Turbulent_Singularity
No bio...
User ID: 3294
Turbulent_Singularity
11mo ago
A few possibilities
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Zuckerberg is a weather vane and just follows the vibe wherever it shifts. He is changing now just cause the vibe shifted. (sub-possibility 1: he shifts for the money. sub-possibility 2: he is legitimately just a sheep and follows the crowd)
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Zuckerberg is a "censorious worm". Trump winning means he can't censor as much as wants anymore so he will lay low until he can censor again (alternatively, he will work with Trump to censor now that he is in power)
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Zuckerberg, like many people in silicon valley, always had pro free speech leanings. However, since he was running a company he censored more than he wanted to. Eventually, he realized that censorship both isn't effective and the bar for what needs to be censored will continuously be raised, so, with the recent vibe shift, he reverted to his pro free speech stance.
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Zuckerberg, like many Americans, had a genuine shift in belief. Similar to 3, but instead of him censoring more than he wanted to, he was actually convinced that he should censor more and that this time was justified. Eventually, like many other Americans, he realized censorship doesn't work, so he shifted back to pro free speech
Right now, I think possibility 4 is the most likely but maybe I'm just naive
Turbulent_Singularity
11mo ago
Yes, nothing happened.
However, "nothing happened because they didn't try to make something happen" and "They tried to make things happen, but they weren't successful" is a useful distinction to make when trying to predict the future.
Turbulent_Singularity
11mo ago
The only reason I am skeptical is because I am skeptical of giving the MTA any more money. I have no clue exactly why that organization is so incompetent. Is just generally government run incompetence? Is it unions shaking down the MTA making construction, maintenance and running the MTA prohibitively expensive? Is it that the state of New York runs the MTA rather than the city so incentives aren't aligned? Is it just expensive cause it is old and you need to shovel absurd amounts of money to modernize the whole thing? Maybe it's the 24/7 subways making it expensive. I've heard all this and more.
Turbulent_Singularity
11mo ago
I do not agree that Trump is a fascist, but I always found the argument of "nothing happened last time" to be super weak. Trump himself repeats that he had people in his administration constantly get in his way and prevent him from doing what he wanted to do. This is something both Trump loyalists and #resist people both agree on.
Zuckerberg was on Joe Rogan
Zuckerberg says that the EU is fining American tech companies 100 million here, a billion there and that it is all adding up. He says that the US government should protect US tech companies. Then he says "all these fines are basically like a tariff" and my ears perked up. Speculation: I now 100% believe that this was the angle Zuckerberg was using when he was talking with Trump. I wonder how much money and time the billionaires Trump is meeting are spending trying to phrase things in a way that Trump would respond well to. Sure, Zuckerberg could've just went with a generic right wing deregulation argument, but calling it a tariff makes Trump way more likely to remember it.
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