And yet you got them.
5,628 karma · joined March 3, 2026
The tragedy of our predicament when we are within ideology is that when we think that we escape it into our dreams, at that point we are within ideology.
That is true, hackers, that is true.
But they cannot help their neighbors;
That's not good, hackers, that's not good.
Join us now and share the software;
You'll be free, hackers, you'll be free.
-- The Free Software Song, as written and sung by rms
> mental health impacts, especially in young people; violence against women, girls, and gender minorities; and delegitimising help-seeking in boys and men
These are real life, observable, negative public health outcomes.
They don't need anyone to define them, they just are. The ideologically inconvenient thing is that some people's identity is tied up with the causes of above negative outcomes, causing them to violently reject critical examination.
The political is medical and the medical is political. Solutions to a political problems are often medical, solutions to medical problems are frequently political.
You are drawing a line where there is none. Why? I believe artificial gatekeeping is what keeps societies sick and medicine underdeveloped. We need to take a look at all the factors affecting health, not just the ones that aren't ideologically inconvenient.
Who gets access to what healthcare is political. Abortions are political. Vaccines are political. Payment models for healthcare are political.
The other way around, too, of course. Pollution limits are a political choice that is also a health choice. Traffic law. Gun policy. Tax policy. You name it. It all affects public health.
And yes, the above is also both political and a health consideration. They make the case right in the block you quote.
You're trying to draw a false dichotomy, when the two are inherently interrelated concepts.
I think generally, the issue is around consent and who initiates the information transfer. If I'm actively looking for something, a listing of options is useful. If I look at a shop window, I am actively looking to see what the shop is selling.
It's the non-consensual invasion of my mental space I take issue with. It's like somebody violently shaking you going "BUY BUY BUY".
But once we automate that, it drastically lowers the amount of viewpoints represented.
A model is never neutral. A model is always also a way of disseminating an ideology, and it doesn't need to be lying for that to work.
Consider the question "what caused the French revolution?"
There's many ways to answer this while being technically correct. What gets prioritized, what gets omitted, that's where the ideology lives.
But offline advertising generally isn't exempt. Screw billboards cluttering up cities. Screw flyers cluttering up my mailbox. Screw print ads cluttering up magazines.
It's all an assault on the senses in service of extraction. It's a non-consensual invasion of the mind.
If it's good, their friends may even tell them about it.
Why does it need a whole manipulative extraction industry around it?
What are you talking about??
It definitionally manipulates people into buying stuff they didn't want before, leaving them poorer and our world devoid of more resources.
The future is what we make of it.
This was. As was the messing with Lula. That was when the mask really came off. Thankfully, the people prevailed.
This is not the gotcha you think it is.
It felt like I was helping the bad guys, and my conscience couldn't deal with that.
They're telling us human endeavors are no longer needed if they succeeded, they also warn us that they might accidentally cause the end of the world in the process.
Why shouldn't we root for their failure?
I can post wild nonsense without any backing, too!