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I have no great love for the current administration and nor do I agree with most of its policies.
But I’m definitely going to have to see a source on the claims mentioned in this post.
Are you an idiot or have you not been paying attention?
This isn’t “I need a source” type stuff. They aren’t hiding this…they just aren’t talking about it on their platforms, for obvious reasons.
Do you know who Elon Musk is? Jeff Bezos? Larry Ellison?
You should. Because they are paying a lot of money to have nearly exclusive control (among themselves) of all national media.
Meanwhile, Sinclair and Nexstar are fighting to control all of the local broadcast stations. They aren’t just buying up the station, they are buying the reputations of the known and trusted local news-anchors. That shit is priceless when you are running a propaganda machine.
This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.
You should. Because they are paying a lot of money to have nearly exclusive control (among themselves) of all national media
Once again, I’m going to need to see some proof.
All I see are wild-ass claims. Claims, claims, claims.
Seriously, what’s happening in the U.S. is insane. I am ashamed of my country. But one thing I’m tired of is these wild claims from all sides, by the way. You think the right MAGA camp isn’t making the same wild accusations against the left? They are. My request remains the same: show me some fucking proof.
I get what you’re saying but honestly I’m finding it quite surprising that you’re on Lemmy and haven’t already seen it a billion times.
Alright, the founder of Oracle…One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison…had a kid. David. David owns Skydance Media. He founded it in 2010. Daddy helped him round up the capital to acquire Paramount, last year.
Here’s what that got him.. But importantly, CBS (including many local stations)
Now he’s trying (and thus far succeeding) to also buy Warner Brothers. Here’s what’s in that package. Importantly, CNN.
Oh yeah, he also has a big stake in TikTok, via Oracle.
You know Jeff Bezos, yea? He bought WaPo a while ago now, and over the past couple of years has been asserting more influence over the content of the paper, drawing sharp criticism. Relevant.
We all know about Rupert Murdoch. No sense talking about him.
And we all know who owns Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, and what a colossal piece of shit he is.
And who owns X, and how he makes Zuck look like a rabbit turd.
I really hope I don’t have to explain Sinclair and Nexstar to you. They’ve been buying up practically every local broadcast affiliate. In my area, all local broadcast news is controlled by these two companies. Sinclair especially has been called out a few times calling for national runs of their highly opinionated script (“this is extremely dangerous to our democracy”).
And then, there’s /u/spez. Fuck /u/spez.
For extra credit, Peter Theil. Manipulative, conniving, petty piece of shit that he is. Founded Palantir, the surveillance mecha. Look how he used Hulk Hogan for litigious revenge. Major Trump supporter. Huge bigot. Vance’s mentor. An openly gay, apartheid, libertarian bigot. You can’t make this shit up.
There’s a lot for you to go on here. It’s not like I can just give you a link that explains everything. You really need to be following along because there’s years of shit to unpack here, and as they enjoy controlling the news, they aren’t going to be outright about telling you about it. You’ve got to dig.
I get it. I feel like a conspiracy nutter now too. But I don’t have the time to hold your hand and open your eyes to the reality that’s been surrounding you for years. It’s there. Look.
The fourth estate is entirely controlled by billionaire interests that are friends, donors, and protectors of Trump. It’s not hidden.
Thank fuck I literally use none of those services.
Right? It’s getting hard to talk to people nowadays because everyone seems brainwashed.
But you can’t get them out of it. Asking people to not check those feeds every day is like asking them to go without water.
It’s embarrassing how dependant folks have become with technology and social media. I’m not immune myself, but I’ll drop anything that goes against my values.
I keep trying to relate this to when we started mass-producing books. It must have been the same. We integrated that tech and got better.
I am not personally a fan right now.
I wish WhatsApp wasn’t the main form of communication in my area of the world.
That’s the only one I’m on and it’s because I could not convince anyone around me to just use texts or download signal
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Neither do I, I only use it for sending and recieving messages. I don’t think anyone uses the AI bullshit that was added to it.
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It was so much better when the search bar was just for contacts or chat messages instead of all the genuinely useless terms
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The dumb thing is that Meta owns Instagram and WhatsApp, so if every one of their apps have these features what’s the point of downloading more than one of them?
