Cookingboy

Robinhood doesn’t care at all for their users, after all they and their orders are the product it sells.

> With regards to treating investing like gambling, there's no real problem with that. There's definitely a market for it, and it's why /r/Wallstreetbets exists.

There are also markets (pretty large ones too) for cocaine and hookers and human trafficking.

There is a difference between treating investment like gambling and teaching and encouraging new investors how to take unnecessary risks.

In fact, if not for the blatant hypocrisy of them doing this under this mission statement “democratizing finance”, I may be ok with how predatory they are.

On Reddit, especially /r/wsb, many people painted it to be a common folks vs. Wall Street hedge funds story. But I've always thought the reality was that it's a hedge funds vs. hedge funds story where plenty of big players made millions, if not billions last week, then shorted the stock at $3-400 and made millions more on the way down. The retail players were probably just caught between a group of 800lbs fighting gorillas. I wouldn't even be surprised if Melvin Capital made all their money back by shorting near the peak.

Additionally I'm beyond disgusted at how "any publicity is good publicity" turned out to be so true and Robinhood came out stronger than ever from this whole debacle: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/03/why-investors-were-willing-t...

> “It’s the fastest growing consumer app, and has better engagement than social media,” one investor said. “The majority of those new traders won’t be trading GameStop.”

Having "User Engagement" as a benchmark for an investing app is beyond immoral. Robinhood has always been extremely predatory at encouraging users to actively gamble with their investments, and utilizes all kinds of user manipulating tactics such as gamification that has no place in a finance app.

They will have a very successful IPO, and the top shareholders/investors will make billions, all from a product named Robinhood that excels at almost nothing but transferring wealth from the masses to the elites.

And it will be hailed as a true Silicon Valley success story.

>But the hedge funds in question closed out their short positions days ago.

No they haven't, because they are literally running ads on CNBC telling people that right now. Why would they spend money doing that if they no longer have skin in the game?

>paid a significant price

Is that price a large sum of money to a particular SuperPAC in the near future?

I can almost guarantee you he wouldn’t have done it and got away with it if he didn’t know his decision was going to be popular among their employees and shareholders.

Of course he made a statement that made himself sound courageous, but it was the easiest decision ever and a PR move lol.

>so it's okay because private companies can do whatever they want

The point is they can't do whatever they want, just like Google/FB/Amazon actually can't do whatever they want.

They can only do it if it's the will of the majority of their customers, employees and shareholders. Jack Dorsey or Jeff Bezos can't make decisions like this unilaterally without the support of all those parties.

That's a good point, but what you are describing would only happen if the vast majority of shareholders, employees, customers and owners of key telecom companies all have the opposite political/world value of the general public, so I think it's highly unlikely.

If it does somehow happen, then yes, we should look at how come all the employees, customers, shareholders and owners of the key telecom companies all happen to hold the opposite value of the general public, that would be the bigger failure.

>It seems obvious to me that sometimes companies become so large and have so much influence that they should not be allowed to just ban/block whoever they want, even if they are private.

I disagree, there is a nuanced, but big difference in government allowing free speech and government guaranteeing free speech. I'm mostly for the former and mostly against the latter.

>Just because they have the right to do it does not means it’s a good thing.

I'm sorry if I weren't clear. That was my personal reaction and my personal opinion, not an objective evaluation of the situation (since I'm pretty sure it's not "good" for anyone working at Parlor lol).

But considering the kind of damage those people are doing to the society and I just happen to live in the exact same society, yeah, in my very humble opinion they can royally go get fucked.

Good.

If corporations are people then they absolutely should have the right to exercise whatever free speech they want to.

Nobody is preventing those deplorables to say whatever the hell they want, but also nobody is obliged to provide services and platform to those people to spread those toxic messages.

According to /r/conservative the entire tech industry is ran by leftists, and leftists are stupid, unemployed losers who live in their moms' basements. So it should be easy for them to recreate their entire own tech infrastructure to host whatever nuclear waste dumpster fire app they want, after all it should be very easy for "smart, hardworking real Americans" like them. Hey, capitalism is all about competitions right? Last time I checked there may even be some money involved in the tech industry so I'm actually a little puzzled why they haven't done so already.

If you think I sound like a smug douchebag in this comment that's because it's exactly how I feel from reading these news these past few days.

What's your definition of "true innovation"? No, Apple did not invent an ARM ISA CPU, but the they also pushed the hell out of all available technology in their design and implementation. The amount of innovation in that far surpasses pretty much anyone else in the mobile space. You should really read into what they've been doing with their in-house SoC team since the A7.

The Apple Watch now generates more revenue than the entire Swiss watch industry combined. Apple is the largest watchmaker in the world both by revenue and by units sold.

LOL.

I don't know what's more amazing about this comment, the ignorance from not understanding their core competitiveness or the arrogance to predict something with regard to the tech industry in the year 2040.

Seriously, I fail to imagine how the fate of those local restaurants would have been better if DoorDash didn't exist.

That's just not true. You can fully move and start working for a non-CA company and you wouldn't be paying CA taxes.

You make it sound like if you ever lived in CA you have to pay CA tax for the rest of your life until you retire lol.

>What exactly are you complaining about?

I don't have an English degree or anything, but I'm pretty sure he's complaining about the several hundred thousands in state taxes.

I agree 100%. As an Asian American it is baffling how throughout years of propaganda, so many Americans firmly believe that personal freedom and democracy cannot co-exist with a competent and effective government that has all the tools and resources to do its job.

I think it comes from shallow interpretation of sayings such as "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". I mean it's a catchy saying, but in reality it's just a result of terrible system engineering (in this case the government system) in many places.

