Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Utah’s Division of Consumer Protection (UDCP) is suing TikTok over allegations that the app’s “addictive nature” harms children and that TikTok deceptively obscures its relationship with ByteDance, its parent company in China. The state’s lawsuit is the latest in a long-and-growing string of bans and legal action from US-based governments and organizations to rein in TikTok’s popularity, generally on espionage fears.
Utah Governor Spencer Cox accused the company of “misleading parents that its app is safe for children” in a press release announcing the lawsuit today. He said the app “illegally baits children into addictive and unhealthy use” with features that encourage young users to scroll endlessly in order to make more advertising money.
The lawsuit alleges that TikTok violates the Utah Consumer Sales Practices Act (UCSPA) by making the app addictive to children and profiting from it; misrepresenting things like the safety of its app and fairness of its policies; and claiming that it’s based in the US and not controlled from China by ByteDance.
[...] Beyond TikTok, Utah also passed a law this year requiring parents to consent before their children can use social media, in a move that’s part of a larger censorship trend in the United States.
Related Stories
Blogger Ben Werdmuller has discussed an article in Nature about the political impact of the algorithm(s) used by X (formerly known as Twitter). The gist is that the use of the algorithms against X's users tends to shift about 5% of them in a specific direction. That's more than enough to tip an election one way or another especially since the damage seems persistent and lasts even after exposure ceases.
Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk's platform X shedding light on this puzzle. We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks, measuring political attitudes and online behaviour. Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects. Neither switching the algorithm on nor switching it off significantly affected affective polarization or self-reported partisanship. To investigate the mechanism, we analysed users' feed content and behaviour. We found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects. These results suggest that initial exposure to X's algorithm has persistent effects on users' current political attitudes and account-following behaviour, even in the absence of a detectable effect on partisanship.
It should be added that the effect has already been seen in multiple countries. For example, the elections in Turkey were affected with outright censorship, within X. And the impact from the CPP's Bytedance's Tiktok is likely even more severe, not to mention multiple experiments in manipulation in Meta's properties like Facebook.
Journal Reference: Gauthier, G., Hodler, R., Widmer, P. et al. The political effects of X's feed algorithm. Nature (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10098-2
Previously:
(2026) How Screwed is Generation Alpha, and the Generations Which Will Depend on Them?
(2025) European Union Orders X to Hand Over Algorithm Documents
(2024) Six Months Ago NPR Left Twitter. The Effects Have Been Negligible
(2023) Utah Sues Tiktok For Getting Children 'Addicted' To Its Algorithm
(2022) Leaked Documents Reveal Instagram Was Pushing Girls Towards Content That Harmed Mental Health
(2022) Musk Buying Twitter Is Not About Freedom of Speech
... and more
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday October 14 2023, @07:23AM (3 children)
Maybe they should setup a China-style firewall and sell tokens to access addictive websites for top dollar.
That's how it's done in the Happy Valley: alcohol is addictive and they want to protect you, so they sell booze themselves. Because that's not at all hypocritical.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Saturday October 14 2023, @10:12AM (1 child)
It's the same way Germany handles gambling. Because gambling can be addictive, basically all gambling (lotteries, casinos, sports betting) is state-operated. And of course advertised (because nothing protects you more from gambling addiction than ads for state-owned lotteries and casinos. ;-)).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 14 2023, @01:04PM
>the same way Germany handles gambling
And Florida. Now, Florida surrounds several sovereign native nations, which also run their own state owned casinos. And we launch cruise ships which operate casinos in international waters, then sell hotel rooms and rental cars and airline tickets and side trips to all the gamblers on their way to and from these less regulated casinos. And lie about our COVID statistics so as not to scare the tourists away. Nothing hypocritical there, nothing compared to other recently passed policies at least.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by mcgrew on Saturday October 14 2023, @06:32PM
Grandma Nazi here, "setup" is a noun. You want a verb and an adverb. "Set up".
Can I mod myself down for being offtopic?
Are the Republicans really in favor of genocide, or are they just cowards terrified of terrorist twit Trump?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by janrinok on Saturday October 14 2023, @09:19AM (52 children)
I have the impression that there are loads of apps targetting children, and they are all using similar algorithms or techniques to make their site 'addictive'.
So why is TikTok being singled out? Is it because it is China that is hoovering up the data rather than one of the 5-Eyes community? If the government believes it is a threat then they have a duty to protect their citizens. Make Tiktok illegal. But they know that they cannot achieve that without having problems getting it passed as a law, and which will also annoy a significant proportion of their population.
We do seem to like having dual standards whereby if we do something it is OK but if somebody else does it then it is time to 'think of the children' or some such other excuse.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday October 14 2023, @09:45AM (28 children)
That's the understatement of the century.
The only difference between China and the US is that US state is controlled by private interests (the 9th of the 14 characteristics of fascism [ratical.org], many of which apply to the US) and leave their complicit corporate masters do their surveillance for them. There is no difference between TikTok and Facebook: the surveillance is just as intense in both cases. If Utah was fair, it would sue Facebook too. But that's not going to happen because Facebook is an integral part of the US crypto-fascist state.
This is factually true, but I'll surely be modded down because I'm poopooing the US. Because the media has been busy, and very successful at convincing Americans their own domestic surveillance complex is somehow better than China's. Just watch.
