Facebook Says It Is 'Absolutely Not Threatening' To Leave Europe After Many Welcomed the Move 153
Markus Reinisch, Vice President of Public Policy Europe at Meta, writing on company's blog: There has been reporting in the press that we are "threatening" to leave Europe because of the uncertainty over EU-US data transfers mechanisms. This is not true. Like all publicly-traded companies, we are legally required to disclose material risks to our investors. Last week, as we have done in our previous four financial quarters, we disclosed that continuing uncertainty over EU-US data transfers mechanisms poses a threat to our ability to serve European consumers and operate our business in Europe. We have absolutely no desire to withdraw from Europe; of course we don't. But the simple reality is that Meta, like many other businesses, organisations and services, relies on data transfers between the EU and the US in order to operate our global services. Further reading: We're Fine Without Facebook, German and French Ministers Say.
I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell ya! (Score:5, Insightful)
There's probably half a dozen small, free social media platforms that would be perfectly adequate replacements for Facebook. "Allo" comes to mind, but there's others. All they lack is subscriber numbers. If Facebook creates a giant vaccuum in Europe by pulling out, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of Europeans will flock to them...and in the process drag along millions more friends, relatives and acquaintances from all over the world.
Given how hated Facebook is, it will be the beginning of the end for them. They know this.
Re:I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell ya! (Score:5, Funny)
Bluff called; Zuck's nictitating membranes were said to have blinked.
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Given how hated Facebook is, it will be the beginning of the end for them. They know this.
Speaking of what they know, I'm curious; do you think the hate is Too Big To Fail too?
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My friend, that is an excellent question. Seriously, it's one of those questions that makes you really stop and think.
Re:I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell ya! (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking of what they know, I'm curious; do you think the hate is Too Big To Fail too?
In Tech No one is Too Big To Fail, Ask Myspace, Altavista, AOL, wordperfect all were leaders and the biggest in their respective market at one stage. In Tech the fall can be very fast to
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Speaking of what they know, I'm curious; do you think the hate is Too Big To Fail too?
In Tech No one is Too Big To Fail, Ask Myspace, Altavista, AOL, wordperfect all were leaders and the biggest in their respective market at one stage. In Tech the fall can be very fast to
We are in a different era of tech now. Let's take your largest example on that list; AOL never threatened democracy or free speech, and never stood a damn chance to do so either.
The same, certainly cannot be said about today's social media that serves many politician, leader, and President. And if they're more left than right in the political spectrum, they are quite dependent on it. Dependent enough that they cannot afford to have the ideology controlling that social media platform, switch against the
Re: I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell ya! (Score:2, Insightful)
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Not sure that holds anymore, the Facebook tentacles reach too deep. People use it even when they don't realize they use it. It was always clear when myspace et all were being used.
Brexit for Facebook. (Score:2)
After Brexit, vote leave for Facebook !
"Facexit" ?
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Oops, a bit dyslexic there. The Hippo favicon belongs to Allo.io, not Allo.Solar, which has a favicon that looks like a house, so most likely a Tesla Energy competitor. I'm also adding a further DDG friendly auto-correction hit. There's actually a social networking site called Ello [wikipedia.org]. This one's described as being an "ad-free alternative" to FB, "the betamax of social media: superior to its competitor but failing to win popular traction".
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I did. I've apologized for wasting the poor guy's time.
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My bad. I'm genuinely sorry for wasting your time. I meant Ello.
I plead human error...I was chatting with a French Canadian friend of mine at the time,and it's their equivalent of "Hello", often when answering a phone.
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Worm: Ello
Sarah: Did you just say Allo?
Worm: No I said "ello," but that's close enough.
Good luck 'Meta' (Score:3)
Oh come on now... (Score:5, Insightful)
This was absolutely a case of Facebook saying "We'll take our ball and leave, and your businesses who rely on Facebook advertising and exposure will all wither and die and you'll lose tax revenue"... Followed by the EU calling that bluff and collectively saying "We have plenty of other balls here, trust me, life will go on if you leave. The door is over there---".
The most annoying thing for me will be that I have friends in Europe whom I can only contact over FB Messenger at the moment. Of course this doesn't earn FB a dime, so it's irrelevant to the conversation :)
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I cant believe Im saying it, but Facebook seems to be right on this one.
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You can just incorporate an EU facebook entity separate from US facebook with no feeding of data between the two. No leaving necessary.
Re:Oh come on now... (Score:5, Informative)
False, because US laws don't forbid what EU laws require. They merely don't require it. FB could absolutely align it's US data policies with EU requirements, then it'd be in compliance with the law everywhere. It's just that if they did that they wouldn't have much data from their users to sell to their customers and there goes their nice juicy revenue stream.
