AmIFirstToThink

Why wouldn't the Chinese hear about the next best mouse trap if whatsapp is banned?

Why wouldn't the manufacturer of next best mouse trap like to sell the product in China if whatsapp is banned?

As far as Chinese government is concerned there is no downside to banning whatsapp.

It's not like whatsapp has turned into substitute for Nature for scientific publication.

Many capitalist companies like the controls of communist China. They find it easier to do business in. Does that make China more innovative for new businesses compared to open monitoring in the western world?

Is Apple going to move manufacturing to USA because China banned whatsapp? hell, no.

China gets to make an example out of whatsapp to make smaller players play by their rules, giving auditing powers and speech controls to Chinese government, or get locked out of 15% of world's emerging market population.

Lesson to progressive liberals of western world, appreciate what you got here and work to protect it, instead of insulting western values at every opportunity.

And Facebooks blocks free speech.

In the race to control what people say, think and see, between the governments and the mega corporations, it's the people who are losing.

China blocks whatsapp... meh.

>can allow us to make progress

As long as there is healthy debate on what is progress, I am all for it. No suppression of free speech.

>This country is one of continuous self-improvment (or at least, ATTEMPTED self-improvement)

yes, and last presidential election was such an event.

>if somebody dangles 6-7 figure checks in front of many people, those people will find that their former concept of "livable wage" has suddenly been revised upwards.

yes, but next serious challenger would be just $4500/month patreon campaign away.

The revolving glass door would remain a problem where someone seeks one time election, votes a certain way and is then given a advisory job at a think tank for couple of years.

But at least, they would be able to burn people just once, instead of what we have now. Plus people may use recalls often.

>I think the deeper problem is that the political class thinks they can compensate for an unappealing candidate with money.

I love the fact that what they think isn't true, at least not always.

You think other side would have rejected free TV time?

May be she did. She might have avoided unscripted exposure. That actually makes Trump's run that much more effective.

I don't know, that sounds arbitrarily limiting. Everyone should be allowed to participate.

I just think that technology has allowed to seek support and sustenance while one fights for a cause. When the support is gone, you go back to earning your living. No strings attached in either direction. Employment of representative, and continuous patronage by the represented, at will.

Actually presidential election is only time where special interests can't tip the scale easily. Right now that's the only change where people get their say.

Just 1/3rd of senators get elected every two years and only handful among those races are balanced where special interest can tip scales with little effort. Same for congressional elections, few places with 50/50 spread where money can easily gain influence.

Presidential election is too big, at the exact same time, for money to wield influence. I for one am glad that we have presidential elections, people have some voice, at least.

>The only people who should be politicians are the ones who'd do it with no campaign funds and median wage.

I wholeheartedly disagree.

Representing people is full time job and must be paid living wages.

People competing to represent people deserve to get funding to support living expenses while they run their campaigns.

Do you want a factory worker delivering pizza at night to represent people like him? If so, then he needs funding so that he can put food on the table while he tries to get elected. If people don't crowdfund it then there is no other option but to seek lobbyist money. No different than soldiers and police and firefighters.

The problem is that there is not enough turn over of representatives. More people being able to get living expenses crowdfunded mean there will be more competition for representatives, competition to win and keep supporters, not a competition to seek and win lobbying funding in support of re-election.

Politicians are looking for people to represent. Democrats in 2016 was textbook example of that. Not the kind of people I was referring to in my comment. To be fair to you, I did say "Politicians should...".

I would like to rephrase that as Representatives among people should start patreon campaigns. People should choose a person among them to represent them and really believes in what they want, not give in to an professional politician looking to represent you no matter what their individual beliefs.

>Imagine if we had 10000+ congressmen, it would much much harder to buy influence or lobby. The votes would eventually start to resemble the will of the people.

I agree, but there would be interesting ramifications.

Almost like direct democracy but not quite there. So, essentially you have to earn the right to vote. Very close to what founders thought who should be voting. Mind blown!

I am actually amazed at how little money is needed to influence politicians.

Lobbying exists because the return on investment is ridiculously high in favor of person asking for favorable treatment from politicians in policy making. It is peanuts invested and Boeing 747s harvested.

