I see you’ve chosen to ignore the point about the influence this has on hundreds of millions of people.

You are so fucking wrong. I have never understood this logic that because people are doing things out in the open that it’s a good thing. They are popularizing their ideas. More people are exposed to them when they’re out in the open. Had they been operating in some obscure forum, they would lack the advertising of their ideas to others.

For what possible reason could this be “positive”? So that the rest of us are aware of their first amendment protected hateful ideas? What good does that do anyone? We just elected one of them to be president of the United States. Allowing hate speech to bloom out in the open tempers our reactions and slowly seeps into our minds as propaganda.

Freedom of speech is, in the US, something that the US Constitution promises will not be restricted by Congress. It is not something any private company is required to protect. I would argue that private companies have a responsibility to its users to ban all hate speech and report substantiated threats to law enforcement.

Not sure why you think this.

You just reiterated what I said.

If you were to rip a Bluray to your computer, you’re legally not permitted to watch that movie if you’re no longer in possession of the disc.

=

You can legally rip a Bluray for backup purposes. If you sell or give away the Bluray, you have to delete the backed up copy.

Technically, if the FBI were to ask you to prove ownership of a digital copy and you had lost the disc, it would be illegal to retain that digital copy.

Bypassing DRM is illegal because the DMCA explicitly prohibits the circumvention…

Yes. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a law that covers copyright protections.

Everyone should generally assume that unless you have something tangibly in your hand, you either do not own it or you may very easily and/or suddenly lose access to it. You could test this by trying to access the content without having to sign in to something.

All these streaming and subscription services should be considered ease of access conveniences. In other industries, you pay a premium for something to be prepared for you to consume. In the subscription industry, you’re paying less because you’re not paying for the content but for a license to temporarily consume the content (and probably because your info is being sold to advertisers).

Fun Fact: If you were to rip a Bluray to your computer, you’re legally not permitted to watch that movie if you’re no longer in possession of the disc. This is because you’re not purchasing the content of the disc but the license to view the content. Decrypting DRM is illegal not based on whether you own the content but because the DRM encryption itself is separately copyright protected.

That’s a perfect response to enforce my observation that people no longer have the sense of what words mean.

But isn’t so much journalism nowadays characterised by unsubstantiated speculation

No, by definition, a billion percent NO. I don’t understand how words have lost their meaning today.

your criticism amounts essentially to your dislike of the thesis of this piece.

Show me one word that criticizes “the thesis” of the piece. I have not. In fact, I think it’s well written and thought provoking (in the same vein as a 9/11 or UFO theory is). I have argued, not that an argument should need to be made because /reality/ and /definitions of words/, that it is a random person with no journalistic credentials making, and admitting to, unsubstantiated claims based on guesses and supposes. This, by definition, is not journalism - nor NEWS.

Dude. There is nothing wrong with the fucking article other than it is not fucking news.

How broken are people? Is it the fox newses that have broken you? TikTok? Reddit? Twitter? Do people have some false belief that armchair speculation, random ideas and theories with no source to back it up, is fucking NEWS?

Furthermore, the rules of this forum require a link be from an actual news source. This is not.

I wasn’t upset at all until people started claiming that the unsubstantiated speculations by some irrelevant person is the same as world news.

It’s a great thought provoking piece of work. It’s just not news.

It’s fine. If the rules of this forum are no longer relevant, I just won’t subscribe to it anymore. The internet sucks.

What’s the difference between an opinion section and what you deem “speculative conspiracy theories”?

That’s wholly irrelevant. If you want to be an investigative reporter and get real facts to report, have at it and post it as news. You have not done this. You are making guesses. Guesses, by someone with no qualifications or influence, are not news.

Anything spoken / written by a political leader is news. If you were someone who influenced millions of people, your opinion would be news.

If I sat down and wrote out a blog about how I believe the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated, would that be News? I mean, I guess you would argue that it is but I am telling you, by definition, it most certainly is not.

I don’t know what makes you believe your armchair speculation is NEWS. The disconnect is so vast that my brain is breaking. I don’t understand how people on this earth have chosen to ignore the definition of words to suit their own narrative and feelings.

OP has written an article speculating how explosives could have been inserted into pagers. It’s not news, it’s speculation. Speculation is not news, it’s opinion.

Did you check his identity, papers or such?

I did. https://criticalresist.substack.com/about

Someone reporting news. OP is NOT reporting news. They are speculating. This is an opinion piece. They’re a fine writer and thinker but not a journalist and not reporting factual news.

News outlets very specifically include sections such as Opinion. They do not include speculative conspiracy theories on the front page (or anywhere) labeled as News.

How broken are you people to not understand what is news and what is speculative opinion? This is not a debate. This is a matter of facts.

You’re not a journalist and speculation is not news. You’re a basement dweller with no first hand account of anything.

There are appropriate places for your work. This is not the place.

Speculation from some random on the internet is not world news.

I have a strong opinion about people promoting their own speculation blog in a forum where that does not belong.

This most certainly is not “World News”. This is a self-promoting opinion piece boring on conspiracy theory.

To me, this attack has the master’s prints all over it — the USA had to be involved.

Thank you.

I’d like to know seven years after when.

Thanks.

Sorry, but that makes no sense at all. Why go through all that trouble when they’ve already accomplished the end goal you’ve outlined?

Other than general assumptions and track-record and being a business that sells user data, is there any actual evidence or clear and present ways that Meta could do harm to the Fediverse / its users?

All I’ve read is that it seems suspicious and we shouldn’t trust them. I totally agree with that but I’d like someone to give some examples of what they could do as a member of the network. I’ve read how they could post advertising – how would that work?

I ask because, like the previous comment, the idea of following people from other, more popular, federated platforms from the comfort and security of “open source” (?) platforms is appealing. At the same time, if this is leaving me and my platform vulnerable to something specific, I’d like to either proceed with caution or not proceed at all.

The biggest loss for me when leaving Twitter was losing access to so much happening in my community and local news and government organizations. They’re all still posting on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and not moving to the open social web. More and more are moving to Threads though so it would be nice to maintain / regain exposure.