9 ms·

Allow me to offer some words of wisdom. If you help building weapons to be used against $currently_designated_bad_people, you can rest assured that given enough

Allow me to offer some words of wisdom. If you help building weapons to be used against $currently_designated_bad_people, you can rest assured that given enough time, those weapons will be used against you. I am watching all this with a mild sense of bemusement.

mekdoonggi 9mo ago
A NYT columnist Jamelle Bouie suggested (in jest) that the next Democrat administration send armed IRS agents to gated communities in Florida, to "investigate tax fraud". But this is exactly why all citizens should be concerned about the infringement of rights happening in Minnesota. If it is allowed without prosecution, you are next.
- iugtmkbdfil834 9mo ago
  Zero disagreement. Rules of engagement should be clear to everyone. How can you possibly play the game if the rules keep changing based on political expediency. And we all know.. that that kind of a game is rigged from the start. That said, I was thinking more about people all of us building tools that got us into the situation we are in now.
  - hsuduebc2 9mo ago
    People rarely recognize that force can be turned on them until it happens. If one side uses force and the other refuses to, you cannot expect the first to grasp that force is always a two way street, because for them it is not real until they feel it.
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
    - tom_808 9mo ago
      First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me
    - direwolf20 9mo ago
      Force can be turned on even if there was no force before. Biden didn't have anything like the current ICE, but Trump just made one out of thin air and then turned it on people.
- terespuwash 9mo ago
  His brilliant columns is the only reason I would ever consider a NYT subscription.
- antonymoose 9mo ago
  Why would anyone be opposed to the IRS catching tax cheats? This seems like such a bone-headed take. In any case it’s also historically illiterate, the IRS has long been used as a political weapon, infamously against “Tea Party” activists.
  - ihsw 9mo ago
    [dead]
  - tock 9mo ago
    > Why would anyone be opposed to the IRS catching tax cheats? This seems like such a bone-headed take. And ICE says they only go after illegals.
  - ceejayoz 9mo ago
    Speaking of historically illiterate... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy > Conservatives claimed that they were specifically targeted by the IRS, but an exhaustive report released by the Treasury Department's Inspector General in 2017 found that from 2004 to 2013, the IRS used both conservative and liberal keywords to choose targets for further scrutiny.
  - fwip 9mo ago
    I feel like you can both want illegal aliens to get deported, but not approve of how ICE is executing protesters in the street, entering homes without warrants, and kidnapping people in unmarked vans. Similarly, you can think it would be good to catch tax fraud, but think that it should be handled without executing folks.
    - sejje 9mo ago
      [flagged]
      - crawfordcomeaux 9mo ago
        You aren't seeing them because you aren't looking for them. And you're making excuses for the ones you see. Go find them. Do searches.
- guywithahat 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - gizzlon 9mo ago
    Did you just link to grokipedia?
    - dmajor2 9mo ago
      Linking to actual sources would reveal that the keywords the IRS was looking for were politically biased, yes, but across the spectrum. The keywords included "Tea Party", "Patriot", "Progressive", and "Occupy." https://www.npr.org/2017/10/05/555975207/as-irs-targeted-tea-party-groups-it-went-after-progressives-too https://www.npr.org/2017/10/05/555975207/as-irs-targeted-tea...
      - jeffbee 9mo ago
        "Biased but across the spectrum" is nonsense.
        ajross 9mo ago
        Purely semantic arguments aren't helpful to anyone. The word "bias" clearly has two senses in this context. The original term from signal processing indicates a persistent offset, which got appropriated in politics to reflect the idea of a "lean" in coverage. So now "Bias" means "politically charged in some direction or another". So you can have a "biased" term ("occupy") next to another biased term ("tea party") in a search. And it's reasonable to call the whole thing a collection of biased terms even though by the original definition I guess you'd say they cancel out and are "unbiased". Language is language. It may not be rational but it's by definition never "nonsense". Don't argue with it except to clarify.
        jeffbee 9mo ago
        Your comment is longer nonsense. Individual data points in a population cannot be biased. Bias is an aggregate statistic of the sample population.
- gadders 9mo ago
  Not massively different to Obama weaponising the IRS against the Tea Party.
  - iugtmkbdfil834 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    - gadders 9mo ago