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 14 2023, @12:01PM
I was thinking in the same direction you're going, just getting to it by a different route. I started with, "Oh, good, outlaw the algorithm, and that will take care of Facebook, Twitter, and all the rest!" But, as you point out, government isn't going to give up their sweet mass surveillance arrangements with all the social media companies. You and janrinok started from a better perspective than I did, is all.
We're gonna be able to vacation in Gaza, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and maybe Minnesota soon. Incredible times.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 14 2023, @01:06PM (15 children)
>the US crypto-fascist state
There's nothing cryptic about fascism in the US, it's pretty plain to read for yourself on the ballots and certainly in the candidates' self descriptions on their websites.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday October 14 2023, @06:50PM (14 children)
Indeed. Who is my congress critter representing? Not the working class, despite being a Democrat. The Republicans and Democrats are both beholden to the 1% to be elected. They have been two wings of the same fascist party since Clinton, maybe even since Reagan.
"But Citizens United! The Supreme Court!"
The SCOTUS decided in the Lessig copyright case that "limited" means whatever congress says it means, so they can now redefine any word in the language. Simply pass a law that more than one person is people and not person and cannot contribute to a political race.
Are the Republicans really in favor of genocide, or are they just cowards terrified of terrorist twit Trump?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 14 2023, @10:11PM (13 children)
Jimmy Carter tried to care, and everyone belittled him as "ineffective." Obama learned from that mistake, and Clinton was just lucky enough to be there when the .com exhuberance balanced the budget briefly - at least he didn't screw that up.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday October 16 2023, @03:24PM (12 children)
He was belittled as "ineffective" because HE WAS! Not only was he ineffective, so was Congress, but when government stagnates, everybody blames the president.
I voted against him in 1980 because the bastard starved me! He decreed that college students were ineligible for food stamps no matter how poor they there. He might have gotten students from the likes of Harvard to vote for him, but how stupid do you have to be to vote for someone who makes you go hungry?
Today, however, all of congress is beholden to the rich, which is why you have to be disabled, working, or looking for work to be eligible for SNAP. Today, food assistance is so employers can pay starvation wages; when I was a teenager no full time worker went hungry. The minimum wage was a living wage, but the Fascists have taken over.
There is no excuse for anybody in America to go hungry, except for the evil greed of the rich and the cowardice of the representatives they own who are supposed to represent you.
Are the Republicans really in favor of genocide, or are they just cowards terrified of terrorist twit Trump?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 16 2023, @03:56PM (11 children)
>He decreed that college students were ineligible for food stamps no matter how poor they there.
That's very un-Democratic of him, I can see how you'd be swayed - but how did you feel about Ronnie Ray-Gun after 12 years of pendulum swing to the other side?
While Carter's handling of the Iran hostages did come off as spectacularly ineffective, I appreciated his lack of escalation: not starting a big war over a relatively small problem - and not giving potential kidnappers everywhere incentive to repeat the feat. Particularly as I was about to come of draftable age not long after...
Then there was Bush Sr.'s handling of his particular Middle-East crisis which came off as spectacularly effective, a war fought with fewer casualties on our side than we normally suffer during non-wartime operations, and again I appreciated his lack of escalation - stopping before we got to a point where we actually started suffering more casualties than during non-wartime operations.
Then there was Bush Jr.'s handling of his particular Middle-East crisis where he basically mired us in Vietnam in the sand. I appreciate that he did not reinstate the draft, but wonder if economic policy (starting with Trickle Down) has replaced conscription for keeping the ranks staffed with cannon fodder?
>when I was a teenager no full time worker went hungry. The minimum wage was a living wage, but the Fascists have taken over.
I don't feel like that was true for the part of the US I lived in in the 1980s. $3.35 per hour really didn't cut it when you had to secure transportation to get to and from the job, and housing for when you weren't working. Full time at $3.35/hr (x2000) is $6700 per year, call that $6000 after FICA and miscellaneous other payroll taxes that somehow still hit below the poverty line. Owning and insuring your own car is kind of out of the question at $6K per year when a running clunker costs $1K to buy and another $500+ per year to insure as a teenager (my 1980 Honda Civic with 50k miles cost $3K in 1987) - so that leaves you attempting to find work compatible with public transporation which didn't really exist where and when I was a teenager in West Coast Florida. Rent in those days ran around $200 per month and up (way up), $200 would be sharing a small place with 2 or more roommates, so there's another $2400 per year out of your $6000. 6-2.4-.5 = $8.50 per day after auto insurance and rent - from that you've got to pay to keep your clunker running, save to buy your clunker in the first place, eat, and maybe clothe yourself? While working 40 hours a week, if you can keep that wonderful job full time with all the challenges of living on $8.50 per day. 95% of my $3.35 per hour class co-workers, like me, lived with their parents and worked part time. The few that were out on their own were living six to a trailer, bumming rides, and on SNAP or whatever it was called back then.
>There is no excuse for anybody in America to go hungry, except for the evil greed of the rich and the cowardice of the representatives they own who are supposed to represent you.
I wonder if economic policy has replaced conscription for keeping the ranks staffed with cannon fodder, and other useful poor to fill roles that our representatives(' masters) feel are best served by low-cost labor?
My preferred direction for the future: UBI. The United States can more than afford it. The opportunities for efficiencies it could bring are huge (if only the entrenched interests benefiting from those inefficieicies could be dug out, exposed, and retrained for something more useful, like retirement.) It's right up there with single payer healthcare in the realm of "nice things we can't have because a small percentage of our people are butt-heads."
