US Presidents have far too much authority and power to institute changes.

I’ll counter your “whatabout-ism” with information:

Facebook and Instagram are already in trouble with the EU over election interference.

Xitter is also being investigated (along with Meta and TT)

Telegram also got a wake up call this year with the arrest of their CEO by French Authorities. That wasn’t publicly related to election interference but its a sure bet that the EU will end up going after them too, they’re just starting off with X , FB, and TT.

Reddit hasn’t gotten their attention yet but it will sooner or later.

In short the EU started addressing this earlier this year, we’re just now starting to see enforcement.

My main grip with wanting to ban tik tok was that it was a transparent attempt to keep a monopoly on propaganda. Tik tok is used by China in exactly the same way Twitter and Facebook are used.

I think it’s fair to say that TT is being used for political propaganda, particularly propaganda that benefits China and now apparently Russia. It’s clear now that US efforts to repress TT were for the exact reason they said it was, to prevent TT as a platform from unduly influencing elections.

Your second sentence is an interesting one though, given that most people who were against the US taking action against TT refused to admit that TT was or even could be used as a propaganda outlet to influence policy, politics, and elections.

We need comprehensive laws against all forms of social media manipulation

I completely agree and FB and Twitter should not be exempted from them.

Where’s all the “Tik Tok is harmless!!!” people? They were everywhere 18 months ago when the US went after TikTok.

It’s also the most misused and ill understood word of 2024. At least half of the people here on Lemmy are using it wrong.

This Australian dictionary didn’t need, nor should they have, created their own definition as the guy who coined it had already defined it.

“It’s a three stage process: First, platforms are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.”

The key here is that it’s not just the users of platforms or services who have problems but ultimately the very businesses doing business with the service or platform, the supposed real customers, who end up having problems.

You don’t have to trust my ignorant ass on this either, you can go directly to the source.

Many of them do care and there’s ample evidence of them pushing back when they find out about it. However ProPublica’s article on this has been directly challenged by the NSSF and they are publicly accusing PP of knowingly misrepresenting what they were told by the NSSF.

https://www.ammoland.com/2024/10/propublicas-falsehoods-exposed-anti-gun-bias-distorts-truth-about-gun-owner-data/

In short both PP and the NSSF have clear biases but much of what PP supposedly exposed has been known about for years and other things, such as the Cambridge Analytica part, are presented without evidence. ProPublica’s efforts were likely nothing more than last minute electioneering.

Like I’m all for domestic manufacturing

How do you propose we achieve a healthy domestic manufacturing sector? It’s not possible for US Companies to compete on price when they pay higher wages and deal with a dramatically more expensive regulatory burden relative to global competitors who are farcically still labeled as “developing” so they can skirt WTO rules.

To pick an example and lay it out plainly it’s not possible for Ford / GM / Chrysler to make and sell vehicles for $30,000 USD while paying their workers $40USD per hour and conforming to US Labor and Environmental laws. This is also why vehicles built in the EU are so fucking expensive for Europeans to purchase.

Auto manufacturing is a single example but the same things holds true for nearly all manufacturing sectors and its why so much production shifted to other areas of the world.

If we want to continue this “race to the bottom” on consumer prices then we must accept the consequences of doing so. If we want to have healthy domestic manufacturing sectors that keep people employed while paying them living wages and protecting both them and the environment then we must accept the consequences of doing so.

Yesterday I saw on Fox News someone saying that we could save $1t by eliminating the department of education

It would save the Federal Government a trillion dollars and likely costs the States in aggregate at least a trillion. We wouldn’t really “save” anything, just cost shift it back to the States themselves. Which may, or may not, be a fair trade off. Both Red and Blue states seemingly want more control of their education systems and arguably we should give it back to them…as long as they themselves are willing to pay for it.

How is the rise in overall violence?

Similar. In 2023 violent crime was up 8.6% and had reached a 15 year high. If you read that article closely there are clues as to what’s going on. This isn’t unique to Germany either, other EU nations like France are experiencing the same trend.

More specifically the Domestic Violence rate in Germany has been ticking steadily upwards since at least 2013, that’s as far back as I pulled statistics, a trend that many other EU nations (Sweden, France, Lithuania, Ireland, etc) have also been experiencing.

I can link all the data if you want but it’s pretty overwhelming to wade through.

Seems like more than a few States want the Federal Government to stop fucking with their policies on immigration and immigrants. Seems like the Federal Government shouldn’t have as much power as it does.

The United States has absolutely no need of Russian Natural Gas. We have so much of our own that a non-trivial fraction of it is flared off at the wellhead. We literally burn it off as an unwanted byproduct of oil production.

Yeah yeah…Trump and all that…but no one is going to purchase NG from Russia that costs more than domestic. I don’t care how hard Russia begs or Trump bloviates. It’s not going to happen.

Yes, did you have questions?

Maybe…but the 9/10ths on gas prices was originally created back in '32 as a tax by the Federal Government.

The tax never went away, because of course it fucking didn’t, so the 9/10ths thing never went away either.

The article body originally had it in all caps and once I noticed that I rewrote my comment that way. The article now shows it as “Bluesky” (no capital S) which is apparently the correct way. I dunno wtf is going on.

Yep.

The main problem with BLUESKY is that it’s the same regurgitated shit you find everywhere else. As a brand new user here’s the first 10 things in my feed:

1. Someone trying and failing to make a clever joke about the US Presidential election.
2. A picture of black hole (which is great!)
3. Semi-clever joke involving Professor X and Alvin and the Chipmunks
4. Self Described “transfem lesbian” screaming about how much they love women. I mean yikes it’s creepy AF.
5. Boring US Political schlock about Lauren Boebert.
6. Science / Astronomy content
7. Video Game Post
8. Self Described “#1 Gayest Lesbian” screaming about how much they love women. A copypasta of the other and still creepy AF.
9. Another eye-roller “I am soooo depressed” meme.
10. Boring US Political schlock defending Dr. Fauchi

So BLUESKY seems to be Twitter v2, primarily inhabited by the Pre-Elon Blue CheckMark types. Can I “fix” that with filtering? Probably but if I do then the feed will slow down so much that even checking in once per day will probably be too often.

Way to make it about race…and then totally fuck it up.

deleted by creator

No idea what your talking about. I live at 6,000 feet in a place with low humidity and the popcorn button on my microwave works perfectly.

Two days ago BlueSky was adding more users in an hour than Mastodon was per week.

TLD is still a Sony Supporter and that’s all I need to say.