      [flagged]
  - acdha 9mo ago
    That’s not something which really happened: conservative groups screamed about it loudly but the investigation found that the IRS was looking at liberal groups, too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy
- direwolf20 9mo ago
  A democratic administration would be extremely unlikely to do that, I think. Democrats are usually middle–of–the–road, don't–upset–anyone types. Radical centrists, if you will. That's why the elections of people like Mamdani are so shocking.
  - __loam 9mo ago
    People who care about their community?
  - goatlover 9mo ago
    There's going to be a lot of pressure on Democrats from their base to hold people accountable for what happens during Trump's 2nd term. And there is going to be some new blood that runs on that. You have state governors like Newsom, Pritizker and Waltz documenting abuses with future accountability in mind. What baffles me is how conservatives supporting the current government overreach aren't worried about the coming backlash. Do they think they'll just win all the future elections? Even when there is no more Trump?
    - ModernMech 9mo ago
      > Do they think they'll just win all the future elections? There's a degree of that. But really it's learned behavior; MAGA literally sacked the Capitol in a violent insurrection and Democrats managed to botch the response to that. The only reason we're talking about future malfeasance is because Democrats didn't punish past malfeasance, thereby shifting the Overton window. And of course this goes back further than Jan 6 -- Trump might actually get a pardon from the next Democratic president if history repeats.
    - magicalhippo 9mo ago
      > Do they think they'll just win all the future elections? Let's say the administration require physical in-person voting due to supposedly mail-in vote fraud and similar in past elections, like when Trump lost. Then they place a bunch of ICE agents outside of each voting location, checking any immigrants and others they've declared unwanted that are about to vote. Suddenly a lot of democratic voters no longer feel safe voting. Will the democrats still win?
- rurp 9mo ago
  Right, if a future democratic president starts sending masked government thugs out to assault and kidnap American citizens we all know that 100% of the people who are defending the current ICE atrocities will suddenly be outraged about government tyranny.
  - order-matters 9mo ago
    a surprising amount of people seem to genuinely believe law enforcement (generally, not just police) is at its core based on discretionary actions guided by their moral values and not a morally neutral action upholding agreed upon contracts that is to say, the law only applies to you if you do "bad" things. and ill be honest, there is a level of truth to this to me. from a practical standpoint, it is infeasible to formally understand every nuance of every law ever created just to be a citizen. The underlying core social contract does appear to be one of "if you do 'good' things, generally the law will agree with you and if it doesnt then we wont hold it against you the first time" *the important caveat here is that this leaves a rather disgustingly large and exploitable gap in what is considered good vs bad behavior, with some people having biases that can spin any observable facts into good or bad based on their political agenda. Additionally, personal biases like racism for example, influence this judgement to value judge your actions in superficial ways
    - goatlover 9mo ago
      The other caveat is if you're a historically persecuted minority group, then those assumptions toward law enforcement don't usually apply. And now the political opposition to the current US administration is also feeling that way.
    - mekdoonggi 9mo ago
      I have never considered this perspective, but this fits very well with people's actions. Thank you for sharing. To me, the system of codified law and courts makes intuitive sense, and most people misunderstand or abuse the system. But other people's intuitive understanding of the law as you mentioned is a much easier way to understand and actually IS a rough approximation of what the system does.
- eunos 9mo ago
  If Dem could win big soon the lawfare against Trump business could be huge. DOGE purge alone was making a lot of bad blood.
- jimbokun 9mo ago
  Would probably be very popular, outside the kind of people whose donations fund political campaigns.
- jcul 9mo ago
  I'm repeatedly shocked by the images of these ICE agents dressed like they are soldiers in a war zone. I was just thinking how in my country immigration officials would be probably wearing formal clothes and have clipboards and paperwork. Your comment about armed IRS agents made me laugh / reminded me about this.
lingrush4 9mo ago
