You deny that the USA does propaganda. I give you proof (from the USA's government themselves) that they do propaganda. Now you move the goalpost: "yeah they do it, but it's different".
All of your comments are low effort. I see no reason not to block you.
There's a new propaganda department at the Pentagon that's just been re-formed, the "Perception Management" office,
“Perception management” came to prominence during the Reagan administration[^1], which used the term to describe its propaganda efforts. [...] On March 1, 2022, the Pentagon established a new office with similar goals to the one once deemed too controversial to remain open. [...] its responsibilities include overseeing and coordinating the various counter-disinformation efforts being conducted by the military, which can include the U.S.’s own propaganda abroad.
In case you think the name is of no import, the Department of Defense's own official dictionary defines "perception management" as
[a]ctions to convey and/or deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning.
Let's look at a definition of "propaganda",
A concerted set of messages aimed at influencing the opinions or behavior of large numbers of people.
That looks about 100% on the nose, doesn't it?
They have a history of producing propaganda and misinformation (with the excuse being "to counter enemy disinformation"[^2]), and they weren't shy talking about it,
The question is whether the Pentagon and military should undertake an official program that uses disinformation to shape perceptions abroad. [...] The military has faced these tough issues before. Nearly three years ago, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, under intense criticism, closed the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence, a short-lived operation to provide news items, possibly including false ones, to foreign journalists in an effort to influence overseas opinion. [...] Pentagon and military officials directly involved in the debate say that such a secret propaganda program, for example, could include planting news stories in the foreign press or creating false documents and Web sites translated into Arabic as an effort to discredit and undermine the influence of mosques and religious schools that preach anti-American principles. [...] However, a senior military officer said that without clear guidance from the Pentagon, the military's psychological operations, information operations and public affairs programs are "coming together on the battlefield like never before, and as such, the lines are blurred."
Mind you, I've only touched on some of their work in the very recent past. There's an even larger body of evidence of the USA's use of propaganda in the slightly more distant past. I only gave the Wikipedia page on propaganda in the United States a brief skim, but it at least touches on (and links out to) some of the big picture items; of note,
In the United States, propaganda is spread by both government and media entities.
[^1]: "In the battle of perception management, where the enemy is clearly using the media to help manage perceptions of the general public, our job is not perception management but to counter the enemy's perception management," said the chief Pentagon spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita. (Source) [^2]: https://consortiumnews.com/2014/12/28/the-victory-of-perception-management/
Do you think its worth dying by nuclear annihilation
Yes.
Do you mean what you say or do you do it to be contrarian?
I can't think of a single way in which anyone who has even heard of the concept of nuclear weapons, much less seen aftermath of real use and hopefully put some individual thought into considering the consequences of their use, could say that it's worth it to die, taking the rest of humanity along.
I'm just going to block you because I do not wish to interact with (or see the postings of) someone who genuinely wants nuclear war. I'm not going to scramble my brain trying to comprehend how someone could be so delusional.
Yikes I had assumed it was just a transcription error from the poster here. But the actual Deutsche Welle article said "Acapulo" in the title. Mind you, the other 3 uses of the name in the article are all correct, just the (arguably most visible) one in the title is wrong.
Ok, two things are happening here.
they offer no reasonable basis for distrusting Signal, the tech that they attempt to vilify.
One, is that they did provide what they considered reasonable basis for distrusting Signal. Given that they thought Signal should not be trusted, the quote you posted is pretty obviously to be interpreted as: thankfully China hasn't naively adopted a compromised communications platform with a USA intelligence backdoor. Now, if you want to say their basis for distrust is not reasonable, or is false, that's completely fine. But in doing so it doesn't change the author's intent behind the quote which you posted.
Given said dev’s past comments, it is reasonable to infer that the reference to China presents them as an example to be followed here.
Two, is that it should be pretty clear they are saying China should be followed here in a very specific and explicit way: they aren't saying follow China in every way under the sun. It's very obvious from context and from what is explicitly said that they mean: China's distrust and refusal to adopt (what they consider) a platform with USA backdoors should be followed. And I think that's an entirely reasonable statement to make. No one should naively adopt compromised communications platforms.
There is no honest reading of the quote (especially given the rest of the context of the essay leading up to the quote) that could lead someone to conclude that this particular essay is (1) advocating for and supporting China spying on its citizens and (2) advocating for other countries following China in spying on citizens. It's pretty obvious the only honest reading of this is: "I believe Signal has USA backdoors. Given that, I'm glad China hasn't adopted its use heavily. I also think other countries should follow China in not naively accepting such technologies".
Again, you can disagree with the foundational reasons for distrust, and that could be very useful. But painting the essay and quote the way you (and others here) are is just intellectually dishonest. Disagree with what is actually said, not with what you imagine (or wish) was said.
But they serve ads. Do they say these ads are fully anonymized? The primary reason other vendors suck up all your data is precisely to serve ads. Why is Brave's serving ads different?
I personally don't find inserting affiliate referral codes acceptable either, but yes at the end of the day this is the user's preference whether or not this is all acceptable to them.
Ok then you're wilfully misreading the quote. That quote is not cryptic in the least. I have no clue why the parent comment is framing it as "holding up China as an example for the world to follow for privacy". It doesn't follow from the quote in any way.
Not surprising unfortunately. There's no accountability or transparency; they can deny any application they want for any reason, and don't have to tell you why. As long as they don't come out and say it's due to being a member of a protected class (which they can act on indirectly, just can't say it out loud), they can get away with any reasoning.
Oh it's vile.
Lots of people list a property, take loads of applications, each with a nonrefundable application fee (often $100+), then close the listing and pretend it was leased out. They wait a bit and repeat the play. They can rake in thousands of dollars for literally making a posting on a website, and repeat this often. And it's often desperate people victimized too: not only are these people renting so they're already in a vulnerable situation, the people willing to pay high application fees typically are desperate to get a lease.
I've also seen places that make you pay an application fee, and as part of the screening process they run a credit check; if they aren't satisfied with your credit score, they'll deny you and of course keep the application fee. What's more nefarious about this though is that they don't give you a score cutoff; you don't know if your score meets their criteria until after you've paid a nonrefundable fee.
$1k USD is over a year's wages for someone at the global poverty line.
Just because it's cheaper than other more expensive alternatives doesn't mean it's not expensive and extravagant. It's also a lot more polluting than some of your more expensive vacations you could compare it to; so in reality, it's not actually cheaper, it just externalizes some of the costs on to the environment (or, the rest of humanity).
Pharmaceuticals is about the worst example you could pick to make a point. It's notorious for socializing the cost and privatizing the profit (not to mention the ethics of price gouging life saving medication treatments).
Here's what Johnson&Johnson is doing right now with a TB drug whose development was paid largely with public funding: