Facebook Are 'Morally Bankrupt Liars' Says New Zealand's Privacy Commissioner (theguardian.com) 328
New Zealand's privacy commissioner has lashed out at social media giant Facebook in the wake of the Christchurch attacks, calling the company "morally bankrupt pathological liars." From a report: The commissioner used his personal Twitter page to lambast the social network, which has also drawn the ire of prime minister Jacinda Ardern for hosting a livestream of the attacks that left 50 dead, which was then copied and shared all over the internet. "Facebook cannot be trusted," wrote Edwards. "They are morally bankrupt pathological liars who enable genocide (Myanmar), facilitate foreign undermining of democratic institutions. [They] allow the live streaming of suicides, rapes, and murders, continue to host and publish the mosque attack video, allow advertisers to target 'Jew haters' and other hateful market segments, and refuse to accept any responsibility for any content or harm. "They #dontgiveazuck" wrote Edwards. He later deleted the tweets, saying they had prompted "toxic and misinformed traffic."
sounds about right (Score:2, Insightful)
There are clear cases where FB and other services have aided and abetted terrorists. I don't understand how they get away with it, really.
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This ultimately reduces to the argument that because books might contain "dangerous ideas" we really ought to just ban them. Authoritarians will always seek out ways to control others and they're scarcely above using tragedy in order to accomplish those goals.
If you believe that there are terrible people in the world, trying to control them won't st
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Fascism have a definition and no, censorship isn't the same thing. Next time you want to claim anything maybe do a quick search so you'll not look foolish?
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That is true, communists also heavily employ censorship. Really, everyone who wants to end personal liberty and therefore democracy. "individual" is by far the largest of all demographics and therefore its interests are at the top of the list for any democratically elected representative doing his/her job.
Censorship is a tool of oppression, any regime trying to repress dissent employs it as a shortcut to get around actually having a superior and/or more convincing argument.
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There is a very big flaw here. Corporations aren't people.
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The users select who the content goes to.
Facebook does just shift bits and bytes they simply do it at a higher logical layer than ISPs. Given their monopoly over the medium they should be regulated as a common carrier.
He made other comments too (Score:2)
He mentioned that rain is wet and the sky is blue.
Enable communication by jerks (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Enable communication by jerks (Score:5, Insightful)
It's more than simply enabling communication. Facebook data mines your personal info and sells it on. It allows Russia to target you with misinformation and influence your political discourse, something that is explicitly illegal in many countries. It helped Cambridge Analytica cheat during the brexit referendum.
Facebook builds communities. Communities that are dedicated to committing crimes in some cases. Facebook enables people to broadcast the murder of others, which at the very least is a severe violation of the rights of the victims.
And Facebook lies about it all the time. Facebook wants you to trust them, wants to present itself as a safe place to be, but it's not. Facebook are a bunch of pathological liars, it's their core value. Pretend to be your friend while ruthlessly exploiting you and trying to cover it all up.
Still: It's user generated content (Score:2)
Yes. AI is being used to try to police/filter it quickly these days (because with a billion possible contributors, how else could you do it fast?) but the challenge for that AI to recognize really bad content (the only kind that should be filtered, right?) is very complex. Human moderators often can't even do it reliably.
So realistically, it has to be a system that relies partly on human users to flag bad content for immediate review. Then a large team of moderators needs to check a
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Echochambers galore (Score:2, Interesting)
When you ban a weirdo, he gets drive to a smaller website of other banned weirdos, and they exist there in an echochamber of weirdness. They loose track of all reality until they decide that they must "do something" in the war against the "others", those evil infiltrators who are destroying all that is good.
The same thing also occurs in reverse: If your culture is to ban dissent, then you build a similar echochamber around yourself and your community. Compare /r/Libertarian with /r/Socialism; one invites de
So? (Score:5, Insightful)
You say that like it's somehow a bad thing. Getting the weirdos out of mainstream channels and into their own private echo-chambers means vulnerable people (teens, mentally challenged and unstable people, etc) aren't exposed to their weirdness and are far less likely to join them.
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Getting the weirdos out of mainstream channels and into their own private echo-chambers means vulnerable people (teens, mentally challenged and unstable people, etc) aren't exposed to their weirdness and are far less likely to join them.
The "vulnerable" will eventually get exposed anyway, because the weirdos are constantly on the hunt for new converts/victims. If they are in an open forum, like this one, then for every "Shout down the opposition in the name of free speech" comment, their will be a "You don't promote free speech by shutting down speech!" response.
