Social credit in America - Politics invades personal finance

Easier to remove Parler than FB, since FB’s audience is not as focused as Parler or Gab (and it’s quite a bit larger too). Not that I’d miss any of them if they did.

It is as easy to remove one app as it is to remove any other app. You just…remove it. Easy peasy.

If you are worried about blowback, then it is not about applying a standard. It’s about accomodating political agendas.

1 Like

Definitely a case of lesser blowback killing Parler or Gab. Very few cared about these apps in the first place so not a huge loss to a lot of people. My parents, the schools, local businesses, churches, charities, everyone and their brother uses FB. There’s probably a lot more revenues on the line for Apple/Google as well if they banned FB than banning Parler and Gab.

But yeah political agenda could be part of the decision. I don’t know if they have a duty to allow everyone without question on their app stores. Are they entitled to decide unilaterally who gets to play on their app stores? On basis of free enterprise, I don’t see why they cannot make any rules they want on their platforms honestly. Don’t like the rules, go elsewhere. Not sure why it’s not PC to say it out loud.

And just like that, no one was allowed to Dislike the Brandon administration anymore.

“Liking” them is not yet mandatory.

4 Likes

It’s only hiding the number, not the dislike button. At least for now. Going the way of facebook, which doesn’t have a dislike button. And the way of this forum, which doesn’t have one either. Hard to tell what’s good and what isn’t without a rating, IMO.

It’s the forum software to blame I think, or maybe their overly positive software designers(?). The original FWF crowd wanted an up/down rating system, but it wasn’t easily included.

1 Like

I wonder if it had more to do with referral money for FW. A post with low/no likes could still generate clicks and earn them money where as a deal downvoted 100s of times would probably not generate as much.

Clearly not the issue with YouTube that had the button and removed it. The explanation that it is done to protect small content creators is complete BS. If you want to be fair, you’d have to also hide the number of likes. Or leave the count visibility up to the individual content creators. They could have gone halfway where the number of likes/dislikes is hidden until you’ve voted like/dislike yourself so that the count does not influence your vote. It also says nothing about whether recommendations are still gonna take into account the count of likes to dislikes. Either way, they should know this is not the right thing to do when you go the way of farcebook and they still went for it.

If the banks can do it to oil companies, they can do it individuals too

Fifteen States Threaten to Cut Off Banks That Refuse to Service Coal, Oil Industries

2 Likes

RED states are trying to “cancel” big banks! The “Cancel Culture” is getting out of hand! Who’s gonna scream “free market capitalism!”
:joy:

no parallel at all. The states are not trying to shut down the banks. That is what cancel culture would do. The states will just stop doing business with them.

Oh come on, it is exactly the same thing – cancel culture is not about “shutting someone down,” it’s about calling them out and boycotting. This is EXACTLY the same thing.

Not correct. An example. Suppose some professor refuses to use some student’s pronouns. The woke culture is not content with not taking his classes; They do everything they can to get him fired. Or is that xir fired :crazy_face:

3 Likes

Don’t get me started on the nonsense gender-neutral pronouns. So annoying and confusing. Article #1 for canceling woke culture itself.

We had a meeting and it took 10 minutes for many people to realize that “they” was referring to one person only. We should just have gone with the pronoun “Snowflake”. It works surprisingly well once you try it mentally.

8 Likes

To some extent, maybe. But I dont consider “freedom” to include the freedom to make everyone else do what you want them to do. You may have the right to protest a business, but you dont have the right to physically prevent them from doing their business - and that is what those banks are effectively doing. And that is what those states are reacting to. History is littered with such instances, that are near-universally considered to be various contexts of “evil”.

There’s a pretty big difference between the freedom to believe whatever you want to believe, and the ‘freedom’ to prevent others from believing stuff you disagree with.

2 Likes

But this has always been true in the English language – you could refer to one person as “they” if you don’t know (or do not want to reveal) their gender.

1 Like

OR perhaps these banks decided realized that fossil fuels are losers in the long-term and it doesn’t make financial sense to work with them? In the same way that many university endowments have been doing (divesting) for a few years?

A lot of times people do/did that. But I dont know that it is proper English. Even in “Ask someone if they could help”, you may be referring to one person so it seems like a singular usage - but it is an unknown person (someone) in an unspecified group (they), so you dont know which person will respond. Thus “they”, to include all the people in that group. In short, it isnt proper to use “they” when you dont know Chris’s gender, it’s only proper when you dont know Chris is the person you are referring to.

That has been my understanding.

At least until we started to redefine words to accomodate select individual’s feelings.

3 Likes

Um, no. And no, that isnt why university endowments have been divesting of them, either.

2 Likes

that’s not correct. In English the default pronoun is he, him

3 Likes

The people’s representatives in the state legislatures have decided that the fossil fuel businesses are important to the state so the government will not do business with the banks that are trying to destroy the fossil fuel companies.

1 Like