters and shit.
China’s still one of your major trading partners, though.
They are but things are definitely getting hot with China. There’s also been some issues with trade and diplomacy since our ex PM publicly called for an investigation into the origins of covid. China did not respond well to that and our previous government’s approach to diplomacy didn’t help. At one point China actually wasn’t answering calls from us.
We are walking a very fine line because we absolutely depend on trade with China but we’ve also entered in an alliance for the explicit purpose of preparing for a potential conflict with China. There’s absolutely no reality where we side with China over America. We would destroy our economy before we back out of our alliance with the US. We have followed them into every war since ww2.
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Correction: fake free speech absolutionism of Musk where he gets to decide who gets censored for their opinion is very popular with dumb dumbs.
You’re partly right. But it’s the job of the citizenry to stand up to this stuff, not the state. We can’t keep our heads down and hope it goes away on its own. We shouldn’t allow the state, with its monopoly on violence, to fight our social battles for us.
I dislike the idea of the state getting to start making decisions on what is “hateful”. And I’m disgusted we don’t have more people standing up and loudly declaring how wrong the hateful viewpoints are. It is our responsibility and we are failing.
It is a tempting proposition to let the state handle hateful speech, but we don’t have to look much further than Florida to see what happens when the shit side is in power and starts redefining what is “hateful”.
So what’s the state for?
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Nah. Our state should do more and better things than that.
I like having a space program, for example. And education for all
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A space program is not optional in today’s world. As is education, among a huge number of different things
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There are many schools of thought on what a government is for or should do and most people do not ascribe to the notions you are presenting as fact.