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday October 16 2023, @07:27PM (10 children)
Reagan made me wish I'd voted to re-elect Carter. He was the very worst thing to happen to working Americans in my lifetime. The lying sack of shit lied like Satan, using the truth. "A rising tide lifts all boats" was and is true, but a tax cut for the rich stock market assholes was anything but a rising tide. I worked for Disney then, and Reagan's God damned tax cut unleashed an orgy of corporate takeovers, one of which was an attempt to buy Disney, cut it into pieces, fire the workers, and sell the pieces. Everybody's hours were cut by 30%, which hurts like hell when you're living from paycheck to paycheck.
That was the administration that started the class war against the working class. From WWII on, productivity and wages kept rising but that stopped under Reagan, when wages stagnated from then until at least now.
He was the first in a half century line of Republican presidents to start a war, Johnson was the last Democratic president to start a war. Reagan had Grenada, Bush I had Iraq, Clinton had peace, as Carter had, Bush II started the longest war in our history by not paying attention (Clinton warned him and he ignored the warning), and then Iraq again because Hussein threatened to kill his dad. He was the worst president in my lifetime at the time. During his presidency there was a quintupling of gasoline prices from his election to Obama's presidency (I believe he engineered it; he was from an oil family, and his VP was an oil man) and it crashed the economy. We almost had another "Great Depression" like the Republicans started a century ago.
After him was Obama, who saved us from economic disaster and presided in a time of peace. He was followed by the very worst president in my lifetime. So far, at least (shudder).
Congress is at fault for the wage stagnation by not raising the minimum wage enough or often enough. Congress is at fault for almost every ill America faces, from inflation, child care, crime, homelessness, even all of the mass shootings. It's my opinion that they're all caused by the fact that the minimum wage is no longer a living wage. When I was a teenager in the '60s only single parents needed child care. There were no working poor, let alone homeless. When Mom works all day and Dad has two jobs so you never see him, and you're raised by child "care" you're far more likely to turn to crime, especially seeing how futile labor is today.
The minimum should be raised to $25 to match 1965's buying power and tied to inflation like my Social Security is. Inflation would no longer hurt the working class or make the rich richer, so it would stop.
The universal basic income will be a necessity in the future. In Journey, Earth is a Fascist dictatorship, a real hell hole, where you work until you die, the spacers aren't allowed to work past age sixty and everybody gets a living wage, people who work do so for extra spending money or they're interested in science or something.
I fear that's where America is heading now, now that the Supreme Court has legalized plutocracy with their Citizens United ruling. I'm supposed to be able to outspend Elon Musk? He's better represented by the government than I am, despite not even being a citizen. He can call any congress person, even the President, and they'll answer the phone. I tried to contact McCarthy when he was speaker, but he won't listen to anyone not in his district. Unless they're filthy rich, of course.
Are the Republicans really in favor of genocide, or are they just cowards terrified of terrorist twit Trump?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 16 2023, @09:11PM (7 children)
>The lying sack of shit lied like Satan
Reagan made it crystal clear to anyone with at least two functioning brain cells (so, about half the US population): Our elected representatives are figureheads, they are working for their behind the scenes handlers. FFS he was a well known PROFESSIONAL ACTOR!!!
As for Ronnie the man himself, I feel slightly sorry for him. I believe on a personal level he wasn't the evil dirtbag that his Presidential legacy turned out to be, he was just doing what they told him to do. I wouldn't be shocked if the bullet came from his handlers as a warning, or even if it didn't they implied to him that it did as a means of keeping him delivering his lines on-script.
>Reagan's God damned tax cut unleashed an orgy of corporate takeovers
His handlers' tax cut unleashed a whole generation of Hollywood "greed is good" corporate takeover hero movies, too. I mean, on the one hand they're sort of saying "too bad, so sad about all the old companies getting gutted for the money, all the little people out of work, boo hoo" but if you analyze the screen-time, most of what they are showing is the rich bastards enjoying the spoils, and what are the majority of viewers going to take away from that 90 minute experience? An urge to buy lottery tickets, for one thing.
>Bush II started the longest war in our history by not paying attention
Michael Moore's bit with Bush in the elementary school classroom getting informed of the tower strikes is priceless...
>(Bush) was the worst president in my lifetime at the time.
Mine as well, we had been economically dislocated to the Houston region and got to watch first-hand as our idiot countrymen enthusiastically re-elected him, even after gasoline inflated 50% at the pumps in the months leading up to the election...
>Congress is at fault for almost every ill America faces
Agreed, and I believe it is mostly through engineered in-action. There are things they could have done to keep us on-course as we were post-Vietnam pullout, but instead they chose to let inflation outpace minimum wage and let all sorts of other policies sit as written rather than take action to update them to at least keep the status quo for the majority of citizens. Instead they let the majority of the population suffer for the benefit of a few.
>When Mom works all day and Dad has two jobs so you never see him, and you're raised by child "care"
Hey, who said you could talk about my Mom (and Dad) that way? Middle-school teachers by day, Dad also taught at the local college in the evenings. I was dropped with a local babysitter who looked after me and 12 other kids through the school days, my younger brother started with the same babysitter when he was 2 weeks old. But we had a newly constructed 3 bedroom 2 bath house with a 2 car garage with a new 6 cylinder BMW and a hand-me-down '69 Camaro 327 from Grandma the hairdresser. And the economic picture continued on greased skids to hell from there. A 2 teacher family friends of ours just bought their first home (renting apartments with 4 kids up until now) when their oldest child was in 10th grade. No new BMWs for teachers on teachers' salaries anymore - not even with night jobs.
