Off Topic Politics Thread

[ImpSaint]

What a waste of time that response was.

Elon Musk owns Twitter.

Agreed

Elon Musk pushes some unsavoury views on Tiwtter.

Agreed, just as many folks that are supposedly intelligent people on all sides of the political spectrum do

Companies need to decide whether the platform they use represents their values.

Agreed. Thats not what is happening though, they are being pressured into a "are you with us good uys or not" setup to comply with what a lobbyist group says.

People have freedom of choice to do that.

Agreed but we aren't talking about people we are talking about big money company's advertising budgets being controlled as to where they can advertise or be ostracised from the good guys club.

Everything you just posted was irrelevant. Elon Musk is not a victim. He is a multibillionaire who chooses to say things on Twitter. If people dislike what he says they don’t have to pay to advertise on his platform.

Its highly relevant. Elon Musk is not a victim - agreed, but again you use the term people when people don't advertise. The people making that decision are the lobby group. the marketing teams of these companies are not choosing in reality to not advertise on twitter they are choosing whether they want to be labelled by a select group as not in the good guys club.

Just like earlier when you said people get what’s coming to them if they post unsavoury things on Twitter , so does Musk. In this case he loses revenue. He could just stfu but he chooses to push what is acceptable and it costs him money.

Agreed on the first part but Musk isn't losing money, the company is losing it and yes he could stfu but he chooses not to. We will see if he wins the case which I assume is being joined by others inthe same position ostracised beccause they won;t play the member's club game. I suspect they would win but then I'm no lawyer. We will have to wait and see if it actually goes further.

 

[Gregm1988]

I never said he was justified. I said he has been attacked from the left since he took over. What he posts is up to the same scrutiny as other people posting rubbish. He might feel he is justified but I did not say he was. I agree with most of what you say about him however its up to him what he says and what he posts.

And he isn't losing revenue because of you or I switching off. He is losing revenue because a "affiliate group" is creating a who's who of who should get advertising revenue, in effect deciding who makes money without any input from the user and that means that what you get to view trying to persuade you to buy is being controlled by others.

You must log in or register to see images

Its not just about letting you or I know who is a good company that you should buy from. It is also a pressure for companies to sign up to be seen as being nice. And if you look closely bottom left............twitter is on there! X isn't! So its a member's club of those that are then lobbied to advertisers ot prefer over others. BP? Hmm. facebook? Hmmm. Google has already been done over manipulating their search engine results! and they are on there?

It isn;t actually about Musk. It doesn't matter whether you or I like him or like X or like social media. It does matter if a clique is able to control which companies are allowed to be advertised to you. I daresay he doesn;t care about the extra money or forcing companies to advertise on his platform and his main thing is stopping other groups pressurising companies to not advertise on certain platforms or they will be kicked out of the preferred partners group!

I’m a bit confused - this all started with saying he shouldn’t have commented on our riots and suggested they were indicative of a civil war. The advertising stuff and the “attacks” from the left have nothing to do with that. At all

 

[Gregm1988]

I would be interested to see what the outcome would be if advertisers are forced into advertising on Twitter from this lawsuit. How could this possibly work? Because you have to pay to show adverts on a platform. How could a court force a company to pay to advertise somewhere they don’t want to? Can the court set the price as well. That would be a crazy precedent to set. It doesn’t make sense to me at all

 

[ImpSaint]

I’m a bit confused - this all started with saying he shouldn’t have commented on our riots and suggested they were indicative of a civil war. The advertising stuff and the “attacks” from the left have nothing to do with that. At all

The riots on their own no, but it is just the latest in a long standing anti-Musk argument and this post is a long way since that began. His post was this week. There have been more and more attacks on him since he bought twitter or to be more accurate since he unbanned people that the left hink should be banned like Trump and some others. There have been growing hints at censor or even the earlier mentioned Saint Mark Rowley hinting at prosecution!

So it isn't that "he started it" unless we want to say allowing big mouths on the right wing to be able to post just like the big mouths on the left can as starting it. I rarely use twitter tbh because its a ****hole. I mainly use it for Crypto stuff as Crypto things pretty much rely on farming activity and utilisation of a fast moving platform to get people on board. A necessity for the NFT community I am a co-founder of

 

[ImpSaint]

I would be interested to see what the outcome would be if advertisers are forced into advertising on Twitter from this lawsuit. How could this possibly work? Because you have to pay to show adverts on a platform. How could a court force a company to pay to advertise somewhere they don’t want to? Can the court set the price as well. That would be a crazy precedent to set. It doesn’t make sense to me at all

They won't be forced to. You cannot force people to do things, but you can fight an argument that they should be able to choose, of their own free will and not pressurised into not doing something. Its called freedom. You don;t have to do something, but you must have a choice to do it or not to. These kind of groups are assuming the powers to basically force companies into sumission to their will or be castigated for not signing up to their club.

Bit like in the UK the campaign to try and shame companies for running Ads in the Mail or on GB News. They are trying to chut down avenues of revenue for anything that transgresses their own set of beliefs.

the question is not forcing companies to advertise where they don't want to. It is about the legality of a pressure group being able to create a scenario where that choice is not available by their own decision in that outsiders can effectively force companies Not to advertise or give revenue to a company.

Its basically something called the free market. It should not be decided by one group of people where the world's businesses should be able to advertise if they so choose of the own free-will.

What would you say if your bank signed up to this and went further banning you from making any payment to X or Y company removing your choice whether to buy from them or not?

 

[Le Tissier's Laces]

I don’t know if this simplifies anything, but I don’t like Elon Musk simply because he’s quite clearly an absolute turbo bellend of a man.

