dingformung

How could it be abused? If all that happens is that they get money from the government each year the only influence the government has is defunding it, but that goes for all areas of public life that are dependent on government money, and there could be a legal framework that makes defunding not easily possible. Though I'm not sure if in case of the US an executive order couldn't bypass such legal boundaries. Which brings us back to the problems of a presidential system - particularly one that we see in the US where the president seems to be above the law similar to a dictator. But I agree that there is a lot that can be done even without public-sector social media. Through respective laws you could force social media platforms to be compatible with each other - kinda like phone providers - so there is a more reasonable competition: You can send a message from Twitter to Facebook and from Xing to Instagram, etc. - I'm sure there are a lot of possibilities.

It wouldn't be under government control, though, otherwise it would be state-media. I'm thinking something like European countries have with broadcasting - only for social media. No state influence here See my edit

I view advertising as capitalist propaganda. Sorry mate ? (Though I was referring to political ads here, namely the Trump campaign) But I agree that well regulated private-sector social media platforms could work as well - I still like the idea of public-sector social media. It's such an important public infrastructure.

You could make it mandatory to replace the picture - or whatever it is that you are deleting - with a descriptive name which then replaces it

Seems stupid to not let a user upload anything ever again only because they used up their upload space.

^Doesn't need to be monitored particularly well, tho, it would be enough if the data wasn't used to target vulnerable individuals and turn them into political tools. Removing propaganda from social media would ruin their business model so it needs to bw funded publicly instead, imo. Also, notice the difference between public media and state media

Yes edit: here's the post in which I explain it (off topic & and can't directly quote bcs topic is closed):

@very honest Aren'T you the guy who thinks Vice is a Russian disinfo operation?

We call this “civilization”. I deboonkt ur hypocrisy there mate

Yeah, it's easier to blame it all on the evil Russians than to admit that there is something fundamentally and inherently wrong with the US' political system and society as a whole. Russia is a useful enemy stereotype. That being said, Russia's government sux

^I think it's not in the same vein, this is much less nasty

this jungle beat is the BOMB!! thanks for explanation

thanks, this whole album (Cold Case Files: Murder Investigation) is pretty good

Lisbon has the best Phô

sim senhor

Gotta go back to Lisbon to catch him/her if I want to. Just thought the photo is cool and used this thread as an excuse to post it

It's technically not my cat, but I took a photo of it so I guess it is now? It's one QT of a cat

Why does the fact that her chancellorship will end in 2021 make the point moot, though? The point was that the transition from Schröder to Merkel in 2005 indeed had more impact on Russia's behaviour/course shift than it may be clear to most people, which has nothing to do with the end of her chancellorship in 2021, so I don't really understand what you mean by that.

To be clear, I didn't call her "left", I called her "left to her party", that means she embodies the social-conservative wing of the CDU. That only means others in her party are more right-wing than her, not that she isn't neoliberal & conservative. She is a center-right politician. I regret ejaculating my opinion all over this thread, damn red wine lol

I didn't mean to turn this into a thread about German politics - maybe let's discuss the actual topic instead - but she actually does often have a position that's contrary to that of the majority of her party, she is left of her own party which is partly the reason for the success of the far-right AfD who managed to fish for conservatives that weren't happy with the modernisation of the CDU and Merkel's more pragmatic centrist course. Another example is the refugee policy. Many people in her party wanted to be a lot more hostile toward refugees entering Europe as a result of the mess that the Middle East for various reasons is but she decided to take a more reasonable humanitarian approach. As much as I don't align with her ideologically, I am worried that we will end up with a worse chancellor this year. Which foreigners got what wrong? I don't understand... I expected that. I didn't know there is another way to do it.

And the same goes for Merkel, who was in the Socialist Party and under direct command of Soviet officials. I'm sure she doesn't have the highest opinion of these sort of people, either. Putin as a KGB man was above Stasi people, hierarchically. I think the Germany-Russia relationship is crucial for the relationship of Russia to the West. Good point mentioning China, though, whose influence is a huge factor. Sorry, that's all only loosely on-topic. Carry on

Her party is mostly against Nord Stream 2 (the planned gas pipeline between Russia and Germany that would supply not only Germany but the entire EU) and as usual, she takes the stance of least conflict. Something lukewarm in between that nobody can really point their finger at and argue against. Nord Stream 2 makes sense, Russian gas is more environment friendly than the US alternative, much cheaper and the closer trading relationships could increase Western influence on Russia and could also be a peace factor (something the Baltic states would really appreciate). Naturally the US sanctions European countries for Nord Stream 2 in order to sell their overpriced and absolutely ecologically harmful fracking gas. I'm not saying that natural gas from Russia is especially good for the environment and that there aren't risks - certain secret services might try to sabotage the pipelines or there might be mistakes etc. - but all in all it's irrational not to realise this project. The US keeps sanctioning Germany and other EU countries for it, though, so maybe the US sanctions might in the end turn the tide - just like they kept Siemens doing business in Iran. We will see. https://www.politico.eu/article/angela-merkel-joe-biden-nord-stream-2/ (Admittedly what I said in my earlier post about her "loving" the sanctions was hyperbolical [and not literally correct in that sense] and referred to a general stance of blind transatlanticism she and her party has - or used to have before Trump)

Making you wear a mask and take a vaccine in order to keep a pandemic from spreading and literally kill hundreds of thousands of people sounds pretty reasonable to me. I think you should direct your infantile emotions of "righteous anger" onto something else less serious. I know you are an angry manchild/-teenager but please live out your belated puberty with a different subject. You know nothing about authoritarianism, obviously. Ask people who actually live/lived in a dictatorship about this sort of stuff.

All German politicians are constantly monitored by US secret services and I'm sure there is a lot of secret interference in political processes happening. "Colony" is of course hyperbolical but the US influence is extreme. Germany wouldn't have to be so submissive towards the US but companies that are connected to Wall Street pay our political parties for doing certain politics that aren't necessarily in the biggest national - or international - interest. The extended arm of the American industrial-military complex and their power elites reach deeply into other nation's governments. Schröder kept Germany from entering the Iraq war against strong pressure by the US - his biggest achievement - so apparently it is possible to act against US politics, theoretically. ? found the first episode. edited my post. I can't play this. Maybe PBS found a way to block people from their website who access with a VPN to evade country restrictions, which would suck.