If anything the cost of buying a politician should increase multiple orders of magnitude. Currently hundred, two hundred thousands to a senator's re-election campaign can buy really serious attention to your concerns. It needs to be hundreds of millions to buy a senator.

Politicians should start Patreon campaigns to get livable wages from supporters and then just execute on what they stand for. Bernie and Trump was essentially that, self/people funded efforts.

Follow up question:

What if I said "I am recording this call" while I am in an Automatic Voice Response system waiting for an human to arrive on the line and talk to me?

As far as I am concerned, human representative or the automated voice response system, both represent the company that I am interacting with. It's not my fault that the voice response system that the company used to talk to me (to answer my questions, or just make me wait) can't understand that I am going to record the call and act appropriately. The business is perfectly fine with using the automated system to take critical actions, then it should be fine with me telling it I will be recording the call, not my fault that their automated system failed to recognize that.

What do you think?

Question: When the party states that "this call may be recorded for quality or training purposes", does that give you reciprocal permission to record the call or do you have to explicitly ask for it?

Any lawyers with opinion on this?

You looking for sauce? Sauce is in Hillary's bag. You are welcome.

In other words, if you don't agree, you can safely ignore the comment, or take upon yourself to prove it wrong.

A person alive today, who happens to be white, never owned slaves in his life. Why is left hell bent on punishing that white person for some crimes that that person's ancestors, may have done. Most whites never owned slaved even in those days. It was white people who fought for and paid with their lives ending slavery.

Left wants to hold all whites responsible for crimes of slavery.

Left wants to give clean sheet to DACA recipients for crimes of their parents.

Why do you want to hold kids responsible for parents crimes when it comes to white people?

Just Fear, or fear of risks materializing?

The risk materialized for victims of terrorism.

The risk materialized for victims of drug gangs.

The risk materialized for victims of illegal aliens committing crimes including identity theft.

The risk materialized for victims of outsourcing. The risk materialized of well paying manufacturing jobs disappearing.

It's wasn't fear, it was the materialized risk. Many voted for Obama overcoming fear, choosing hope. But they realized you can't just choose hope, you have to go and bend reality to be what you want it to be. And they put a bend in flow of reality, choosing Trump.

The elite fail to sympathize with their own countrymen in peril, because having compassion for your fellow countryman means you were being a 'xenophobe'. That label is not very vogue in elite circles.

I, for one, am glad that the risk of Trump being elected materialized.

Trump uttering "Bush lied, people died" at debate, inside Bush library, to the cheers of the crowd, Republican Conservative crowd.

If Trump hadn't done that, I would have gone for eternity judging those people as war mongers no matter the cost.

If Trump hadn't said "I want some punishment for the woman" on abortion, I would have gone for eternity judging all anti-choice folks to be for incarceration of women for exercising choice.

>Arguably "good people" don't support nor vote for an individual who openly brags about assaulting women...

If you take that stance, then your options are:

1. 45% of the voting people in USA support sexually assaulting women.

Are you OK with that understanding? Do you not find something unsettling about saying 45% people in USA are OK for sexually assaulting women? The same conservative family oriented people, the same law and order people, the same god and sins people are supportive of sexually assaulting women? Can we have survived as a nation so far if so many people supported sexually assaulting women?

2. Hillary still lost to such person. What does that say about Hillary?

If Trump's audio conservation had not leaked, he would have won by even larger margin. What does THAT say about Hillary? Why do you think that was the case?

Red-pilled a year and half ago. I still liked Google, the technical parts. The political advocacy was uncomfortable, but OK, political agenda implementation is downright scary.

>From everything I can tell your voluminous objections are all based very incomplete and extremely incorrect assumptions

Those 200 pages were written in support of NN.

Let's say the customers, that you sold your produce to, know that you sell at your farm: the YouTube channel.

You may be willing to toil the earth at new location, but not having those same customers who want to buy from you at new location, is the biggest loss, more so than the land.

