scoobdog

... until we go back to getting nothing passed again.

I would have preferred a murder, murder, suicide with Ivanka and Donald attached and Melania with a steak knife.

Yes, but is more than that. Plenty of people with liberal ideologies either won't vote or will vote for a conservative candidate for the same reason that our friend in this thread, and that has something to do with the intense psychological pressure that comes with elections. It's hard not to look around at everything and come to the conclusion you're at a crossroads where you have to decide if it's more realistic to continue fighting for your ideals or adapting to a reality where you're being oppressed. There's no question that the country will not be in a better place with conservative leadership, even if for the simple fact that they don't represent the majority of Americans. Some places, like here in California, are insulated from bad Republican ideas, but a lot of others are not. Eventually, you convince yourself that it's better to make decision that run counter to your interests if it means you can rationalize your behavior in a constructive way.

Better than Kiwi

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Dude, you only need ten minutes to write each paper anyway.

Hey guys…. https://apple.news/A9WTjcgzSR7u1oUBYOSmAyg Tim Poole isn’t pleased.

Booooooooooooooooo

Those are all his "friends."

Well, giving average free users better control of how they organize their tweets would be an extremely valuable asset to the paid analytical services, for sure. There is something to be said about keeping the expression side of the equation free, which limits how much you can monetize aggregation, but, at the same time you can have two different apps to handle the same data that would make it easy to make the delineation.

I like it. Maybe the baddies are trying to steal something or they're terrorists. Maybe they're trying to overturn an election!

Interesting that @Ginguyfeels the need to downvote the OP for celebrating he loss of a clearly bad political figure in a country he shouldn't have any particular interest in. I wonder why?

What Sorce is talking about is actually a parallel business model. It's more or less a separate business that is itself entirely pay while the social media side is "free" with bare-boned services. Instead of selling user analytics to third party marketing entities, those analytics are only accessible to Twitter's in house marketing where clients can reach Twitter's massive user base.

Obviously, he hasn’t made life better. What he does for them is what anyone with a cult of personality does, including Elon Musk: he tells people things they want to hear, he makes a certain group of people believe he thinks like they do.

You have to see it to believe it. I’ve been looking for it online but I can’t find it.

So, essentially, social media companies providing public relations resource tools. It makes perfect sense, but you’re also talking an entirely different skill set than anything in the tech industry. The right ownership group could really make a killling doing this.

Judging by the highway blockades, that is exactly what he’s doing.

What services are you thinking? Obviously, my use for social media is limited so I'm going to have a myopic appraisal of its potential.

Monetization itself is the problem. It doesn't really cost you anything to talk to someone face to face, and there is built in social norms that allow for that other person to police your speech without a third party monitoring it. Adding that third person, a necessary step, creates overhead in what should be a completely free process. That's not to say that Elon is competent because he isn't, but the only real system that works is one that prioritizes cultured promotion.

Twitter is always going to be unprofitable for the simple fact that it can't be a platform that can protect free / open speech, diligently ban hate speech / misinformation, and still monetize its services. Once you introduce monetized services, you give priority to "voices" that can pay which, in turn, means you're giving priority to those that are on the platform to market products.

Says the guy who's spent... how many years living in Japan?

Not voting isn't itself a problem; doing nothing is. Part of the problem with phrasing your disdain in "slacktivist" terms is that if gives the impression that you're doing nothing else. People not participating in advocacy is shameful, especially in a society where the very right to be an activist is protected for now. The people you're enabling to win by not voting would certainly love to curtail your right to advocate for yourself. That being said, it's not easy being an advocate even if we have the right to do it unmolested. You can't just advocate for your own personal needs, you have to advocate for everyone who is in your position. You also have to understand how your needs impact others and what you need to do to get others to invest in you. It sounds daunting, but it's really about listening and keeping an open mind about how others paths can still get you to your goals.

Yep, you sure can say trite things. I'm not going to criticize you for not wanting to vote or for feeling like your vote doesn't matter, but I will for acting like this lazy stance is somehow a validation of it. Voting isn't an end all, nor is it a compensation for personal inaction. We're supposed to be voting for the people who will do what we would do in their situation, not people who will magically fix all the problems that our fellow citizens create for us. For better or worse, Republicans seem to get that and do, in fact, vote for the people that would do what they would do right down to the part about trampling the rights of people that don't look or think like them and publicly cheering the demise of politicians they blame for their problems. It's easy for them to do that, too - these voters are happy with the racism and bigotry as long as they keep getting what they have. Democrats, or liberals in general, don't have a collective idea of what they want to do, and quite often, what an ultra liberal wants to do is directly in opposition to what a moderate wants. That's endemic with a society where there is a large gap between the rich and the poor, and it comes from a deeper and simpler social malaise than political divisions. Maybe if you were honest with yourself, you would have admitted that the reason you don't want to vote is because you don't see either candidate helping you. There's nothing wrong with saying that, but it also comes with added responsibility of knowing what activism you need engage in to get what you want.

Dude, that wasn't real.