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What you don't seem to get is that media, including social media, loves weirdos, just like they love a train wreck. It's why the media gave Trump $2B in free media during the election. Weirdos capture eyeballs, making revenue for those media companies. It just ain't gonna happen.
Hillary Clinton was a terrible candidate. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's why she lost.
She didn't go after the right votes; she didn't hold press conferences; she hid her poor health; she insulted an enormous swath of the electorate; her slogan was narcissist and niche feminist.
Repeat it until you believe it: Trump won because he was a better candidate.
Re:Hillary Clinton was a terrible candidate. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Repeat it until you believe it: Trump won because he was a better candidate."
Not to be confused with an assertion that he was a good candidate I'm sure.
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I'm totally inclined to reject any censorship because it's a slippery slope and even the most well-intentioned censor has some kind of bias about what's acceptable speech and what should be censored. That, and usually sunlight is the best disinfectant -- bad/dumb ideas tend to wither under most examination.
That being said, I don't think humans have ever lived in an era where we were so capable of being exposed to so many bad ideas that could be so easily and effortlessly communicated, often with the intent
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Hear Hear
In general I oppose censorship but there are certain cases where it is sketchy to call something speech and cases where it conflicts with other important rights and principles and a compromise must be reached.
The danger of censorship is that when you allow it you must keep it very narrow and explicit so it can't be used as a precedent for the next time. Otherwise you create a more and more broad tool. Even if you think it is just in the case being provided you must also think about when not if the
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How exactly do you think you'll get said proof if you tolerate the suppression of speech?
Re:Communication prevents violence (Score:5, Interesting)
A nice theory, however, it's not applicable to any media service that auto-screens content to improve your engagement by primarily showing you things you already agree with. That doesn't promote debate, it promotes extremism.
That's the difference between social media and real life conversations - real life conversations give you a semi-representative sample of what people believe, and you can have those productive debates (with the risk of physical violence encouraging most people to remain reasonably civil). Social media instead sorts people into groups that say things you "like", producing an echo-chamber to reinforce your pre-existing biases.
Of course people sort themselves in real life too, but if you go to the local skinhead bar, you're fully aware that you're going to a self-sorted establishment to hang out with a like-minded minority. You wouldn't expect the sort of disagreement you'd get voicing the same opinions in a sports bar. Social media though spans such a large population that it can easily provide the illusion that you're actually in the majority.
I would much rather see such auto-grouping abandoned than banning particular opinions - but that would severely impact profits, so I doubt it would happen.
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No, I'm not implying anything - I'm stating outright that the market solutions are not meeting my desires as a responsible citizen who thinks violent civil war is something that should be a last resort to overthrow tyrants, rather than something to be actively fostered to settle policy disagreements between opposing sides who have been made into extremists by for-profit echo chambers.
"Market solutions" are only applicable to things that only affect customers. When the consequences of your purchasing decisi
Wow, I didn't expect that... (Score:2)
... from a lawyer working for a politician.
Justice Minister Judith Collins said at appointment "I am confident Mr Edwards will be highly credible in the role of the Commissioner and will be able to engage both the public and private sectors."
Well, Ms Collins was certainly right.
There seems to be some spine in NZ politicians and lawyers...
Moderation is not easy. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's easy to attack and criticize. But he offers no solution. Seriously, how does this "privacy commissioner" *think* one would moderate platforms this large... particularly while negating the possibility of false positives?
I haven't seen the NZ shooter's stream in full. But the clips I've seen look like they could come from a FPS streaming on Twitch. Probably, that was because the news was sensationalizing the "just like a video game" element of the stream. But still... if a human can mistake the stream for a Twitch feed, than a machine certainly can. So automation is right out. You need humans monitoring content and more human monitoring those humans and even more humans monitoring those humans to both prevent things like that lifestream; but also prevent false positives (The innocent should never be punished along with the guilty. So false positives are unacceptable.). I can't even fathom the size of the moderation workforce that would be necessary, given the size of platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and the like.
And if Facebook, Twitter, et al. ever DID manage to build that sort of moderation regime; how much do you want to bet that the we-hate-nerds outrage crowd would then be screeching "big brother" and "censorship"? It's especially ironic, considering that the screecher in this particular case IS a privacy commissioner... advocating for a level of surveillance that would eliminate anything even resembling privacy.
Re:Moderation is not easy. (Score:5, Interesting)
The NZ terrorist's video could easily be blocked if they really cared. Look at how good YouTube is at recognizing someone merely humming a few bars of some copyrighted song. Play a 5 frame clip of some TV series in the middle of your hour long critique video and YouTube will copyright flag it.
