If nationalization is scandalous violence for you, let me say I want him to get the french treatment.

China doesn’t pretend that their media is unbiased, though. There’s no aura of unbiased media in China.

What they “pretend” to be doesn’t matter, what matters is the thoughts they want to put on the people who read it, why they want to, and how many of them do read it. Any and all state media or state collaborative media tries to paint the state it comes from in a good light. This is not somehow more benevolent or less manipulative when it’s done by China, even if “it’s easy to circumvent” or “people know it’s biased”.

Meanwhile, Facebook’s head of global threat intelligence, is literally a US intelligence plant

According to its CEO and founder Ren, Huawei’s corporate culture is the same as the culture of the CCP, “and to serve the people wholeheartedly means to be customer-centric and responsible to society.” Ren frequently states that Huawei’s management philosophy and strategy are commercial applications of Maoism.

Ren states that in the event of a conflict between Huawei’s business interests and the CCP’s interests, he would “choose the CCP whose interest is to serve the people and all human beings”. Qiao and Marquis observe that company founder Ren is a dedicated communist who seeks to ingrain communist values at Huawei.

I wonder if WeChat and TikTok are any different, too.

Bing has 100 million DAUs worldwide. Reddit has about 55 million DAUs worldwide. LinkedIn has about 22 million DAUs in the US. Twitter has about 54 million MAUs in the US. Threads has about 8 million DAUs worldwide (though probably less now, lol). 1-5% penetration of total users in terms of usage is indicative of very high awareness.

Last October, China clamped down on some VPNs

So basically, it’s easy to do, but illegal, but it’s rarely persecuted? That’s a really weird policy.

No it’s not. Much like you aren’t a CPC shill/russian bot/whatever, no one commenting on a lemmy post is a psyop agent with a secret agenda to manipulate everyone. Those guys have the entire media, they don’t need to hire people to pretend to be redditors. Just because you believe it really really hardly doesn’t make it true.

That was also the day we realized how much nicer C was to C++

Absolutely. I went through a whole process of using less and less C++isms that everyone was recommending me as they just made everything so much harder, longer to compile, produce more unreadable errors, harder to organize… Until I eventually was just writing C but structs have functions.

Then I moved to Rust and I have not looked back.

How in the world did they think no one would notice? Aren’t they a tech savvy company?

I get what you mean, but the other guy brought up democracy as if it was the be-all end-all solution.

Yes. No democracy, no support from me. “But the US isn’t democratic!” Which is why I don’t support it either. Not sure if the other guy is the same.

Countries that disprove OP’s point about democracy being the solution

No country disproves that democracy is needed. “Benevolent dictators” (all dictators think they’re benevolent) die. If you think a dictatorship is doing well just give it a few years.

most urban people either know how to flip the firewall or know someone who can - it’s really not that hard.

“Yes they censor everything, but it’s easy to circumvent!” is not an excuse. How accurate is this really though? Do you have any sources to prove this is the case? Genuinely interested.

As if the large media organizations in the US don’t all cite reports from “independent think tanks” that are conspicuously all funded by the same billionaires and manned by “ex”-US intelligence.

Chinese news cite chinese think tanks, both entities funded by the chinese government. How is it any different? Doesn’t China have more billionaires than the US too?

followed by USA/capitalism works best and is only system that works (does not)

Neither me not the person you were responding to said this. They criticised China on something - you made up the “hence the US is good/only thing that works” line. You just assumed if anyone thinks anything slightly remotely bad about China it’s because they’re an evil idiot liberul!!!. It really is just a reflex for you people no?

It’s not about brains, it’s about the flow of conversation. Everytime someone calls out China on anything there’s always a bunch of people that immediately say “Ah yes because the US–” No one is talking about the US. No one is saying it’s any better. It being a shithole too doesn’t magically make China not one. If that is the only thing you have to say then you don’t actually have an argument, just the vibe that it’s le based epic AES wholesome chungus country and if they do anything wrong it must be propaganda or not actually done by them.

This not an argument. You can’t respond to “X is doing something wrong” with “OH AS IF Y IS ANY BETTER” when literally no one was talking about Y. You’re just trying to derail the conversation. If you’re going to defend China stick to your guts and defend China, don’t attack completely unrelated countries implying I must think they’re any better, they’re not.

At least most people in Russia and China can distinguish between the truth and the party line.

I am sure that most people in the country with the largest censorship firewall in existence know the truth any better. And before you say B-B-B-BUT AMERICA— Yeah they censor shit too. I hate both of them.

