The 5th amendment says you can't be compelled to be a witness against yourself. That has a very narrow meaning: You can't be compelled to testify in court against yourself. It doesn't cover destruction of evidence. It also applies only to criminal cases. I'm not sure if the FTC is considering criminal or just civil penalties in this case.

That's a whole different question. Americans in particular seem to be experts at voting against their own best interests. It has to do with money and manipulation of politics by the powerful, I think.

You should trust the government more than you trust Amazon. The government is accountable to the people. Amazon is only accountable to its shareholders.

Your "I'm only asking questions" shtick is a little tired.

If Amazon had been "told to keep documents, emails and other messages" then deleting such messages is obstruction of justice at the very least. I guess the FTC anticipated that this might happen.

We need to ban Meta next. Facebook and Instagram are provably harmful to mental health and directly responsible for whipping up xenophobic massacres.

If we strongly regulate tobacco for being harmful to our physical health, then why are we not strongly regulating social media for being harmful to our mental health, and in some cases to people's very lives?

Oh wait... it's American companies profiting from the harm. So that's OK then.

This is exactly right. The freedoms guaranteed in a nation's constitution should apply to people. Actual living human beings. Not to corporations, which should have a much more limited set of rights.

The granting of rights to corporations as if they were people is a huge problem and it's contributing to the decline in political discourse.

As a non-European, non-American, let me chime in... I don't think most places in Europe or the USA are "hellholes". However, if I had to pick another country to live in other than where I am now, USA would be way down on the list and many European countries would be near the top.

You are joking, right?

Sure, there are some very well-off places in the United States. But there are also plenty of awful, depressed places with terrible standards of living in the United States.

The disparity in Europe is less. I've been to cities in seven European countries and in all of them, the standard of living seemed comparable to a reasonably-prosperous North American city.

Interesting. The per-capita GDP of Norway is higher than that of the United States, according to this. So maybe Americans' hard work doesn't pay off?

Honda's getting about CAD $5B in subsidies to expand production in Ontario. I'm philosophically opposed to subsidies like this, but companies play governments like chumps. "Well, if you don't subsidize us, we'll simply go to $OTHER_JURISDICTION that will subsidize us... that'd be a shame..."

It's not disingenuous at all.

Also, it's nobody's business what medical care someone elects to receive, other than that person, their parents if the person is incapable of informed consent and is a minor, and their doctors. Ever heard of small government that doesn't intrude in private life?

It's a fact. Conservatives are obsessed with kids' genitalia and with policing gender presentation, as if a piece of clothing has super-powers.

That statement (that most trans kids just "grow out of it") is debunked bullshit.

I have kids. I'm glad I had them. But would I have been less happy had I not had kids? I'm not sure. My kids are all adults now, and out of the house and independent, and I have to say, I greatly prefer this stage of my life than when the kids were little.

Right, because 0.2% of the population really skews the numbers.

I'm trans and I have three biological kids. *head asplodes*