Even if this is technically true, if there is a certain amount of aid and a certain percent goes to US deals that are exported, and then the aid gets bigger with the expectation of larger more expensive export deals, I’m just not sure if this is meaningfully true rather than technically true. I am not downvoting you, BTW, I appreciate the correction, but just belive you are are confusing a semantic difference with actual ignorance.
I get your sarcasm, but what should I be doing as a poor US citizen?
-Writing letters? (Unlikely to persuade people because opinions are divided on humanitarian versus hard-core Christian theologian views. I would need to remotely deprogram elected officials for this to work.)
-Holding signs to protest? (Unlikely to persuade for the same reasons.)
-Sending lengthy theological arguments to right-wing types? (I could try it. It would be strange coming from an atheist but I could try? It would be more effective than trying to deprogram them.)
-Donations? (I looked at some organizations helping Gaza and many of their leaders make substantially more than me per year and I’m dealing with financial hardship. It’s hard for me to donate to an organization with leaders who have high salaries while I struggle with bills, but maybe that’s a bad excuse. Maybe some leaders with high salaries donate to their own organization, but if so it wasn’t listed.)
-Direct donations? (I should probably do this, and I’m not sure how to do this.)
Please, tell me the appropriate response for a poor person, even if it’s anything other than nothing. I just feel like nothing I do will be effective.
I’m sorry people of Gaza, this is really evil and as a US person who has paid taxes, I’m a part of it. I wish I could stop it but am poor, I’m not sure protesting would work. I feel helpless and also responsible. This is no different than when everyone looked the other way and refused to take Jewish people during WWII. I am sorry for not realizing what this was sooner and disbelieving the severity and evilness of it at first. :-( There’s really no way for me to opt out of this unless I leave the US, become like Henry David Thoreau and just don’t participate in society, which may mean death for me, or actually just choose to die so I no longer have to be part of a disgusting and evil society. The regular people of Gaza aren’t part of this war and war crimes are being committed. It probably means nothing but I’m so so sorry.
He may have made a calculation about this not based on money and can’t disclose it without altering the calculation.
Example:
Scenario 1: Tell Trump to fuck off for treatment of transgender people. Result: Trump using monopoly power to break up Facebook, truth social increases in power, no way to monitor hate groups effectively
Scenario 2: Pretend to agree with Trump and move hard right, monitor hate groups, come back slowly center in subtle ways, no rise in Truth Social users, ability to shape acceptance over time
Even with fuck you money, saying fuck you makes scenario 2 possible. Say what you want avout Zuckerberg, but he’s no idiot. If I as an indifferent person can do a simple decision tree example in 3 seconds in my head, imagine how much he analyzed such a big decision.
My point is Facebook sucks because they make it almost impossible for users to use Facebook without submitting to surveillance capitalism and ban people without giving them recourse in a mean shitty way. He must be aware of that and for allowing that, he sucks. And as a US company that is likely in bed with surveillance capitalism and the intelligence community, their “private” ways of verifying individuals is unlikely to be private, and they offer no alternative. So he sucks for that, but I’m not sure he specifically sucks for this reason. He’s even heavily implying strategic thinking is requiring him to do things he otherwise wouldn’t and can’t discuss it without altering the outcome.
Whether the end never justifies the means (same “we won’t vote for Kamala because of Gaza stance” mindset) is better ethically even if impractical is another debate.
I hate Facebook and that they will ban people, without notice, unless they record a video selfie from multiple angles, and then still sometimes permanently ban people even then, without a way to pay to prove the person is real or talk to someone or even get a reason for the ban. I also think Facebook is an arm of the government and is not really a company (quasi-governmental) and is basically a corporate rebranding of LifeLog and Zuckerberg probably got a 1600 on his SATs and was recruited to join the government while in high school.
So that all being said, despite my hatred of Facebook, what he is saying isn’t that illogical.
Let’s say Zuckerberg personally supports trans rights and thinks Trump is an idiot. He can’t say that in a meeting that will obviously have leaks. It would be “value-destroying.” Say what you want about Zuckerberg, but most people with enough intelligence don’t hate trans people because they understand science and how prenatal hormone conditions and epigenetic conditions means that sometimes internal senses of gender don’t match biological at birth sex. (Musk is the rare exception to this and it seems like his reaction comes from ego and anger about being estranged from his daughter and autism/lack of empathy, and so he’s a weird data point that doesn’t neatly fit if we take his reaction at face value.)
So let’s say Zuckerberg wants to say “We support trans and gay people, we have to do this so Trump doesn’t go after us to remain profitable and not end up needing to decrease our head count, I hate Trump.” If he said that, someone would immediately leak it, Trump would go Ape Shit, and the company would lose value.
It’s hard to know for certain if this is what he’s talking about, but if he is, this isn’t really something to fault him on.
Facebook labeling linux as somehow evil, on the other hand, is a bizarre and shitty thing to do, so fuck Facebook and fuck this asshole who is letting linux be labeled as a cybersecurity threat. I also think Facebook doing this is because government, which has backdoors in Microsoft and Apple OSes, doesn’t like linux and sees it growing in popularity and so I believe the government requested Facebook do this. I can’t fathom a social media company would do this for no reason on their own, it makes no sense, but if Facebook is Lifelog and always has been Lifelog and Zuckerberg gets his orders from someone else, then it would make sense that they implement policies regarding labeling linux as bad to try to keep their backdoors in as many users’ OSes as possible.
so fucking crazy and illogical that it’s just a distraction and not real
“look over here
while we implement Project 2025! Beyonce! DEI! What’s your opinion?! Let’s engage in aracist and pointlessdebate about whether Beyonce deserves singing accoladeswhile we ready the wall for women who get abortions.”