Not the one being smug. That's you. I am not the one virtue signally. Literally what I pointed out you were doing. I'm not going to tell you to stop or not do it, because you do you. My thing is mocking it anytime I see it. In case it's not clear, I'm not claoming this makes me the better person.

Firstly…

I completely agree that it has never “felt” that way. My point was that we need to stop and intellectually consider where we have been and where we are. If you slow down and think for a second you can see that some progress has been made.

Secondly… and please don’t take this as an attack.

Notice that I didn’t say Hilary lost, I said Bernie lost. The fact that you said Gore lost, as opposed to Nader lost suggests to me that you weren’t yet apart of the fight I was referring to in the year 2000. You were still a reactionary at that point, you were still thinking in terms of harm reduction or partisan politics, rather than an affirmative vision for what could serve the material interests of everyday average working people.

If you now have an affirmative vision — beyond blindly supporting whatever the Democratic Party does — that too is progress.

@tmyakal@infosec.pub made me realize I take solace in the fact I'll never feel like we've won or are satisfied with the state of governments. Yes, plenty of countries have great safety nets and protection for their civilians, but it's still nothing compared to my dream of an idealized world. That long list of desires for a peaceful existence will just never get filled, but I continue aiming for it regardless with whatever time I have here.

ur still affected by how these influence the news cycle and general societal conversation

Ok, and? Why is everyone up my ass because I'm happy I don't support these elites? Sure the rest of the sheep are grazing in the pasture. How is that my problem? It's not like I don't talk to those in my circle. I can lead a sheep to water but I can't make them drink.

The only winning move is not to play.

Big reason why I chose not to reproduce and am encouraging others to similarly abstain. Billionaires can't exist without the rest of us.

Is this any different than making a post on Reddit encouraging people to switch to Lemmy?

I'm rolling with it.

Yeah that's the problem. I don't use them, but a bunch of other people do. How do we get them to stop?

There was basically one positive aspect of them going for this sort of model: they are very incompetent at actually controlling such a media conglomerate monster, specially as it grows. Now there's AI, there's social network personality cults-on-demand, they can increasingly and reliably offload the control to what are essentially primordially mental surgery bisected intelligence that can be cloned on demand. They are increasingly working to create the digital human cattle slaughterhouses they've always wanted.

in NYC, but i dont see any other cities having a smilar situation. thats why the DNC and gop stop attacking him on MSMs, they dont want to inflame and spread his influence. Walz in minnesota has pretty much lost favor due to how weak he has become in light of the ICE attacks.

I heard some inside baseball that Walz might not have been as comfortable passing the far-left legislation that came out of MN over the last few years as we previously thought. I’m hoping Jesse Ventura will get back in there and do a better job when Walz term is up.

It’s certainly harder to organize outside of places like NYC, and there aren’t many places like NYC in this country. But I don’t see why people wouldn’t respond similarly to having their material interests served by government if people manage to organize for such a candidate.

When FDR was passing the new deal he won 4 landslides in a row across the entire country. Why wouldn’t people respond similarly today? (Besides the fact they passed term limits to stop a similar situation.)

But twitter is a nazi platform and there are valid alternatives available.

Alao participation in capitalism might be necessary to survive, posting on Twitter isnt.

Last season of Westworld was about guiding people through AI to control them. Your destiny was preordained by AI.

Does that make it less ironic?

Delete all your accounts, and tell all your friends and family to do the same. Refuse and reject any service designed to fixate your attention. You won't miss them, most people alive today lived in a world without their influence.

Because they were originally successful companies that weren't owned by meta, and meta couldn't have that so they bought them.

Why this doesn't violate anti-trust laws is anybody's guess...

Right? It’s getting hard to talk to people nowadays because everyone seems brainwashed.

But you can’t get them out of it. Asking people to not check those feeds every day is like asking them to go without water.

Just vote for trump. It’s all the same.

I have no great love for the current administration and nor do I agree with most of its policies.

But I'm definitely going to have to see a source on the claims mentioned in this post.

We shouldn’t be integrating AI into our lives though. AI sucks.

Are you an idiot or have you not been paying attention?

This isn't "I need a source" type stuff. They aren't hiding this...they just aren't talking about it on their platforms, for obvious reasons.