So… no, you don’t have an actual point to make.

Yes yes we know America is bad too, now do you have an actual point to make?

Why is it always the Save The Children Act and not the Erradicate Trans People Act?

I am sorry for being agressive. I mostly assumed you thought the same things as the person you were quoting. I appreciate that you at least admit you aren’t well read enough, that’s more than most people I talk to.

I’m happy to receive some recs I can follow up on.

I really appreciate this too. Thank you. I think as a direct expanding on what I’m talking about, this essay is very good:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anark-the-state-is-counter-revolutionary

It’s available on video form too, but the video doesn’t have citations.

Here’s a good rebuttal of On Authority:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/london-anarchist-federation-the-problems-with-on-authority

A modern and a classical reading on how anarchists view authority and power:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anark-power

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/mikhail-bakunin-what-is-authority

Thanks for ignoring everything I said.

Look, I agree that it’s dumb to call yourself a socialist and have zero respect for most attempts at socialism, especially when your critique doesn’t come from anything serious but just parroting of cold war propaganda. I agree that these countries weren’t literally the devil, nor fascist, not “pretending”, that’s all fine.

But it’s still so dishonest of MLs to dig for quotes and smugly boastbout how “libertarians never succeed”. Even if we completely ignore all the very explicit and deliberate attempts at sabotage anarchists had to endure from their statist “comrades” (which we shouldn’t but we always casually seem to be forced to do in the name of “unity”), it doesn’t change the fact that vanguardist revolutions have all been incredibly flawed too.

You all are very often willing to recognize your failures, most of the people like you I have talked to seem to agree that at some point the revolution was “hijacked”, usurped, corrupted, lost aim, usually coinciding with a figure they don’t like taking over the revolutionary government and messing things up.

The supposed “strong state that crushes all opposition” being taken over by the reformist opposition and then the capitalist one in the case of the USSR and Leninists. The market reforms of Deng in the case of China and Maoists. But you all never seem to ask yourselves the question “Why was that allowed to happen?”. Why am I supposed to put my trust in some authoritarian bullshit solution specifically justified as a means to protect the revolution when it failed at doing so? Why do you have to be so smug and condescending at me for not trusting in things that didn’t work?

Why do you instead of learning from the mistakes in your methods that most of the time you yourself recognize and trying to come up with new ideas and systems for the current age, insist on still clinging to material analysis of the world of a hundred years ago as the gospel, the sole undying and absolute truth on how to Make Socialism, merely saying “it’ll totally work right this time” instead? Why do you insist on mocking and “”“dunking”“” on anyone who refuses to do that?

They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted.

This is all completely false. It genuinely is just lies. You can disagree with the explanations, but to claim there literally aren’t any is just ignorance and a complete lack of good faith. Look, if you’re a socialist in the internet, you probably have dealt with confidently incorrect liberals whining about strawmen that you don’t believe, because they haven’t read anything about it - and it’s probably been incredibly frustrating. So why do you never think twice before doing the same thing with anarchists?

I’m always told to read Lenin and a ton of authoritarian essays and I always do in good faith, but it’s extremely rare for me to ever be afforded the same honour, and then all the conversations I have end up with people telling me shit like this and me having to explain anarchism 101 to them because they genuinely don’t actually know anything.

No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.

I am also always told to be charitable and nuanced about the failures and mistakes of vanguardist revolutions, but no one ever has the same honour with anarchist ones.

What are you on about? Who’s talking about “completely getting rid of AI”? And you accuse me of strawmanning? I didn’t even argue that it should be stopped. I argued that every single time anyone tries or suggests doing anything to curtail these things people like you jump out to vehemently defend your precious programs from regulation or even just criticism, because we should either completely destroy capitalism or not do anything at all, there is no inbetween, there is nothing we can do to help anyone if it’s not that.

Except there is. There are plenty of things that can be done to help the common people besides telling them “well just tough it out until we someday magically change the fundamentals of the economic system of the entire world, nerd”. It just would involve restricting what these things can do. And you don’t want that. It’s fine but own up to it. Trying to have this image that you really do care about helping but just don’t want to help at all unless it’s via an incredibly unprobable miracle pisses me off.

false information? already a problem without A.I. always has been. media control, paid propagandists etc. if anything, A.I. might encourage the main population to learn what critical thought is. it’s still just as bad if you get rid of A.I.

