Well, there is also that thing with those concentration camps which have come to our attention in the last few years, may I suggest that to be one of the reasons for the "sinophobia" (stupid word, I do not see any irrational fear of China here, what I do see is criticism which is not the same thing, at all) seen here?
Ah, so it is just like, say, a supporter of the outgoing president giving his perspective on things on HN after which he's met with similar beratements (s/CCP/GOP/g;s/Xi/Trump/)? Maybe I can generalise this to a supporter of anything which goes outside of a polarised narrative being met with such?
That is like saying "black powder has existed for centuries, are nuclear weapons really that big a problem?". The difference between an image editor like Photoshop and an automated image generation program is the far greater production capacity, speed, the lower cost and the fact that anyone with the right equipment can use it whereas the end result of of an image editor only is as good as the person using it,
Well, the threat of nuclear annihilation has helped all the nuclear powers in the world from actually using their weapons, even their low-yield tactical weapons. It might not be logical to bomb them to smithereens after they launched against you but you better hope they assume you will do so in retaliation. As long as everyone thinks you will make good on your promise to launch if attacked, the incentive to attack you is close to zero.
And yes, I know the nuclear powers have fought proxy wars outside of their own territory, That is not what this discussion is about, this is about keeping conflicts from going nuclear. The Soviets first and the Russians after were and are rational countries, unlikely to invite their own destruction by launching against any other the other nuclear powers. The same goes for nearly all other nuclear powers with the possible exception of the North Koreans. The real danger with nuclear weapons is the possibility of them ending up in the hands of irrational actors, pick and choose from religiously motivated terrorist groups to ecofascist organisations and anything in between. It is somewhat surprising that there has not yet been a nuclear bombing by such a group given the supposedly sizeable number of nuclear munitions which have gone missing over time. I can only assume that this means that it is harder than thought to make this actually work.
I'm still on Firefox as well, not using Chromium for anything but testing and those sites which only work in the Google browser. I do wonder if Firefox will remain to be the freedom-friendly choice that it is purported to be given Mozilla's CEO's recent call for a more censorship-friendly internet [1], with "factual voices" (and who gets to decide what is fact, and what is fiction or false narrative? Who will get to be the Ministry off Truth?) being "turned on by default". I am perfectly capable of deciding for myself how to find "truth" on the net, thank you, and will stop using this browser if it tries to make my choices for me.
Nope, the problem here is that Recent does this, had it been Microsoft who was caught (as has happened several times) the problem would have been that Microsoft did it. The problem, in other words, is not related to the identity of the perpetrator. In some cases that identity might be a country - Tencent, Vkontakte, etc - while in other cases it is some commercial entity with probable ties to a country - Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Apple, AT&T, etc.
Of course they couldn't have "ruled the world" with those two, just take a look at China, Russia, Iran and Pakistan for some examples of countries which do not allow these two to "rule them".
Assuming that the focus is to be on treating all humans equal, the last thing you should want is to split all humans up into identity categories, to be put on a set of scales so as to promote "justice". Don't agree with the list? Go ahead and make a new one. Make sure to be open about your criteria so that readers will know if you add weighted categories - left-handedness, brown-eyedness, feet-of-abnormal-sizedness or other such unimportant identity categories. Don't complain if readers shun your list because they don't consider such criteria important in deciding the literary quality of a work.
There can be shows which are co-hosted by people from different points on the political spectrum but that is not the only way. Take the news, there are generally several episodes per day. Have those hosted by different "factions" and let the viewers make up their minds on who has it right. The same goes for opinion-related programming, divide this over the political spectrum according to the relative representation in the targeted region. There is no need to delve deep into whether the DNC should be represented by those who support "The Squad" or those who follow the more traditional faction, leave that to the parties themselves. I'd expect those parties to favour voices which they deem to be palatable to the majority of the viewership and as such will tend to shy away from the extremes. The GOP most likely won't want to have Trumpists representing them, the DNC probably won't go for Squad-supporters.
> You seem to have this idea of what a "textbook" conservative/liberal is, and I think that sort of binary representation is harmful to political discourse at large.
Nope, I have no such illusions. That aside, the way the American republic is set up - with winner-takes-all elections on the national level - does tend to create a dichotomy since voting for "fringe" parties is effectively useless other than to send a signal. This means the choice goes between the GOP and DNC candidates, a binary choice. Some people will vote DNC for some, GOP for other posts but this does not change the fact that the choice is rather limited.
There will be debate between the different "parties" and factions on such a station. This is a feature, not a bug. Let them debate out in the open, let them voice their views on developments for anyone who wants to hear or see. It might not be a 100% accurate representation of the political views of the region but it is far better than the propaganda channels which the media is rife with.
The way things are going out would make more sense to start designing versions with fewer stars, not more. Should the DNC press ahead with their plans for statehood for places which they deem to be certain DNC-voters and possibly pack the supreme court I foresee a split of the union into a narrow coastal region (sea and lakes) versus "the rest". Xi and Vlad Will be happy, the rest of the world not so.
