What Researchers Suspect May Be Fueling Cancer Among Millennials (msn.com) 171
Cancer rates among people aged 15 to 49 have increased 10% since 2000 even as rates have fallen among older populations. Young women face an 83% higher cancer rate than men in the same age range. A 150,000-person study presented at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting found millennials appear to be aging biologically faster than previous generations based on blood biomarkers. That acceleration was associated with up to 42% increased risk for certain cancers including lung, gastrointestinal and uterine malignancies.
Researchers are examining the "exposome" -- the full range of environmental exposures across a person's life. Studies have linked early-onset cancers to medications taken during pregnancy, ultra-processed foods that now account for more than half of daily calorie intake in the United States, circadian rhythm disruption from artificial light and shift work, and chemical exposures. Gary Patti at Washington University is using zebrafish exposed to known and suspected carcinogens to track tumor development. His lab has developed systems to scan blood samples for tens of thousands of chemicals simultaneously to identify signatures appearing more frequently in early-onset cancer patients.
Researchers are examining the "exposome" -- the full range of environmental exposures across a person's life. Studies have linked early-onset cancers to medications taken during pregnancy, ultra-processed foods that now account for more than half of daily calorie intake in the United States, circadian rhythm disruption from artificial light and shift work, and chemical exposures. Gary Patti at Washington University is using zebrafish exposed to known and suspected carcinogens to track tumor development. His lab has developed systems to scan blood samples for tens of thousands of chemicals simultaneously to identify signatures appearing more frequently in early-onset cancer patients.
Limits of model organisms (Score:3)
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What I'm getting at is the dearth of real, definite "cures" as opposed to "we've beaten it back, so you're cancer-free right now. And you've probably got lots of trouble-free years. But who knows." Along the lines of this XKCD comic [xkcd.com].
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What you want ain't happening, by the very nature of the disease. It takes only a handful of cancerous cells among the trillions in your body to cause a recurrence. It's a needle in a haystack you'll never find, and even if it's present, it may not gain a foothold again.
"Your chances of remaining cancer-free look good" is the best you're gonna get.
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Re:Limits of model organisms (Score:5, Interesting)
So new vitamins were still being discovered in 1948. This led me to start listing all the incredible amazing advances in the 20th century: Penicillin was discovered in 1928 and sulfa drugs in the 1930s. Before then, there was virtually no effective treatment for infectious diseases.
The first vaccination was for smallpox, known since the 18th century or earlier. Smallpox was completely eradicated in the 20th century (except for samples in labs). Polio and measles were nearly eliminated, but now are resurging, because apparently some people don't "believe in" vaccines. A lot of new drugs are monoclonal antibodies, a recent development (recognizable because their generic names end in -mab.)
Diagnostic modalities: "first photograph of a human body part using X-rays" was made in 1895 [wikipedia.org]; now we have ultrasound, CT scans, and MRIs, not to mention electron microscopes, fluorescence microscopes, confocal microscropes, mass spectrometers, and a vast array of tests.
And that's just medicine: the Wright brothers first flew in 1903: 100 yards, ten feet off the ground. Less than 70 years later, humans on the moon and a supersonic passenger transport. Amplification by vacuum tube became practical [wikipedia.org] only with Lee de Forest's 1907 invention of the three-terminal 'audion' tube." Transistors invented in 1947, then integrated circuits; now microprocessors contain billions of transistors on a single silicon chip.
It's been quite a ride. Frankly, the biggest problems now are in translating from the lab into practical applications and then distribution of the solutions. And those problems are mostly social and political. But there's still need for both basic and applied research, which of course requires funding from somewhere -- but that's another story.
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We've done a pretty amazing job of cancer in humans too.
I know I would rather have today's treatments than the ones from when I was a child.
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Survival rates on most cancers are actually pretty goddamn good, where they were virtual zero 70 years ago.
In my extended family alone, I've got 6 cancer survivors, and 1 that didn't.
Of course, the 1 that didn't had a glioblastoma- which have been pretty impervious to medical science given its predilection for growing tendrils throughout your brain.
Tylenol (Score:2)
Vaping (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Vaping (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect that keeps them under the percent gen X that were smoking at the same age, so I doubt it's behind the increase.
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Oh sure, in the 90s we did every drug we could get our hands on.
