The issue is not censorship, it’s disinformation and Hamas is all over it when allowed.

I’m aware, it’s why I inherently don’t trust them. They are anticompetitive to a fault. It is unethical no matter what code of ethics you go by and I vote with my wallet.

I would prefer my phones to work well with other phones. If your phone requires that everyone else buy the same overpriced phone, it is not a better device. Anyone can make something that talks well with itself.

If the app was literally called “CCP Government Monitor and Sensor Node” would you say the same thing about people being free to use it how they please? At the very least you would recommend any phone with it installed be banned from any government location or strategic location and people who use it scrutinized. As it currently stands, people don’t believe that’s what it is because they like it.

If you accept what the government is trying to communicate about it, the lines around individual freedom and the freedom to endanger others becomes pretty clear. You have the freedoms to work with explosives but you have no right to take a bomb on a military base. It is the same with data models. Having worked in machine learning and defense, I’m inclined to believe it. I acknowledge that I’m biased here but take my opinion for what it’s worth.

Part of the equation here is the transparency. It’s good that they are transparent and I do think they listen. Part of the interesting side to watch is the interaction with the community.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t have human orca war on my 2020s bingo card.

We can help derp about capitalism all we want but this wouldn’t change in a government run program. An organization is only as ethical as the people that make it up. The military question was an inflection point where the organization was really forced to deal with the question of how to define evil.

Suddenly every person in that organization was forced to answer some questions. Is the existence of a military evil? Is it evil if I don’t directly support those solutions? What if something I build is used to develop it indirectly? Even if it is not, am I now complicit?

Now, I’m a Soldier so I have a massive bias here. I personally cannot see why anyone would intentionally want to contribute to us getting killed or losing a war. Tech products are already used in the process. Toyota is not complicit in terrorism just because their trucks are the trucks of choice for insurgent logistics. That being said, if they started accepting contracts with them, there would be an issue.

A lot of it comes down to the thoughts on the war on terror at the time. The funny thing is that the solutions that they built are focused on Eastern Europe right now in a conflict that most people support and were not completed in time to do counter insurgency.

The funny thing about the COIN fight is that information products simply made things more accurate with better intelligence. It meant less terrorism due to less insurgents and less civilian casualties resulting in blowback. If poorer information resulted in higher civilian casualties, are the pacifists complicit in that?

Again, I’m biased so my perspective is one of this issue being a detractor to doing my job better. In the end, defining evil is not black and white, even if you could theoretically come to a specific answer for a specific circumstance with the magical power of all the knowledge in the world. It broke the culture of the company.

Right, don’t address my points. Just flip the table and walk away.

I commented on if the accusations were worth the military’s time. It is apparently worth the military’s time more than the civilian justice system’s time.

Statement -> rebuttal

You can take your ignorant self and go fuck yourself. You don’t even know how little you know about this issue yet you opine pretty strongly about opinions you THINK I have.

While I wholely support a civilian controlled military, your attitude towards this is why civilians make horrible military governance.

I addressed specific points. You have leveled an accusation without addressing my point. What are you expecting in response?

I have had this command authority before. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that ucmj is perfect but it’s the best we can do and it is better than the civilian sector. That should end the conversation right there. Your comments are like the pot calling the kettle black. If you have a better suggestion, why has it not been implemented yet literally anywhere?

Complaining about the way things are without a suggestion is worse than unhelpful because it increases discontent which leads to more conflict.

Thinking you know better than literal experts speaks for itself. I hope you see the irony in that.

I was commenting on if it is worth their time. I find it to be a wholely unjustified statement given the fact that they actually conduct justice unlike civilian juridictions. If it wasn’t worth their time, they wouldn’t be addressing it.

You know who likes beans? Ukrainians like beans. Put a big Ukraine flag behind it.

The civilian justice system is absolutely not better at executing justice and is arguably worse on many ways when comparing similar cases. At least the rape kits get actually tested and processed in the military.

Fascism as a system is defined as purity of effort. It comes from the literal Italian word for a bundle of sticks. Alone they are weak. Together and united they are strong.

The cultural element is that it favors uniformity as an element of unity. This is where the militarism comes in but it is not entirely defined by it. It also manifests itself in civic works and progress. It seeks to unify those that are similar. Here one of the key points though. Fascism is okay with the existence of other groups, just that they are not a participant in their system and seeks to bring those that are into the system.