It is totally possible to have a powerful government and have that government supervise. In the end there is a clear distinction between "big government" and "authoritarian dictatorship". If your big government devolves into individual dictatorship it just mean the single executive position likely had too much power to begin with.

In fact, similar to companies, it's very well possible to avoid a single dictator CEO even as your company grows large and end up with a large management hierarchy.

>What’s the point other than the coolness factor?

So Genshin Impact can look and run beautifully XD

>I don't agree and there isn't much if any recorded history to support that assertion. Information and expression doesn't kill

What the hell? Are you serious? Yes, anti-semitism never killed anyone, anti-vaccine misinformation never hurt anyone, and calling Covid a hoax didn't cause any unnecessary death either /s.

>it's not a virus

It's not, because it spreads far, far faster than even the most dangerous virus.

Wow you are not even discussing in good faith anymore.

Where did I say discussion of certain topics should be banned? Where did I say people should be killed for believing different things? It’s literally strawman after strawman from you.

> you must explain, as a matter of implementation, who gets to decide what is banned.

No I don’t. I pointed out a problem, but I am not suggesting solutions, and I sure as hell don’t owe you an implementation.

> I'm sure if the United States government did a strict lockdown and welded the doors shut of COVID patients and left them to die

No country did that, why are you making things up? China stopped people from leaving their houses but at the same time provide supplies and delivered food through organized effort for weeks. That was well documented by even foreigners living there.

Hell, let's not use China's example, what about countries like Singapore, South Korea, New Zealand, etc all managed to be both democracies and selectively enforce rules at the same time?

Way to make up strawman's argument.

Do you agree that there are objective facts that should be accepted by the society for the well being of the society? Such as Earth is not flat, vaccine does not cause autism, and wearing a mask is helpful at preventing Covid spread?

If you do not believe such object facts exist, then we do not live in the same reality, if you do, then there must be some mechanism that raises certain statements into the status of "facts", and that's the same kind of mechanism we should apply.

The whole point of my comment is I am not important, and neither are you, so both of us should shut up if our speech materially hurt the society.

> Silicon Valley neo-barons and politicians, whose opinions are ACTUALLY dangerous and influential, and yet none of them will be cancelled.isnt it curious?

I see you failed on reading comprehension. They should be cancelled if they are proven to be dangerous to the society, such as anti-mask movement or anti-vaccine movement. I don't know why you are trying to trivialize "tin-foil brigade" when it literally killed many people this year.

>I still wish you can express your views all over the internet without the risk of being cancelled.

I don't, especially if me spreading nonsense directly causes harm to a large number of people and the society. I do not believe my unlimited free speech rights is of higher priority the health and wellbeing of the overall society.

The whole "individual rights always triumphs over the interest of the society" is exactly the type of American exceptionalism I mentioned. It's a very strange notion in many cultures (and no doubt you'd say those cultures are inferior) and it's more or less another symptom of a culture that worships narcissistic behavior.

Of course I could make this argument, and it would be a very valid argument too.

There are pros and cons to each system, do you really believe free societies has absolutely zero trade offs or drawbacks?

The very fact that is successful just further reinforces my point doesn't it? If we see different countries as competing organisms, obviously in the 21st century China would have a leg over us precisely because of things like their government would shut down any anti-mask speech or movement at the first sight.

Imagine a terrorist cell just unleashed a biological weapon that's far more deadly than Covid. Which country do you think will fare better in this scenario, China or the U.S.? Would Americans still be arguing about the superiority of democracy and free speech if a majority of the people died?

As far as entropy goes, if we actually have a "supreme leader" then it would actually drastically lower entropy. It would be a shitty society to live in unless we are talking about a benevolent AI or something, but entropy would indeed be low.

Btw my original comment wasn't about the danger of free speech, it's about the danger of absolutely unchecked free speech from all aspects of society.

As long as there is people and society there will be a civilization one way or the other.

You may not like that civilization, but saying a specie cannot survive unless we adhere to democracy and free speech is the product of your upbringing but not the product of objective reality.

> Allowing Free speech still is the hill I'd like to die on

At this rate it will be the hill that the civilization dies on. The whole "absolute free speech is a sacrosanct human rights for everyone" is an ideal that simply would not scale with the 21st century civilization. Most users around here grew up firmly believing that value, and it is further reinforced by American/Western exceptionalism, so I can see how this comment will be very negatively received.

But we can all agree that freedom isn't free, at one point in the future the cost would be so high that the whole civilization would be facing a "give me freedom or give me death" moment. I can't predict whether that moment will come in the form of an anti-science misinformation campaign during a pandemic that is far more serious than even Covid or a mentally deranged, conspiracy theory supporting leader who has full control of the nuclear arsenal, but that moment will come one day.

The second law of thermal dynamics applies to more than just physical systems, entropy also plays similar role in a complex society that is getting ever more complex. Before our species can attain the ability to modularize our own society through interplanetary colonization to ensure survival, we have to face the very uncomfortable truth that we have to put in more rules and checks into our existing society to ensure the entropy doesn't snowball out of control too fast. That means we have to put everything on the table and re-exam all of our values, because there is no value to speak of in a dead world.

The unfortunate thing is it's very difficult to have this conversation, even with very intelligent people, without everyone getting emotional. After all a lot of these beliefs and values are something we hold very dear, and maybe that is the ultimate tragedy of our world.

>Can Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Google Chat, Slack, Discord, and others operate freely in China?

Actually yes, as long as they adhere to Chinese data laws. That's why iMessage, FaceTime, Skype, etc are all able to operate freely in China. All those laws apply to Chinese companies too.

What American data law can TikTok/WeChat adhere to to operate here? Do those laws apply to American companies as well?