>where you work until you die
Oh, you mean like me? My retirement plan is essentially to continue in my current job for as long as they'll have me... 70 if I can pull it off (mid 50s now). We have 2 sons around 20 years old, both 100% disabled from working with Autism, unique communication methods - one might find some kind of supported employment, we're looking for a group home for the other one that isn't an inhumane dumping pit - he's not really "in the community on a regular basis" material. I blame the community, not him, but either way this is how it is, and there aren't really any better communities we have found, maybe better services up north than in Florida, but the communities are still lacking true acceptance. Ergo: never enough money to maintain them in anything resembling our current lifestyle for the rest of their days. We're not rich, single income, but I did get lucky and catch the software engineering wave in the early '90s, haven't wiped out yet.
>people who work do so for extra spending money or they're interested in science or something
As it f-ing well should be. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Life: food, shelter, healthcare. Which, really reduces to healthcare, because without food your health rapidly deteriorates, and lack of shelter is only a little slower. Healthcare = Life.
Liberty: freedom to travel. Not a right to luxury travel, but neither should you be confined to a building (jail) or city, or even state. You should be able to pursue your life where you want. Most people seem to choose to stick around what they know, friends, family, location they grew up - more or less, but freedom to travel isn't just good for those who want to wander, it's good for everyone to be exposed to each other, instead of forming little gang-cliques that are each afraid of the next one and show off their bravado by shooting each other up with constitutional (amendment) guaranteed rights to firearms... whatever insane interpretation of that we're living under these days.
and the Pursuit of Happiness - isn't the right to boss others around, it's the right to do your own things with others who want to do those things with you. If you have the wherewithal and desire to build or buy your own boat and go sailing, pursue your happiness that way. If you don't, you shouldn't be infringing others Pursuit of Happiness by standing in their way, or conscripting them to serve as deck-hands on your yacht - which is what our current economic situation is more or less doing to a lot of people.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 17 2023, @01:15AM (5 children)
You haven't shown that healthcare == health (and thus, is somehow equivalent to these other more important needs). In some very important ways, it doesn't. For example, heroic medical intervention in the last year of life.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 17 2023, @02:08AM (4 children)
Heroic medical intervention should be conceptually differentiated from healthcare. The industry, insurance in particular, seems to be fighting that distinction, attempting to lump regular checkups and preventative screening into the same basket as organ replacements and costly surgical interventions, all things covered by insurance and charged at 10+X insured rates to the uninsured.
Healthcare can be measured in terms of the person -hours required to deliver the materials, devices and their application to the patients. Interventions which require more person-hours than the patient is expected to live should clearly fall into the extraordinary (and uninsured) bucket. Private pay for them if you wish and can, appeal for crowdfunding to get 20 years of care invested in a chance to give your granny another 5 years (if she wants them and is willing to suffer the treatments). Such compassionate acts should not be draining resources from basic healthcare for the masses.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 17 2023, @02:25AM (3 children)
It should be, but it won't be.
What happens if the health system throws in additional person-hour costs? For example, if an alt-right committee spends one man-week evaluating your healthcare petition before rejecting it on the grounds that it doesn't extend your lifespan by at least that week!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 17 2023, @09:56AM (2 children)
Administration is not healthcare, it is overhead, and administration percentages of total cost higher than those demonstrated by other national healthcare systems are waste. Waste should be taxed triple normal rates, to encourage its reduction.
>if an alt-right committee spends one man-week evaluating your healthcare petition before rejecting it on the grounds that it doesn't extend your lifespan by at least that week!
When putting the alt-right gatekeepers up against the wall would extend more lifespans than theirs are shortened... They should be forcibly retired by whatever methods are required.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 17 2023, @12:45PM (1 child)
And my take is that there are too many parties supporting the interpretation of heroic medical intervention as health care for it to go away. Classic example of concentrated interests trumping diffuse ones.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 17 2023, @02:05PM
>there are too many parties supporting the interpretation of heroic medical intervention as health care for it to go away.
The U.S. is barely rich enough to afford this, we are affording it by denying basic health care to a large slice of the population, which is actually creating more market for heroic interventions which are more expensive than the basic health care would have been.
>Depends who is in charge, right?
Those who have the gold, make the rules. And, unfortunately, those who have the gold mostly only want more gold for themselves. Thus the current state of our rules...
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 17 2023, @08:02AM
There are lots of people with guns in the USA and lots of people who'd want to kill the US President (it's one of the most dangerous jobs in the world - 8.6% died of job related causes).
So all you need to do is let someone through...
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 16 2023, @09:17PM
Lameness filter said too long? Whatever:
>I tried to contact McCarthy when he was speaker, but he won't listen to anyone not in his district.
I have had surprisingly good access to our Congresscritters over the years... not that I went looking for it, necessarily.
Newt Gingrich came and visited our company shortly after stepping down (something about a female intern...), he hooked us up - not with his intern, but with the money behind Home Depot to pitch our company investment opportunity to. He was making that kind of thing his hobby for a few years there.