For someone who accuses others of not understanding how AI works, to then say something like this is absurd. I hope you’re being intellectually dishonest and not just that naive. There is absolutely no comparison between a paid propagandist and the irrecognizable replicas of real things you could fabricate with AI.

People are already abusing voice actors by sampling them and making covers with their voices without their permission and certainly without paying. We can already make amateur videos of the person speaking to pair it up with the generated audio. In a few years when the technology innevitably gets better I will be able to perfectly fabricate a video that can ruin someone’s life with a few clicks. If this process is sophisticated enough there will be minimal points of failure, there will be almost nothing to investigate and try to figure out if the video is false or not. No evidence will ever mean anything, it could all be fabricated. If you don’t see how this is considerably worse than ANYTHING we have right now to falsify information, then there is nothing I can say to ever convince you. “Oh, but if nothing can be demonstrably true anymore, the masses will learn critical thought!” Sure.

say you succeed. A.I. is gone. nothing has changed. inequality is still getting worse and everything is terrible. congratulations! you managed to prevent countless scientific discoveries that could help countless people. congrats, the blind and deaf lose their potential assistants. the physically challenged lose potential house-helpers. etc.

This is what I mean. You people lack any kind of nuance. You can only work in this “all or nothing” thinking. No “anti-AI” person wants to fully and completely destroy every single machine and program powered by artificial intelligence, jesus christ. It’s almost like it’s an incredibly versatile tool that has many uses that can be used for good and bad, It’s almost like we should, call me an irrational emotional snowflake if you want, put regulations in place so the bad uses are heavily restricted, so we can live with this incredible technology without feeling constantly under threat because we are using it responsibly.

Instead what you propose is, don’t you dare limit anything, open the flood gates and let’s instead change the economic system so that the harmful don’t also destroy people economically. Except the changes you want not only don’t fix some of the problems unregulated and free AI use for everything bring, they go against the interests of every single person with power in this system, so they have an incredibly minuscule chance of ever being close to happening, much less happening peacefully. I’d be okay if it was your ultimate goal, but if you’re not willing to have a compromise on something that could minimize the harm this is doing in the meantime without being a perfect solution, why shouldn’t I assume you just don’t care? What reasons are you giving me to not believe that you simply prefer seeing the advancements of technology rather than the security of your fellow humans, and you’re just saying this as an excuse to keep it that way?

on top of that, we lose the biggest argument for socializing the economy going forward, through massive automation that can’t be ignored or denied while we demand a fair economy.

Right, because that’s the way to socialize the economy. By having a really good argument. I’m sure it will convince the people that have unmeasurable amounts of wealth and power precisely because the economy is not socialized. It will be so convincing they will willingly give all of that up.

It’s mostly large companies, some models are open source (of which only some are also community driven), but the mainstream ones are the ones being entirely funded by, legally protected by, and pushed onto everything by capitalist olligarchs.

What other options do you have? I’m sick and tired of people like you seeing workers lose their jobs, seeing real people used like meat puppets by the internet, seeing so many artists risking their livelihoods, seeing that we’ll have to lose faith in everything we see and read because it could be irrecognizably falsified, and CLAIMING you care about it, only to complain every single time any regulation or way to control this is proposed, because you either don’t actually care and are just saying it for rhetoric, or you do care but only to the point you can still use your precious little toys restriction-free. Just overthrow the entire economic system of all countries on earth, otherwise don’t do anything, let all those people burn! Do you realize how absurd you sound?

It’s sociopathic. I don’t say it as an insult, I say it applying the definition of a word, it’s a complete lack of empathy and care for your fellow human beings, it’s viewing an inmaterial piece of technology, nothing but a thoughtless word generator, like inherently worth more than the livelihood of millions. I’m absolutely sick of it. And then you have the audacity to try to seem like the reasonable ones when arguing about this, knowing if you had your way so many would suffer. Framing it as anti-capitalism knowing that if you had your way you’d pave the way for the olligarchs to make so many more billions off of that suffering.

I am so tired of techno-fetishist AI bros complaining every single time any of the many ways in which AI will devastate and rot out daily lives is brought up.

“It’s not the tech! It’s the economic system!”

As if they’re different things? Who is building the tech? Who is pouring billions into the tech? Who is protecting the tech from proper regulation, smartass? I don’t see any worker coops using AI.

“You don’t even know how it works!”

Just a thought terminating cliche to try to avoid any discussion or criticism of your precious little word generators. No one needs to know how a thing works to know it’s effects. The effects are observable reality.

Also, nobody cares about advertising companies? What the hell are you on about?