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Not quite. The Cloud act makes that far less black and white than you make it seem.
Re: Oh come on now... (Score:2)
But then that makes Facebook less useful and more annoying for everyone. Letâ(TM)s only keep the consequences of stupid anti-internet laws to the people that passed them.
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Privacy is hardly anti-Internet, a right to control your own data has been around since the early 90s and has caused absolutely ZERO disruption or harm to the Internet. Honestly, if you're going to start throwing out bogus complaints, at leat make it a bogus complaint people might believe in.
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I think that's what he means by "less useful and more annoying." Suppose you ran a slaughterhouse and the government passed a law saying that you can't harm livestock. Don't you see how that would be less useful to your customers? Sure, it wouldn't disrupt or harm the internet at all, but what about people who want to infect you with ads?
Won't someone please think of the assholes?!?
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Re:Oh come on now... (Score:4)
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Re:Oh come on now... (Score:4, Interesting)
> The most annoying thing for me will be that I have friends in Europe whom I can only contact over FB Messenger
E-mail isn't a thing in the EU or something?
I have to assume you're at least old enough to remember how people stayed in touch before 2004... or possibly old enough to remember before the internet.
So I guess it's annoying that you have to use FM Messenger, but not as annoying as doing something else...
=Smidge=
Re:Oh come on now... (Score:4, Funny)
I have to assume you're at least old enough to remember how people stayed in touch before 2004... or possibly old enough to remember before the internet.
A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers [ietf.org]
Re: Oh come on now... (Score:2)
Re: Oh come on now... (Score:3)
Re:Oh come on now... (Score:4, Funny)
With Fidonet chops, then surely you remember how to use a phone. I encourage trying it sometime. It's refreshing how quickly you can communicate intricate nuances over the phone as compared to text / email. And, if you use a landline, how good the audio quality can be.
Yes, it might take the effort of actually discovering the phone numbers of your friends. Believe me, it's worth the effort. You might think you're staying in touch via chat and text, etc., but it's nothing compared to how much closer you'll be even with just one ten minute phone call a month.
Re: Oh come on now... (Score:2)
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>With Fidonet chops, then surely you remember how to use a phone.
The time zone difference is a bitch though.
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Fidonet was late 80s, right? Five years after I moved from TBBS to using IPSS. So there's lots of greybeards here. Now that's a shock. A whole 1.5v 4 milliamp shock.
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This was absolutely a case of Facebook saying "We'll take our ball and leave, and your businesses who rely on Facebook advertising and exposure will all wither and die and you'll lose tax revenue"... Followed by the EU calling that bluff and collectively saying "We have plenty of other balls here, trust me, life will go on if you leave. The door is over there---".
But not only the EU but a shitload of the comments on European Reddit subs and other social media were very anti-Facebook...comments like nothing of any value lost, we'll be better without it etc.
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>This was absolutely a case of Facebook saying...
No. It was Facebook putting in worst case scenarios into the financial risks section of their SEC filing, as they are required to do. Anybody reading that and not seeing it for what it was is not familiar with reading company reports.
Dam! (Score:2, Informative)
I just had to listen to a relative tell us how Facebook won't let you type the word "fat" because of hate and divisiveness filters but that was OK because she and her friends just typed "f@t". I just kept my mouth shut and listened.
Social Media is such a wasteland.
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the future i look forward to is tom and zuck sitting in a bar sipping appletinis lamenting about how the ride is never as long as you want it to be.
Just one word: LIARS (Score:2)
Quote: "But the simple reality is that Meta, like many other businesses, organisations and services, relies on data transfers between the EU and the US in order to operate our global services."
The kind of data Facebook/Meta hoards? FALSE.
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I can think of a number of reasons why storage would be distributed and replicated. Like not having to make a query across the atlantic every time I see the profile picture of an author I follow who lives in Northern Ireland.
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Not fake news (Score:5, Insightful)
https://www.socialmediatoday.c... [socialmediatoday.com]
As mentioned, this is the same issue Tik Tok has with US data. It seems very cumbersome to keep data locked into geopolitical regions, and I understand why Meta would want to flee the EU. OTOH, doing so would give other countries a simple method for ridding themselves of the scourge.
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Given that the entire purpose of a social network like Facebook is to share personal information, I fail to see how someone in the EU can be Facebook friends with someone in the US and not have their personal data transmit to US servers.
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Totally bogus claim by FB and Tik Tok.
They just want to spy on you and store the data they get in China where they can use it to harass you.