From there I moved to a company where our IP atty. was the treasurer of Tom DeLay's campaign when he got elected and made a big wig. I never had a personal desire to bend Tom's ear, but our company certainly did and used him to put a squeeze on the FDA to approve our product's new indication, which they did - much more story there, but without the DeLay access that approval certainly would have taken at least another 5-10 years, if it ever came at all.
Random coincidence, I bumped into my district's Representative in the HOR on our first night in DC for a family tourist trip - he and his staff happened to be taking up one of three tables in this hole-in-the-wall restaurant that was around the corner from our AirBnB, we squeezed into the table behind him and I spent 30 minutes eating with my elbow almost in his back before we were introduced by the waitress. He was all smiles and candidate for us, and encouraged us to go to his office for the capital tour - which we hadn't thought to do before that encounter, but we were there for a week of touring the town with the kids, so... very appropriate.
Finally, shortly before his ascendency to power, I met Marco Rubio face-to-face, actually ate the catered lunch at his table of 6 right next to his right hand, got to see him put on his game face before giving his closing speech where he made us all feel heard and understood and made a bunch of empty promises about how he was going to improve things for us. Then he got elected to some state office I think, then he got elected to the U.S. Senate in far less than 10 years after I sat with him. Then, during the pandemic, he opened online office hours - and having had the experience with our Rep in person I knew what to expect: good things from the Senator's staff. It took me a year, I attempted to make an online appointment 3 times and it was always booked full before I clicked the web-page open. Then, on the fourth try - a little over a year after the first - I got my appointment, and talked with the staffer who was only a little less openly cheesed off than the tour guide about having to do this sort of thing, but the little shit did shoot a barely adequate e-mail to my local SSA office, and the director of the office replied to him - since it was labeled "Congressional Inquiry" after all, and the director finally hooked us up with a competent service drone who took 3 months to get around to having a very productive call with me wherein we determined 1) my elder disabled son does not, in fact, own our home - something "the system" showed him which never came through on our paperwork, and 2) both sons in-fact were eligible for the full $914 per month disability payments without the 33% reductions that were currently applied (yes, we applied correctly to get the full amount the first time, yes we protested all the errors WE COULD SEE on the forms they returned to us, no they never responded to us with anything intelligible about why the 33% reduction was applied, or even that it was a 33% reduction, until the DIRECTOR OF THE F-ING OFFICE GOT A F-ING CONGRESSIONAL INQUIRY...) and, so, 3 years after the initial screw-up they finally did acknowledge our sons' proper classifications, and they even gave us some back-payments (6 months worth - back to the last time they sent a screwed up status letter).
So, no, I have never had Musk level access, nor can I say I know anyone with less than $100M net worth who does (the company DeLay did the favor for had a $1B market cap...), but they are in-fact real people who have real offices full of pouty little staffers (have you ever seen Jupiter Ascending? They remind me of her assistant android that helped her get her royal insignia.) who can occasionally do real (little) things for little people. Pouty as he was, the Rep's tour guide did give an excellent tour of the Capitol building. Oh, and it's not just the tour guide and Rubio's Zoom call jockey, another time on the Capitol steps waiting for the 4th of July fireworks, a little gaggle of congressional staffers where talking shit for literally an hour - same petty B.S. like the others, I'm convinced: they're cut from the same cloth, and a few of the lucky ones that have the most public appeal end up in office eventually.
Also, from the perspective of a parent with 2 fully disabled children, you can see how UBI makes sense, to me. I don't want anything special for my children, I just want them to have Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness in a world without a bunch of BS standing in their, or anybody else's, way.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 17 2023, @01:12AM
Wages stagnated [nytimes.com], but not total compensation [heritage.org]. Krugman's table shows the alleged stagnation. Table 1 of the second essay shows the real reason why: health care costs not mean Republican cooties. I'll note this has been brought [soylentnews.org] to your attention before. Even if we ignore that, the deviation between wages and productivity started in the early 1970s well before Reagan and continues unabated through today. Meanwhile if we do pay attention, a slight deviation between total compensation and productivity can be seen after 2001. Reagan isn't the start either way.
The wars you ignore (from Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]): intervention in Lebanon 1982-1984, bombing of Libya 1986, tanker war in Persian Gulf 1987-1988, invasion of Panama 1989-1990, first intervention in Somali civil war 1992-1995, Bosnian and Croatian wars 1992-1995, intervention in Haiti 1994-1995, Kosovo war 1998-1999, intervention in Yemen 2002-present, intervention in northwest Pakistan 2004-2018, second intervention in Somali civil war (the same war as before) 2007-present, Operation Ocean Shield (anti-piracy in Indian Ocean) 2009-2016, international intervention in Libya 2011, Operation Observant Compass (Uganda) 2011-2017, military intervention in Niger 2013-present, American led intervention in Iraq (2014-2021 versus ISIS), American led intervention in Syria (2014-present), American intervention in Libya (2015-2019).
Note that none of those wars were entered or started by Trump (first such president since Carter FWIW) though many were continued by Trump. There are numerous additional wars above started or entered by the Republican presidents (second Bush in particular), but even the "times of peace" had wars: Clinton started or entered four wars and Obama started or entered seven. And the "the longest war in our history" was continued over Obama's entire era.
