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On March 15 2026 13:06 KwarK wrote:
The digital town square only works if it follows the same rough rules as the real town square, you have to show your face, you have to be willing to face the social consequences for your speech, people have to be able to speak back to you.
When Mr Burns shows up at the Springfield town hall to argue against solar power the people of Springfield have the advantage of knowing that he isn't a well meaning concerned citizen, he has a conflicting financial interest. That is necessary for true dialogue to work.
This is all the more important in an era of bots using LLMs to impersonate humans.
In a lot of parts of the world people can be killed by what they say, also in many parts including the 1st world people can go to prison for the wrong opinions etc.
Manning and Assange went through hell and countless others would without anonymity.
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On March 15 2026 17:29 baal wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2026 13:06 KwarK wrote:
The digital town square only works if it follows the same rough rules as the real town square, you have to show your face, you have to be willing to face the social consequences for your speech, people have to be able to speak back to you.
When Mr Burns shows up at the Springfield town hall to argue against solar power the people of Springfield have the advantage of knowing that he isn't a well meaning concerned citizen, he has a conflicting financial interest. That is necessary for true dialogue to work.
This is all the more important in an era of bots using LLMs to impersonate humans.
In a lot of parts of the world people can be killed by what they say, also in many parts including the 1st world people can go to prison for the wrong opinions etc.
Manning and Assange went through hell and countless others would without anonymity.
Source for bolded?
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On March 15 2026 16:44 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2026 11:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On March 15 2026 10:03 LightSpectra wrote:
There shouldn't be anonymity on social media networks, because that's how bad actors from foreign countries and bots sway public opinion. There should absolutely be anonymity for whistleblowers/journalists, purchasing birth control, reading censored literature, etc. But you don't need to do any of those things over social media. What exactly would you require or not allow, if you're removing anonymity? For example, would you require social media accounts to show first and last names? An accurate, up-to-date profile picture of the person? How would these be verified by the social media platform? And how loose would privacy settings need to be, if a stranger wants to learn more about you and your account? Would stalking or unjustified violence be a concern? I totally agree with you that bots and bad actors need to be addressed; I'm just not sure how to do that while still protecting average users. (Ideally, tech literacy / social media literacy / research literacy would be taught to new generations in middle/high school, so that young adults are less susceptible to bots, bullshit, and bad actors. That'll take a while though, and something should change during the interim.) It's really easy. Just require a login with a digital ID or a google/Facebook account created with a digital ID. We already use it for basically everything, several times per day. Takes social media a few hours to implement. Doesn't even have to show your full name. Just show country and maybe your first name. Removes all bots and obvious trolls and obviously illegal shit like childporn.
Ah okay, so you're not talking about removing anonymity between social media posters, but rather simply tying the account to your person behind the scenes.
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On March 15 2026 17:29 baal wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2026 13:06 KwarK wrote:
The digital town square only works if it follows the same rough rules as the real town square, you have to show your face, you have to be willing to face the social consequences for your speech, people have to be able to speak back to you.
When Mr Burns shows up at the Springfield town hall to argue against solar power the people of Springfield have the advantage of knowing that he isn't a well meaning concerned citizen, he has a conflicting financial interest. That is necessary for true dialogue to work.
This is all the more important in an era of bots using LLMs to impersonate humans.
In a lot of parts of the world people can be killed by what they say, also in many parts including the 1st world people can go to prison for the wrong opinions etc. Manning and Assange went through hell and countless others would without anonymity.
In the parts of the world you can get killed there is no such thing as anonymous social media either way. Authoritarian states does not like their citizens being able to talk freely and there are already laws against it (see Russia shutting down telegram, China, Turkey etc.)
If they can't shut down or control social media they just shut down the internet (Iran etc).
In democratic countries the amount of people going to jail over "free speech" is so minute and the types of speech regulated so small it's a negligible problem.
But the more important thing is that in a democracy you can rather easily change the laws. And people tend to forget even a functional democracy is the dictatorship of the commons. There are always going to be fringe ideas that the majority finds so offensive that they are banned and it's just how it works.
Meanwhile the problems with bots and false propaganda is huge and growing.
I voted for the pirate party (twice) when I was young. That pretty much sums up my ideas on anonymity and net use. I've been an active internet user all my life and I now think that social media should not be anonymous because the problems are so rampant at this point.
