I was simply telling a joke, but point well taken.

To be fair, considering the right wing hellscape our (US) Overton window overlooks the bias bot might actually have a point.

I’ve also ran into some issues simply accessing youtube through my vpn, but that’s been going on for a while.

Bro took a long shower I guess.

Absolutely. So much of the right wing media space is inhabited by, funded by, and glorifies grifters that they’ve created a constant chunk of their audience that is vulnerable to their tactics. Values or policy prescriptions don’t even really need to come into it, if you are a grifter it’s just a smart business decision to start drifting to the right. It opens up those audiences to you because you are “one of them”.

I think it’d also count as a full term in office so far as the rule against running more than twice goes. So you could run for reelection, but that isn’t a “one werid trick” to getting three terms in office.

Those who believe in conspiracy theories have become our conservative party. Some (myself included) would argue they’ve always been there or that that’s always been the nature of the republican party. But the important thing here in the modern day is that the conspiracy theorists now control half of the country’s political system.

I’m personally of the opinion that conspiracy theory is the result of a fundamental unwillingness or inability to engage with reality. If that is the case then why on earth would you choose to believe in climate change? It’s scary, and an existential threat to humanity if it’s taken seriously. Besides, theres a lot of money to be made burning the planet.

I think at the end of the day that’s what the American right’s denial of climate change boils down to. Everyone in that party participates in some way in denying reality in favor of a collective fantasy. What’s one more denial?

This is why they’re losing advertisers left right and center.

Fixed that for you.

I’m already planning to. I run Windows 10 and as soon as that stops receiveing security support (or really as soon as I have the time) I’m gonna be swapping over to Linux for good.

Think that’s where it started actually.

Eh, I’m sure it’s just a matter of time. As people have said above the infinite free money is drying up. That’s a fact that all these corporations have to contend with. The only difference between Twitter and Facebook or Unity and Google is that Twitter and Unity have made their dumb decisions already. Facebook, Google, and others have navigated this fairly well so far. But they are feeling the same pressures that Reddit and Unity did and eventually they will bend to them too.

Obviously not a lawyer, but I’m not 100% certain that the billing terms would stand up to legal scrutiny. It’s been kinda hard to keep up with this story so my apologies if any of this is wrong, but I believe that they said they were wanting to use an “aggregate proprietary model” to determine downloads. What that basically means (I think) is “we’ll tell you how much you have to pay us but we can’t independently justify any individual charge”.

Again, I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t know of anything off the top of my head that’d make that illegal, but it also doesn’t really feel like it’d square with how things work. I mean if companies could just make up a number and say you owe them that much without being able to say why or whether or not that number comports in any way with reality, then what’s stopping every company from doing that? What’s stopping a magazine for example from coming back to you and saying “Yes, you paid us for the magazine. But our proprietary aggregate model that totally reflects reality promise tm suggests that you might have shown that magazine to two or three other people after you purchased it from us. So that means you have to pay us three instances of the review licence fee.”?

I don’t know. Obviously this is all scuzzy and morally wrong. It’s just that even factoring in that this is a subscription service and that they are a corporation with an army of lawyers who’ll likely win any challenge to it, I can’t really shake the feeling that there’s something fundamentally legally wrong about that aspect of it in particular that wouldn’t hold up in court. Even for them.

There’s a part of me that legitimately wonders how far Twitter could go as an influncer bubble. Granted this is unlikely to happen but if everyone who’s not an influencer just left for Mastodon and Twitter just became a hollow shell of influencers trying to sell products to customers who just aren’t there, how far would Twitter’s inerta carry it before anyone realized?

That’s what I don’t get. These are expectations that I’ve had for years. The indie space has kinda proven that creativity will take a game a hell of a lot farther than cash ever will. With few exceptions I simply don’t buy AAA games anymore because honestly I just don’t expect the same level of effort will be put into making them.

Honestly the FTC should be handing out antitrust suits like candy. Late stage capitalism has created a bit of a target rich environment, if only the FTC could take advantage.

I’ve actually been wondering why that’s the case for a while. Like is it a limitation of something their doing under the hood of GSUITE products?

It’s like Elon has read every book with an evil corporation in it and decided to make it his whole ascetic. X corp, sounds like the big bad that some plucky band of YA book protagonists have to team up to take down.