It aligns efforts and systems regardless of their origin towards the goals of the state. This includes corporations and state organizations. It will nationalize organizations that work against the state and ostracize groups that are not aligned with the majority. It roots out internal dissent within government as an inefficiency.

A socialist form of system absolutely can be fascist. A fascist government does not inherently need a dictator but it is inherently authoritarian. It does not matter if the means of production are corporate, individual, or government as it is about unity of effort and uniformity as a force for progress.

These are clearly defined parameters.

You only see fascism come in when citizens see a lack of progress as a result of social issues. It’s not left politics that it is reacting to, it is the violence and chaos on the streets that inspires a strong reaction. People perceive the distribution as the cause of the problems that actually impact them. They literally see the destruction of their property and their neighborhoods being caused by these radicals. They see the inability of the liberal state to stop it because it allows for that dissent and disunity. Voters remember a time when people were united. Then they see these groups coming in and fighting back. They are literally cleaning up the streets and defending their neighborhoods at a ground level. They look and act like them so they trust them. They see that snowball into progress at a larger level and start to increasingly trust the approach and who they are told is causing the issues in society. They saw it for themselves and so they trust that it’s the truth that they cannot see now.

When an outside group refuses to confirm or leave, that’s when you start getting increasingly strong forms of solutions to the perceived problem. This is where you see language around a final solution come from. You can disband organizations but people must be removed.

It does not need to be the left. It actually could be the right. National Socialism was called what it was for a reason. It was reacting to the right in society. It started out as being for the nationalization of resources within Germany. As it gained power, it was okay with corporations as long as it worked on behalf of the state. Fascism is agnostic to socialism vs capitalism until it is working against them. Nazis are not socialists, except they are when the corporations are perceived to be working against the efforts of the majority.

Unity of effort is a powerful and efficient thing. It does not take into account the benefits of diversity or the social benefits of dissent as a force for moderation. When you put fascism against a liberal society, the united liberal society is typically able to innovate around a united but uniform approach against them given enough time. It also wins more allies on average. Unity is typically the challenge as diverse societies have a lot of differences.

So, why is Russia fascist now? The Russian citizens went through an extended period of change that worsened the average Russian’s life. Most remember a time when they were more united or at least felt that way. There’s outside corporations and organizations perceived to be degrading Russian life. There’s chaos on the streets and separatists everywhere and the new modern liberal society is unable to stop it. You have someone come into power that has cleaned up the streets and focused on progress. They’ve focused on defending the average Russian from these inside threats that are rotting Russia from the inside. They are saying that life was better when Russians were united. They want to get back to the way it was and bring Russians back in to the fold. There’s a focus on unity of government, corporation, and culture. There’s a systemic stamping out of dissent regardless of the source.

Russia probably would be faring a lot better if they hadn’t been a huge gainer from the smaller states in the USSR. Only Russians were better under the USSR, not the smaller states. This is why the Holodomor is so significant. Ukrainians were less important for food than the Russians because they dissented. I would argue that the USSR was also a fascist state but it gets a lot muddier in that discussion to the point where it almost doesn’t matter.

This is an ethnic argument, further pointing to the idea that you are making distinctly fascist points in this thread.

I have already defined fascism through other means. You just didn’t like it because it described you, which was my original assertion.

The phrase starts with that but includes a lot more because fascism crops up during times of uncertainty and instability. So too does other radical ideas. The definition I put forward is a universal one. Defining an ideology as being against something else is not an ideology. It would be no better than saying that anarchists are defined as being antifascist. It simply shows you don’t understand what they believe.

If you don’t understand what they believe, you cannot understand why it is bad. Suddenly you are justifying the invasions of sovereign countries on ethnic lines and here we are.

So, your definition of fascism is state power to counter the left. My definition is how the fascists define it; how you are currently defining your society. Think on that. Do some actual research into historic fascist arguments. I’m not advocating for them, I’m saying you should see some parallels.

You literally don’t know what fascism is and I challenge you to define it. Then we can determine if I’ve missed the point. Fascism is always legal. It is always backed by law. It must be by definition or it seeks to be. If your society cannot stop an ethically motivated war that you started because the law prevents it, that is fascism.

And so it is on Russia to leave. You bring up Russian laws like the Ukrainians are not sovereign. They gave their own laws. You know what else was legal? The Holocaust was legal under German law. That didn’t make it right. I hope you can understand that this is why people consider Russia a fascist state right now and yes, it does matter. Your arguments are textbook fascist and you should take that into serious consideration.