And you think they won't be used against me if I don't help build them? Seems unlikely. If the implication is that the tools won't exist if I don't build them, that's beyond a pipe dream. We'll never get a globe of 8 billion people to agree unanimously on anything. Let alone agreeing not to build something that gives them power over their adversaries.
- iugtmkbdfil834 9mo ago
  I will offer a benign example. A new team member was given a task to generate a dashboard that, as per spec, in great detail lists every action of a given employee within a system that generates some data for consumption by those employees. As simple as the project was, the employee had the presence of mind to ask his seniors some thoughtful questions of what makes sense, what is too intrusive, what is acceptable. He felt uncomfortable and that was with something that corps build on a daily basis. Now.. not everyone wakes up thinking they are building database intended to enslave humanity as a whole, but I would like to think that one person simply questioning it can make a difference.
nathan_compton 9mo ago
[flagged]
- iugtmkbdfil834 9mo ago
  On occasion, it is worthwhile to take a step back and recognize that what is happening is not new or novel. Likewise, it is useful to recognize a pattern when it presents itself. It is extra useful ( and helpful ) that this is brought to the attention of other people who may still be going through the steps of processing of what seems to be happening. If it helps, I appreciate going meta after me, but there is not much to dissect here. I stand by my bemused. You may think it is some soft of grand struggle and kudos for you for finding something to believe in, but don't project onto others.
  - nathan_compton 9mo ago
    I don't think its any sort of "grand struggle" in any sense other than the human condition is a grand struggle for peace in a world which perhaps fundamentally encourages conflict, but it doesn't have to be a grand struggle to appreciate the fact that people are dying and being treated inhumanely. I really do think you're fundamental warning is spot on: people really should consider how power is going to be used against them when calculating how much of it to give up in the pursuit of a goal. I also happen to think its sort of ridiculous (and impossible) for us all to wail and gnash our teeth each time a person dies unjustly. But I also think its probably wrong to be amused by it, even if it is commonplace in human affairs.
    - iugtmkbdfil834 9mo ago
      << But I also think its probably wrong to be amused by it, even if it is commonplace in human affairs. This may be the source of disconnect. While it might seem like I am amused by suffering, this is explicitly not the case. I shudder at the thought that people would take my argument as meaning that. All I am saying is: things exist after their original purpose has been served ( or not served ). But those things continue to exist, because we, as a species, can't seem to help ourselves. That weird drive within us is what I would call bemusing ( and not amusing ).
guywithahat 9mo ago
[flagged]
- iugtmkbdfil834 9mo ago
  Sure, but I was under impression those mechanism already exists. The question, as it were, comes to enforcement.
  - dmix 9mo ago
    The mechanism to do it properly is the feds working with local and state officials where there's a full breadth of accountability and judicial coverage. Some states and cities have explicitly rejected doing this, some opting to purposefully make it harder. Trump instead of being diplomatic and trying to work with them has aggressively sent goons in to do flashy operations and pushed federal enforcement to the limits of the law. ICE and border patrol wasn't really designed either legally or in training for these sorts of large operations, so it's created lots of dangerous situations like how to do crowd control broadly under laws like "interfering with a federal investigation", while commanders are pushing them hard for results.
    - iugtmkbdfil834 9mo ago
      I am not disagreeing with you. Paraphrasing your own words, the mechanisms exist, but they have been intentionally blunted. We can argue whether it was a good idea to blunt it, but it does not help that the administration used that blunt tool regardless.
      - dmix 9mo ago
        I've always said the root problem to most of America's problems has been in action by congress. Congress could have fixed the border long ago but they let each administration either ignore it, make it far worse by actually welcoming people to violate the law, or try to fix themselves without the proper tools. There's also no doubt that "sanctuary cities" idea helped create this dangerous situation but I personally respect state/local rights and disagree with the Executive Branch simply forcing feds into their streets to subvert it. This 100% needs local/state police coordination. Immigration enforcement is far from an unpopular idea (it was in fact the most popular thing in the election), it just needs to be done right and across the board.
