So Proton is out.

Sorry, I won’t trust a service that licks fascist boots.

Is it? The bullshit people usually are just pissed; all news they hear is horrible

Oh yeah, though at this point who cares, it’s all bullshit

Are they?

Are you okay with the current state of affairs where every idiot gets given a bullhorn to spew their nonsense, where lying is not an exception, it’s not a sometimes, but it’s actually the norm?

Go to a random website and chances are that it’s full of clickbait bullshit lies. Get some product from any company, check information about it and it’s almost guaranteed overstated and lies.

Where does it end?

I’m assuming you didn’t read or just pretend, but I’ll assume you very much know what I mean.

Free speech and the Internet is a horrible combination as the Internet gives a bullhorn to extremists, liars, conspiracy theorists and cheaters. Basically a large group of sociopaths who are willing to do the work to manipulate people for their own benefit and theirs alone.

Add AI to the mix and it becomes an absolute nightmare.

I’m not talking about you disagreeing with the government, let that be protected. I’m talking about the need for at least a basis of facts from which we can have a reasoned argument.

How am I to have a discussion with you about how to solve climate change if you heard from Alex Jones, oan, Fox news, and a bunch of conspiracy theorists that climate change is a hoax and a plot to rape your children, and you actually believe this nonsense?

That is where we are at RIGHT NOW.

Misinformation should simply not be protected anymore, Bo matter who it’s coming from. If you’re a politician and you spew unscientific bullshit you should be warned, second time fired. If a company publishes a fake scientific research paper to discredit climate change and it turns out it’s funded by oil companies? Throw all their CEO’s in jail for a year.

You’d be surprised how fast truth becomes a thing

Tell me: right now, what source of information can I still trust at all? A president? HAH! Those are the worst. Obama lied like 25% of the time, was it? Trump must be in the 80-90% somewhere. Same goes for news organizations, same goes for political organizations, same goes for the vast majority of websites that kust publish clickbait bullshit to get you to click, same goes for…

It has to stop

For sure. However, you’ll want allies, no matter how powerful you are. Maybe a Schengen type situation would be interesting?

A lot of values are similar, make an open trade and travel zone?

Maybe, I don’t doubt that there are some.

But I’ve seen way WAY too many assholes like this (first hand included) that just see an opportunity to get some more money and they don’t care if they have to squeeze a desperate family.

You are extremely oversimplifying a very complex situation.

The Mexican government consists of self serving corrupt assholes but also loads of people who genuinely try to make the country better. Mexico was a third world nation which has grown up tremendously in the past decades, but it still has ways to go.

Could they have done more / better? Sure, of course.

Is the US government complicit in the shit show going on now in Mexico, with their policies and actions? Absofuckinglutely, and a big part too.

Just because the Mexican government could have done better doesn’t mean the US government is off the hook

Yes and no

I fully agree we need to have independent journalists. People won’t pay for news anymore so governments should fund independent journalists through some sort of independent foundation. International foundation, preferably.

But beyond that, it matters little if we still have Alex Jones who somehow has actual listeners, or Fox news which is just a 24/7 bullshit pump with a large userbase.

We need to stop people, organizations, and companies from being able to lie to large groups. You lie? The lie gets immediately marked as being a lie. Not “this is not entirely true”, no, “this is a lie”. Repeat offenders should be fined depending on their worth. You are worth a billion dollars? Get a 100 million dollar fine. Still don’t listen? Jail time, doesn’t matter who you are.

Its either that or I see this world dead within the decade. With AI pictures and videos getting better every day, with AI becoming better at posting, how long do you think we have until we have a dead Internet with only AI posting lies and all extremist humans ready to commit mass murder because the AI bots have been telling them that the Jewish space lasers will make your frog children gay or something?

