But this company is not paying Reddit for this, it seems like a way to avoid paying for ads

It could be reasonable in general but the given reason is bullshit

The allegation in regard to TikTok isn’t ‘dangerous speech’

…On the very surface level, sort of.

Romney replied, “Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature. If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians, relative to other social media sites — it’s overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts.”

The allegation in regard to TikTok isn’t ‘dangerous speech’, it’s the platform’s collection of user data and the manipulation of available content via an algorithm that they claim is a tool of a hostile foreign entity.

If the US government really cared about collection of user data and manipulation of content, they could demand things like increased transparency and open protocols for social media. Instead, they are here requiring that the issue be redressed with TikTok being shut down or handed over to a company subject to direct US influence and control.

This is indistinguishable from an act of censorship. If the government is intimately connected with the people and companies running the oligopoly of services which control moderation of virtually all public discourse in the US, when it uses force to defend that oligopoly and eliminate competition that is not in the club it is abridging the freedom of speech, even if it is doing so through one layer of proxy.

I keep bash scripts on my desktop to do common things

I mean they deter comments from the people leaving the downvotes. Anyone wanting not to be deterred by downvotes can adjust settings to not see them.

But what I’m saying is, they are good because they likely deter toxic thoughtless comments.

I’m fine with seeing things I don’t like or agree with if it is a fully formed thought, but I still think downvotes are a nice trap for lazy inarticulate people to feel like they are doing the equivalent of dropping a low effort flame comment while actually doing basically nothing. I have display of vote scores disabled and don’t have to know or think about the approval of people who are only voting, which is nice. If they had something to say that isn’t already fully communicated by the downvote button, maybe they would say it instead despite downvoting being an option.

upvotes with hostile intent

It’s not great, but at least downvotes barely affect anything other than visibility of top level comments on popular posts, and are easy to hide. Better that than people disagreeing using lazy insults and tired truisms.

lol touche

Well what things can a group of adults really do that are both not lame and boring, and also not illegal

Oh, the way I read it it seemed like they were saying perceptual hashes used to be easier to calculate

Why “no longer”?

Yeah I haven’t owned a television in years

I’m all for trying to make it out, but for most people day trading in particular is a terrible idea and 90%+ lose money. I think most people would be better advised to just dump money into an index fund or other longer term investment and not think about it too much, at least that way you are betting on the market as a whole rather than your personal trading skills vs pros, which isn’t likely to work out.

It’s nice to fantasize about but realistically we’re never getting back to a world without a working global internet of computers.

They have a point, but ultimately it’s still a biased rationalization. The idea that life is impermanent and you can’t defer doing what you care about with it is true, but it does bug me when this is posted that it’s also an imagined, hostile caricature from the perspective of a character who sees people (in particular people who have found themselves in debt slavery to his organized crime group) as just worthless losers. That’s its focus, as a putdown from that perspective; portraying a man who works a low paying job, can’t get women, commits the sins of gambling and drinking. Unstated but implied is that this is about a failure of achievement that is at its core financial, that positions himself above them both by being rich and doing fucked up things that are by his logic “meaningful”.

The OP comic is kind of an interesting contrast to that, making a similar point, but about a woman with a successful career, where that success might not hold much meaning.

Wasn’t this a villain speech? I don’t fully remember it but I feel like it might mean something different with the context

Crazy how the response is to completely gaslight you about what the real issue is

seems plausible it could be a legal concern about being sued for defamation