POG Politics Thread Version 3

I thought of an example. Creators on YouTube complain about censorship. But this is censorship they are buying into for monetization. If you don't care about monetization or The Algorithm you can post whatever you want on YouTube.

So they are auto-censoring, acting as both the creator and the censor. It's a useful way of thinking about things.

BCH is a Heideggerian

being-towards-expression and being-towards-commerce may be at odds with each other, competing for being-in-the-world's direction

to the extent one subordinates the other out of necessity, the master/slave dialectic occurs, neither being abandoned (killed) by the other but serving the other

this fractures dasein, not a pleasant sensation, but the cause of this fracture is a violence external to dasein, in the necessity, which itself may be not taken for granted.

BCH please

Filthy, I think I need to see a birth certificate.

I don't understand, does believing in aliens make him not born in America?

no, it suggests he was born on the planet Kenya in the Reptile system

that's how he knows

No, I need to see your birth certificate. I've a new working theory to explain your "philosophies"... 😀

ah I see lol.. ok that makes sense.

If I had the technology to travel here from another planet, and pass as human, I hope I could also get a birth certificate

and if I had that kind of power, Elon and all them would not be living it up rn. and I'd be in one of their mansions or on one of their yachts. and you all would be invited too

I was telling my gf about this, and she said for a while she was using 20gb a day

She watches hours and hours of video on a tiny phone screen?

I've a monthly prepaid plan I use on my phone. I will often skip not paying the next month right away because I can go sometimes weeks without needing it. There is Wifi almost everywhere and when on walks I just pre-download some podcasts. ymmv

This is possible because I use a Google Voice number for calls and texting. So I can still call and text without an active cell plan.

As an aside, I gave my Openclaw agent "Claw" my cell phone number to use for calling and texting. Since I never use the plan for anything other than data.

I don’t think that really gets to the core of the issue. Liberal thinking tends to abstract away concepts like censorship and freedom of speech in such a way that it becomes a purely theoretical exercise rather than one in situ with capitalist reality.

Censorship, for instance, is treated as outright removal of specific speech. So, for instance, in the YouTube example, it would be taking down video because of something you said. And sure that does happen. But more commonly it looks more like manipulating algorithms and search functions such that your video is de facto removed or at least has its audience narrowed to an extreme degree. So if I were to criticize Israel’s government, YouTube might not remove the video, but if they made it also impossible to find via search and also made it so it never came across anyone’s feed, that’s censorship in every practical sense, but liberal thinking would not treat it as so.

Same goes for the concept of free speech. Liberal thinking is purely “can I say a thing without the government directly intervening”. But that has no practical significance. Elon Musk, Roger Aisles, and I all have freedom of speech in the liberal sense, but in a practical sense no one ever hears what I say compared to millions/billions hear what they say. And that is simply because they are rich.

And I would also challenge the idea that anyone is “opting in” to this set up. No one has the freedom to opt out of capitalism.

Obviously people can't opt out of Capitalism. Wage slavery is an accurate term.

I was only saying they are opting in to making money on this particular platform with this particular type of content.

sure. But they do not really have an option. Its not like video content creators have a marketplace of platforms to choose from where this exact type of censorship isn't a thing.

www.upscrolled.com

there are many video hosting platforms, and it's actually surprisingly easy to diy your own

capitalism does not force people onto YouTube

people don't want to learn something new, they want to brightest, simplest button. particularly one that all of their friends use (because it's so easy)

do Vimeo and Mastodon have APIs that would enable embedding in 2P2? probably! but that's too many buttons for users; this one is the video button, that one is the social media button.

this actually does happen, today, eg libraries pulling Maus from the shelves because of anthropomorphic animal nudity

there are state laws that criminalize librarians providing "sensitive" materials to minors

a conspiracy video getting funneled only to conspiracy wonks is a bastardized form of censorship; it does not have the bearing or weight as its true form, and treating them equally risks coating the worser with a gloss of banality.

capitalist logic doesn't force people to be terrible

it enables them to be terrible, and it works because people want to be terrible

the antithesis is to force people to act otherwise than they desire, even if for the greater good!

Plato belongs in a museum, not on the masthead.

I know ya'll are smarter than that

is there an echo in here

Literal echo chamber.

Check out these genius new signs in my area.

glossed.

The anti-sun movement

In the future maybe we'll be banned from grocery stores (which only exist online) for supporting Israel.

Or maybe grocery stores will be eliminated for globo corp restaurants.