"Meta" stands for.. (Score:3)
"Metastasize". Fitting.
We are legally required to disclose ... (Score:3)
That is why we say in our filings, We could do a totally stupid thing, and try to threaten to leave a market segment in what we thought would be a under the radar communication channel. But some pesky gadfly, completely could disregard our privacy, and could blabber it all over the place attracting lots of bad publicity. We might be forced to make a public retraction of our imagined confidential threat communication.
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Uh... there's nothing private (express or implied) about SEC filings. They are very much public information, and read by thousands of people. No one even imagined this to be confidential, though they might have wished it were (but probably not even that).
I imagine they did it more to try to get it noticed, in the hopes the EU would relax the rules for them.
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Reportedly this has been in the last several filings, too.
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What Facebook actually meant (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that their business model is incompatible with the privacy laws in Europe. This is very insightful: there is no business case for them, unless they abuse every possible private aspect they can obtain from you. Crappy.
Their business model is incompatible with privacy (Score:2)
This.
I would even simplify: "Their business model is incompatible with privacy"
no grassroots ground swell (Score:5, Insightful)
C'mon. They tried to trigger a user based groundswell of backlash against the EU government and it failed. That says a lot about the value of FB. Its hilarious that everyone invited them to leave the EU instead of getting upset about it.
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Total BS (Score:2)
A threat is only any good when you are willing to do it, and the other person cares.
In this case Facebook was not willing and the EU did not care.
PLEASE DO IT (Score:3)
Please leave the EU.
And then leave Canada.
And then leave the US.
Re:PLEASE DO IT (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well, sort of the comment I was looking for, but all the way at the bottom.
But perhaps a more pointed Subject, such as "Please, pretty please with sugar on it! Leave already. And don't let the door hit your arse on the way out."
Whoops. Too long for a Subject. But sometimes it needs more characters.
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Just pull the plug, Facebook.
Brexit for Facebook = "Facexit" (Score:2)
After Brexit, vote leave for Facebook !
"Facexit" ?
To good to be true... (Score:2)
...but maybe someday.
But they are ... (Score:5, Funny)
One can still hope (Score:2)
I second that (Score:2)
As a german citizen, I would not have the faintest objection to the idea getting rid of all services provided by Meta!
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At the very least, stop posting shit about Meta when what you really mean is Facebook. Of Alphabet for Google.
Re:Of course not. (Score:5, Informative)
Just like Neil Young was totally not trying to get himself pushed out the door of a car at 90mph over Spotify...
He pulled his own music down. You used to call that voting with your wallet. /shrug
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Again. He pulled his own music down again. The problem is he's turning into the musician who cried wolf. He's already abandoned and re-joined Spotify, and abandoned and re-joined Tidal, and now he's abandoned Spotify the only question is for how long.
Re: Of course not. (Score:3)
Heâ(TM)s not known for his consistency. During the 2016 election he called Trump a friend and asked to borrow money from him for a project then complained about Trump licensing his music to use at rallyâ(TM)s.
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Heâ(TM)s not known for his consistency. During the 2016 election he called Trump a friend and asked to borrow money from him for a project then complained about Trump licensing his music to use at rallyâ(TM)s.
Would that be the “just give him a chance” the right was whining about actually being given and now still complained about for actually doing it?
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Again, he didn't own the music.
He sold it off several years ago.
So, technically, he didn't have the right to do so.
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Again, he didn't own the music.
He sold it off several years ago.
So, technically, he didn't have the right to do so.
I guess you're referring to the deal he made with Hipgnosis? Afaik the exact terms of that deal isn't public. To me it seems very unlikely that he sold the ownership of the songs as Hipgnosis is a publicly traded company and would need to inform the market (see recently posted meta/facebook stories). A more likely scenario imho is that he has sold a share of future profits to those songs while retaining ownership. But perhaps you have more information?
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He sold it off several years ago.
So, technically, he didn't have the right to do so.
And yet here we are. He says jump, the record industry says "how high?" Now even if you come here and publish the contract of the sale it doesn't make your point any more valid as evident by what actually happened and the fact that his music is currently not on spotify.
What rights he has (or you think he has given I suspect you have not actually read his sale contract) is irrelevant given the influence he demonstrates over his catalogue.
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He proposed something, something happened. That's really the end of it. Not owning the music (as you postulate without knowing the full details of his contractual agreement) could have allowed all parties to simply ignore him, and yet they didn't.
If you don't think that is influence then I can only recommend a dictionary.
He'll make more from the nostalgia tour (Score:2)
Again. He pulled his own music down again.
