• 1 Post
  • 108 Comments
Joined 2 months ago
cake
Cake day: November 6th, 2024

help-circle










  • Before we get to the changes, we want to remind everyone that we are not a (US) free speech instance.

    I’ve never understood this concept. There is no such thing as “(US) free speech”. Threats, coercion and blackmail obviously notwithstanding, you’re either free to express yourself, or you are not. Of course I understand that right of free expression isn’t something that applies to many European people, and there may be pros and cons to that, but nevertheless there is no middle ground on free speech–you’re either free or you aren’t.

    But regardless of that, this is your own private community and you’re well within your rights to moderate it however the hell you want, “free speech” really doesn’t come into it at all. That’s one of the main benefits to federation.


  • Do you think Palestine sprung into existence on October 7?

    No. I think most people know that Israel and Palestine were both established by the League of Nations back in the 40s post the fall of the Ottoman Empire, after which they proceeded to start fighting each other for fucking decades of pointless holy wars.

    I’m not sure how that’s relevant to the discussion at hand, however.

    Why does every discussion of Israel being genocidal colonizers come down to an incident that happened decades after their oppression of Palestine began?

    Uh, are we not currently in a thread specifically talking about an October 7th game or…?


  • Try out a mesh network VPN like tailscale (others are available, but i haven’t tried them).

    Tailscale is basically just a simple but powerful wireguard manager that does all of the work of setting up a mesh network for you, and it works amazingly well in my experience. The free account is good for I think 3 users and 100 devices on a network and has been the perfect thing to expose my home server to my various devices no matter where I am.

    I like it so much after having used it for the last few months that I just spent way too much money upgrading my server… but that’s another thing entirely. lol







  • This is a slippery slope argument.

    The “problem” re TikTok is that they are a Chinese company with ties to the Chinese government who have managed to get a closed source black box app on millions of Americans phones that servers as about the most perfect avenue for social/political manipulation as any adversary could dream of.

    The solution to that problem that was offered to TikTok more than a year ago was to simply sell to an American company (and thus a company that could in theory be held somewhat accountable, but probably not if we’re being honest) for doing bad things here in the USA. ByteDance would have made billions of dollars selling the American version of TikTok, but they knowingly chose the other option, which was to face a ban at the end of this year.

    FWIW, American companies cannot operator or sell product in China without going through a Chinese company, and social media platforms like Facebook are banned in China, so in my opinion some degree of reciprocity here is at least warranted.


  • TikTok could have sold to an American company (read: a company that we can hold legally accountable for bad things that their product does) and made billions of dollars in the process. They chose not to, for some reason, and thus knowingly opted to face a ban in the United States. Those were the options and they knew it.

    As I understand it American companies doing business in China almost always have to go through a Chinese company in order to operate legally and make products available to the Chinese market. Platforms like Facebook are already banned in China and must be accessed through a VPN because they don’t play ball with the Chinese regime, so why should it not be reciprocal?

    Until TikTok is being managed and operated by a company that can be held legally accountable here in America, they are nothing but a security threat and a backdoor for the Chinese government into every cell phone of every person who is dumb enough to install that shit. Is that what the people want to hear? Probably not, but it’s the truth.

    I wouldn’t install TikTok on my phone any sooner than I’d install RedStarOS on my PC, because the implications of using a proprietary, closed source application with ties to the Chinese regime should be fucking obvious to anyone with bare minimum technical knowledge. Likewise, I wouldn’t blame a Chinese person for being skeptical of Microsoft Windows or X.com for their close relationship with the American government. To think otherwise is just not smart.