ActorNightly 9mo ago
Tik Tok wasn't built to be used as a weapon though.
- pixelatedindex 9mo ago
  Weapons can come in all forms and sizes. When wielded with the blend of censorship and propaganda, (social) media is absolutely a weapon. Is there a reason why it won’t be?
- buellerbueller 9mo ago
  Are you sure about that?
  - ActorNightly 9mo ago
    Yeah. I don't subscribe to the hypocritical vies that people are expected to have "free will" and "freedom", while also being "influenced by the algorithm". Its either one or the other. Personally I think its the former, and Tik Tok is just confirming to people what they want to hear.
    - iugtmkbdfil834 9mo ago
      << Its either one or the other. Why would that be a given? If we remove tiktok and replace it with anything else, that replaced influence does not automatically negate my will? Case in point, when I call my mother to talk a new car purchase, does her disliking my choice automatically mean I either influenced and therefore have no will? I am not certain you considered edge cases here.
culi 9mo ago
This is called "boomerang theory" in sociology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang
- Etherlord87 9mo ago
  > The imperial boomerang is the theory that governments that develop repressive techniques to control colonial territories will eventually deploy those same techniques domestically against their own citizens. This is different from what parent post describes. Parent means developing tools by one side of a barricade, that the other may eventually use against them, e.g. when the power shifts to them. Whereas you speak about developing the tools to be used abroad, but those tools eventually also get used domestically, but the administrator remains the same.
topspin 9mo ago
> those weapons will be used against you On the matter of social media "moderation," this is the phase you're actually in, right now.
gcanyon 9mo ago
The problem I was listening to a historian discuss the other day is that we're stuck in a cycle of: 1. Republican breaks norms/laws 2. Democrat cleans up after, but by *not* breaking norms, doesn't go far enough to actually undo all the damage 3. We end up with a more broken governmental configuration, and head back to (1) They said this pattern goes back to Nixon.
- Jcampuzano2 9mo ago
  Theres a reason 99% of actions taken by democrats are just "strongly worded letters" and how they consistently come up with the exact small number of Democrats needed to push legislation and bills that the party proposes to be against. Most Democratic politicians are in on the game too. Its all just political theater and their in-group rotates out who gets to be the bad guys. Yes Democrats clean-up by not breaking norms, but as mentioned they never go far enough because they legitimately do not want to go too far due to corporate interests and the elite. I am left leaning but do not align with the majority of the Democratic party because they are in on this too. They have the tools to be much more antagonistic to the GOP but they purposely don't use them
  - gcanyon 9mo ago
    I think this take is on the cynical side. A more charitable interpretation would be what they say (but maybe I'm being naive): that they don't want to break the rules to fix what someone else broke by breaking the rules. I'm not sure what you mean by "they consistently come up with the exact small number of Democrats needed to push legislation and bills that the party proposes to be against" -- if you mean the Republicans manage to get some Democrats to "switch sides" -- it's important to remember that this is how everything used to get done. Check the old votes: party-line was less common back in the day. And even now, Democrats tolerate members with differing opinions far more than the GOP does, and it shows in their voting patterns.
    - deaux 9mo ago
      You're not just being naive, you're ignoring the blatant reality. 2016 DNC is enough evidence that yes, the core of the party is very much in on it.
dogleash 9mo ago
Corollary: building a benign system that doesn't make the levers of control as small and close to the user as possible, is inviting someone with ulterior motives to use those controls.
jimbokun 9mo ago
This seems to be an argument that defense spending is never legitimate?
agilob 9mo ago
>If you help building weapons to be used against $currently_designated_bad_people Democrats would really love some extra help from WikiLeaks right now, if only not Bidens administration who helped to extradite Julian.
- cosmicgadget 9mo ago
  Afaik only one side of the aisle asks for Russia's help with offensive cybersecurity.
Hasz 9mo ago
I have been arguing this point for several years now -- but wrt to the Democratic party's relationship with guns. The same justification used to limit the second amendment is the same justification that can be used to limit the 1st, 4th, etc. Both parties seem to be on an authoritarian bent over the last 10-15 years, which sucks.