EDIT: I misread telegram as Instagram lmao, but either way there’s no point in using any of them
Somebody needs to jailbreak WhatsApp interoperability. Especially now that their ‘encryption’ has been demonstrated to be a farce.
I didn’t try it but this claims to have done it: https://www.beeper.com/
Yes you should break yourself from all of the US and Israeli tech stack. They cannot be trusted.
You should break yourself from any tech stack that isn’t open source and either decentralized or federated if it’s an online service, regardless of country of origin.
It’s hard to get away from the hardware companies through. I’m all AMD because they’re a little less evil, but they’re in the same AI bubble and also currently doing little in terms of innovation since they already have the performance advantage
ur still affected by how these influence the news cycle and general societal conversation
Yeah that’s the problem. I don’t use them, but a bunch of other people do. How do we get them to stop?
The only one mentioned here that i have is WhatsApp, but i barely use it
Although i do still use some other nonfree Amerikkkan services. Discord is the main one, i’m quite active on there and it’s not that easy to replace because of its structure with communities (also there aren’t good alternatives yet, quite hopeful for Fluxer tho). I also use an iPhone and Apple Messages, and i have a Macbook (which I don’t use much at the moment) but I’m gonna install Linux on it. I don’t make use of iCloud tho, i use Proton Drive and selfhosted email.
I’m not trying to rib you here, but I hate that excuse that it’s too hard to drop these products. We’ve lived thousands of years without them, but lack the will now? WTF kinda weak ass shit is that?
I am not saying that it’s hard to drop
I’m saying that because of Discord’s structure it’s hard to move Discord communities to other platforms because you need to move a community of many people rather than just an account on which you post and view posts like when moving from Twitter to Mastodon or Reddit to Lemmy
It’s not hard at all. You either move or you don’t. It’s binary. If you can’t be bothered to do a little bit of legwork then just stay where you are and give the corps what they want. If that fragments your community so be it, build another one. All I hear are excuses as to why folks can’t stand by their morals because it’s inconvenient. IMO it’s pathetic, but everyone is entitled to their opinion.
Lol. Lmao even. You think shaping your habits will protect you. You can’t personal responsibility your way out of this.
If you can’t solve the problem 100%, why even bother.
I don’t think that’s the criticism, rather we fixing the problem at the wrong end of things. We can’t fix society by stressing personal responsibility, we need a different tactic.
If the tactic doesn’t benefit the person doing it at all, then they won’t do it.
Sure, and that’s why I don’t bother telling people their voting tactics are wrong.
It has little to do with protection and more to do with keeping a clean conscience. I won’t support evil.
I mean, congrats? Kind of irrelevant to the discussion here, then.
“Oligarchy becomes smaller and more powerful” - article
“Good thing they don’t get my money via direct means” - you
Lol, short of going out and killing these bastards there isn’t much else I can do other than to stop supporting these services. I have to hope if enough folks like me stop using these services they will fail. There is a point where it only takes one straw to break the camels back.
That’s basing your imagination that we’re a meritocracy. There’s meaning behind the saying “failing upwards”. I don’t know how to counteract it either, but their success comes from failure. Let alone the Island stuff.
What are you even talking about? I didn’t say shit about meritocracy or failing upwards. I’m talking about not supporting those services and platforms that support evil.
Right, and I’m trying to explain to you that it’s not what they base their success on. I know you mean well, but we’re not a meritocracy and they do fail upwards.
The issue here isn’t your about your conscious. The majority of people do use these and those people are being influenced.
Your comment has a sort of fuck you I got mine vibe to it.
No it’s not, lol. If people stop using these platforms they will fail. Sounds to me like you’re just justifying your continued support of these services and platforms. Defeatist loser mentality.
You just assumed I use those platforms which makes you the fool here.
You not supporting evil doesn’t stop evil. To try for another approach here since you seem rather dense, evil prevails when good men do nothing.
I’m sure you’ll just attack that too becuase what’s important here to you is your feelings. Doing something was never going to be an option for you
And what are you doing Mr. Holier-than-thou?
