This is a really weird comment. You frame not caring about canon or consistency as something noble or as growth. That's fantastic that you no longer care about certain elements of fictional stories. And while certainly there are people who take it too far or put maybe a little more energy than the average person, it does matter to a lot of people, and that doesn't show a lack of maturity.

You honestly sound kind of apathetic or even flippant about fiction. The meme of the guy saying "don't ask questions, just consume" comes to mind.

Sort of. I hear too many stories about juries being rigged, and rigged against people who know too much about court systems.

So, it's best to have no ownership? That's how the current model works.

We've had ecological issues before cryptocurrency and we'd still have ecological issues if cryptocurrency never existed. It is not an ecological disaster waiting to happen and hyperbole doesn't help make points.

Sorry, that's not how things work. Sorry, I should say, that's how things work when there is proper competition. But there are only a couple big players in the phone OS/app market. That means that things you might be able to do when you're smaller and there's lots of competition you don't necessarily get to do when you're a behemoth and there's little competition.

I don't quite understand this. I guess we should have pure and unwavering trust for the corporations around us? All the tech companies that people complain about all the time that they can't trust for numerous reasons? Or I guess people should be okay with electronic payments going through a handful of companies (Visa, MasterCard, etc.)? I wouldn't mind an alternate to giving those corporations a cut of everything.

Of course there's distrust. He acts like there shouldn't be. There shouldn't be that distrust, but anyone who's paying attention knows that's an idealistic world in some parallel dimension.

Or maybe we should trust those companies that will pull games (like UbiSoft)? Why shouldn't we trust a company that sells a game that, in a couple of months, will no longer be playable? I could go on about the scummy things that companies do.

This kind of sounds like the gamers that started to panic around the time Gone Home came out, and some of them thinking that most future games would be walking simulators because several websites heaped awards on the game. No Mr. Paranoid, the Nifters are not going to prevent you from making non-NFT games. I don't see NFTs becoming ubiquitous in gaming anytime soon.

Fuck, I don't even have anything to say about NFTs. This guy sounds like he's using his hate against NFTs to try and tell people that they should just trust companies and corporations.

You'll have to explain what's xenophobic about my question, though it doesn't sound like a good-faith question.

Considering neither are UK companies, it doesn't seem reasonable. How they operate vs companies merging aren't on the same level. So I guess, say, any companies that are based in India but have a footprint in the US can be subject to US monopoly laws? That doesn't make sense either.

These are both US companies. Why does the UK think they have jurisdiction?

Blocking and reporting should be fine for most people. Is it within their right to do this? Sure. Is it creepy a fuck? Yep!

There are plenty of games that don't spy on me. I'll play those.

Not all NFTs are created through machine learning. There are people who put skill into the art (if there is any, not all NFTs are images) with an NFT.

What? No they don't. What is the intrinsic value of a painting then?

You're correct that NFTs don't have intrinsic value. They're essentially 1s and 0s. People give them value.

Some NFTs are scams, not all. This would be like someone seeing a PC for the first time, and all they see is popup ads when they open a browser, and are therefore convinced that all computers are used to distribute scam ads.

Paintings rarely come with copyright rights either.

You could make the exact same argument for physical paintings. Nothing more than some colored dyes on paper or cloth.

That just seems like one possible symptom of "watch more content". Unless you have a source or evidence that says it was specifically to cause those emotions, I don't think there's much of a case there. People also become engaged and watch more content in relation to other emotional triggers, or just topics of interest.

But free speech should be what we protect. The few instances we don't allow it should only be urgent exceptions. I don't know much about the full effects of subliminal advertising, but single-frame subliminal advertisements aren't the same as keeping people engaged and watching on social media.

Manipulates them...in what way, exactly? To watch more content?

You can say that about literally nearly anything, especially media in general. You don't think that there's media out there that's been manipulated to have the strongest connection to as many people as possible? And to get them coming back for more?

Hell, things that are physically addictive, like fast and junk food, are perfectly legal. All the salt and processed sugar that's nutrient deficient so you keep coming back for more (it's one part of the massive obesity problem in the US). Obesity is a far, far bigger health issue than social media.

Everything I've heard is simply; people look at content, algorithms determine that people who look at X content also watch Y content, and show you're shown Y content. Nothing about extremism or anything of that nature. Simply about grouping people on what they watch and what others seem to watch.

You are completely fucking wrong.

It's okay when allies spy on us, since while there is a lot of negative PR around a government spying on its own citizens, it's all good to have an ally spy and then get the information from them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes