A Wells Fargo spokesperson told Bloomberg that the company “holds employees to the highest standards and does not tolerate unethical behavior.”

I mean the jokes write themselves

Yes. They spent years fighting Roe V. Wade with inane bullshit until one stuck. They fought student loan relief, immigration changes, and healthcare reform. Republicans in America have clearly demonstrated that they are dogs chasing after cars, and when they catch them they don’t care or realize what the consequences are. We need to stop excusing their behavior as if they’re “making a statement” or “posturing”. They tell us what they want to do, we say “nah, they don’t mean it”, and then it happens

No actually, in America we don’t actually have all that many rights. I was specifically asking him what right we have as citizens that he feels we are being denied by this decision. Because I would be hard pressed to identify a right we have that is harmed by this decision

It appears this person signs off all of their comments with a creative commons license for fair use, presumably saying how you’re allowed to use their comment. Which I’m relatively sure has exactly the same legal power as a boomer posting a Facebook picture saying that they don’t consent to having their data collected

Every single time we infringe on personal freedoms, we need to do this calculation.

What freedom do you have that you think this is infringing on?

Stop Chinese data collection. I think this is just misdirection. You say it’s conspiracy, but just like the PATRIOT Act had nothing to do with patriotism or protecting children and the Iraqi war had nothing to do with WMD… the government often misleads or outright lies.

Correct, it had nothing to do with patriotism or protecting children. It had to do with war profiteering. That’s the simple answer to basically every question that starts with “why did the American government do…” It made wealthy Americans richer. That’s the default US policy

Much of our data is for sale to anyone who wants to buy it. In fact, our law enforcement loves buying data instead of going through the process for a warrant.

There are so many apps out there with less than scrupulous devs who are more than willing to scrape for as much data as possible and sell that off. China can easily acquire massive amounts of data regardless.

Yup, and that’s fine in the way that it’s fine for us to ship oil, soybeans, and semiconductors to China. As long as America gets the first bite of the pie, what happens after that is mostly fine

Chinese influence on Americans. I think this one makes more sense than the first one. China is able to quietly suppress or encourage certain points of views - subtly pushing the 170 million Americans into directions that are beneficial for China’s interests. For example, perhaps media discouraging support for Taiwan.

I think this is ancillary benefit that is mostly being pushed by our military. I know it’s the “reason” they’re giving but I agree this is not the primary purpose

I believe this because we are a free society.

We are not. By basically every measurable metric of “freedom” the US doesn’t even crack the top 10 in the world and on a lot of lists we don’t make the top 20. I don’t know what Americans think “freedom” means but whenever I hear people talk about it I often wonder if we live in the same country

You are right that we don’t always live up to that term, and never really have. But we get a hell of a lot closer than China or Russia. We shouldn’t be moving towards them in ideological terms, but away from them.

It’s pretty hyperbolic to say that banning the Chinese pipeline of disinformation and spyware makes America ideologically similar to Russia

As for the young people, there are 170 million people on the app and it skews younger. A large portion of these people use Tiktok as their primary social media. A lot of these will be pushed towards anti-establishment and radical ideologies. Tiktok already leans leftist (and not neoliberal left).

That’s just conjecture. Do you know how many social media sites we’ve seen come and go? You assert people will become anti-establishment, I assert they’ll just move on to other social media. Both of our assertions are equally valid without evidence

What happened to freedom of speech? Freedom of association? Free market capitalism?

America has none of those things. We have clear limits on what is and isn’t acceptable speech. We routinely see protest groups beaten, jailed, and killed for protesting things the police like. Finally, you have to live in a bunker if you think we have a free market

If an American citizen wants to use a Chinese platform, why don’t they have the right to?

Because part of the government’s job is protecting its people. If China gave away a blowjob and cocaine robot and all you had to do was walk it around and give it detailed tours of civilian infrastructure that’d be banned too despite being hugely popular. If the government desides it’s in the best interest of the people to not do something then they have the authority to prevent people to doing it

I think the data collection stuff is a red herring. Real reason is that war is coming and they’re preparing the online information space so they can more easily manipulate it. Sort of how they did a test run with covid. Banning misinformation and such.

This is just pure conspiracy talk. Occam’s razor says the simplest solution is usually correct. What’s the simple answer here? Data is becoming one of the most valuable “natural” resources. You don’t hand valuable resources for free to rival governments. You charge them, or you prevent them from taking it. It’s all about money

If the sale doesn’t go through, I don’t see how this will eliminate whatever little bit of credibility the federal government has among the younger generations. 18~25 or so

Call me naive but I like to think young people care about more than just the apps on their phone and are capable of holding a more nuanced view of our government than you clearly are

I understand and obviously agree or else I wouldn’t be vaguely gestures to everyone around him

But let’s not live in fantasy land. Capitalism rules the internet and like it’s old predecessor Feudalism there’s one rule. Bigger Army (bank account) diplomacy. None of the other rules matter if you’re big enough to write them. Nobody will willingly give up their level of control of the internet and everyone who takes it will do so with the objective of replacing them not dethroning

Just give them Mexico and they’ll be appeased, they won’t go to Guatemala next! There’s no reason for them to keep going south, it’s not like they’ve previously used their power to overthrow democratically elected leaders in central America before

This is the exact same logic used when Germany invaded Poland for fuck’s sake. These dipshit aren’t even original

I think you’re vastly understating the price problem. Bulk purchases of laptops, monitors, keyboards, mice, and cameras are going to push prices well below a third of the cost of Apple Vision Pro. That’s on top of the licenses needed for employees which I wouldn’t be shocked to find out they’re more expensive/nonexistent on Apple Vision Pro. This price point confuses me on who this is supposed to be for

I’d have a little more sympathy if companies were actually hiring people and not doing absolutely everything in their power to not hire real employees. Restaurants refuse to pay people minimum wage, corporate jobs only hire contractors, airbnb, lyft, and Uber all claim their workers aren’t employees, and if someone sneezes and it sounds like the word union they’re gone. We can live in magical fantasy ecomnics land, or we can discuss reality. Harsh regulations need to stop these companies from shafting regular people and if they decide to hold the economy hostage like 2008 then we forcibly make the company public property

Obviously this will never happen in America but let’s stop giving them lip service and call them the greedy leeches they are, and not holy job creators who bestow the gift of a prosperous economy upon us