An easy example is the completely fake AFD hit piece article (posted on a cloned website of politico) that even made it to TL.net. A single google search shows how it was posted, amplified by bots on X and twitter until it started to be shared by real users, eventually getting posted here.
Website is offline now but the damage is already done.
If you follow things like the Ukraine war for long enough you can "feel" when the bots get activated to push a certain narrative.
Back in the old days it was citizens/internet users against the big companies/governments/political parties fighting against regulation.
These days it's citizens/internet users who wants regulation and big companies/some governments/some political parties who are against it.
I think the fact that old school "pirates" are now on the other side against the enemy is evidence enough that anonymity on social media is no longer in our interest.
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On March 15 2026 18:18 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2026 16:44 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:On March 15 2026 11:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On March 15 2026 10:03 LightSpectra wrote:
There shouldn't be anonymity on social media networks, because that's how bad actors from foreign countries and bots sway public opinion. There should absolutely be anonymity for whistleblowers/journalists, purchasing birth control, reading censored literature, etc. But you don't need to do any of those things over social media. What exactly would you require or not allow, if you're removing anonymity? For example, would you require social media accounts to show first and last names? An accurate, up-to-date profile picture of the person? How would these be verified by the social media platform? And how loose would privacy settings need to be, if a stranger wants to learn more about you and your account? Would stalking or unjustified violence be a concern? I totally agree with you that bots and bad actors need to be addressed; I'm just not sure how to do that while still protecting average users. (Ideally, tech literacy / social media literacy / research literacy would be taught to new generations in middle/high school, so that young adults are less susceptible to bots, bullshit, and bad actors. That'll take a while though, and something should change during the interim.) It's really easy. Just require a login with a digital ID or a google/Facebook account created with a digital ID. We already use it for basically everything, several times per day. Takes social media a few hours to implement. Doesn't even have to show your full name. Just show country and maybe your first name. Removes all bots and obvious trolls and obviously illegal shit like childporn. Ah okay, so you're not talking about removing anonymity between social media posters, but rather simply tying the account to your person behind the scenes.
No real point on complete anonymity, right?
If I want to leave a bad review of my local restaurant I don't want the owner to harass me.
If I want to extort him and other business owners by giving bad reviews the police will find me right away.
The main problem is bots and paid actors pretending to be from other countries, scammers etc. If you can't pretend to be someone completely different, and you have to be a real person that can be tracked down if you commit a crime you solve 99% of the problems and you can still be semi anonymous.
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On March 15 2026 17:59 EnDeR_ wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2026 17:29 baal wrote:On March 15 2026 13:06 KwarK wrote:
The digital town square only works if it follows the same rough rules as the real town square, you have to show your face, you have to be willing to face the social consequences for your speech, people have to be able to speak back to you.
When Mr Burns shows up at the Springfield town hall to argue against solar power the people of Springfield have the advantage of knowing that he isn't a well meaning concerned citizen, he has a conflicting financial interest. That is necessary for true dialogue to work.
This is all the more important in an era of bots using LLMs to impersonate humans.
In a lot of parts of the world people can be killed by what they say, also in many parts including the 1st world people can go to prison for the wrong opinions etc.
Manning and Assange went through hell and countless others would without anonymity. Source for bolded?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafgesetzbuch_section_86a as the most known example.
Another example that has been on and off is digital drawings of children. Or even real children in a lot of cases.
I personally am in favor of hate speech having consequences, especially when straight up threatening people. Any speech that is likely to cause more injuries should be considered carefully, the right to free speech ends when it causes real damage to real people. (Hard to measure and always agree on since correctly calling for an evacuation will cause injuries but likely save many lives.)
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On March 15 2026 13:06 KwarK wrote:
The digital town square only works if it follows the same rough rules as the real town square, you have to show your face, you have to be willing to face the social consequences for your speech, people have to be able to speak back to you.
When Mr Burns shows up at the Springfield town hall to argue against solar power the people of Springfield have the advantage of knowing that he isn't a well meaning concerned citizen, he has a conflicting financial interest. That is necessary for true dialogue to work.
This is all the more important in an era of bots using LLMs to impersonate humans.
Most countries in Europe are still ill equipped to deal with the modernized internet technology being used from the US (and possibly other countries), AI-powered algorithms, advanced spying tools and the like. Nobody here is anonymous, we just pretend they are on paper to pretend that any of that shit operates legally.
If anyone mounted my digital identity on paper somewhere like a solar panel without my knowledge to monetize or weaponize my content without my consent for years, I couldn‘t do jack about it without some money. But I could turn myself into an asteroid magnet instead and see how that goes for them.
Some tools don‘t belong in corporate hands without government oversight that is able to rule out corruption in the process.
That said, if your country was actively committing fraud against you, they wouldn‘t tell you for a good reason.
If you went to Springfield town hall and asked what measures they put in place to ensure local online safety, would they tell you ?
Or just order another drug dealer from Craigs list.
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On March 15 2026 19:10 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2026 18:18 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On March 15 2026 16:44 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:On March 15 2026 11:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On March 15 2026 10:03 LightSpectra wrote:
There shouldn't be anonymity on social media networks, because that's how bad actors from foreign countries and bots sway public opinion. There should absolutely be anonymity for whistleblowers/journalists, purchasing birth control, reading censored literature, etc. But you don't need to do any of those things over social media. What exactly would you require or not allow, if you're removing anonymity? For example, would you require social media accounts to show first and last names? An accurate, up-to-date profile picture of the person? How would these be verified by the social media platform? And how loose would privacy settings need to be, if a stranger wants to learn more about you and your account? Would stalking or unjustified violence be a concern? I totally agree with you that bots and bad actors need to be addressed; I'm just not sure how to do that while still protecting average users. (Ideally, tech literacy / social media literacy / research literacy would be taught to new generations in middle/high school, so that young adults are less susceptible to bots, bullshit, and bad actors. That'll take a while though, and something should change during the interim.) It's really easy. Just require a login with a digital ID or a google/Facebook account created with a digital ID. We already use it for basically everything, several times per day. Takes social media a few hours to implement. Doesn't even have to show your full name. Just show country and maybe your first name. Removes all bots and obvious trolls and obviously illegal shit like childporn. Ah okay, so you're not talking about removing anonymity between social media posters, but rather simply tying the account to your person behind the scenes. No real point on complete anonymity, right? If I want to leave a bad review of my local restaurant I don't want the owner to harass me. If I want to extort him and other business owners by giving bad reviews the police will find me right away. The main problem is bots and paid actors pretending to be from other countries, scammers etc. If you can't pretend to be someone completely different, and you have to be a real person that can be tracked down if you commit a crime you solve 99% of the problems and you can still be semi anonymous.
Yeah I think that makes a lot of sense. I'm curious if LightSpectra feels similarly.
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On March 15 2026 20:00 Yurie wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2026 17:59 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 15 2026 17:29 baal wrote:On March 15 2026 13:06 KwarK wrote:
The digital town square only works if it follows the same rough rules as the real town square, you have to show your face, you have to be willing to face the social consequences for your speech, people have to be able to speak back to you.
When Mr Burns shows up at the Springfield town hall to argue against solar power the people of Springfield have the advantage of knowing that he isn't a well meaning concerned citizen, he has a conflicting financial interest. That is necessary for true dialogue to work.
This is all the more important in an era of bots using LLMs to impersonate humans.
In a lot of parts of the world people can be killed by what they say, also in many parts including the 1st world people can go to prison for the wrong opinions etc.
Manning and Assange went through hell and countless others would without anonymity. Source for bolded? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafgesetzbuch_section_86a as the most known example. Another example that has been on and off is digital drawings of children. Or even real children in a lot of cases. I personally am in favor of hate speech having consequences, especially when straight up threatening people. Any speech that is likely to cause more injuries should be considered carefully, the right to free speech ends when it causes real damage to real people. (Hard to measure and always agree on since correctly calling for an evacuation will cause injuries but likely save many lives.)
I don't think we disagree, hate speech and speech likely to cause harm, like the classic yelling "Fire" in a crowded theater should have some kind of repercussion.
However, the claim was "going to prison for the wrong opinion."
Even if you yell fire in a theater and somebody dies and you're found liable, then you're going to prison for manslaughter, not for having the wrong opinion.
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United States43987 Posts
On March 15 2026 20:06 Vivax wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2026 13:06 KwarK wrote:
The digital town square only works if it follows the same rough rules as the real town square, you have to show your face, you have to be willing to face the social consequences for your speech, people have to be able to speak back to you.
When Mr Burns shows up at the Springfield town hall to argue against solar power the people of Springfield have the advantage of knowing that he isn't a well meaning concerned citizen, he has a conflicting financial interest. That is necessary for true dialogue to work.