Re:Moderation is not easy. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Facebook is too large (Score:2)
So how are you going to police the whole web? And why would you even try?
I really think people need to get thicker skins, and accept that the full, ugly range of human behaviour exists. People who don't want to be able to see it all should start becoming patrons of some new filtered-search service that works FOR THEM, according to their own specifi
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Why would the NZ Privacy Commissioner try and police the 'whole web'? Why would he try? He has no jurisdiction. As for people getting thicker skins, etc.....maybe people should accept that the web is a public place and what you say in a public place has some restrictions. Look again at your 'ugly range of human behaviour comment'. It is currently the 25th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide at which time New Zealand held the Presidency of the Security Council. Are you saying we should have ignored it as we
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Although it is currently unclear as to in which country's jurisdiction and standards - is it determined by:
a) where you post from (which could be random),
b) where the poster is a citizen of,
c) where the filmed act took place, or
d) where it was copied to by web browsers i.e. everywhere in the world?)
If you're going to hold middleware responsible, which of the above a) b) c) or d) should
Faulty reasoning (Score:5, Insightful)
Of all people, privacy commissioner should understand that a system that could proactively prevent "live streaming of suicides, rapes, and murders" would be extremely hostile to concepts of both privacy and all forms of freedom of expression.
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Of all people, privacy commissioner should understand that a system that could proactively prevent "live streaming of suicides, rapes, and murders" would be extremely hostile to concepts of both privacy and all forms of freedom of expression.
Maybe he does? The best way to destroy something threatening is to be in charge of it, after all.
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Morally bankrupt? (Score:2)
Lawful Evil (Score:2)
Technically they have broken no laws.
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Now when has that become relevant again?
That commissioner is just angry, bitter, outraged (Score:2)
It's called a channel (Score:2)
News (Score:2)
I haven't seen the clips, nor have I any particular desire to see the clips. But since I'm ignorant of the content, I have to ask the question... How was it different from a CNN video feed?
Wars have provided countless video feeds of people being killed. Missiles hitting targets in the early dawn hours... Munitions being dropped on positions... Whole divisions of mechanized forces being buried in sand by bombs...
I get the not wanting to glorify terrorism argument, and I agree to a point that eliminating
Overtake (Score:2)
Where were all these people back when Facebook was still in the process of overtaking everyone?
This is absolutely true (Score:3, Interesting)
But no one has the guts to stop it. Facebook needs to be smashed into 10,000 pieces along with Google.
Sorry Microsoft, you were 1990's evil.
Pot Calling Kettle Black (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are in New Zealand, you can get up to 10 years in jail just for having the shooter's manifesto in your possession:
Link Here [businessinsider.com]
Ten Years. For having a hateful text document on your computer.
I would call that morally bankrupt.
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Morally bankrupt pathological liars (Score:2)
Just use 'corporation'. It takes less keystrokes.
This is not really a problem. I expect corporations in which I have an ownership stake (shareholder) to operate up to the limits allowed by laws* to maximize profits. Nothing more, nothing less. Not wasting money or avoiding opportunities based on some unquantifiable touchy-feely nonsense.
*Whose laws? Facebook is a US corporation. The fact that an Australian, located in New Zealand chose to use it as a streaming platform isn't the fault of FB. And we have a
New Zealand Privacy Commissioner (Score:4, Insightful)
He has every right to be pissed and the New Zealand government has egg all over it's face on this. Recently NZ has been updating it's Privacy Act and they yet again left it toothless with no power for the Privacy Commission to enforce compliance [nzherald.co.nz]. But hey, that's what you get when the MP in charge of the Bill is also in charge of the GCSB [parliament.nz]. Well that, and a blanket exemption for the GCSB. This was before the Christchurch Shootings and look where we are now. It looks as though the Bill wasn't rewritten to so much to protect peoples privacy as it was to allow our economic compliance with the GDPR and gain more government exemptions. I doubt the Privacy Commissioner is as pissed at Facebook as he is at being left totally impotent by the New Zealand Government.
NZ is just finding this out? (Score:3)
Also, telephones (Score:2)
Did this goofball stop to think that every single thing he mentioned could have been accomplished with the plain-old-telephone system?
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Yeah (Score:2)
Here's the problem (Score:2)
How about "they're just young" (Score:2)
View point of a New Zealander (Score:3)
It is hard to express how deeply the event in Christchurch has affected the nation, it certainly has had exactly the opposite effect of what the to be nameless perpetrator intended.
As much as I would love to think AI could magically block such live streams I think that will never be practical. Disabling it for all would be overkill. I'm surprised it only 17 minutes to stop the live stream given how hard companies like Facebook work to block people from contacting a real live staff member. I think they could improve the communications channels between law enforcement and their staff. That said with modern technology you are never going to be effective at stopping bad stuff being streamed.
The repeated sharing of the content is a different story. Youtube is pretty good at automatically blocking reposts of stuff and this is an area where AIs can be effective. If Facebook can't effective block sharing of this video then they do have something to answer for.
People in senior government roles need to work hard to separate their person views from those of their role. Given it is hard to tell a person's personal views from official views of their roles it is probably best that when they take on such roles they stop personal social media post. In this case I think personal feelings of the commissioner got the better of him and he posted something not well thought through. Mind you if you look at the endless questionable tweets of the POTUS the I think the commissioner's tweet look pretty mild.
At the end of the day I think it is stupid of one government to try an apply its laws to the website in another country with the exception of servers physically hosted within their territory. That should not stop a government from making their views clear to website owners, they just shouldn't expect much as a result. In general I am proud of how our nation, government, politicians and people have handled themselves.
Re:Clueless (Score:5, Insightful)
Facebook or the politicians? (Score:2, Insightful)
Because I would definitely consider the latter both clueless and morally bankrupt. This whole social media problem has been going on for ~23-24 years now. Maybe longer. My sister started on it in her teens which was back in the late 1990s. That means the politicians have had over 20 years to analyze the impact of social media and consider the ramifications of it. And they haven't.
This is on them, not Facebook, Whatsapp, or anyone else. Companies today exist to make money hand over fist at the expense of all
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+1 Insightful
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All social media? Probably not, but the waters of that term have been deliberately muddied and made broad one doesn't need to dominate all social media to have a monopoly platform. There is no other "social media" that qualifies as a competitor to Facebook's network, it might compete with some facebook produced or third party app running on that network but not the social network itself. That the makes the facebook social network a monopoly of sorts, not necessarily an illegal monopoly though. If I make a s
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Re:Clueless (Score:4, Insightful)
Those are not mutually exclusive. I'm not sure there is a difference between being morally clueless and morally bankrupt.
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Is more what they are than morally bankrupt...
Hanlon would agree. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Clueless (Score:5, Insightful)
There is plenty of evidence that Facebook knows what it is doing, especially when it comes to selling data. They knew about companies violating their contracts with regard to user data and just ignored it until the world found out. Always profit before the users.
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I keep seeing people talking about FaceBook being morally bankrupt, but their moral compass points to always keeping the investors rich. So it's not just FaceBook that's morally bankrupt, but all of western society. Which, oddly enough, it's mostly western society that's giving their private information to FaceBook, so...
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Eastern society doesn't respect privacy or individualism either. They just defer to a government they have no control over as opposed to us where we can be a Luddite and keep our privacy.
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You're very correct, and that's why it's important for western society to ditch this stupid practice of "social media". Because what you're describing about eastern society will soon be western society, too.
Re:Clueless (Score:5, Insightful)
The "enabling genocide" and "facilitating foreign undermining of democratic institutions" was in part done by them selling people's data. They allowed hostile governments to mine Facebook data which was then used to facilitate genocide and interfere with democracy.
BTW the NZ Prime Minister is a woman. Perhaps you meant the Privacy Commissioner, who you actually quoted.
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Given that he is the privacy minister and not the prime minister it seems he was also off topic whereas collecting, selling, and monetizing data would have been his wheelhouse.
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For free speech to work it must be absolute.
Well then we'll have to do away with laws against death threats, copyright enforcement, doxxing/revenge porn, and privacy in general, not to mention any seditious libel/seditious conspiracy and hate speech laws of course.
The only jurisdiction that has "absolute" free speech is the ungoverned regions of Somalia.
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With the valid examples in that list (a few shouldn't be censored) those are examples of other rights being trampled on and a complicated choice having to be made. His mistake was a broad generalization but the underlying point without pedantic nitpicking stands.
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Someone tried to bury this. Highlighting it instead. This is a cornerstone principal of democracy.
"It's funny he says they undermine democracy but then acts like censoring information isn't undermining democracy. You can't have it both ways. For free speech to work it must be absolute. The tyrants of NZ clearly don't see it that way though."
Re:Clueless (Score:5, Interesting)
Post a mastectomy reconstruction photo with a female nipple showing on Facebook and see how quickly it gets taken down. Repeat the process a few times to see how quickly your account gets permanently banned.
After that, come back and tell us all about how Facebook has a strong bias toward free speech.
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You can't show tits! Imagine, kids might see it! Tits ain't for kids!