The land owner, didn't mind what you were doing, it's even legal what you were doing, but then one fine day the landowner dated a girl who didn't like that you cultivated onions, she hates onions, she convinced the landowner to get rid of you. And the landowner owns 70% of the land in your country and 90% of the produce buyers are also residing on the same lands. Going to new land is much much unfair proposition. At these scales the legal system, which still exists and has power, should step in an break apart the land owner or impose rules which forces him to play fair.

Anti-trust laws exist for this very reason. Break up Google.

How about audience portability?

Shouldn't I be allowed to give a forwarding address so that my audience that I developed, can reach me on the new platform that I go to?

I don't think any youtube creator worth her salt doesn't keep backup of the videos. The problem with google kicking you out is that you lose your audience. Severing the connection between you and your audience is the biggest issue here, not loss of some files.

Google should be forced to honor forwarding URL (e.g. to vimeo) for accounts that it suspends.

I know. Right?

It connected mine and my kid's school account together because same browser was used to login to those accounts.

I have come to the conclusion that Google is evil. It can't chose to not do evil anymore.

Well, the same mentality spills over from Think Tanks to regular people on YouTube.

On YouTube, if your account is suspended, you are severed from your audience that you worked hard to build.

Sure, you can find cheap/free land, but don't you think you would feel that someone stole your work, robbed you of the fruits of your labor, if the land you toiled for years to make fertile is taken away from you?

This think tank situation is tip of the iceberg of what Google is doing in terms of censorship (suspensions/terminations/demonetization) on their platforms.

>And a sidepoint: You should always back up your videos/files/etc. Then if Youtube/etc is taken down somehow, or your account is terminated, you'll still be able to put it up elsewhere.

How do I backup my audience?

>The key to taking down Google's kingdom is to set up competition.

Tread one overlord for another, or be an overlord yourself.

I think anti-competitive behavior laws will play a role in taking down Google.

I can't believe I typed that. I loved, loved, loved Google two months ago. Few with political agenda have co-opted years of work of thousands of imaginative, hard working, caring engineers. Now, I want Google broken up by the government using anti-trust.

Worrying about Comcast when Google/Twitter/Facebook/Reddit are stifling speech with impunity is like worrying about stains on the carpet when house is on fire.

I have written so much about NN that it could be a 200 page book, and made many donations to EFF. But, NN is comparable to carpet stain, restricting opinions you don't like on a multi-billion-people platforms like YouTube/Twitter is comparable to house on fire.

I would rather use NN being invalidated as a way to teach Google/Twitter/Facebook/Reddit a taste of their own medicine.

I hope someone at Google and Facebook is measuring negative sentiment generated by their actions against speech that they don't like.

Google is allowing ADL to tarnish their brand value. It is dropping like a rock. Google is doubling down on their Clinton campaign investment, they should cut losses and support pillar of American values, Freedom of Speech.

The similarities to "Bernie" telling Democratic party to wise up are too strong here. We are telling Google, the company that I absolutely loved and believed in till two months ago, to wise up or they will lose the affection people had about them taking the company down with it. I can't believe I have stopped using Google search, but here I am.

I am taking no action, no advocacy of NN this time around. Think of this as Bernie supporters telling DNC that Democrats do not represent them anymore. I will band together with the enemy, Ajit Pai, in this case, to make sure Google/Facebook/Twitter/Reddit pay some price for their censorship.

When it comes to dire situations, if my ISP does funny business, I can choose another ISP e.g. a mobile connection.

No different than taking another road to go to the bank. My account and money in there is still safe.

If the bank take away my account without due legal process, does it matter if the roads to get to the bank were traffic/pothole/toll free?

For a YouTube content creator, who spent years building brand and audience, one fine day to wake up and have videos demonetized and/or account suspended is like bank terminating your account without giving you a dime from your account. With bank, you can get government/FDIC engaged, with YouTube, they are the Gods of that universe.

There are private entities, public corporations and government. We hold public corporations to a different standard than individual persons.

If DNS can be taken away form you without due legal process, does it really matter if your ISP can throttle you or not. NN has become a fringe issue, yes, I do support NN, but at this point I would rather use NN to show hypocrisy of large monopolistic social media platforms. Free Speech is more important to me than NN.