"It is clear that in the '90s there has been a considerable resurgence of drug use. Marijuana use, in particular, has led the increase, but there are other drugs, including ones as dangerous as heroin, which have grown in use,"
https://www.psychiatrictimes.c... [psychiatrictimes.com]
Yeah, sorry, its not the vapes even if the vapes are bad.
Nah, we don't need any studies (Score:5, Funny)
RFK Jr. just knows the cause, whatever it is.
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Well, we should all judiciously use OTC meds....they pretty much all have some sort of side effects.
I have horrible allergies ...and Benadryl is a friend of mine, but I watch it....
But there are signs it can contribute to dementia risks [harvard.edu] in humans.
So, careful with ANY OTC meds the public can access.
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Orange Jesus already has it figured out. If you don't test
, there won't be any new cases!
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Yeah, RFK Jr can tell who's full of cancer just by looking at 'em in airports.
Still room for more funny on the dark story. America has struck it rich in the stupid mine.
Not really a joke, but my considered response of the weak week:
Everyone wants a sage oracle to trust. But you have to be fundamentally stupid to mistake the Yuge Orange Buffoon for anything but a silly and grotesque liar. The spice called sage is more honest and sincere.
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RFK Jr can also point you to a company selling magic juices, fully natural of course, that will prevent cancer. No connection with his own bank account.
All that poison people eat and smear on their skin (Score:2, Informative)
Corporate poison that people are sold that accumulates in the body which can't get rid of it until it becomes toxic and disrupts metabolic processes. We're being manipulated so the rich can get needlessly richer. Just stop buying crap from corporations. Pollution is bad enough but we compound it by polluting ourselves. Like all those fake fragrances and chemicals in our cleaning and health products. Things like air 'fresheners' are just evil
Re:All that poison people eat and smear on their s (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re: All that poison people eat and smear on their (Score:2)
"Most natural fragrances are actual drugs that have significant potency."
Most fragrances aren't natural. At least not here in the US. The balance might be different in the EU where they are much more willing to ban compounds on the basis that they are probably carcinogenic.
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"Most natural fragrances are actual drugs that have significant potency."
Most fragrances aren't natural. At least not here in the US. The balance might be different in the EU where they are much more willing to ban compounds on the basis that they are probably carcinogenic.
I mean, most fragrances in products really are natural mostly because we have evolved a sense of smell to detect them because they are so bio active, but not at the concentrations we use them at meaning none are natural in a strict sense. While a small exposure in passing a flower bed may be natural, taking 700 lbs of flowers/plants and packing it into 4oz of concentrate that’s pumped out to 100x the passing smell but 24-7 is not exactly “safe because it’s natural”.
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"Safe because it's natural" is trivially false. Consider lead, consider arsenic. Consider smallpox.
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"Safe because it's natural" is trivially false. Consider lead, consider arsenic. Consider smallpox.
I prefer poison ivy “bath tissue”, castor bean chili, and hemlock shakes but to each their own.
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I'm glad you two had that part of that conversation without me, because I wasn't trying to go anywhere near that argument anyway. I was only pointing out that what natural stuff does is mostly irrelevant in the cases I'm concerned about because they don't primarily involve natural fragrances. Those are expensive by comparison, and variable in effect when what's wanted is consistency. Here in the USA we seem to want to pound everything full of synthetic fragrances when there's really no need for them. When I
Re:All that poison people eat and smear on their s (Score:5, Informative)
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chicken nuggets and fries (Score:2, Informative)
We have entire generations that will only eat chicken nuggets and fries. Keep wondering why they are unhealthy.
Vapes (Score:2)
Blowin' fat clouds
Stress (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yeah... this would be my bet, honestly? Most of the other suspected causes mentioned are really things you'd be hard-pressed to pin as things only the millennials would be predominantly exposed do. Ultra-processed foods, for example, are consumed in large quantities by Gen-X -- because they were the "latch-key kids" who got used to the whole idea of fending for themselves at an early age. As a pre-teen or teen trying to fix their own meals, they turned to all the fast/easy solutions available to them and
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Better diagnosis (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd like to see a good line of evidence eliminating the possibility that better diagnosis technology --finding cancers that previously wouldn't have been discovered-- isn't the cause.
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I mean sure, but then you'll have addressed cancer and missed the underlying problem of blood aging biomarkers being higher. Even if better diagnosis was the cause of increased cancer diagnosis, it doesn't account for anything else in the underlying study.