Do you know who Elon Musk is? Jeff Bezos? Larry Ellison?

You should. Because they are paying a lot of money to have nearly exclusive control (among themselves) of all national media.

Meanwhile, Sinclair and Nexstar are fighting to control all of the local broadcast stations. They aren't just buying up the station, they are buying the reputations of the known and trusted local news-anchors. That shit is priceless when you are running a propaganda machine.

This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.

This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.

If someone is on Xitter (or Reddit, or wherever) and using it, what means would you use to ask them to stop using it and suggest an alternative platform?

I would use the platform... Ironically.

It's embarrassing how dependant folks have become with technology and social media. I'm not immune myself, but I'll drop anything that goes against my values.

I keep trying to relate this to when we started mass-producing books. It must have been the same. We integrated that tech and got better.

I am not personally a fan right now.

I concur, though my job has me integrating some open ai into our software. Not much I can do besides so what they like, bit of transcription and summary.

Had a coworker give me replies from gpt for an issue . I could tell easily because I had worked with similar data for years (parsing PBX data for calls) and knew the reply had errors. Like I know I can have issues parsing our data sometimes but it was insulting he gave an AI reply. So I nicely pointed out all the errors in the reply saying I assumed it was from ai. Mean did it nicely he was trying to help (and is a really nice dude) but still I know how to google and sift as well as ai probably does. And if I get the answer I remember it due due to the work I did.

It’s too stressful to worry about divesting from everything all the time. We do our best here in the swamp

Yeah I think meant the effort that was put in to add features to one of their apps when they were already present in the others

You should. Because they are paying a lot of money to have nearly exclusive control (among themselves) of all national media

Once again, I’m going to need to see some proof.

All I see are wild-ass claims. Claims, claims, claims.

Seriously, what’s happening in the U.S. is insane. I am ashamed of my country.
But one thing I’m tired of is these wild claims from all sides, by the way. You think the right MAGA camp isn’t making the same wild accusations against the left? They are. My request remains the same: show me some fucking proof.

I get what you're saying but honestly I'm finding it quite surprising that you're on Lemmy and haven't already seen it a billion times.

Alright, the founder of Oracle...One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison...had a kid. David. David owns Skydance Media. He founded it in 2010. Daddy helped him round up the capital to acquire Paramount, last year.

Here's what that got him.. But importantly, CBS (including many local stations)

Now he's trying (and thus far succeeding) to also buy Warner Brothers. Here's what's in that package. Importantly, CNN.

Oh yeah, he also has a big stake in TikTok, via Oracle.

You know Jeff Bezos, yea? He bought WaPo a while ago now, and over the past couple of years has been asserting more influence over the content of the paper, drawing sharp criticism. Relevant.

We all know about Rupert Murdoch. No sense talking about him.

And we all know who owns Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, and what a colossal piece of shit he is.

And who owns X, and how he makes Zuck look like a rabbit turd.

I really hope I don't have to explain Sinclair and Nexstar to you. They've been buying up practically every local broadcast affiliate. In my area, all local broadcast news is controlled by these two companies. Sinclair especially has been called out a few times calling for national runs of their highly opinionated script ("this is extremely dangerous to our democracy").

And then, there's /u/spez. Fuck /u/spez.

For extra credit, Peter Theil. Manipulative, conniving, petty piece of shit that he is. Founded Palantir, the surveillance mecha. Look how he used Hulk Hogan for litigious revenge. Major Trump supporter. Huge bigot. Vance's mentor. An openly gay, apartheid, libertarian bigot. You can't make this shit up.

There's a lot for you to go on here. It's not like I can just give you a link that explains everything. You really need to be following along because there's years of shit to unpack here, and as they enjoy controlling the news, they aren't going to be outright about telling you about it. You've got to dig.

I get it. I feel like a conspiracy nutter now too. But I don't have the time to hold your hand and open your eyes to the reality that's been surrounding you for years. It's there. Look.

The fourth estate is entirely controlled by billionaire interests that are friends, donors, and protectors of Trump. It's not hidden.

Somebody needs to jailbreak WhatsApp interoperability. Especially now that their 'encryption' has been demonstrated to be a farce.

I didn't try it but this claims to have done it: https://www.beeper.com/

Oh, I wonder if this is that teenaged guy that Apple tried to sue.