Thank you for asking so nicely and with such curtesy and humility after graciously answer my questions.
I actively encourage and warn others to not use these platforms. I also pirate all their shit and share it with those around me who struggle to shake their addiction to the content.
But everyone else does and they will be voting in the next election dragging you down with them.
I can’t control other people, only myself. If they want to sleepwalk into lies and fake propaganda there is nothing I can do.
Your point?
The control of media and of communication by the wealthy is mainly a threat to society.
It’s not like eating junk food where you’re only harming yourself.
We’re all threatened by people being ignorant and propagandized.
Now, what you can do, there are many things. Talk to your neighbors, involve yourself in your community, get people to come on the Fediverse, demonstrate, etc.
I do all of that already. If my friends and family take my advice it is their choice. I cannot nor would I want to force them into it. You can’t save people from themselves, especially if they’re unwilling. You can only save yourself.
I commend you for doing your part.
I don’t either. Too bad 99.9% of the rest of the people do.
Too bad 99.9% of the rest of the people do.
This is the problem.
Good job lemmings, pat on the back for separating yourself from all this bullshit. Unfortunately, the thousands of us here don’t have super mega voting power…
Really is a shame
Lol, posted on “X”
Exactly where people who need to read this message are. What’s your point?
Moral superiority. It’s seems to be a strong theme around here. Why worry about others when we’re all so much better then them.
assigning moral value to software is such a weird thing when you really think about it
“haha look i’m a morally superior person due to the specific 1s and 0s that run on my CPU” ok
You just described a sizeable portion of the FOSS community.
As somebody that loves FOSS, the community around it can come off like a morally superior vegan/christian/other-commilunity-known-for-this-attitude quite often. “I DID IT, WHY CANT YOU!?” Is an attitude I’ve encountered frequently, and it’s hard to get them to understand that not everybody has the same tech knowledge level, or use cases, or can manage the loss that comes with stopping/moving away from corporate solutions.
It’s also funny and weird how the epstein files are also just 1s and 0s
With a paid blue verification check mark, no less.
gotta reach people
posting it on an alternative would be preaching to the choir
And the woke media continues to report news about trump in a negative manner. Pay attention
Do you just login to this account every month or so to collect downvotes?
Shut the fuck up, fucking dipshit
Weird, because all i have seen is regular news outlets sugarcoat and protect everything he says and has done for years now.
Loser
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The beacon of freedom and democracy, as that loosely arranged attempt at a nation state has been called, certainly is not.
(Edit: and unlike some people seem to think, it has never ever been)
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People are talking about it, but the conversations are muffled or muted by those same billionaires.
Large no kings rallies should have had massive coverage, but were actively ignored by the news who frequently report on a handful of protestors who are promoting hate. Heck, with all of the pro Trump bullshit being a tidal wave of shit it just drowns out everything else so trying to actively discuss problems anywhere but niche communities is like trying to have a conversation in the middle of the dance floor at a rave.
I hope Lina Khan gets her old job back
She’s Mamdani co transition team or something like that.
They said…on twitter/X … with a blue check…
Someone’s gotta reach where the masses are
And how dare they criticize capitalism while living in a capitalist country!
And how dare they push for better labor laws while using electronics made by child labor!
Stop with the silliness.
Just gonna ignore that blue mark huh. Or do you not know what that means
It means they reach a bigger audience.
But twitter is a nazi platform and there are valid alternatives available.
Alao participation in capitalism might be necessary to survive, posting on Twitter isnt.
gotta reach people
You criticize society, yet you live in one.
Paying for the checkmark is out of line though.
Lol 185+ stations.
Sinclair waged this war a decade ago and won. That number needs a couple zeros on it.
Time to study socialist theory. Seriously! https://redsails.org/
Delete all your accounts, and tell all your friends and family to do the same. Refuse and reject any service designed to fixate your attention. You won’t miss them, most people alive today lived in a world without their influence.
Oligarchy speed run!
We need socialism
Socialism doesn’t really address any of that, instead you just have a political party elite that fills that plutocrat class. It’s the same shit when it comes to a few megalomaniacs ending up in control of everything.
What you need is an actual fucking democracy.
What about council communism?