Which likely accounts for very little. The real money is live performances. If this PR stunt gets a few more to show up for the ext nostalgia tour the Spotify loss will be more than compensated for.
Re: Of course not. (Score:2)
The problem is he's turning into the musician who cried wolf.
This is hardly a recent development for him. Southern man don't need him around anyhow.
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He pulled his own music down. You used to call that voting with your wallet. /shrug
So... Democratic capitalism?
Just a PR stunt ... (Score:2)
Just like Neil Young was totally not trying to get himself pushed out the door of a car at 90mph over Spotify...
He pulled his own music down. You used to call that voting with your wallet. /shrug
Actually its called a PR stunt. A PR stunt by someone struggling to remain relevant many decades after their fame. Neil is a 1960s/70s star, even in the 80s he dropped to 2nd tier. He's a real musician and all, not a one hit wonder, he's just not timeless.
Huh? Are we thinking of the same Neil Young? (Score:2, Interesting)
Seems to me like he won. Hell, Rogan's press people had to d
Re:Huh? Are we thinking of the same Neil Young? (Score:4, Interesting)
Musicians make so little from Spotify, even if they control their own music, that there's no significant economic penalty to ask to have their music taken off; insofar as it raises their profile it's probably a net benefit.
Spotify doesn't pay artists so little because it's particularly evil; it pays them so little because its business model is wildly unprofitable.
That was the whole point of getting into exclusive podcasts: it's a lot more profitable for them to be content owners than content distributors. The thing is, it's harder to hold content-related controversies at arm's length when it's in effect *your* content.
Actually the attention helped Rogan ... (Score:3)
Seems to me like he won.
Not really. The controversy caused various stories that backed Rogan's questioning of the consensus of the day. For example a story about Oxford and a Tokyo university doing covid19 trials of ivermectin became part of the conversation.
Be careful when people start tossing around words like "misinformation" and "disinformation", a lot of it is political. It used to be considered scientific to be skeptical and want to see the evidence, want to investigate alternatives, etc. Now the "scientists" are saying "
That was already part of the conversation (Score:4, Informative)
And I don't need to be careful with those words. Not here. You're trying to hide behind science. Jimmy Dore does it too. Rogan's too dumb to do it, so he just yells a lot and if that doesn't work kicks people off his show and stops inviting them and others like them. That's why for every 1 left wing commentator on Rogan you'll find 10 or 20 right wing whack-a-doodles.
The left wingers are there to debate and educate. The right wingers are there to propagandize. So while they left wingers push back against Rogan's misinformation and lies, the right wingers encourage it.
And go look up Rogan yelling at a literal expert in primates about Bonobo monkeys. Rogan gets real mad, real fast when he's proven wrong. He's super easy to manipulate. Just make him feel good about himself.
Is that really the kind of guy you want to Stan?
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I'm as lefty tree hugging liberal as the next West coaster. But I've listened to Rogan for years and he's not overtly political. His shows lean in the direction of the politics of the person he's interviewing and that goes in multiple directions. Often politics is not in evidence since he gets a lot of academics on who are there to discuss their academic thing. The piling on of anti Rogan sentiment is at least as misinformed as the off-piste covid misinformers he's had on his show for a tiny fraction of the
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The media in America overwhelmingly is leftist. There's no doubt about this. And that "who owns the media" bit has the ugly stench of antisemitism about it.
You've obviously never listened to Joe Rogan. He's an all around mensch. The rest of us know him though, that's why we can see right through your weird characterization.
Hey, why is it you're presenting the pro-regime case in public? Aren't you leftists supposed to be on the side of the little guy?
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because the right wing dominates the media (they own it, seriously, go look into who actually owns your favorite media outlet).
LOL. Seriously? Ignore the content of the broadcasts, go look at stock holders. Funds and ETFs most likely.
And I don't need to be careful with those words. Not here. You're trying to hide behind science. Jimmy Dore does it too. Rogan's too dumb to do it, so he just yells a lot and if that doesn't work kicks people off his show and stops inviting them and others like them. That's why for every 1 left wing commentator on Rogan you'll find 10 or 20 right wing whack-a-doodles.
Oh, by domination do you mean listeners not sources? Kind of irrelevant in any case. The attacks on Rogan are not grass root, they are media and politically inspired.
The left wingers are there to debate and educate. The right wingers are there to propagandize
LOL, oh god, seriously. You do realize that both sides state the former regarding their team and the latter regarding the other team?
Here's a clue: whether one side lies or not is a coincidence depending on if the facts accidentally lande
Re:Actually the attention helped Rogan ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Be careful when people start tossing around words like "misinformation" and "disinformation", a lot of it is political.
