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Just like the "men would do anything but go to therapy" meme, Americans would rather install malware on their phones than get out to vote.
What's this supposed to mean? You're tripping on several fronts.
Not only am I a person of color and I also heavily criticize Meta/Amazon/Google and their egregious apps, but news just came out a couple of days ago that the Chinese government sponsored literal malware and attacked civil rights activists with it from inside the US. Yes, it's obviously different than social media, but what do you think they're doing with unlimited access to a popular app that everybody and their grandma has on their phones collecting all that data about people's viewing habits and manipulating feeds?
And yes, I'm aware it's technically spyware but my comment was hyperbole saying Americans would knowingly install malware if they could. They're one step away from it pretending it's activism.
but what do you think they’re doing with unlimited access to a popular app that everybody and their grandma has on their phones collecting all that data about people’s viewing habits and manipulating feeds?
Never seen a double down while pretending to sidestep quite like that
Again, and for the people in the back who don't quite get the meaning of words: I'm not necessarily saying those apps are malware. I'm a programmer ffs, I know how these things work.
Goddamn the stubbornness in your witch hunt is palpable. The only one pretending is you. The only one doubling down is you. Stop being thick.
.ml people are downvoting you for disrespecting the Chinese government, but people would easily install the Facebook or instagram or WhatsApp app if it had malware and had private api access even to microphone and camera data and sold all of that to advertisers to advertise on Facebook or instagram or TikTok or X. Unfortunately that's just not happening, so everyone is in the clear. Your data by any capitalist profiteering corporation in any country is safe, but Chinese ones are super safe.
I don't get it.
Scary words get used to describe normal things when colored skinned people do it.
ok, but are the Chinese colored skin?
that's what I'm confused about.
They are derogatory called yellow as not to be considered white.
so it's a racist joke?
The joke is about racism. What constitutes malware or socialmedia is dependent on the skin color of the developers.
Fortunately, that's not what I'm saying, especially as a POC. But thanks for explaining anyway!
As a black man, let me tell you about the evil Chinese...
Except this was never about "malware" or anything else.
Republicans first wanted to ban it because younger people were getting politically organized on it, and they weren't voting republican.
Then it was the main platform where news of Gaza was getting out, because American owned media, social media included, have always towed the line with Israel and anything that shows them in a negative light is just automatically considered "antisemitic".
Because of Gaza, Democrats jumped on trying to ban it with Republicans because neither side liked that information was being spread and they had no power to suppress.
If they actually cared about security or the privacy of citizens they would make regulation that applied to all social media, US included. There is nothing Ticktok does that Facebook, Twitter, and all the rest don't have a long history of doing. And there was the whole Cambridge Analytica thing where it was found Facebook sold user data and gave access to a foreign group that actively was using Facebook to influence the 2016 election. If China wanted data on US citizens there is nothing stopping them from just buying it from American companies like they already do.
Also, Twitter was specifically doing things to help prop up Trump this last time at the behest of Musk who was not born in the US and pretty much fits the bill of "foreign agent trying to undermine American values", except that he's trying to undermine the people and the push for equality and human rights, which most politicians don't care about.
The US banned Huawei, is close to banning TP-Link, so there is definitely a fear over Chinese spyware. It's a very real risk, just like Russian anti virus software (Kaspersky) had been banned recently.
But even if you don't believe it's about spyware TikTok should still be banned for economic reasons. China basically blocks all non Chinese socialmedia apps, so why would we accept Chinese social media? The playing field should be equal, banning TikTok makes it more equal.
I don't really believe Gaza has much to do with it, you can find the same content on YouTube or X or other platforms.
AIPAC and meta contributions completely fly in the face of that.
I personally appreciate it when people correct me on things like this, so it isn't a dig or anything, but the phrase is "toe the line." As in walk up and put your toe on the line.
It's hyperbole. I'm saying they would literally install malware in whatever form to stick it to the man instead of doing the more effective thing. I'm not necessarily calling those platforms malware even if they're kind of iffy.
You talk as if your vote means shit.
That kind of talk is why Trump won.
As a Canadian, I honestly believe your election was rigged and has been since 2000.
Corporations own your country, it's very obvious. The only way you can influence your government at this point is collective action which will never happen cause you have iPhones to use to get your anger out.
I’m not disputing your theory, in fact I think it’s likely but how do you think they’re actually doing it?
Voting machines, many of which are owned by private corporations
Diabolical!
Democrats is why Trump won.
Lack of resistance is why Trump won. Democrats are part of that, but the blame hardly lies on them alone.