This is all the more important in an era of bots using LLMs to impersonate humans.
Most countries in Europe are still ill equipped to deal with the modernized internet technology being used from the US (and possibly other countries), AI-powered algorithms, advanced spying tools and the like. Nobody here is anonymous, we just pretend they are on paper to pretend that any of that shit operates legally. If anyone mounted my digital identity on paper somewhere like a solar panel without my knowledge to monetize or weaponize my content without my consent for years, I couldn‘t do jack about it without some money. But I could turn myself into an asteroid magnet instead and see how that goes for them. Some tools don‘t belong in corporate hands without government oversight that is able to rule out corruption in the process. That said, if your country was actively committing fraud against you, they wouldn‘t tell you for a good reason. If you went to Springfield town hall and asked what measures they put in place to ensure local online safety, would they tell you ? Or just order another drug dealer from Craigs list.
I think you may have been high when you wrote this.
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On March 15 2026 22:23 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2026 20:06 Vivax wrote:On March 15 2026 13:06 KwarK wrote:
The digital town square only works if it follows the same rough rules as the real town square, you have to show your face, you have to be willing to face the social consequences for your speech, people have to be able to speak back to you.
When Mr Burns shows up at the Springfield town hall to argue against solar power the people of Springfield have the advantage of knowing that he isn't a well meaning concerned citizen, he has a conflicting financial interest. That is necessary for true dialogue to work.
This is all the more important in an era of bots using LLMs to impersonate humans.
Most countries in Europe are still ill equipped to deal with the modernized internet technology being used from the US (and possibly other countries), AI-powered algorithms, advanced spying tools and the like. Nobody here is anonymous, we just pretend they are on paper to pretend that any of that shit operates legally. If anyone mounted my digital identity on paper somewhere like a solar panel without my knowledge to monetize or weaponize my content without my consent for years, I couldn‘t do jack about it without some money. But I could turn myself into an asteroid magnet instead and see how that goes for them. Some tools don‘t belong in corporate hands without government oversight that is able to rule out corruption in the process. That said, if your country was actively committing fraud against you, they wouldn‘t tell you for a good reason. If you went to Springfield town hall and asked what measures they put in place to ensure local online safety, would they tell you ? Or just order another drug dealer from Craigs list. I think you may have been high when you wrote this.
Nope. Very sober. Very annoyed, and informed. Just not from others.
Thiel in Rome holding speeches. I could puke right now. Dude belongs in an interrogation room.
After all the shit this country put me through for their sole benefit they‘d have to give me a few medals in Italy.
It‘s a gigantic pile of fraud. You don‘t live with these guys, you survive them while they keep making up fake shit.
You'd have to sift through the files of entire ministries starting in 2019 to find out why, probably. Possibly earlier.
Or ask my neighbours.
Maybe if I posted a selfie somewhere here, strange things would happen.
Or I'd know why a horse was looking at me on facebook.
Or Italians would randomly start attacking Austrians. Since Austrians love to do that in reverse. But not before committing several other atrocities.
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On March 15 2026 20:43 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2026 19:10 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:On March 15 2026 18:18 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On March 15 2026 16:44 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:On March 15 2026 11:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On March 15 2026 10:03 LightSpectra wrote:
There shouldn't be anonymity on social media networks, because that's how bad actors from foreign countries and bots sway public opinion. There should absolutely be anonymity for whistleblowers/journalists, purchasing birth control, reading censored literature, etc. But you don't need to do any of those things over social media. What exactly would you require or not allow, if you're removing anonymity? For example, would you require social media accounts to show first and last names? An accurate, up-to-date profile picture of the person? How would these be verified by the social media platform? And how loose would privacy settings need to be, if a stranger wants to learn more about you and your account? Would stalking or unjustified violence be a concern? I totally agree with you that bots and bad actors need to be addressed; I'm just not sure how to do that while still protecting average users. (Ideally, tech literacy / social media literacy / research literacy would be taught to new generations in middle/high school, so that young adults are less susceptible to bots, bullshit, and bad actors. That'll take a while though, and something should change during the interim.) It's really easy. Just require a login with a digital ID or a google/Facebook account created with a digital ID. We already use it for basically everything, several times per day. Takes social media a few hours to implement. Doesn't even have to show your full name. Just show country and maybe your first name. Removes all bots and obvious trolls and obviously illegal shit like childporn. Ah okay, so you're not talking about removing anonymity between social media posters, but rather simply tying the account to your person behind the scenes. No real point on complete anonymity, right? If I want to leave a bad review of my local restaurant I don't want the owner to harass me. If I want to extort him and other business owners by giving bad reviews the police will find me right away. The main problem is bots and paid actors pretending to be from other countries, scammers etc. If you can't pretend to be someone completely different, and you have to be a real person that can be tracked down if you commit a crime you solve 99% of the problems and you can still be semi anonymous. Yeah I think that makes a lot of sense. I'm curious if LightSpectra feels similarly.
