mimichuu_

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.

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?

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.

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

Vote with your wallet

When are we going to finally accept that this is nothing but a delusion? How many failed boycotts over and over will it take?

I'm very satisfied with my build but my main issues are cables. The cables of the two CPU fans are way too long so they hang in a pretty non aesthetic way. On the other hand, the cables of the fan headers are too short for me to put them in the back of the case so it has to just stay there below my GPUs. It's awful.

I've seen countless times of things we need being completely ignored by the system. When it's inconvenient enough it will simply never get passed. We can fight for it, and win, but if the same system remains in place, once again, what we won was a concession that can and will be taken away at the nearest chance. You showing me an example of a rich youtuber followed by millions of people being able to do it doesn't change what the situation is like for regular people like you and me. You can do both if you want to, just don't think emailing a bunch of rich aristocrats is going to ever have a reasonable chance of being meaningful. Seriously, if you want to make real change, join an org.

Also, "extremism" just means things that go against the status quo. It's not a synonym for "bad".

I didn't ignore it. I said what we achieve working within the system is a temporal concession and thus it's not actually a reliable and deep change. It's good, but it shouldn't be the only thing we do.

I'm not being defeatist at all. Quite on the contrary, I'm telling you to fight.

My point is that fighting within the system never works. Everything we achieve that way eventually gets taken away from us. As long as the ruling class is still in power, they simply benefit the most from granting us as little as possible, and so they will always search for ways to do just that, and to take away things they previously granted us if they think we wont be threatening enough to take them back.

That's why I am saying, do not hire lobbyists or email politicians or something. Or if you do, make sure it's not the only thing you do. Join an org. Join an union, a party, a syndicate, organize. That is what has brought, brings and will bring real change. Fight against the system.