Votes do matter, they're just not enough on their own.
It's hard to claim lack of resistance when the entire party was shifting to the hard right trying to attract that hard right vote. They cozied up to war criminals, cops zionists and the right wing while blowing right-wing dog whistles there was no resistance
They were still better on some policies. There would have been space to pressure them in the next four years, build support for a progressive party in local and state elections where they thought they were safe and so on. I can't imagine any timeline where a Trump victory won't be objectively worse on many issues. Like I said, the Dems bending over is part of that lack of resistance, but the unwillingness of many voters to vote against Trump, if nothing else, is also a factor.
How are you consciously standing by idly while watching an out-and-open authoritarian take the lead? How are you seeing Musk of all people crawl up his butt and figure "yeah, I'd rather let him take the reigns"?
Not my problem, this is a mess created by liberals for not demanding better of their elected officials or ever holding them accountable for their actions, which is why politics keep getting worse every cycle. As a party they knew they can do whatever they want with no repercussion because voters are trapped in a cycle where they feel there are only 2 options and will come crawling back to them at election time.
Yes. Democrats alienating the people whose votes they need to win is absolutely a democrat problem.
You’re not owed your ass kissed for a vote. That’s not how it works. A candidate has to try to appeal to more than single issue voters. Historicity this has been proven true.
No one is asking for their asses to be kissed, we're asking for a campaign that appeals to enough voters in the party's own base as opposed to courting voters in the other party's base.
And I said a candidate needs to appeal to a wider audience than to court single issue voters. If those single issue voters understood this, maybe things would have gone differently.
Yes, maybe things would have gone differently if they had done anything to appeal to people with a proven track record of voting blue (including opposing genocide in Gaza, which most Democrat voters oppose) rather than trying to appeal to imaginary "moderate Republicans". I guess we'll never know!
Play stupid games win stupid prizes
Except it's genocide
If it wasn't for Hillary's pied Piper strategy, Trump never would have been elevated with billions of dollars in free media to become president. If it wasn't for Kamala Harris embracing right-wing politics and every policy of bidens that the public opposed, we wouldn't have Trump right now. Democrats are toxic poison and are their own worst enemy
Riiiiight. It’s always something other than what the numbers show.
The numbers show that the dem's embrace of right-wing policies (and genocide) were wildly unpopular, the thing we have been screaming for 4 years.
In swing states, yes. But for the majority of americans not in a swing state, their gripes are at least somewhat valid thanks to gerrymandering.
Gerrymandering has been a huge problem for a while, what makes you think this time it played a pivotal role in Trump's victory? If that was the case, he would have won the electoral vote but not the popular vote, but he won the popular vote, first Rep pres to do so in 20 years apparently. It helped secure past Rep presidencies, but doesn't to have done so this time around.
Jerrymandering doesn't play any role in who gets elected president, just the house of reps.
Gerrymandering only impacts the House of Representatives and no impact on the president or any other government positions.
Gerrymandering does affect the electoral college, which affects the presidency.
The number of electors to the electoral college are chosen by the number of congressional districts and 1 for each state senator in a state regardless of how those maps are drawn.
Texas has 38 congressional districts and 2 senators from the state, so they have 40 electors to the electoral college. That number does not change regardless how the maps are drawn. Same for every other state in the country.
>never votes because he doesn't think his vote matters
>awful politician gets elected because he didn't vote
See guys? Voting doesn't work!
Awful politicians get elected when I do vote too
That’s why we have trump.
We have Trump because of Democrats, specifically Hillary Clinton and her pied Piper strategy.
So, it had nothing at all to do with the three million people single issue third party voting and the almost ninety million people not voting at all?
See, you are offering an opinion on why. I’m offering facts on why. Big difference.
Either you all have to admit that your single issue protest vote was VERY effective in sending a message that you won’t support someone that you don’t like- thus, helping trump get elected, or….
You have to admit that your protest vote failed miserably, and your message fell flat without ever being noticed and your third party vote was wasted- thus not helping to pad the numbers of the only person that could have kept him from being elected.
Which will it be?
Because we all heard all of the threats from the third party protest voters prior to the election. You all were going to send a clear message… so tell me- do you believe it was it heard, or not?
I didn't cast a protest vote. A protest vote is one that is cast against something kind of like Democrats voting against Trump. The outcome that we got is 100% the result of Democrats thinking that they are any different than Republicans your party answers to the same bankers. The same CEOs the same donor class that the Republicans do for the same and means
Currently, a 3rd party vote IS a protest vote. Because it is a vote against the only person that could have stopped trump.