 

[ImpSaint]

I don’t know if this simplifies anything, but I don’t like Elon Musk simply because he’s quite clearly an absolute turbo bellend of a man.

I don't like him or zuckerberg or social media in general but unfortunately needs must and while I no longer use facebook. Being into the NFT and Cryptoworld means I have to be pretty active on telegram and discord and utilise twitter's reach because thats where the audience is.

and if you think twitter is bad.........eek.....telegram is a 4chan of different nationalities, races going to verbal warfare with short tempers if prices go the wrong way! Its a horrible place to be on when it gets to that stage.

 

[ChilcoSaint]

You must log in or register to see images

 

[Schrodinger's Cat]

You must log in or register to see images

You must log in or register to see images

 

[......loading......]

Oh man, the US is a nation that loves its soldiers and Trump has hit a major backlash after accusing Walz of stealing valour and abandoning his unit. Walz served 24 years of the 20 years you are supposed to serve before retiring, and retired a year before his unit went to Iraq. Trump on the other hand dodged the draft.

This is a big deal for conservative Americans as you simply do not question another man’s service.

 

[Schrodinger's Cat]

You must log in or register to see images

Ended badly for Smaug

 

[Gregm1988]

Oh man, the US is a nation that loves its soldiers and Trump has hit a major backlash after accusing Walz of stealing valour and abandoning his unit. Walz served 24 years of the 20 years you are supposed to serve before retiring, and retired a year before his unit went to Iraq. Trump on the other hand dodged the draft.

This is a big deal for conservative Americans as you simply do not question another man’s service.

Didn’t Trump insult John McCain for getting captured in Vietnam. The war he chickened out of (not that I blame him for that but it’s still a bit rich)

And it didn’t hurt him significantly

 

[......loading......]

Didn’t Trump insult John McCain for getting captured in Vietnam. The war he chickened out of (not that I blame him for that but it’s still a bit rich)

And it didn’t hurt him significantly

But that time he was on the way up in the polls and this time he is on the way down. The ‘weird’ label is absolutely wrecking him.

 

[Gregm1988]

The bbc have done a piece on the “weird” label. There are (of course) republicans out there who have taken it as a swipe at republican voters. When it absolutely isn’t that - it’s a swipe at the lawmakers and talking heads and some of there weird obsessions. But mostly at Trump and Vance. Especially when compared to Walz - who came up with it

The actual best defense would be to try and make out like they were talking about the average defense Republican voter in a “basket of deplorables” sense. But even then - they can get unhappy about it but they can’t own it as a badge of honour like they did with “deplorable” from Clinton. And it might be too late because Vance and Trump (as well as the likes of Vivek) have taken it personally.

There are an awful lot of republics out there seething and desperately trying to claim that it isn’t sticking and that they all just think democrats are weirder

But this is patently false when you look at the reactions of exactly who it was aimed at - Trump, Vance and republican commentators. Trump basically hasn’t let it go at all.

It works so well because they pride themselves on being “normal” and even more importantly - they truly think everyone else thinks like them (this whole silent majority thing) and don’t understand how far out of touch they are on many issues

I saw a great comment analysing Matt Walsh’s furious reaction when he was raving about trans people and drag artists. And this comment said that the average American would be more likely to think “how does this guy spend his day?” rather than “yeah I agree all of that stuff is weird”. And this is the same Matt Walsh whose profile nosedived after he was recorded talking about girls of 16 being peak fertility or something similar to that (might have been 17, 18 or 16-18).

And then of course they are going all in on this fake stolen valour when all it does is highlight the lack of any valour on their side and their disrespect for service. They are rattled by Walz. The day after he was announced Ben Shapiro released a disheveled video where he looked like he had been awake all night freaking out about the pick where he described him as “a more athletic Mr Feeny”. Now for anyone who didn’t watch Boy Meets World back in the day - that is just about the biggest compliment you can give someone. I’m not sure if it was meant as an attempted jab or more a resigned acknowledgment of it being a good choice of running mate

 

[Libby]

Quite remarkable that Russia have yet to repel the Ukrainian incursion into their territory after a week or so.

 

[Gregm1988]

Quite remarkable that Russia have yet to repel the Ukrainian incursion into their territory after a week or so.

Does it potentially suit them? Their narrative the whole time has been that Ukraine is the aggressor. And now they can try and say that with real evidence?

 

[Libby]

Does it potentially suit them? Their narrative the whole time has been that Ukraine is the aggressor. And now they can try and say that with real evidence?

Hnmm not sure about that. Putin likes to project strength and this doesn't help that image at all.

The whole narrative around this war is to keep people safe and yet they don't appear to be capable of doing that even over a period of a week or so.

 

[Le Tissier's Laces]

Hnmm not sure about that. Putin likes to project strength and this doesn't help that image at all.

The whole narrative around this war is to keep people safe and yet they don't appear to be capable of doing that even over a period of a week or so.

There’s a certain irony to Putin moaning so hard about people making incursions into territory…

 

[Puck]

I can't imagine any war leader choosing to allow enemy troops to remain in their territory. Maybe if it helped with some masterplan to win the war but that doesn't seem to be the case. I'm pretty sure the reality is the Russian military isn't anywhere near as strong as people thought.

 

[Osvaldorama]

Just want to post on here to rescind any views I previously held and say that I think Starmer is a fantastic politician and a wonderful bloke. The country is heading in a great direction under his magnificent leadership.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the government arresting people for their opinions. I came to this conclusion of my own free will.