I do, yes.
You should review the conversation we've had up to this point. I didn't say Cuba didn't have low gun ownership, I'm challenging the notion that IF they had guns they'd definitely overthrow the government because they both want to do that, and no government is capable of defeating a guerilla insurgency of their own citizens.
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Northern Ireland26785 Posts
On March 15 2026 19:07 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2026 17:29 baal wrote:On March 15 2026 13:06 KwarK wrote:
The digital town square only works if it follows the same rough rules as the real town square, you have to show your face, you have to be willing to face the social consequences for your speech, people have to be able to speak back to you.
When Mr Burns shows up at the Springfield town hall to argue against solar power the people of Springfield have the advantage of knowing that he isn't a well meaning concerned citizen, he has a conflicting financial interest. That is necessary for true dialogue to work.
This is all the more important in an era of bots using LLMs to impersonate humans.
In a lot of parts of the world people can be killed by what they say, also in many parts including the 1st world people can go to prison for the wrong opinions etc. Manning and Assange went through hell and countless others would without anonymity. In the parts of the world you can get killed there is no such thing as anonymous social media either way. Authoritarian states does not like their citizens being able to talk freely and there are already laws against it (see Russia shutting down telegram, China, Turkey etc.) If they can't shut down or control social media they just shut down the internet (Iran etc). In democratic countries the amount of people going to jail over "free speech" is so minute and the types of speech regulated so small it's a negligible problem. But the more important thing is that in a democracy you can rather easily change the laws. And people tend to forget even a functional democracy is the dictatorship of the commons. There are always going to be fringe ideas that the majority finds so offensive that they are banned and it's just how it works. Meanwhile the problems with bots and false propaganda is huge and growing. I voted for the pirate party (twice) when I was young. That pretty much sums up my ideas on anonymity and net use. I've been an active internet user all my life and I now think that social media should not be anonymous because the problems are so rampant at this point. An easy example is the completely fake AFD hit piece article (posted on a cloned website of politico) that even made it to TL.net. A single google search shows how it was posted, amplified by bots on X and twitter until it started to be shared by real users, eventually getting posted here. Website is offline now but the damage is already done. If you follow things like the Ukraine war for long enough you can "feel" when the bots get activated to push a certain narrative. Back in the old days it was citizens/internet users against the big companies/governments/political parties fighting against regulation.
These days it's citizens/internet users who wants regulation and big companies/some governments/some political parties who are against it.I think the fact that old school "pirates" are now on the other side against the enemy is evidence enough that anonymity on social media is no longer in our interest.
Yeah, pretty much.
There was something of a sweet spot where I think broadly speaking the internet culture benefitted the individual, and grass roots organisation etc.
Subsequently a combination of actively malicious actors, or alternatively non-malicious types whose actions are still to the public detriment got the keys to that particular kingdom.
Like I think it’s fundamentally daft to advocate for things based on the former, where the latter is rather blatantly the case.
I mean come on the next 10 years or whatever is going to be a gigantic, gigantic clusterfuck. We’ve already got the giant bot networks, social media as an unregulated hellhole. Add to that ‘AI’ that’s rapidly developing to the level I can no longer spot a deepfake by eye alone, much less Joe and Jane Public
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There's probably some unforeseen economic impacts of removing bots (and now AI agents) when we consider they make up about half of the internet traffic most ads are metric'd off of.
There's basically a centi-billion dollar industry (without counting the platforms themselves really) in arbitraging (frauding) ad engagement by buying fake engagement and selling it to advertisers.
(EDIT: Advertising is rather uniquely central to the US economy.)
That probably has an unrecognized impact on the culture/sociology of the humans on (and off) the internet that is worthy of consideration.
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On March 16 2026 01:55 GreenHorizons wrote:
There's probably some unforeseen economic impacts of removing bots (and now AI agents) when we consider they make up about half of the internet traffic most ads are metric'd off of.
There's basically a centi-billion dollar industry (without counting the platforms themselves really) in arbitraging (frauding) ad engagement by buying fake engagement and selling it to advertisers.
(EDIT: Advertising is rather uniquely central to the US economy.)
That probably has an unrecognized impact on the culture/sociology of the humans on (and off) the internet that is worthy of consideration.
Yeah, it's dystopian.
Lot of fake stuff pretending to function, like Austrian banks involved in the cocaine trade.
They still haven't decided to teach Russian at schools here, kinda surprising.
I‘m just kinda waiting for the information I need before leaving for good. But it isn‘t going to come from this country lmao.
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On March 16 2026 01:55 GreenHorizons wrote:
There's probably some unforeseen economic impacts of removing bots (and now AI agents) when we consider they make up about half of the internet traffic most ads are metric'd off of.
There's basically a centi-billion dollar industry (without counting the platforms themselves really) in arbitraging (frauding) ad engagement by buying fake engagement and selling it to advertisers.
(EDIT: Advertising is rather uniquely central to the US economy.)
That probably has an unrecognized impact on the culture/sociology of the humans on (and off) the internet that is worthy of consideration. And half the S&P 500 is an AI bubble with little purpose and no financial viability,
The economy is utterly fucked either way.
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Would be funny if SpaceX going public would crash the market after all the AI and private debt warnings. At least I am seriously considering pulling out of index funds before the IPO since there are a lot of discussions of how they will boost prices just before index funds buy and then dump their stocks for a profit as it crashes.
The need to be public for a year and other mechanics meant to stop that seems to be able to be sidelined if you put enough money into the effort.
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On March 13 2026 23:26 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On March 13 2026 22:07 Simberto wrote:On March 13 2026 16:31 baal wrote:On March 11 2026 22:16 LightSpectra wrote:On March 11 2026 15:31 baal wrote:On March 09 2026 23:51 LightSpectra wrote:On March 09 2026 10:37 baal wrote:On March 08 2026 22:35 LightSpectra wrote:
Afghanistan is a country of est. 40 million and the NATO mission committed no more than 18,000 troops at a time to holding it. The total U. S. armed forces plus reserves is over 2,000,000 people, so the security force in Afghanistan is about 0.009% of what you're calling "the full force of the US military". there werent 40 million taliban combatants and the RoE would be very differnt, the US military can't just carpet bomb Los Angeles to kill armed citizens, the more the military escalates aggression the more internal turnmoil within it ranks happen, soldiers aren't going to blow up their own families, thats how civil war factions are formed. What Afghanistan proved is that no matter how many planes and tanks you have to control a population you need boots on the ground and people to surrender, unless you are willing to obliterate them which isn't an option in a civil war. What Afghanistan proved is that 18,000 troops being supplied from the other hemisphere can't hold a mountainous country of 40 million. It in no way proves that no government on Earth is capable of winning a civil war against insurgents using guerilla tactics, especially the richest government with the most well-funded military in human history. A perfectly loyal army, willing to kill their own friends and neighbors, to level its own infrastructure, that is not a realistic scenario in a civil war, however against an unarmed populous you only need a few bullets to seed enough fear to drive ppl into submission. You are again ignoring that many governments have indeed won civil wars/defeated insurgents throughout history. You can't just throw out platitudes and then cherrypick evidence for it. If civilians in Venezuela and Cuba were armed they would have staged an armed resistance that would likely develop into toppling the regime, maybe some external actors fund one side or the other, but the thing is, if the population is armed its much more difficult for dictators to take root. Hilariously uninformed. There are numerous militias in Venezuela. It's lawful to own personal weapons in Cuba. Talking with some of you is just... bizarre, you call others uninformed and then throw the dumbest imaginable statement ever like Cuban civilians owning guns. It's literally one of the countries with least civilian gun ownership in the entire world for fucks sake. In Venezuela a civilian carrying a gun has a 20 year sentence, the militias are pro-regime to suppress civilians you maniac. Please don't use that "AI overview" shit. We should not normalize it. There is an actual internet out there, with actual sources. Use those. They are right below the AI spam in the search. Yeah, it says 'thegunwriter' right under, and searching for 'thegunwriter' and 'cuba' I get sources like https://thegunwriter.substack.com/p/q-and-a-with-a-cuban-expert-on-the and why cuba has one of the lowest civilian gun rates, and it seems reasonably legit, and baal's statement seems largely correct.
On June 04 2025 06:33 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Honestly Razyda you should just pay a visit to chatgpt and ask questions like 'how come nazism and fascism are considered far-right ideologies when the nazi program included policies that clearly could have been part of a socialist party's agenda' and hopefully, you'll end up being wiser. You can't just be like 'well I disagree' when you're talking about well-established definitions of words, because you're not the one who gets to define them, and if you insist on using a different, personalized set of definitions when you argue, people are inevitably going to think you make no sense.
Sorry Drone, but that was you.
On March 14 2026 02:14 LightSpectra wrote:
Why should any Democrats be primaried if you think we shouldn't vote for Democrats at all because electoralism doesn't work?
Honestly I dont know:
https://www.drmikekatz.com/the_dnc_and_rnc_are_private_corporations
"In 2017, a Florida judge dismissed a class-action lawsuit against the DNC brought by supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders over the handling of the 2016 presidential primary. The court ruled that the DNC is a private corporation and that voters cannot protect their rights by turning to the courts."
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On March 14 2026 04:48 LightSpectra wrote:
The TL.net US Politics Mega-thread is simultaneously so unimportant that nobody could ever get radicalized by the fascists posting in it, but somehow also the grassroots backbone that could very well constitute the very future of the Democratic Party itself.
TL radicalised me like nothing else could...
On March 15 2026 19:07 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2026 17:29 baal wrote:On March 15 2026 13:06 KwarK wrote:
The digital town square only works if it follows the same rough rules as the real town square, you have to show your face, you have to be willing to face the social consequences for your speech, people have to be able to speak back to you.
When Mr Burns shows up at the Springfield town hall to argue against solar power the people of Springfield have the advantage of knowing that he isn't a well meaning concerned citizen, he has a conflicting financial interest. That is necessary for true dialogue to work.
This is all the more important in an era of bots using LLMs to impersonate humans.
In a lot of parts of the world people can be killed by what they say, also in many parts including the 1st world people can go to prison for the wrong opinions etc. Manning and Assange went through hell and countless others would without anonymity. In the parts of the world you can get killed there is no such thing as anonymous social media either way. Authoritarian states does not like their citizens being able to talk freely and there are already laws against it (see Russia shutting down telegram, China, Turkey etc.) If they can't shut down or control social media they just shut down the internet (Iran etc). In democratic countries the amount of people going to jail over "free speech" is so minute and the types of speech regulated so small it's a negligible problem. But the more important thing is that in a democracy you can rather easily change the laws. And people tend to forget even a functional democracy is the dictatorship of the commons. There are always going to be fringe ideas that the majority finds so offensive that they are banned and it's just how it works. Meanwhile the problems with bots and false propaganda is huge and growing. I voted for the pirate party (twice) when I was young. That pretty much sums up my ideas on anonymity and net use. I've been an active internet user all my life and I now think that social media should not be anonymous because the problems are so rampant at this point. An easy example is the completely fake AFD hit piece article (posted on a cloned website of politico) that even made it to TL.net. A single google search shows how it was posted, amplified by bots on X and twitter until it started to be shared by real users, eventually getting posted here. Website is offline now but the damage is already done. If you follow things like the Ukraine war for long enough you can "feel" when the bots get activated to push a certain narrative. Back in the old days it was citizens/internet users against the big companies/governments/political parties fighting against regulation. These days it's citizens/internet users who wants regulation and big companies/some governments/some political parties who are against it. I think the fact that old school "pirates" are now on the other side against the enemy is evidence enough that anonymity on social media is no longer in our interest.
"Authoritarian states does not like their citizens being able to talk freely"
"Authoritarian states does not like their citizens being able to talk freely"
"Authoritarian states does not like their citizens being able to talk freely"
A+ for effort, F for understanding the issue.
What country have nost people arested for social media posts?
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Norway28797 Posts
Your reading comprehension is off. I'm not negative towards ai as a tool for learning and I had no issues with baal posting the summary as a source.
I do have issues with people posting chatgpt posts as arguments but that is different.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://i.gyazo.com/17c48c90a2e0d085b3eba707baeb3c3a.png)
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