ALL third party voters knew they were voting for someone that has a barely above zero chance to win..
So it was a protest- a throwaway vote. Regardless of how you want to sell it, no matter how loudly you scream from the hills.
The throwaway vote is the ones that were blindly cast for right wing Republicans that called themselves liberal
So you’re saying that seventy five million people are wrong and threw away their vote for the one person that had a chance to stop trump……
While you’re right about your idea to vote for someone that had an almost zero chance to win?
Care to explain this?
None of the DNC internal polling ever showed Biden or Harris beating Trump. If a person voted against their own best interests because they feel trapped in the duopoly, yes, they were wrong.
If voting didn't do anything then they wouldn't be trying so hard to suppress it.
To give you the illusion that your vote matters. When one billionaire has more political influence than millions of citizens, your vote doesn't mean shit
Two things can be true at once: Voting matters, and also billionaires have extremely outsized political influence. You know what part of that outsized political influence tries to do? Make people think voting doesn't matter and also pass laws to make it harder to vote. Why do you think Republicans were in such a rush to make it illegal to give out water bottles to voters in Georgia after they went blue in 2020? You're legitimately demented if you think all that is just a ruse to make you think voting is important.
There are problems with voting in America, and political corruption is rampant, and Congress is literally for sale, but voting is still how you choose which players are in the game. Using systemic flaws as an excuse to do nothing is a psyop tier opinion.
How much voting maters depends on one's social class.
Vote maters for bilionaires and the rest of the elites because it affects how power is distributed amongst them.
It maters for the upper middle class and some of the middle class because one party is more prone to help some investors and their investments more than others so it impacts the little investments of said middle and upper middle class people and their pensions.
For the rest of the middle class it maters for those who are minorities, be it for safety reasons if you're in one of the minorities most targeted for hate by the nuttier party or because middle class minorities can best exploit things like "positive discrimination" for personal upside maximization (sadly that type of thing mainly applies to middle class job opportunities).
Working class people (especially blue collar) and the poor are fucked either way as both parties only give a shit about them one day every four years. This includes minorities since wealth discrimination is by far the biggest vehicle for inflicting the suffering of things like Racism, which usually gets transformed into actual chronic suffering via wealth discrimination (get fewer opportunities due to Racism, remain poor, live in a bad house with bad living conditions in a bad neighbourhood with bad schools were your kids will have fewer opportunities).
This is why billionaires care about how people vote whilst at the same time in the US voting makes no difference for many people.
Next time ask them why they don't personally run for office. Walk them through how only the capitalist class can actually afford to do so. The only people that can run are either members of the capitalist class or people who promise to serve the interests of the capitalist class. You can only vote for a candidate that doesn't prioritize your interests above those of that capitalist class.
Maybe they'll get it. Someday.
TikTok doesn't matter and they're trying v hard to suppress that
Oh you're one of those...
Are you seriously in a communist space advocating a vote for capitalist parties?
When the options are "capitalist party that will kill more people" and "capitalist party that will kill fewer people," the answer is obvious
You could not vote, or you could vote third party, but when 97% of the country agrees that one of these two capitalists is gonna win, you have to try and make sure that the less evil one does
You sold your soul to vote for a genocide and you didn't even win. You are not less evil. Doesn't matter who you're comparing yourself to.
After all the Palestinians are wiped out, I hope you rest easy knowing you didn't even try to save some of them
The dnc as a party weren't interested in saving any of them. They're still in 100% genocide denial. Their own party denied ceasefires.
You hope the Palestinians are wiped out so you can be smug about it.
You hope Donald Trump gets a third term to stick it to the Dems.
It's fun making shit up about other people
You tried to save them by supporting the person exterminating them?
If you're being sincere right now, you're the biggest fucking fool on the planet.
I don't think you're being sincere. I have your actions to judge you by. I think you're a nazi.
This comment thread was a massive waste of time. I'll sum it up: AntiOutsideAktion believes that trying to mitigate harm makes one complicit in it, and I think that calling people nazis for trying to mitigate harm is stupid. I offered paragraphs and paragraphs of reasoning for my position, and AntiOutsideAktion offered literally nothing
What actions are you judging me by? The only thing I've done is vote for Harris.
A third party was never going to win 2024, and there is no number of absurd accusations you can throw out on the world's most obscure social network to change that. The average American likes the Republicans or the Democrats. I would love for a third party to be a realistic option, but when polling indicates they'll account for approximately 1% of the vote, I'm going to act accordingly. When you got to the polling place, you had to think of the possible outcomes of your vote. You knew that a third party would not win. If you voted for one, you have done the same thing as not vote at all, because again, the average American likes the Republicans or the Democrats. The choice was between Trump and Harris, and you decided that you'd rather let Trump win than vote for Harris.
I know you communists hate the trolley problem, but it really is analogous here. You're sitting there drawing a new track with crayons and pretending to try and save all the people tied to the tracks, while the grownups are trying to pull the lever to actually reduce the amount of harm done. Then you call us fucking nazis for not playing make-believe alongside you.
I don't think you're sincere. I think you're lashing out because over the last few months, you've seen just how bad a Trump presidency is going to be, and you want desperately to believe that Harris would have been just as bad.
What actions are you judging me by? The only thing I’ve done is vote for Harris.
Right. You're a nazi. You explicitly and materially support a genocide. You're fucking scum.
Can you explain how trying to prevent an ongoing genocide from expanding makes me a nazi? Can you expound on how a vote is the same thing as explicit and material support for the worst aspects of a politician? Can you acknowledge that the average American likes the Republicans or the Democrats, and so the only possible winners of this election were Trump or Harris? Can you acknowledge that my position, that one should cast their vote in a way that is most likely to do the least harm, is valid?
Can you offer any actual rebuttals if you disagree with me?
Of course, you can't. I'm pretty sure you're a literal bot, trained to just call people nazis. I hope you're not a real person, because it must be a sad existence if you are
Lesser evil is bullshit that liberals tell themselves because they know what they support is evil. There is no lesser evil.
And by all measures the party that you're saying is killing lesser people helped kill an absolute shit ton of Palestinians the last 2 years.
I really don't care if some communist thinks I support genocide. I don't, but go ahead and think that I do. But are you really gonna condemn me for trying to save some lives? I could have bitched and moaned and joined the 3% who voted third party or the 40% who didn't vote at all, but I'm not so naive as to think that would help anything
Edit: I decided there was a better way to respond to the comment, and my edit went through after they replied. My original comment read
Do you think Palestinians will fare better under Trump than they would have under Harris?
If you voted for people that was funding and condoning genocide, you also condone that genocide.
If you see an ongoing genocide, and decide that you would rather see it get worse than try to mitigate it, you also condone that genocide. The difference between us is that I want fewer people dead, and you apparently want more
I wanted none, which is why I was not willing to support the ones that was actively allowing them to get killed. Democrats were terrified of what Trump *might *do while having their head up their ass with what their party was actually doing.
I wanted none too, but we both know that wasn't an option. The choice was between more or less, and you thought "eh, we can't have none, so either works for me." You may pretend to have very strong feelings about it, but unless you're planning on doing something really based within the next couple days, strong feelings are indistinguishable from apathy.
Democrats were terrified of what Trump *might *do while having their head up their ass with what their party was actually doing.
Again I ask the question I've asked so many times since november: do you actually think the Palestinian people will fare better under Trump than they would have under Harris?
Maybe not, but then again, today is the wrong day to be pushing that line lol.
Do you really think acceleratioism is not the dumbest fucking idea?
How's that incrementalism working out for you? Your party implied that small baby steps would march to the left, your party is barely to the left of trump. You were advocating and pushing for your own country's shift to the right and further and deeper into fascist authoritarianism. Your party has shifted from people that are building houses for the homeless around the world to embracing cops and zionists on their party stage while blowing Republican dog whistles. Hoping to get the Republican vote while welcoming war criminals with open arms into the party
First: not my party
Second, how's your apathy/voting for a third party in a system where that literally hurts your own goals working for you?
First: not my party
Coward. Liar.
Not too bright are you? Nuance seems to not be your strong suit.
You're a coward because you don't take responsibility for your actions. You're a liar who says they don't support or defend the democratic party when you support and defend them in the only way they care about.
And now I can say you're an idiot because of this tepid, rote reply. Le epic internet insult argument. Smarm smirk smarm.
And now I can say you’re an idiot because of this tepid, rote reply. Le epic internet insult argument. Smarm smirk smarm.
Buddy you entered this conversion with two one word sentences. At least your username checks out, you're certainly staying inside your glass house.
Don't confuse refusing to vote for a party that does not represent the working class as apathy. That's like telling a Democrat they're apathetic because they won't vote for a Republican
I do vote and got two of my first choices elected each time. If I didn't, their chances would decrease. What do you even mean voting means shit? My country does not have a college of representatives so my vote counts exactly as one vote.