Don't worry, it's just a first step. After this, they will more easily be able to ban any public media not accepting direct government requests for censorship (or censorship immunity) and reduction of reach (or artificial boosting of reach.)
That this is auxiliary to US goals to antagonize China is the sugar. The real goal is to continue the progress made when when breakaway Trump-supporting networks like Parler were directly attacked by Congress, and app stores informally threatened if they wouldn't ban them. Twitter is being continuously threatened by Congress just because they changed ownership from movement Democrats to an "independent" rich guy.
TikTok will be the precedent. It's obviously just racist to attack TikTok alone; in order to retroactively make it not racist, it's important to attack companies that amplify Chinese, Russian, Iranian, or Palestinian messages, the alt-left, the alt-right, or anyone that might inspire disloyalty to the homeland. Which is why Homeland Security will be overseeing social media.
> they might get shot up in math class?
The safest place that a child is at all day is at school (home and family are far more dangerous), and more people die in a day in Ukraine or (until fairly recently) Yemen, or because asthma inhalers were re-patented in the US through active corruption and their price went from $5 to $75, than have ever died in a school shooting. Middle class paranoia is being exploited by dragging the discussion of 6 deaths in this suburb, 10 deaths in that suburb, over years, with public wailing and gnashing of teeth, energetic and aggressive shaming of dissenters (with state support), and constant press releases from an industry that relies on advocacy for income.
Upper-middle class liberals can only be focused on issues that affect them directly, which is why gun control (and gun rights, classical liberals are liberals too) is an easy way to manipulate them. I wish they could be pushed back to important things, like our failed healthcare system that will ruthlessly bankrupt them with the slightest provocation.
Gun control pandering is just Republican law & order pandering in a Democratic style. It's pretending that there's some magical incantation that will make desperate people both not violent, and also not easy targets for violence and exploitation. The solution is systemic infrastructure, rather than distraction. I'd take a school shooting that kills 6 every week in exchange for a compassionate, functional healthcare system. It's 300 lives versus hundreds of thousands of lives.
edit: Americans live in a country that shut down most public mental health care from 2008-2010.
That this is auxiliary to US goals to antagonize China is the sugar. The real goal is to continue the progress made when when breakaway Trump-supporting networks like Parler were directly attacked by Congress, and app stores informally threatened if they wouldn't ban them. Twitter is being continuously threatened by Congress just because they changed ownership from movement Democrats to an "independent" rich guy.
TikTok will be the precedent. It's obviously just racist to attack TikTok alone; in order to retroactively make it not racist, it's important to attack companies that amplify Chinese, Russian, Iranian, or Palestinian messages, the alt-left, the alt-right, or anyone that might inspire disloyalty to the homeland. Which is why Homeland Security will be overseeing social media.
> they might get shot up in math class?
The safest place that a child is at all day is at school (home and family are far more dangerous), and more people die in a day in Ukraine or (until fairly recently) Yemen, or because asthma inhalers were re-patented in the US through active corruption and their price went from $5 to $75, than have ever died in a school shooting. Middle class paranoia is being exploited by dragging the discussion of 6 deaths in this suburb, 10 deaths in that suburb, over years, with public wailing and gnashing of teeth, energetic and aggressive shaming of dissenters (with state support), and constant press releases from an industry that relies on advocacy for income.
Upper-middle class liberals can only be focused on issues that affect them directly, which is why gun control (and gun rights, classical liberals are liberals too) is an easy way to manipulate them. I wish they could be pushed back to important things, like our failed healthcare system that will ruthlessly bankrupt them with the slightest provocation.
Gun control pandering is just Republican law & order pandering in a Democratic style. It's pretending that there's some magical incantation that will make desperate people both not violent, and also not easy targets for violence and exploitation. The solution is systemic infrastructure, rather than distraction. I'd take a school shooting that kills 6 every week in exchange for a compassionate, functional healthcare system. It's 300 lives versus hundreds of thousands of lives.
edit: Americans live in a country that shut down most public mental health care from 2008-2010.