Better advise would be to be careful when you start hearing yourself contorting into a logical pretzel to defend misinformation and disinformation. Usually it's a good indication that you believe a bunch of bullshit.
It used to be considered scientific to be skeptical and want to see the evidence, want to investigate alternatives, etc.
You're a little confused as to who the skeptical ones are here. Hint: it's not the people hawking "cures" that have no evidence behind them. No one is saying that scientists shouldn't investigate alternatives. What they're saying is that doctors shouldn't be prescribing alternatives that have not been demonstrated to have any effectiveness.
Now the "scientists" are saying "trust me". No, that's a politician in a lab coat. A real scientist hands over the data for you to read for yourself, confident that you will come to the same conclusion.
Scientists do publish their data. That never stopped being a thing. But there's a reason that the data is appended on to a paper that explains the data, which is appended on to a summary that simplifies it even more. Why would a scientist be confident that you would arrive at the same conclusion with just the data when you are not a trained scientist and do not know how to interpret the data?
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Be careful when people start tossing around words like "misinformation" and "disinformation", a lot of it is political.
Better advise would be to be careful when you start hearing yourself contorting into a logical pretzel to defend misinformation and disinformation. Usually it's a good indication that you believe a bunch of bullshit.
What "misinformation" and "disinformation" am I defending? All I have said is that when a politician or political operation throws around such words its silly to trust them on face value.
It used to be considered scientific to be skeptical and want to see the evidence, want to investigate alternatives, etc.
You're a little confused as to who the skeptical ones are here...
That's possible, I have never listened to Rogan.
... Hint: it's not the people hawking "cures" that have no evidence behind them.
Really, no evidence? I suppose no evidence has led Oxford to conduct human trials of the controversial ivermectin that Rogan took, under medical supervision.
Do you know how medical research is conducted? Its not necessarily big Pharma doing big studies. It sometimes starts
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>why would so many governments not latch onto ivermectin if it actually helped people without roundworm infections
Some have. Specifically ones in Africa that lacked affordable access to covid vaccines. Ivermectin is an anti viral and shows moderate benefit for covid victims. It doesn't come close to vaccines in terms of efficacy, but it's cheap, safe (when properly dosed) and available.
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Is it its anti-viral properties or its anti-parasite properties that causes improvements in health?
And we're still back to the question that I seem to have been down voted for asking, why wouldn't it be used in other places to take the stress of off the healthcare system? Especially during the time before we had much in the way of vaccines available.
Re:Actually the attention helped Rogan ... (Score:4, Interesting)
And we're still back to the question that I seem to have been down voted for asking, why wouldn't it be used in other places to take the stress of off the healthcare system? Especially during the time before we had much in the way of vaccines available.
Politics. The big orange dude showed an interest in existing inexpensive meds where there were anecdotal claims. Showing an interest in such anecdotal claims put you on his side, the "evil" side. Also which side are the big donors on, the side that makes them money (brand new vaccines and brand new therapeutics) or not (old repurposed stuff).
Speaking of investigations, Oxford and a University in Tokyo are conducting trials of ivermectin use related to covid19. So the anecdotal must be interesting enough to look into once you get past the politics.
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The big question is why would so many governments not latch onto ivermectin if it actually helped people without roundworm infections.
I think that is the veterinary use. The FDA approved human use is for something quite different.
Gee, lets see, do the really big political donors have a preference with respect to an alternative use for an already FDA approved med with a very safe track record compared to something brand new that will require all sorts of emergency government spending and cutting the red tape for a new technology they happened to be researching. Yeah, I wonder where the big doners go given those two options.
Re:Huh? Are we thinking of the same Neil Young? (Score:4, Informative)
Citation [fortune.com]
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Joe Rogan is hardly a racist. You're an eager victim of creative editing.
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Joe Rogan is hardly a racist. You're an eager victim of creative editing.
The
“Powerful combination genetic wise. Right? You get the body of the Black man and then you get the mind of the white man altogether in some strange combination.”
comment did need some apologies, it’s not all hard Ns taken out of context.
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Oh, that one is new to me.
Well he got a bit better since. I still give him more credit than all the nasties out there trying to get him by digging through his whole life. Racism can take many forms, and by themselves generalizations about groups of people are pretty much 'natural thinking'. Ugly forms are a belief in a natural order of groups of people which needs to be enforced, or just taken advantage of.
I find it hard to denounce people for being stupid, but i do denounce people for being mean.
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Is there anything that one would buy with Facebook branding?
Toilet paper.