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That's an interesting point. It's definitely true that some past spikes in disease reporting have been caused by improved diagnosis.
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Also worth mentioning that the change isn't in all cancers, as the chart in the article shows [akamaized.net]. That evidence weighs against dietary or lifestyle choices generally (but not lifestyles like "smoking" of course).
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You won't find the study you need to take your head out of the sand because it's an absurd claim that doesn't require direct studies. Applying your same argument to weight, you're claiming our population has always been this fat, we've only now noticed it because our digital scales are better. Apparently 50 years ago all the fat people hid in their homes naked. There's no study on that. Instead you can look at indirect metrics like clothing manufactures increasingly making and selling larger sized cloth
Plastics. The answer is microplastics (Score:3)
Microplastics are this generations lead in gasoline. Crappy processed food would be the second culprit, followed by vaping and whatever crap goes into that.
So, can you pay me all that research money now?
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Microplastics are this generations lead in gasoline. Crappy processed food would be the second culprit, followed by vaping and whatever crap goes into that.
So, can you pay me all that research money now?
Those are great hypotheses. Now prove them likely true with preliminary evidence that is rigorously collected so that it might be duplicated by others, and then you get a shot at research money. With that research money, you then need to perform additional data collection and hypothesis testing in a way that, again, is rigorous, using tools and techniques that are widely available, so that others can duplicate and extend your findings. And if the additional data you collect shows that you were wrong, the
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The American Dream (Score:3)
"Studies have linked early-onset cancers to medications taken during pregnancy, ultra-processed foods that now account for more than half of daily calorie intake in the United States, circadian rhythm disruption from artificial light and shift work, and chemical exposures."
What a great country!
Who though that crapping all over the environment (Score:2)
Was bad for the next generation. Evil at work.
Joe Jackson said it first (Score:2)
In 1992 he released a song titled "Everything Gives You Cancer". At the time the claim was exaggeration for effect. Now, it seems to be damned near factual.
Let me guess... (Score:2)
It's that their mothers took Tylenol while carrying their babies?
US Food Ingredient == EU Toxic Waste (Score:3)
There are food additives that are "legal" to use in the US that are classified as 'effing bona-fide Toxic Waste in the EU and can't even be legally disposed of in regular landfills. There are literally thousands of additives that are flat-out _illegal_ in the EU that can be used in food in the US.
To me there is no wonder that you guys have cancer rates rising.
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Smart people aren't saying smartphones, because well, they're not stupid.
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I doubt that there are a lot of "smart" people saying that people spending an extra 90 minutes sitting on a couch and staring at a screen every day instead of going outside and exercising is lowering their risk of cancer. If they are, they aren't very smart.
Re:\o/ (Score:5, Insightful)
Person 2: "That's kind of a stupid take."
Person 1: "Whenever I see anyone responding with a personal attack (even an indirect one), I see a tacit acknowledgement that the point cannot be questioned on its merits."
Some assertions are so dumb, they require no refutations, because only dumb people believe them. Honestly, the reason the internet has gone to shit is because the cost to post a stupid thing is vastly lower than the post to thoroughly demonstrate why it's a stupid thing.
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The thing we call a sphere- Earth- is really a bizarre 4-dimensional object in a curved spacetime.
Takes nothing but a transform to get us from what we perceive, to what it is.
Likewise, it's nothing but a transform from the 3-dimensional Earth to an infinite 2-dimensional flat Earth. And.... it's not wrong.
Of course, that's not what they mean by "flat Earth", but meh. We're having fun here.
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OTOH, smartphones *do* put a lot of plasticizers in the breathing pathway, so it's likely a (small) contributory factor.
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Imagine such,
You assert that gravitation is in fact not a geometric consequence of a curved Minkowski spacetime, and caused by electromagnetic radiation.
Einstein responds that you are a fucking moron.
Has Einstein just tacitly acknowledged that your point cannot be questioned on its merits? Of course he hasn't. He has decided that you aren't worth doing so.
You're clearly just not a very
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It is an unfortunate part of the Authoritarian playbook to go after science and academia in general.
The Nazis went after "Jewish Science", notably Relativity , as well as trying to assert the reality of "social darwinism" , amongst their attacks on sociology, sexual health, queer theory and other things they put under their coined term "cultural marxism".