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Re:Clueless (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not a free speech issue.
There is a privacy and human dignity issue with things like the NZ terrorist's video. People are being murdered in it, and in many countries the victims of crimes like that had a right to a certain amount of privacy and dignity even in death. I think it's different in the US, but for example in the UK they generally don't show people being murdered on TV unless it's very exceptional circumstances.
There are other privacy issues around the way that Facebook handles personal data of course, e.g. Cambridge Analytica.
There are also safety issues for children. If they want to be open to children they have additional responsibilities. If they don't they can raise the minimum age for having an account to 18. As an example we have film and game ratings because we understand that children don't have the psychological tools to process certain material without being harmed by it, but Facebook has nothing like that. In fact it promotes itself as a safe space, when in fact it is not.
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"in many countries the victims of crimes like that had a right to a certain amount of privacy and dignity even in death."
Is this the case in NZ? Or are you again stating what you want to be the case as a fact?
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Many decades of child psychology research and practice says otherwise. I assume you have some peer reviewed studies to back up your assertion that it's all bunk?
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Psychology is a pseudoscience not a science. Please discuss it with your chiropractor, reflexology specialist, and aromatherapy expert and leave it off here. Having some kind of study, peer reviewed or otherwise, does not make something science.
Even "legitimate" western medicine, while basing many things on medical science, is not itself science. Medical doctors are not engineers, their practice is not considered applied science.
Psychology is worse, and blends heavily with social science an area which has h
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Next you'll tell me you cook and eat babies.
If you can't argue don't bullshit.
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That's argumentum ad absurdum.
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That's argumentum ad absurdum.
Which is a valid logical argument, not a fallacy. You take an opponents words to their obvious conclusion.
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"Videos like this are not "free speech". They are toxic propaganda to recruit more killers"
Free speech includes speech to which biased labels like "toxic" is applied. Do you know the difference between a soldier, an executioner, and a killer? Mostly the bias of the speaker.
"passing them around is at best giving aid/comfort to the enemy"
Whose enemy? A neutral platform doesn't choose sides therefore there is no 'enemy'
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This is most definitely not a troll. Whoever it is engaging in this moderation abuse should be flagged and have moderation privs removed. Metamods, please react accordingly.
Unfortunately for you abusers, there is a limit to your mod points but there is no limit to how many times I can resurrect these posts.
"Being an American company, there is a strong cultural bias towards free speech. Even though Constitutionally the First Amendment only applies to the government not companies. Americans in general have mo
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Yeah, we're such a shithole. Please don't ever come here and see it for yourself. We only have the largest economy on the planet, backed by the strongest military. And yeah, we've gotten into some stupid shit that we never should have. But maybe you should ask yourself, why does the US have the largest number of immigrants of any nation in the world, with people literally dying to get here? Stop paying attention to tabloid journalism, and look up how well the average American lives.
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Re:Clueless (Score:4, Informative)
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Thanks for the compliment, no, English is actually my third language. I just have a pretty good spellchecker, I guess.
The "we" in that signature is mostly owed to the space limitation of signatures on /.. "we" is shorter than "people in the US and by extension on the rest of the planet because, well, you see, what the US does eventually has some sort of effect on how governments all over the globe behave".
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Did you know that the first Bill of Rights was the Bill of Rights of 1689?
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Nah, but you do have to say NYC does. It's far from representative of the remainder of the nation.
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Thanks, and stay out.
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Really, and what country would that be? Again, you can't refute that America has the largest number of immigrants in the world, every single fucking year. Why do you suppose that is? Sure, we had slavery, just like most all of the rest of the globe had back through 1800s. What other "refugees" are you claiming?
I didn't claim we're perfect...we've got a lot wrong with us. That doesn't make us the crapper that I frequently read about here, or in tabloid journalism. FWIW, I've been to ~50 countries (incl
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Really, and what country would that be? Again, you can't refute that America has the largest number of immigrants in the world, every single fucking year.
Well, it depends on how you measure. Most years, in absolute numbers, you're right though just quickly looking, for example in the 50's, Canada had higher absolute numbers and was very close in the early 20th century.
If you measure by percentage, then even Switzerland is ahead of the US and Canada lets in quite a larger percentage then the USA. It's a lot easier to have a million immigrants when you're population is close to 350 million, you end up getting the people who were refused in other countries such
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Surely you meant "Zuckmarine".
But yeah, that guy is an asshole. What will it take to shut down the whole company?
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I vote nukes.
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From orbit, I'm guessing?
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Nah, any old nuke would do, I ain't picky.
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It's a matter of magnitude.