Twitter has been losing money for years... Did they ever turn a profit? Certainly not under Musk.

Facebook lost money for many years too. As does TRUTH Social, although that might actually fit the description of propaganda.

That's just how tech start-ups work. Lose money but gain users, and eventually enshittify.

More than that. TikTok is where a lot of younger people share political philosophy. It's one of the few mainstream places where socialism is the dominant movement, which is why they want to destroy it.

Without TikTok fewer young people would be members of unions, fewer would be taking climate change so seriously, and more would be vulnerable to bad landlords who rely on ignorance of legal rights. While there is of course a lot of crap on there, it's not true to say that there is nothing of value.

Lately The Onion has called a lot of the reporting around the situation in Gaza days or weeks before it happened.

It's funny, but it's also really biting satire that we need to help us keep perspective here. Their stuff about all the ways the media will find to avoid saying Israel killed anyone is a good example. Some of the headlines, about bullets "finding" their way into children's heads, are truly beyond parody, but we will need satire to remind us just how insane they actually are.

Landlords choose to rent out property. Hate speech only applies where the thing being described is not a choice, such a race, gender, and bizarrely religion.

I had an Amstrad PC1512 that came with DOS 3.3, but also with DOSPLUS that offered CP/M compatibility. And the Gem windowing system version 2, which was the one that was hobbled by a patent dispute with Apple, which resulted in the desktop being only able to show two windows side-by-side (apps could do what they liked).

I think I spent 90% of my time in DOS, although Locomotive BASIC II in Gem was interesting.

FTFY.

They say they want more legal immigration, but then close down all the legal routes.

For example, there is a greater than 20 year waiting list for applications for family reunion visas for people in Mexico. For most practical purpose, there is no legal option. Same thing in the UK, the government bangs on about wanting safe and legal routes for refugees, but there aren't any. It's literally impossible for them to even apply for asylum without first illegally entering the country.

I don't buy that they even want people with skills either, not really. Again, in the UK they now can't bring their families. Who is going to come and work in the UK, probably doing some job that British citizens don't want like caring for the elderly, if they have to leave their family behind and there is no prospect of ever reuniting with them if they end up staying here? The message is clearly that they want people to leave as soon as they are of no use to us anymore, no matter how much they have contributed.

It used to be that children supported their parents into old age. Now their parents are the wealthy ones, with property that massively increased in value, while the adult children struggle with rent and high prices.

I know, but this is the world we live in. The high cost of living and of accommodation gives women little choice.

Worse still there is little prospect of it getting better, because boomers will vote against anything that devalues property back to sane levels.

As an aside, that's actually legally the case in the UK. You can't sue for damages for having a child, e.g. because you raised them but found out you were not their biological parent, or your sperm was accidentally given to the wrong person at the fertility clinic etc. The law considered a child to always be a blessing, not something that can ever cause you financial loss.

It also says that the rate for that group is climbing, i.e. women are having children later. We see an increase in women freezing eggs when they are younger too.

It might be a case of you not knowing what you are missing, if you don't read/speak Chinese or Japanese. The characters are detailed and complex, but it seems that whatever translation you read isn't bringing those aspects over.

I got a nice bump up from British Airlines when they were unable to run a scheduled flight I had booked. They told us about half an hour before take-off that it was cancelled, so I immediately booked with ANA for a few hours later. That happened to be a first class upgrade, but it was the only seat they had, so I was entitled to it and BA had to pay the price which IIRC was around £4,500, when I only paid them about £800.

These days I always go with ANA or JAL anyway, BA have been terrible too many times.

That's a distraction from the real issue here, which is that both political parties in the US don't like the kinds of things that are being said on TikTok, and really hate that the TikTok algorithm is promoting those videos.

There is a lot of stuff about Palestine, and about unions and worker's rights, and about the rental market. A lot of it skews socialist, fairly common European stuff but terrifying to American politicians.

They want an American company to buy TikTok and change it to promote conservative views. And when I say conservative, I'm including the Democrats in that, they are far to the right politically of where TikTok users are.