This is way worse than what Yen did. This guy donated a lot of money to a party that explicitly pushes demigration policies, and if there was any doubt that this was a motivating factor for the donation, he later said he felt those policies were necessary. That’s understandable to not want to give your money to someone who you know is going to go bankroll demigration politics with some of your money.

Yen praised the Republicans at large over an anti trust pick.

I think the other criticisms of Proton’s policy changes are valid, and everyone has different standards for what is enough to divest from a company I guess, but I’ve heard people calling Yen a fascist sympathizer for that statement, and that’s just divorced from reality imo.

I generally agree, but there is a level of ignorance where you don’t even really know what questions to ask, and subjects complicated enough that you just aren’t equipped to understand an answer without needing a lot of background education first because they just aren’t intuitive at all by nature. At that point, is there really much value in asking the question?

Determining where that line is is hard sometimes, but I do think it’s there.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: this kind of “elitism” is literally just division of labor which is basically required for a modern society to function.

There would need to be major structural changes in how investment works in Europe IMO. With markets so fractured, you just can’t muster the kind of capital you can in the US, so companies that get successful in Europe often end up bailing to the US to get traded for the greater availability of investment capital.

I’d love to see the EU really put up serious competition to American tech services, but I just can’t see it happening without that getting addressed first.

“Dang.” adds two new email aliases.

Stop eating avocado toast!

Wait, not like that.

? I mean, I’m replying?

I’m willing to hear the argument, I just haven’t heard one yet aside from what I summarized above, which seems to me very weak. I think it’s worth talking about because this line that keeps getting repeated by a small but vocal minority led me to believe that this guy was something like a JK Rowling that’s pumping lots of money into groups that tangibly harm people, or is out there changing minds towards a very negative ideology or something… but he literally only took up the gauntlet regarding anti trust, which is pretty not-fascist. He isn’t pushing anyone to the right with that.

I could ask the same… why participate if you aren’t willing to consider maybe you were too hasty in judgment?

Again, you’ll need to explain to me that if his real goal here is “align[ing] with fascist talking points”, why is the only actual issue he jumped in on anti trust? Where was he regarding the election moves? Where was he regarding the ICE policies?

A decent anti trust pick isn’t aligned at all with fascism, yet it’s that issue that he spoke up on. Why only that when there have been countless issues that are aligned with fascism he could have commented on?

This screams the kind of now typical online left purity testing way more than fascism, to me.

Sure, but he was also perfectly willing to encourage him towards what he could frame as being a win for Trump, too.

I’m in no way saying Mamdani isn’t principled. I’m saying he also has an eye for strategy over performative politics. There was, probably is, a small left cadre that was really giving him shit for meeting with Trump at all for fear of “legitimizing” or “normalizing” him… this strikes me as very, very similar to the dynamic around Yang.

Again, there has been ample opportunity for this guy to go to bat for fascism. Why only anti trust?

So in 2024 he is praising the republican party about anti-trust, which even you admit he is wrong about.

If I divested from everyone I thought was incorrect about something, I wouldn’t be able to do business with literally anyone. And I explained why I think he said this, which implied it’s quite possible he doesn’t even think this is true.

How is this any different than what Mamdani did?

Again, if he was out here stumping for fascist positions I’d have a little more pause. But the issue he picked up here, of all the political issues in the recent years, was anti-trust. Sorry, this doesn’t scream crypto fascist to me. Certainly not enough for me to worry about.

I also didn’t say I’m surprised. I’m arguing that I think it’s wrong and the vast majority of even those on the left aren’t going to care about this.

It’s always nice when people let you know to block them for juvenile and petty behavior that would make a redditor blush before they actually manage you get to you.

You can’t remove the context this statement was made in though, which was about the appointment. And let’s be real here: he is not wrong about corporate capture of the Democrats at all. Yes, saying the Republicans are any better is ridiculous, but this strikes me far more like stroking the ego of a guy that likes having his ego stroked and made a rare decent pick for anti trust. This is no different than what Mamdani did visiting the White House… do we cancel him too for appeasing fascists? Or can we acknowledge choosing to try and engage with and manipulate a guy that’s shown to be easily manipulated is probably a strategic choice more than ideological?

And the thing he’s praising here is anti trust. Sure, I think it’s wrong to say Republicans are better on this issue, but literally the thing he’s praising is very much antithetical to fascism. How can we really say he’s supporting fascism then? Where are his posts supporting his ICE policies? Where are the comments supporting overturning a democratic election? He makes one comment supporting anti trust efforts and suddenly he must be a crypto fascist because it came from Trump? Not buying it, man.

I really think trying to portray Yang as something like the My Pillow Guy, which is the level of discourse a lot of this has had around it, is really, really disingenuous and I think only serves to make people take these accusations less seriously even when they’re levelled against people who truly are fascist sympathizers at the very least.

The big difference, of course, being that you’re paying a not insignificant amount of money explicitly for privacy, not a “free” service like Google. While Enshittification can happen everywhere, they’ve got a pretty direct incentive not to just start selling data and that sort of thing compared to the incentive Google had. The bigger concern is the security risk of all your eggs in one basket, but that’s a convenience vs security tradeoff we make all the time. Each user needs to assess for themselves that tradeoff. But just the encryption at rest alone along with seemingly not reading your emails already puts an average Proton use way ahead of an average Google one, and moving them to a complete suite is a lot more likely than to 6 different services. That’s a hard sell for an average user.

Also, I think the framing of open support of fascists is frankly ridiculous, personally. The way people were talking about it I was afraid we were talking full maga here, but the guy literally just praised a single appointment in anti trust… and she did have some actual bona fides that made her surprisingly (for this administration) qualified for that job, she has actually worked blocking mergers. This wasn’t a Robert Kennedy appointment, this appointment could have been under any admin in the last few decades and nobody would blink, if anything might also have been praised for the pick. Broken clocks, guys, broken clocks, they’re right sometimes.

Everyone can make their own choice here, but praising a rare decent pick from a shitty politician doesn’t nearly reach a divestment bar for me and I think probably all except the most militant.

Once a society reaches a certain level of prosperity and people have some disposable income, it’s better to have a system that allows people to choose to do what they want with that income. Socialism fails at that point.

Just to be clear capitalism and markets aren’t equivocal. Market socialism is a thing.

Socialism is a really big umbrella term… similar to “democracy” there are a bunch of different ways to actually apply it. State socialism is only one scheme for it.

There, you see? The Catholic Church was simply about saving the children.

No, I wouldn’t be, because I was talking about a random location which was indeed pretty unique. That said, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you, I’m a big fan.

I understand that’s the theory, but these situations were specifically not something that could be easily gleaned. We’re talking like reminiscing about things that happened in our pre internet youth that there’s no record of anywhere and that came up randomly in conversation. I’m definitely aware of the dynamic, even before ubiquity of the internet, it’s true that sometimes companies would know people were pregnant before the person did based on their purchasing profile. This wasn’t that though, there’s just no possible connection.

That happened a few times now, so pretty much nothing is going to convince me it’s not the case.

This was my understanding, but I just don’t believe it anymore. There have been way, way too many time my wife and I were talking about an incredibly niche thing that didn’t come up through the internet in any way, and lo and behold the algorithm presented those key words. Nobody will ever convince me it isn’t being done to some extent.

Agreed, there are definitely exceptions I could think of, just speaking generally.

I really wonder if there is any place outside of a concert venue that these folks find music on speakers acceptable? I kind of get it if they’re solo, just use headphones, but… hanging out in a group and listening to music together at the beach is about the most normal use of a beach trip I can think of.