mekdoonggi 9mo ago

A NYT columnist Jamelle Bouie suggested (in jest) that the next Democrat administration send armed IRS agents to gated communities in Florida, to "investigate tax fraud". But this is exactly why all citizens should be concerned about the infringement of rights happening in Minnesota. If it is allowed without prosecution, you are next.

iugtmkbdfil834 9mo ago
Zero disagreement. Rules of engagement should be clear to everyone. How can you possibly play the game if the rules keep changing based on political expediency. And we all know.. that that kind of a game is rigged from the start. That said, I was thinking more about people all of us building tools that got us into the situation we are in now.
- hsuduebc2 9mo ago
  People rarely recognize that force can be turned on them until it happens. If one side uses force and the other refuses to, you cannot expect the first to grasp that force is always a two way street, because for them it is not real until they feel it.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - tom_808 9mo ago
    First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me
  - direwolf20 9mo ago
    Force can be turned on even if there was no force before. Biden didn't have anything like the current ICE, but Trump just made one out of thin air and then turned it on people.
terespuwash 9mo ago
His brilliant columns is the only reason I would ever consider a NYT subscription.
antonymoose 9mo ago
Why would anyone be opposed to the IRS catching tax cheats? This seems like such a bone-headed take. In any case it’s also historically illiterate, the IRS has long been used as a political weapon, infamously against “Tea Party” activists.
- ihsw 9mo ago
  [dead]
- tock 9mo ago
  > Why would anyone be opposed to the IRS catching tax cheats? This seems like such a bone-headed take. And ICE says they only go after illegals.
- ceejayoz 9mo ago
  Speaking of historically illiterate... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy > Conservatives claimed that they were specifically targeted by the IRS, but an exhaustive report released by the Treasury Department's Inspector General in 2017 found that from 2004 to 2013, the IRS used both conservative and liberal keywords to choose targets for further scrutiny.
- fwip 9mo ago
  I feel like you can both want illegal aliens to get deported, but not approve of how ICE is executing protesters in the street, entering homes without warrants, and kidnapping people in unmarked vans. Similarly, you can think it would be good to catch tax fraud, but think that it should be handled without executing folks.
  - sejje 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    - crawfordcomeaux 9mo ago
      You aren't seeing them because you aren't looking for them. And you're making excuses for the ones you see. Go find them. Do searches.
guywithahat 9mo ago
[flagged]
- gizzlon 9mo ago
  Did you just link to grokipedia?
  - dmajor2 9mo ago
    Linking to actual sources would reveal that the keywords the IRS was looking for were politically biased, yes, but across the spectrum. The keywords included "Tea Party", "Patriot", "Progressive", and "Occupy." https://www.npr.org/2017/10/05/555975207/as-irs-targeted-tea-party-groups-it-went-after-progressives-too https://www.npr.org/2017/10/05/555975207/as-irs-targeted-tea...
    - jeffbee 9mo ago
      "Biased but across the spectrum" is nonsense.
      - ajross 9mo ago
        Purely semantic arguments aren't helpful to anyone. The word "bias" clearly has two senses in this context. The original term from signal processing indicates a persistent offset, which got appropriated in politics to reflect the idea of a "lean" in coverage. So now "Bias" means "politically charged in some direction or another". So you can have a "biased" term ("occupy") next to another biased term ("tea party") in a search. And it's reasonable to call the whole thing a collection of biased terms even though by the original definition I guess you'd say they cancel out and are "unbiased". Language is language. It may not be rational but it's by definition never "nonsense". Don't argue with it except to clarify.
        jeffbee 9mo ago
        Your comment is longer nonsense. Individual data points in a population cannot be biased. Bias is an aggregate statistic of the sample population.
gadders 9mo ago
Not massively different to Obama weaponising the IRS against the Tea Party.
- iugtmkbdfil834 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - gadders 9mo ago
    [flagged]
- acdha 9mo ago
  That’s not something which really happened: conservative groups screamed about it loudly but the investigation found that the IRS was looking at liberal groups, too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy
direwolf20 9mo ago
A democratic administration would be extremely unlikely to do that, I think. Democrats are usually middle–of–the–road, don't–upset–anyone types. Radical centrists, if you will. That's why the elections of people like Mamdani are so shocking.
- __loam 9mo ago
  People who care about their community?
- goatlover 9mo ago
  There's going to be a lot of pressure on Democrats from their base to hold people accountable for what happens during Trump's 2nd term. And there is going to be some new blood that runs on that. You have state governors like Newsom, Pritizker and Waltz documenting abuses with future accountability in mind. What baffles me is how conservatives supporting the current government overreach aren't worried about the coming backlash. Do they think they'll just win all the future elections? Even when there is no more Trump?
  - ModernMech 9mo ago
    > Do they think they'll just win all the future elections? There's a degree of that. But really it's learned behavior; MAGA literally sacked the Capitol in a violent insurrection and Democrats managed to botch the response to that. The only reason we're talking about future malfeasance is because Democrats didn't punish past malfeasance, thereby shifting the Overton window. And of course this goes back further than Jan 6 -- Trump might actually get a pardon from the next Democratic president if history repeats.
  - magicalhippo 9mo ago
    > Do they think they'll just win all the future elections? Let's say the administration require physical in-person voting due to supposedly mail-in vote fraud and similar in past elections, like when Trump lost. Then they place a bunch of ICE agents outside of each voting location, checking any immigrants and others they've declared unwanted that are about to vote. Suddenly a lot of democratic voters no longer feel safe voting. Will the democrats still win?
rurp 9mo ago
Right, if a future democratic president starts sending masked government thugs out to assault and kidnap American citizens we all know that 100% of the people who are defending the current ICE atrocities will suddenly be outraged about government tyranny.
- order-matters 9mo ago
  a surprising amount of people seem to genuinely believe law enforcement (generally, not just police) is at its core based on discretionary actions guided by their moral values and not a morally neutral action upholding agreed upon contracts that is to say, the law only applies to you if you do "bad" things. and ill be honest, there is a level of truth to this to me. from a practical standpoint, it is infeasible to formally understand every nuance of every law ever created just to be a citizen. The underlying core social contract does appear to be one of "if you do 'good' things, generally the law will agree with you and if it doesnt then we wont hold it against you the first time" *the important caveat here is that this leaves a rather disgustingly large and exploitable gap in what is considered good vs bad behavior, with some people having biases that can spin any observable facts into good or bad based on their political agenda. Additionally, personal biases like racism for example, influence this judgement to value judge your actions in superficial ways
  - goatlover 9mo ago
    The other caveat is if you're a historically persecuted minority group, then those assumptions toward law enforcement don't usually apply. And now the political opposition to the current US administration is also feeling that way.
  - mekdoonggi 9mo ago
    I have never considered this perspective, but this fits very well with people's actions. Thank you for sharing. To me, the system of codified law and courts makes intuitive sense, and most people misunderstand or abuse the system. But other people's intuitive understanding of the law as you mentioned is a much easier way to understand and actually IS a rough approximation of what the system does.
eunos 9mo ago
If Dem could win big soon the lawfare against Trump business could be huge. DOGE purge alone was making a lot of bad blood.
jimbokun 9mo ago
Would probably be very popular, outside the kind of people whose donations fund political campaigns.
jcul 9mo ago
I'm repeatedly shocked by the images of these ICE agents dressed like they are soldiers in a war zone. I was just thinking how in my country immigration officials would be probably wearing formal clothes and have clipboards and paperwork. Your comment about armed IRS agents made me laugh / reminded me about this.

