Shares of Facebook and Instagram parent Meta have plummeted more than 40% over the past six months Options

[Christian J]

https://nypost.com/2022/03/20/meta-employee...id-stock-crash/

[pandy]

Boo hoo.

[Christian J]

Seems Twitter is not doing well either.

[pandy]

Mykhailo Fedorov's account is doing very well. He even got me to follow and I usually don't read Twitter.

[pandy]

It's actually fascinating to see the power of the Internet and social media at work and for once NOT used to make people dumber or to spread false information or to sell something but for something good. He snaps his fingers and big companies obey, within hours. And those that don't will get a very bad rep. It feels liberating.

[Christian J]

Oh dear.

[pandy]

What's wrong with that? I think it's great those networks come do good use for once. But of course it's at the same times scary to see the impact.

Fedorov seem to know how to work the net. Have you seen this?
https://putina.net/

[Christian J]

I haven't paid that much attention to any of this war, to be honest, just like the wars in say Ethiopia, Syria or Yemen. Most of what you hear is propaganda lies anyway, so it's just a waste of time to keep track.

That said, the reaction in the Western world seems like a mass psychosis to me, truly scary. Maybe it's a leftover from the Covid scare and will calm down soon.

[pandy]

Are you joking? You really should read. They are attacking dwelling houses and hospitals - even children's hospitals - and places where civilians have taken shelter. They almost caused a new Chernobyl. They let nothing get out or in from the cities they control. People don't have food and water and die from it. Where it's worst it's like the siege of Leningrad. The dogs eat corpses and people eat the dogs. We've seen a lot of unjust wars, but this seems to me as one of the dirtiest. They seem to prefer civilian targets in their quest to totally destroy the country and break people's will to fight back.

And look at a map. It's about 300 km to the Russian border up north. This isn't in another part of the world. It's here. It's been known since long before this war that Putin wants to resurrect Russia to its former glory and power. If he manages to take Ukraine he won't stop there. He'll want the Baltic states. Some mean that the smart way to take the Baltic states is to invade us first. That way he'll have them surrounded and he'll control the Baltic sea.

What's great about what Fedorov is doing is that he gets companies to withdraw from Russia faster than governments do. And he gets them to give Ukraine what they need. Two examples. He asked PayPal to help with money transfer. They did. Fast. He told Musk that Starlink would be really helpful (since Russia cuts them off from the net). Within a few hours the loaded trucks were rolling and they keep coming.

What scares me the most is how Putin will react if he at some point realizes he won't win. He can't give up. He'll be a dead as a leader and probably really dead too. If the Russians don't' kill him he'll face a was tribunal. What are the chances he will NOT use his nukes?

You must read. Those people aren't only fighting for their country. They are fighting for us too.

Sorry for OT. But this is bigger than forum rules. And I just realized this is the OT forum anyway.

[Christian J]

Sorry, can't be bothered.

[pandy]

You actually shock me. So just because some information may be false you choose to ignore everything? Of course there's propaganda, from both sides. It's a war. But propaganda isn't the same thing as disinformation, although from one source they are so mixed up it's hard to distinguish between them.

Do you take the same approach to everything? Pollution? Health threats? I guess you do. Now you call the response to the pandemic hysteria. Yet you said earlier you held your breath when passing people. Why, if covid isn't dangerous?

[Christian J]

Seems Twitter is not doing well either.

Elon Musk buys 9.2 percent of Twitter amid complaints about free speech
https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/4/23009622/...res-free-speech

I doubt this will improve anything much, Twitter and similar social media sites are flawed at their core. Even Jack Dorsey seems to have finally realized it: https://www.zdnet.com/article/twitter-found...g-the-internet/

[Christian J]

I’m a former CIA cyber-operations officer who studies bot traffic. Here’s why it’s plausible that more than 80% of Twitter’s accounts are actually fake—and Twitter is not alone.