Meanwhile over in the USSR Stalins boys went after evolution prefering lysenkoism (which let them imagine marxism would be passed down by genes.). Maos peo
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Authoritarians really dont like Academia. Book burners, Censors, and those that seek to be King don't want you to think for yourself.
Indeed - DJT, current POTUS:
smart people don't like me
and let's not forget
I love the poorly educated.
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Re:\o/ (Score:5, Informative)
Show me the science which proves that smartphone radiation doesn't cause cancer..
You obviously don't understand statistics or science, but here's a link in case other people are interested:
https://www.reuters.com/busine... [reuters.com]
Seriously, you shouldn't reply to me, you'll be wasting your time. Instead, you should go take a statistics class.
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Re: \o/ (Score:2)
Re: \o/ (Score:2)
Go ahead, prove a negative.
Re: \o/ (Score:2)
"Seriously, you guys need to chill."
True, you are way too successful at trolling these people.
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Seriously, you guys need to chill.
No, you need to learn statistics.
If there's evidence of safety, simply link to it.
There's evidence. It was posted, but you didn't understand it, because you don't understand statistics. You're not a moron, just ignorant. Take a statistics class.
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You don't need to prove a negative- which yes, you absolutely can prove a negative. It's just difficult.
In this case, we take the world population, and look for evidence that cancer is caused by cell phone use.
If we cannot find it, then the negative is effectively proven.
Trying to make a God of the Gaps argument for non-ionizing radio-wave induced cancer isn't smart- in fact, it's quite dumb.
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One can only prove a negative (in general) given a restricted domain.
SOME negatives can be proven.
In this particular case, it would be possible to prove that smartphones have no large effect, but I doubt that it would be possible to prove that they have no effect.
FWIW, I believe it HAS been proven that smartphones have no large effect on cancer rates for exposure periods of less than a decade...but do note the qualification. Proof of that kind of statement is, as you admit, difficult. Proving that they ha
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To show otherwise is quite easy. There are many populations that do not use cell phones.
And yes, you can only prove a negative within a restricted domain.
But all relevant discussions have some domain which can be restricted.
I do not need to prove that a cell phone is not linked to cancer incidence for all of time, I only need to show that it isn't over the course of a human lifetime.
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Agreed, but I don't think any of the existing studies have actually done this. And it would be extremely difficult.
(OTOH, yes, there is no evidence to support the conjecture that they are causally related to the increase in cancer. Though I suspect that there might be a strong causal correlation with cellphones being used after a cancer diagnosis.)
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They talked an LLM into agreeing that it wasn't impossible, thus discovering that cell phones cause cancer.
The brilliance of the argument, is that no mechanism is needed.
Re:\o/ (Score:5, Interesting)
Although these reactive molecules can potentially cause damage to biological material and impede functionality, their presence and production should not generally be considered harmful.
ROS are ubiquitous in human cells. Your cells literally use them to power themselves.
RF radiation is ubiquitous in the world- long before the advent of the first bit of technology.
The RF can lead to an increase in ROS is unsurprising.
RF is absorbed by the body.
What you cannot demonstrate, is that it represents a biologically relevant increase in oxidative stress above background.
For every study showing that RF of some wavelength increases ROS somewhere in the cell, there's another showing that it lowers it.
And the final say, is you cannot epidemiologically show an increase in cancer among population that use cell phones, and those who do not.
Calm your arrogance pls (Score:2)
ROS are ubiquitous in human cells. Your cells literally use them to power themselves.
ROS is a byproduct like pollution and must be controlled. Most ROS in cells are from mitochondria, which use fat and sugar to turn ADP into ATP by adding electrons. ROS are chemical off products like superoxides, peroxidies etc. Your antioxidants work to render these inert, like superoxide dismutate, catylase, etc. They don't "power the cell"
Here's some more info. There is no ability to QA mitochondria besides the ones that persist, persist, the ones that are dysfunctional, rupture and are removed. Surviv
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They don't "power the cell"
You're right- that wording was weird.
It should have said,
"Your cells literally use the production of them to power themselves."
ROS production was an evolutionary decision.
That ROS are destructive to cellular machinery is without question.
Their absence is also death.