lingrush4 9mo ago

And you think they won't be used against me if I don't help build them? Seems unlikely. If the implication is that the tools won't exist if I don't build them, that's beyond a pipe dream. We'll never get a globe of 8 billion people to agree unanimously on anything. Let alone agreeing not to build something that gives them power over their adversaries.

iugtmkbdfil834 9mo ago
I will offer a benign example. A new team member was given a task to generate a dashboard that, as per spec, in great detail lists every action of a given employee within a system that generates some data for consumption by those employees. As simple as the project was, the employee had the presence of mind to ask his seniors some thoughtful questions of what makes sense, what is too intrusive, what is acceptable. He felt uncomfortable and that was with something that corps build on a daily basis. Now.. not everyone wakes up thinking they are building database intended to enslave humanity as a whole, but I would like to think that one person simply questioning it can make a difference.

nathan_compton 9mo ago

[flagged]

iugtmkbdfil834 9mo ago
On occasion, it is worthwhile to take a step back and recognize that what is happening is not new or novel. Likewise, it is useful to recognize a pattern when it presents itself. It is extra useful ( and helpful ) that this is brought to the attention of other people who may still be going through the steps of processing of what seems to be happening. If it helps, I appreciate going meta after me, but there is not much to dissect here. I stand by my bemused. You may think it is some soft of grand struggle and kudos for you for finding something to believe in, but don't project onto others.
- nathan_compton 9mo ago
  I don't think its any sort of "grand struggle" in any sense other than the human condition is a grand struggle for peace in a world which perhaps fundamentally encourages conflict, but it doesn't have to be a grand struggle to appreciate the fact that people are dying and being treated inhumanely. I really do think you're fundamental warning is spot on: people really should consider how power is going to be used against them when calculating how much of it to give up in the pursuit of a goal. I also happen to think its sort of ridiculous (and impossible) for us all to wail and gnash our teeth each time a person dies unjustly. But I also think its probably wrong to be amused by it, even if it is commonplace in human affairs.
  - iugtmkbdfil834 9mo ago
    << But I also think its probably wrong to be amused by it, even if it is commonplace in human affairs. This may be the source of disconnect. While it might seem like I am amused by suffering, this is explicitly not the case. I shudder at the thought that people would take my argument as meaning that. All I am saying is: things exist after their original purpose has been served ( or not served ). But those things continue to exist, because we, as a species, can't seem to help ourselves. That weird drive within us is what I would call bemusing ( and not amusing ).

guywithahat 9mo ago

[flagged]

iugtmkbdfil834 9mo ago
Sure, but I was under impression those mechanism already exists. The question, as it were, comes to enforcement.
- dmix 9mo ago
  The mechanism to do it properly is the feds working with local and state officials where there's a full breadth of accountability and judicial coverage. Some states and cities have explicitly rejected doing this, some opting to purposefully make it harder. Trump instead of being diplomatic and trying to work with them has aggressively sent goons in to do flashy operations and pushed federal enforcement to the limits of the law. ICE and border patrol wasn't really designed either legally or in training for these sorts of large operations, so it's created lots of dangerous situations like how to do crowd control broadly under laws like "interfering with a federal investigation", while commanders are pushing them hard for results.
  - iugtmkbdfil834 9mo ago
    I am not disagreeing with you. Paraphrasing your own words, the mechanisms exist, but they have been intentionally blunted. We can argue whether it was a good idea to blunt it, but it does not help that the administration used that blunt tool regardless.
    - dmix 9mo ago
      I've always said the root problem to most of America's problems has been in action by congress. Congress could have fixed the border long ago but they let each administration either ignore it, make it far worse by actually welcoming people to violate the law, or try to fix themselves without the proper tools. There's also no doubt that "sanctuary cities" idea helped create this dangerous situation but I personally respect state/local rights and disagree with the Executive Branch simply forcing feds into their streets to subvert it. This 100% needs local/state police coordination. Immigration enforcement is far from an unpopular idea (it was in fact the most popular thing in the election), it just needs to be done right and across the board.