Wage stagnation is again due to health care costs. And you ignore that there's a market minimum wage. Increasing the demand for labor would be an obvious fix - especially if coupled with policy that lowers cost of living (particularly, the price of real estate).
Rather we would have even stronger positive feedback for inflation. Tying Social Security to it was already a bad idea.
And yet those corporations have rights under the US Constitution which have now been enforced by the Supreme Court. You vote, Musk's corporations do not. That's your counterweight to the greater economic power of businesses and rich people.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday October 15 2023, @01:18AM (10 children)
Even if the US were a perfect democracy, it would be controlled by private interests, voters. Further, we ignore that fascist states aren't controlled by private interests but purely the reverse. Further, one ends up with confusing a plutoarchy with a fascist state while disqualifying actual fascist states like Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy. Here's a better definition:
If one looks at the ideology as expressed by the fascists themselves, you see what I mean. For example, in the 1920 Nazi Party platform [ushmm.org], they heavily emphasize the state's rights and authority and have several policies very hostile to private enterprise (such as banning interest and income derived from non-labor sources like capital). Mussolini in his essay, the Doctrine of Fascism [sjsu.edu]:
There's all this talk of the state and peoples' duties to the state. Meanwhile typical pro-capitalism arguments are just as absent as pro-democracy.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Sunday October 15 2023, @10:34AM (9 children)
The beauty about voters being in charge is that they are not speaking with one voice and thus extremist views have very little chance of gaining a lot of popularity. They may for a very brief period, but unless that period can then be used to destroy democracy (and yes, they will try that, every single time, if given a chance), they will be kicked out quite quickly again by the same voters that fell for them.
It's true that communism is the dictatorship of the proletariat and democracy the dictatorship of the proles, but the latter at least notice (for a far too brief period) if they were bullshitted by some snake oil peddler.
One should hope, though, that the democracy and its elements are resilient enough to survive the period while the populists manage to convince their dupes.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 15 2023, @03:14PM (8 children)
Keep in mind also that populists are one of the important ways democracies correct for anti-democratic trends.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday October 16 2023, @08:30AM (7 children)
You might want to explain this. When I look around the world, the populists are pretty much the anti-democratic element in our political systems.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 16 2023, @11:40PM (6 children)
The Know Nothings populists of the 1850s were a whole bunch of crazy, but they also supported women's and labor rights, as well as government spending on such (in a number of places in the South, they were also the only alternative to the Democrat Party).
We also have some significant historical examples such as the Gracchi brothers, who represented impoverished Romans of the late Roman Republic particularly poor agrarian interests, and the revolutionaries who overthrew the French monarchy. These populists were often brazenly anti-democratic or worse, but they all represented legitimate grievances that had been ignored by those in power.
In today's US, I think a number of problems and grievances have been left by default to the populists. Trump won in 2016 because he was the sole Republican candidate and then the sole presidential candidate that would say anything about immigration.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Tuesday October 17 2023, @10:20AM (5 children)
They will not address it. They will raise it and lament about it, as if nobody else ever noticed it. Do they have a solution for it? No. But they talk about it. Great. Now we talked about it and we lament about it, we complain about it and we moan about it, but we're still stuck here with the same damn problem. They don't have a solution. Because some problems simply don't have a solution because, guess what, if they had one, the ones that currently run the show would already have found it. Or they would have been confronted with it and would have had to explain why they don't want to apply it.
Complex problems with easy solutions do not exist. If there was an easy solution, someone would have found it by now.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 17 2023, @12:39PM (4 children)
Unless, of course, those populists do address it while the ones that currently run the show didn't have an interest in solving the problem. The French revolutionaries for all their glaring flaws did end the monarchy and eventually replace it with something better. Similar populist movements did similar things in other European countries. Mexico for all its present faults is no longer a one company town under the thumb of the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional). And perhaps the most famous of all US populists, Abraham Lincoln oversaw the transition of the US towards a complete ban on slavery.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday October 21 2023, @11:06AM (3 children)
The populists don't have any interest in solving that problem either. If they solved that problem, they could no longer lament about it and blame "the establishment", "the system" or "the boogeyman du jour". Their spiel is to lament and complain, not to solve anything.
Also, if you think the French revolution replaced the monarchy with something better... there's a reason what they replaced it with got the name "La Terreur" [wikipedia.org]. Not always is what comes after a rebellion better than what you had before. For reference, see the French or the Russian revolution. Just because it happened to actually have improved things once, in the US, doesn't mean that this is the normal result.
It's the very, very rare exception.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 22 2023, @12:03AM (2 children)
Like when Abraham Lincoln managed to ban slavery?
Is the Terror still in operation today? It did indeed get better after a series of governments. But that started with overthrowing the first tyranny.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday October 23 2023, @12:15PM (1 child)
I didn't really have Lincoln down as a populist, care to elaborate why you think he was one? He actually wanted to change something, not just use it as a front to distract from the actual goal, i.e. getting to the pork barrels himself.
As for change and revolutions... change can happen in different ways as well, it doesn't have to get worse first before it can get better. For reference, see Spain after Franco and most of the changes in the East Bloc when their communist dictatorships fell. You don't have to go through a phase of "even worse" first just to get rid of a bad situation. And let's be brutally honest for a change: Care to point out how "bad" the situation is in any place that is being taken over by a populist that warrants the fate the country is heading to with this goofball at the helm?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 23 2023, @12:57PM
Because he was a populist by definition. No political party support to speak of - the Republican party was created in 1854 a few years before as a bunch of fringe abolitionists opposed to the nasty political compromises of that decade. He only got elected because of his appeal to the US public in the free states.