Measuring an increase in ROS does not mean measuring an increase in the probability of a cell forming cancer. It can simply be an increase in its metabolism, and there is no direct link between metabolic rate and probability of cancer.
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Quite possibly people using cellphones tend to have a disrupted sleep cycle, which is known to (slightly) increase rates of cancer. (E.g. & IIRC, shift workers tend to die several years earlier, among other problems.)
There are probably other plausible mechanisms, also. (I know about disrupted sleep cycles, because I've gotten several spam calls at wildly inappropriate times.)
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For me, it was computers... and then it was girlfriends over the (wired!) phone... then it was school... then it was work.
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But he's nevertheless correct.
Phones have been extensively researched, and there's no evidence that they cause cancer.
(on the other hand, the lack of exercise caused by sitting in a chair and being glued to your phone and your many other devices may be a factor.)
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Most of those studies were short term, and would only find large effects. Proving that there's no small effect over decades is probably impossible.
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Whenever I see anyone responding with a personal attack (even an indirect one), I see a tacit acknowledgement that the point cannot be questioned on its merits.
In some cases it's more that the point is not deserving of even having its merits discussed. The Smartphone cause cancer crowd are right up there with the flat earthers and the moon walk being faked. Some discussions aren't worth entertaining, and we should just call fucking morons fucking morons and get on with our lives without them.
Re: \o/ (Score:2)
That's not how anything works.
Also, that was a direct attack, but you weren't smart enough to recognize that.
Whether an attack is made or not is orthogonal to whether the person can refute your dumb-assed claim.
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Mod grandparent funny. FP and defense of FP not so much. (Charitable assumption that FP was seeking Funny?)
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Noone is allowed to say smartphones
Or blue hair dye.
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Yeah...sure was fun as a kid, riding our bicycles behind the mosquito fogging trucks in the summer evenings....breathing in all that nourishing DDT.
Re: \o/ (Score:3)
There was more pollution then, but we have exotic new kinds of pollution that literally didn't exist then, like that related to PTFE production.
Re:\o/ (Score:5, Interesting)
It probably is smartphones, but not because of the wifi signal. Its because of the stress you experience from being connected at all times.
Re: \o/ (Score:2)
Not the smartphones per se. But the fact that they tend to keep you indoors away from the Vitamin D our bodies critically need. Find 'Medcram' on YouTube for a medical perspective about this vitamin. No, pills will not work as good.
And while we're talking about things no one is allowed to talk about, let's bring up a certain under-tested mandated medicine at one time for everyone also? If you care, Dr. Campbell on YouTube is a good resource for that.
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That kind of thing is possible in Russia and China.
In America, if the GOP stops you, you sue and get tons of coverage. If the DNC stops you, Trump and he says it and gets tons of coverage.
If the GOP and DNC stop you, then Russia and China shout it to the world
The only time the kind of stupid censorship you describe happens is when the government controls everything - and in that case a-holes like you are not allowed to say stupid crap like "They stop us from speaking."
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Most of the things you mentioned are not censure. Censure is being punished buy the government for your words, not your actions. Refusing to take a jab or administar one is not a free speech issue.
When someone that is not the government does something that is not censure either - just as idiots like you have the rights to say stupid things, your bosses have the right to disagree and fire your dumb ass.
If you work for the government, they do have the right for firing you for saying those things while on th
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WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? Trump was banned from YouTube on Jan 12th and Meta around Jan 7th. TRUMP WAS PRESIDENT AT THE TIME. He didn't pressure companies to ban himself. Those companies chose to ban him because his Jan 6th conduct didn't follow their ToS.
YouTube had suspended Trump from the platform on January 12, 2021, claiming it had “concerns about the ongoing potential for violence”.
This came after Trump uploaded a video claiming his speech before the riot at the Capitol was “totally appropriate".
and
Zuckerberg said in a Jan. 7, 2021, post on Facebook that Trump’s refusal to condemn his supporters who stormed and occupied the Capitol showed that he “intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power
That is not the government censoring anything. That is companies choosing to use their free speech to block someone. They do it all the time to tons of people and it's perfectly legal. Those settlement payments were bribes to kee
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21st century bribery. They could have fault it in court and risked the power of the government coming down on them or paid off Trump and got to sit at his inauguration as well as other favours.
Re: Silence (Score:2)
You mean he pretends to not know who he's talking about, because he's too cowardly. Speaking of which...