ActorNightly 9mo ago

Tik Tok wasn't built to be used as a weapon though.

pixelatedindex 9mo ago
Weapons can come in all forms and sizes. When wielded with the blend of censorship and propaganda, (social) media is absolutely a weapon. Is there a reason why it won’t be?
buellerbueller 9mo ago
Are you sure about that?
- ActorNightly 9mo ago
  Yeah. I don't subscribe to the hypocritical vies that people are expected to have "free will" and "freedom", while also being "influenced by the algorithm". Its either one or the other. Personally I think its the former, and Tik Tok is just confirming to people what they want to hear.
  - iugtmkbdfil834 9mo ago
    << Its either one or the other. Why would that be a given? If we remove tiktok and replace it with anything else, that replaced influence does not automatically negate my will? Case in point, when I call my mother to talk a new car purchase, does her disliking my choice automatically mean I either influenced and therefore have no will? I am not certain you considered edge cases here.

culi 9mo ago

This is called "boomerang theory" in sociology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang

Etherlord87 9mo ago
> The imperial boomerang is the theory that governments that develop repressive techniques to control colonial territories will eventually deploy those same techniques domestically against their own citizens. This is different from what parent post describes. Parent means developing tools by one side of a barricade, that the other may eventually use against them, e.g. when the power shifts to them. Whereas you speak about developing the tools to be used abroad, but those tools eventually also get used domestically, but the administrator remains the same.

topspin 9mo ago

> those weapons will be used against you On the matter of social media "moderation," this is the phase you're actually in, right now.

gcanyon 9mo ago

The problem I was listening to a historian discuss the other day is that we're stuck in a cycle of: 1. Republican breaks norms/laws 2. Democrat cleans up after, but by *not* breaking norms, doesn't go far enough to actually undo all the damage 3. We end up with a more broken governmental configuration, and head back to (1) They said this pattern goes back to Nixon.

Jcampuzano2 9mo ago
Theres a reason 99% of actions taken by democrats are just "strongly worded letters" and how they consistently come up with the exact small number of Democrats needed to push legislation and bills that the party proposes to be against. Most Democratic politicians are in on the game too. Its all just political theater and their in-group rotates out who gets to be the bad guys. Yes Democrats clean-up by not breaking norms, but as mentioned they never go far enough because they legitimately do not want to go too far due to corporate interests and the elite. I am left leaning but do not align with the majority of the Democratic party because they are in on this too. They have the tools to be much more antagonistic to the GOP but they purposely don't use them
- gcanyon 9mo ago
  I think this take is on the cynical side. A more charitable interpretation would be what they say (but maybe I'm being naive): that they don't want to break the rules to fix what someone else broke by breaking the rules. I'm not sure what you mean by "they consistently come up with the exact small number of Democrats needed to push legislation and bills that the party proposes to be against" -- if you mean the Republicans manage to get some Democrats to "switch sides" -- it's important to remember that this is how everything used to get done. Check the old votes: party-line was less common back in the day. And even now, Democrats tolerate members with differing opinions far more than the GOP does, and it shows in their voting patterns.
  - deaux 9mo ago
    You're not just being naive, you're ignoring the blatant reality. 2016 DNC is enough evidence that yes, the core of the party is very much in on it.

dogleash 9mo ago

Corollary: building a benign system that doesn't make the levers of control as small and close to the user as possible, is inviting someone with ulterior motives to use those controls.

jimbokun 9mo ago

This seems to be an argument that defense spending is never legitimate?

agilob 9mo ago

>If you help building weapons to be used against $currently_designated_bad_people Democrats would really love some extra help from WikiLeaks right now, if only not Bidens administration who helped to extradite Julian.

cosmicgadget 9mo ago
Afaik only one side of the aisle asks for Russia's help with offensive cybersecurity.

Hasz 9mo ago

I have been arguing this point for several years now -- but wrt to the Democratic party's relationship with guns. The same justification used to limit the second amendment is the same justification that can be used to limit the 1st, 4th, etc. Both parties seem to be on an authoritarian bent over the last 10-15 years, which sucks.