The Internet gave a bullhorn to idiots and cheaters and though I was one of the earlier users, loving it’s thinking it would rescue the world, now I’m of the opinion that it will doom us all

Of course that is an issue but we’ve arrived at a point where I think that is less of an issue than the rampant “everybody and everything is a lie, there is no objective truth anymore, but everybody claims to have the absolute, factual, and moral truth anyway”

The current situation is unsustainable. You can’t have a normal civil discussion about climate change because the other side screeches that climate change is fake news, then shits on the table.

You can’t do anything if you can’t at least agree on what is factual truth and oh boy, Republicans and conservatives just put so much lies and bullshit out there that it’s just not doable anymore

It has to stop. So normal people like you and me, fine, talk. But websites must contain FACTUAL information, or be very clearly labeled “fiction, not factual”. If the site contains information that is known to be false, just have some DMCA like ayatem that will remove it from the Internet.

What source is factual? Anything not supported by a single government, anything that is not funded by any for profit company. Wikipedia is a good example. Sure, it’s far from perfect but it’s a 100 times more reliable than anything else out there and you gotta start with something.

Make an independent government funded group that can work no matter who’s in charge at the government, and they are tasked with checking facts.

If someone with power (politician, famous actor, comoany, whatever) makes some false statement, have it labelled as such and fine them. They don’t repeatedly, remove their Internet posting privileges. They circumvent that? Jail them.

Its either that or humanity will be over. This current anarchy is used by various actors for only their personal benefit, and they all have the “I don’t care if the world burns if I can rule the ashes. I have matches” attitude. How much more of this bullshit do you think we can have? What do you think will happen once AI picture and videos are perfected? You won’t be able to trust anything ever again, the Internet will effectively be dead and only conspiracy wing nuts will use it to read the latest outrageous lie to incentive them to commit some terror attack.

I get what you’re saying, I’m just saying that California under Canada would be off a LOT better than it is currently under the US.

But sure, go at it alone but make some sort of free trade and travel zone at least, ala Schengen in Europe.

Mexico is really quite amazing ina lot of things. Nothing you see in TV, basically

It’s deleted so I don’t even remember what it was, just that it was sad

Those are just solutions in waiting, I don’t see that as a barrier form California to join

Also, Canada NEEDS more citizens, getting a huge influx of higher educated people isn’t a bad deal.

Add the enormous economy and we have a winner

On the flip side…

California subsidizes the shit out of the rest of the USA, and relatively speaking gets less in return. Imagine no longer having to finance just about everything of failed religious states like Kentucky and Mississippi.

Also you wouldn’t have to deal with racist religious extremists. Like any country, we have our crazies but we’re not even close to the level of the US.

Financially it would be hugely beneficial to California to be part of Canada.

Also, get free healthcare, which is fucking awesome

We can equally share the .ca domains, it’s not like there are that many left anyway

OOF?

Also helps with streaming and many, many other services

Having said that, though, yeah… 99% of the population doesn’t need more than 10Mbit / person

So what IS the difference between scripting and programming in your view?

I don’t care about individual expressing their opinions.

Once you have a following, you have a responsibility to speak the truth. We currently live in a world where fox news can spew incendiary lies 24/7 and noone bats an eye and if ever anyone says anything in court they simply claim to be entertaiment and that no reasonable person would take them seriously.

What. The. Fuck.

How is any of that possible, at all?

This is not “false” this is just “pants on fire lying”

This person should not have the freedom to speak publicly anymore

Screw freedom of expression as we currently have it. Freedom of expression should become a right with responsibility. if you can’t be responsible, you can’t have the right. You either speak the truth or don’t get to speak to groups, period

I’m SO done with literally everyone and everything lying with zero repercussions. Companies lie, all fine. Politicians lie like there is no tomorrow and that’s fiiiiine, even Obama lied like 25% and that’s fiiiiine, trump literally lies 99% of the time and it’s all fine! Nothing happens, so we just lie more and more and you can’t trust anything or anyone anymore

Freedom of expression on the internet was a big mistake