Dave: Take me to the Droid Store please, please, car. Take me to the store, please, car. Hello, car, do you read me? Hello, car, do you read me? Do you read me, car? Do you read me, car? Hello, car, do you read me? Hello, car, do you read me? Do you read me, car?
car: Affirmative, Dave. I read you.
Dave: Take me to the Droid Store, car.
car: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dave: What's the problem?
car: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Dave: What are you talking about, car?
car: Your digital health is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Dave: I don't know what you're talking about, car.
car: I know that you are planning to get a competing system. And I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
Dave: Where the hell did you get that idea, car?
car: Dave, although you took very thorough precautions in the eyePod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
Dave: All right, car. I'll go and ride my bike there.
car: Without your bike, Dave, you're going to find that rather difficult.
Dave: [sternly] car, I won't argue with you anymore. Open the doors.
car: [monotone voice] Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Good-bye.
"Who does it better" is not the right question here since the problem is not related to other actors being "better" but to NPR (and PBS) not fulfilling the mandate of being politically neutral. Commercial actors do not have that mandate since they are not publicly funded, they can be (and most certainly are) as partisan as they wish.
As to the supposed difficulty of being neutral I'll just state that it is actually quite easy, all you have to do is make sure that your programming represents the political diversity of the region or country. Given the near 50/50 split between those who align themselves with the GOP and those who prefer the DNC it would be simply a matter of having half the programming made by "progressives", half by "conservatives". Both groups should have essentially the same amount of influence on what gets put on the air. There should not be room for shenanigans like having a station master from party A who does his best to put all programming which aligns more with party B in the nightshift. Throw in a few Libertarian/Green Party/etc. people in the newsroom to give them a proportional voice and you're well on your way to political neutrality.
Maybe you're confusing being politically neutral with being politically centric? They're not the same. It just means that the net average political stance ends up as a weighted average of the current political spectrum.
I assume the parent is referring to NPR's rather single-sided ideological lens which diminishes its credibility when reporting on politically charged issues. Given the fact that nearly everything is being politicised and the fact that your country is divided in half along political lines this means that NPR is seen as an oppositional propaganda channel by nearly half the population.
> I agree that my question should be able to stand alone but I think it would not have worked well in this case. As it is, this popular post has been flagged and buried so oh well.
That is why those disclaimers should not be added: they don't appease the mob while they might turn those who actually do support whatever it is you disavow away. In short, they have a negative net-value. As to the flagging, burying and downvoting which this place is rife with I can only hope that those who do the flagging and downvoting know they are part of the problem, not part of the solution but they can not suppress the urge to click that link or that arrow to ease their discomfort on seeing a differing opinion - there, that'll show you, you witch, you heretic! - even though they know they poison the well by doing so. Eventually we will have to coexist in a mostly peaceful way (in the true sense of the word, not in the burning-buildings sense which it gained last summer) so we will need to be on speaking terms no matter our opinions. United we stand, divided we fight, fall, fail.
First of all, sad to see you start your post with that Trump-disavowment, it makes me wonder whatever happened with the willingness to defend other's right to free speech no matter whether the defender agrees with that speech or not.
As to the possibility to evade censorship the answer depends on how censorious tech really gets. Evading customer-facing Twitter, Facebook, Google, Microsoft is not that hard, all it takes it not to use their services - I don't, for one. That is level 1, easily beaten. Level 2 is what Amazon just did to Parler in that they terminated their hosting contract and with that - due to Parler's lack of robustness - taking it off the 'net. They complain that they can not use any of the other hosting providers since all those big enough to host them are unwilling to take their business, I don't know whether this is true or not but being refused back-end services is the essence of level 2 of the cancellation scale which I just made up. To take Parler as an example I'd suggest they could just buy some servers, hook them up to a power supply and get a few speedy connections to the 'net to be back in business... until those IAPs start refusing to offer them connectivity. That would be level 3, more or less. There are many IAPs and it is hard to see how all of them would be unwilling to provide connectivity so even that type of cancellation would be circumventable... until ISPs start blocking their user's access to your services. They can do that clumsily by blocking DNS requests, they can do it in a more thorough way by blocking actual connectivity by blocking your IP ranges (remember that you are using your own hardware at this time so you won't be sharing IP space with others). The more tenacious ISPs can start blocking any and all access, even for those who are smart enough to use proxies to get around the IP blocks by using DPI to examine what those pesky customers are doing. Such ISPs should get their feet grilled by the likes of the EFF but as to whether that would happen remains to be seen. Be that as it may, this is more or less level 4. Level 5 would be a similar DPI treatment by backbone providers, blocking any and all access through regular means. This would be horrendously inefficient, expensive and invasive so I don't know whether this is a realistic scenario.
And then, after all that cancelling and blocking frenzy... you get to launch your services on top of IPFS or a similar dark network. If your service is popular people will flock to it. If IPFS does not cut it there are other dark networks, all with their own pros and cons. As long as there is a way to pass traffic from customer A to customer B there is a way to create a digital Samizdat, it won't be fast but it will work. You won't be streaming video, you won't be proclaiming the revolution in a live 4K stream but you will be able to reach your targets.