Even so, change was eventually for the better in the French Revolution.
IMHO the key is lack of representation. It doesn't have to get to the point where society is falling apart.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Opportunist on Saturday October 14 2023, @10:14AM (20 children)
Apps? When are we going to start talking about the biggest scam targeting children: Religion.
Oh. Wait. Utah. No can do.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 14 2023, @12:08PM (19 children)
If you're an American, you live in a country that was founded on the concept of freedom of religion. That was the motivation for huge numbers of people immigrating here. Since you can't show that you suffer any harm from my belief in the flying spaghetti monster, you can't outlaw religion. And, even if you could demonstrate such harm, you would still have a long uphill battle ahead of you.
Be grateful that you can't be dragged out to Chop Chop Square on the sabbath for your unbelief. https://news.yahoo.com/saudi-arabia-conducts-mass-execution-184458435.html?guccounter=1 [yahoo.com] Now, don't you feel fortunate to be living in a country founded by Christians?
We're gonna be able to vacation in Gaza, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and maybe Minnesota soon. Incredible times.
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 14 2023, @12:50PM
Patience. Our Opus Dei-approved Supreme Court is working on it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 14 2023, @01:14PM (6 children)
Ironic part about US "freedom of religion" is that the founding refugees were mostly fleeing Catholic and near-Catholic derivative religious oppression.
Yet, today, Catholicism is still the largest single sect, or whatever you want to call it, of Christianity in the US - and the Supreme Court just overturned the most significant anti-Catholic ruling in history.
Talk about your (attempted, transparent) pyramid schemes: you want to get married in the Catholic Church? You must BOTH pledge your allegiance to the Catholic Church and pledge to raise your children as Catholics. Oh, by the way, birth control is a sin, and abortion will get you lynched by the Church.
Still, even with historically pitiful service attendance numbers, the Catholics are leading with their long-game approach.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mcgrew on Saturday October 14 2023, @07:00PM (2 children)
Talk about your (attempted, transparent) pyramid schemes: you want to get married in the Catholic Church? You must BOTH pledge your allegiance to the Catholic Church and pledge to raise your children as Catholics.
There's a lot about the Catholic church that's not only unchristian but anti-christian, including your example. But the Mormons are no different. My ex-wife became a Mormon, was remarried in the Mormon church, and the kids were prohibited from attending the wedding because they weren't Mormon.
I hate denominations. None teach Christ's message. My Grandma, a Southern Baptist, was told by her Presbyterian sister that she was going to hell because she wore pants, despite the fact that pants aren't mentioned in the Bible and hadn't even been invented when the Bible was written.
The problem isn't religion, it's PEOPLE.
Are the Republicans really in favor of genocide, or are they just cowards terrified of terrorist twit Trump?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 14 2023, @10:06PM
Jehovah's Witnesses are extreme... I forget if my sister in law eventually consented to attend her only sister's only wedding or not (because I just didn't and don't care if she did), but there certainly was the big bruhaha about setting foot in a Presbyterian Church being a violation of her pledges to Jehovah or however they express all that nonsense.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 17 2023, @08:15AM
Yeah, people kill each other over football too, so I bet even if you somehow get rid of religion like the atheists want, people will still be killing each other in similar quantities if not more.
After all State Atheism has an even worse track record in death counts (Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc). Some Atheists[1] will do their "No True Atheist" thing to try to refute that but just use similar arguments that those Atheists use against Christians doing the "No True Christians" thing in response to the Catholic Church's killings.
[1] Too many Atheists are rather similar to the religious fanatics they hate, which is why Neill deGrasse Tyson says he's not an Atheist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2itlUlD10M [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday October 14 2023, @08:08PM
When I was to be baptized and the (Catholic) priest at first refused because my name isn't very "Christian", my mom's reply was "the protestant church is across the road. You think I care which flavor of water they pour on my kid?"
Apparently it was convincing, I got the name she wanted and I was originally a member of the RCC.
Religious principles kinda vanish into the background when you threaten to withhold money.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Monday October 16 2023, @10:19AM (1 child)
Err... and there I was thinking that most of the immigrants to the United States up until at least the early 20th century were coming from Protestant countries (Germany, Eastern Europe, the Netherlands, Ireland, the United Kingdom. Guess I'll have to revisit the meaning of that WASP acronym, eh?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 16 2023, @01:30PM
> most of the immigrants to the United States up until at least the early 20th century were coming from Protestant countries
Oh, they were, but Catholics still comprise the largest minority (there is no majority) due to the wide variety of Protestant flavors.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday October 14 2023, @01:23PM (7 children)
That's the myth all little American learns at school.
The truth is, the Pilgrims were batshit crazy ultra-Puritans the more mainstream English Puritans wanted nothing to do with. And while they were very vocal about religious freedom for themselves, they didn't exactly extend the courtesy to other Christian denominations: https://history.howstuffworks.com/history-vs-myth/puritans.htm [howstuffworks.com]
Also, they were first and foremost economic migrants. They didn't leave Holland out of idealism: https://www.history.com/news/why-pilgrims-came-to-america-mayflower [history.com]
In short: this country was founded by hypocritical religious nutters trying to escape poverty.
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 14 2023, @07:02PM (3 children)
Ahhhh, the Great Puritan Scare. Didja notice, however, that the Puritans didn't declare independence from England? There were one or two other religious groups as well. Read on to get an idea what Colonial America looked like: https://www.history.com/news/religion-13-colonies-america [history.com]
We're gonna be able to vacation in Gaza, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and maybe Minnesota soon. Incredible times.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Opportunist on Sunday October 15 2023, @10:28AM (2 children)
You do know that nobody will read that wall of text, yes? If you can't be assed to summarize your drivel, I can't be assed to read it.
Sorry, but when it comes to religion, you didn't invent gish-galloping. It's been here long before you came along.
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 15 2023, @02:19PM
You also know that your ignorant drivel posted above cannot be excused if you refuse to click the link and/or read the WOT that I so generously copied into our own forum.
Executive summary? You were wrong.
We're gonna be able to vacation in Gaza, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and maybe Minnesota soon. Incredible times.
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 15 2023, @02:20PM
I'm sorry, it wasn't your post I was responding to, it was Rosco's post.
We're gonna be able to vacation in Gaza, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and maybe Minnesota soon. Incredible times.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday October 14 2023, @07:05PM (1 child)
The Pilgrims didn't write the Constitution, weren't the only religious refugees, and religion wasn't the only reason people emigrated from their native lands. My first American ancestor was exiled here in the 1600s by Cromwell.
Are the Republicans really in favor of genocide, or are they just cowards terrified of terrorist twit Trump?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 14 2023, @10:15PM
My ancestors mostly landed in Tennessee in the early 1800s, as indentured servants from Scotland, Germany, England... We have one branch of the family tree that supposedly runs back to the baby that was born in transit on the Mayflower. It's not a wealthy branch, but it is much better off than the farmers that make up the rest of the bunch.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 15 2023, @01:45AM
Given that it's true, maybe we should be calling it something other than a myth?
Note that the more mainstream Puritans quickly followed - the Pilgrims arrived in 1620 and those mainstreamers show up in 1630 and immediately get into a massive Indian war. Further, you ignore that Massachusetts of the early 1600s is not the US. The grievances here are more than a century and a half before the US formed. Catholicism ended up being widely tolerated in English colonies in North America. And of course, by the time the US was formed, the Bill of Rights explicitly had freedom of religion as a protected right.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday October 14 2023, @08:06PM (2 children)
It's weird that your original settlers fled Europe due to religious oppression. Right now, Europe is pretty much prepping to welcome those back that want some freedom from religion for a change.
Another funny thing is that my country is actually quite Christian. Very much so. The difference is, religion is a private thing here. You believe your stuff and don't pester anyone else with it. Most of all, you don't try to indoctrinate other people's kids with your junk.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 15 2023, @03:19PM (1 child)
How about the people who still want invisible sky god worship? Are they as welcome in Europe?
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday October 16 2023, @08:33AM
Sure. Like I said, a lot of people, (IIRC about 60%) are religious in some way around here.
The key difference is that they don't pester the rest of the world with their conviction and instead just want to worship their god(s) in peace and be happy about it. And while I could do without the bells ringing on Sundays, I also don't have a problem with that. Just keep your Jesus to yourself and out of laws and education and nobody has a problem with it.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday October 14 2023, @06:42PM (1 child)
Yes, because it's the communist Chinese and not the American Fascists that produce TikTok. But, say five people rob your store. Should you let the one who's caught go because none of the others were punished? Perhaps this is the first of a string of lawsuits; if it succeeds, can Fakebook, TwiXXer, and Instagramaw be far behind?
We do seem to like having dual standards whereby if we do something it is OK but if somebody else does it then it is time to 'think of the children' or some such other excuse.
Former President Pinocchio's party is in charge of congress right now and have called a strike. That party needs to change its mascot from an elephant to a hippo critter.
As to the Fascists and Communists, under Fascism, business controls government, under Communism, government controls business. Either way, the same evil clowns are in charge. I don't see any difference.
Are the Republicans really in favor of genocide, or are they just cowards terrified of terrorist twit Trump?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 15 2023, @03:23PM
This. Someone has to be first.
Having said that, I find the argument of the lawsuit ridiculous. The same things that make TikTok so allegedly addictive also make it usable. How can TikTok comply with the lawsuit and still have a usable product.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Saturday October 14 2023, @01:25PM (2 children)
The only difference between Tiktok and others is that they don't even pretend to be anything other than a highly addictive data-sucking waste of time.
Take it away and there are plenty of other that will fill the void.
It is not just a single "algorithm" either. It is lots of things working together, all the way from the hypnotic scrolling used on cell phones, to the insane marketing that encourages constant engagement that makes you feel like a bad person if you miss a single text or alert.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday October 14 2023, @05:03PM (1 child)
To agree with and extend your remarks you can sip fancy whisky to enjoy the subtle flavors, but everclear grain alcohol is just for getting addicted and fucked up on.
A lot of the hate directed against Tiktok isn't even from people, its from dying legacy media. The TV networks are absolutely freaked out about Tiktok for obvious reasons... addicts are supposed to be watching them, not Tiktok.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 14 2023, @07:05PM
I can accept that. Their dying acts can help to improve the new digital world.
We're gonna be able to vacation in Gaza, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and maybe Minnesota soon. Incredible times.