So this is decades long waste and fraud, but a significantly higher amount of money for handouts for the ultra-rich authorized by Trump, including money piped directly to his family, is fine?
From the PPP program:
More than half of the roughly $525 billion in [PPP] loans doled out through November went to just 5% of the more than 5 million recipients
In my opinion, part of what I think the message by liberals should’ve been for the last 10 years is not to just vote early and often, but to actually run for office. I can easily see how the critical deterioration of the average person’s mental health would make it challenging to reach this end. Our understanding of mental health still leaves so much to be desired
sites feeding content that use an algorithm to personalize feeds for each user are all compromised.
Not arguing against this at all because you’re completely correct, but this feels like a key example of governments being too slow (and perhaps too out of touch?) to properly regulate tech. People clearly like having an algorithm, but algorithms in their current form are a great excuse for tech companies to use to throw their hands up in the air and claim no foul play because of how opaque they are. “It only shows you what you tell it you want to see!” is easy for them to say, but until consumers are given the right to know how exactly each one works, almost like nutrition facts on food packaging, then we’ll never know whether they’re telling the truth. The ability for a tech company to have near unlimited control and no oversight over what millions of people are looking at day after day is clearly a major factor in what got us here in the first place
Not that there’s any hope for new consumer protections during this US administration or anything, but just something I had been thinking about for a while
Do you have a source for that? I’ve heard about this, too, but the evidence was dubious at best
I’m Gen-Z too. To some extent I agree with other people on here that, for broader discussions about certain topics, it doesn’t really matter what age you are in order to contribute to the conversation, which I feel is one of the strengths of this format of social media.
I also agree with you too that it doesn’t feel like there’s a space carved out by others from our generation on the fediverse yet. Growing up in such a dramatic period of technological change and global turmoil is something that we all have in common and has fundamentally affected our perspectives and our personal identities. I’d love to be a part of a community if you or anyone decides to begin cultivating one.
Something that’s become evident, too, is that a lot of people really can’t grasp how much money is being stolen by the rich. When the administration says that DEI initiatives cost, let’s just say, $200 million, it’s easy to say “well that’s way too much money!” But that amount is a pittance compared to $250 billion into the pockets of 5% of participants of only a single program. Regular people are so far removed from these numbers that we can’t even wrap our heads around them when we hear them