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Comment by zaroth | Hacker News Reader

LeBron doesn’t get $84 of value from Twitter? Definitely not a political statement going on there.

Parent didn’t say it’s not “political”. It’s reasonable for a wealthy person to feel that a system that discriminates against the poor is not a system they want to participate in.

(Note that I use discriminate in the literal sense, as a simple statement of fact.)

But the example you give is an appeal to a universal moral good. Not partisan politics. So despite saying it’s not not political, your justification is that it’s not political.

Also, how did you get a blue check before being able to buy one?

Some people unfortunately view concern for the poor as political. However my point of mentioning politics is to say that “it’s political” is not any kind of gotcha when it was never denied as being political. Regardless of the actual justification being political or not, the “political” gotcha is nonsense.

That’s bullshit. Virtually everyone agrees poverty is a problem. Sure, the welfare state feeds the cycle of poverty, but it’s not like that was the goal.

Absolutely not bullshit. Some cynical people on the internet believe this, and that's what I thought the person I was replying to was saying. It is an extremely low bar to say "some people believe X", and I don't know why you care to question that. Even with your own reply you say "virtually all people agree" and your use of "virtually" acknowledges that not everyone agrees with you, therefore some people do believe what I say. This is anyway such a silly tangent and was not even my point.

The exception proves the rule though.

Are you sure about that? If I break out of the poverty cycle who am I going to vote for?

Republicans I guess, but the point is that doesn’t mean Democrats hate poor people. That’s just political framing.

lol you don't actually believe that's his reason do you?

LeBron started a school where poor kids can get free food and clothes. The man obviously cares.

yeah he gave some money and shows up for photo ops sometimes, sticking the taxpayers with the rest of the bill - swell guy

Twitter doesn’t get $84 of value from Lebron?

Lebron famously uses the free version of Spotify. Maybe he just does not see the value of paying for the blue mark.

He may well, but he may have also concluded that the indirect cost of having a blue tick outweighs the benefits.

Like it or not but it's the twitter that gets value from celebrities. How many people are on social networks jusy so see what their fav celebrites are doing?

It obviously goes both ways. Social media is a megaphone and ego boost for celebs.

The problem for twitter is it isn't the only game in town when it comes to social media, not by a long shot. They're not even in the top ten. They're a megaphone in a large pile of megaphones, and those other megaphones don't bite the hand that picks them up.

Twitter needs the LeBrons of the world far more than they need Twitter.

As someone who was on Twitter long before Oprah, or Elon, or Obama, or most other celebrities and politicians: I strongly disagree.

(Speaking about Twitter the product, not necessarily Twitter the company.)

That was an entirely different era. If you yearn for it, come on over to Mastodon.

Twitter the multi-billion dollar advertising company needs the big whales. I think it was pretty clear the company was under discussion.

What their fav celebrites say -v- what 'the media' says?

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