Oh - and it is not fascist to let privately owned companies do what they want.

A decent definition of fascism: âoea centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.â

Private companies choosing not to peddle in lies about an ongoing pandemic does not even get close to fascism. Lies saying that the pandemic is a hoax are NOT âoeoppositionâ - they are simply lies.

Iâ(TM)m fine with most of those other than the utilities. Utilities (even if privately owned) enter into contracts with the areas they provide service to that say they will provide service evenly to everyone (among other things). What they get out of it is access to the physical infrastructure of the town/city. If itâ(TM)s a public utility then definitely no - they donâ(TM)t get to discriminate.

Private companies have all sorts of gatekeeping going on already. You canâ(TM)t shop at Costco without paying for a membership - and I guarantee you they have clauses in that membership agreement that say they can revoke it whenever they want.

In general: private companies DO NOT HAVE TO SERVE ANYONE (other than - they cannot discriminate against protected groups based on race, religion, etc. and note that being an a-hole misinformation spreader is NOT a protected group). Most of the examples you give companies could already be doing - but theyâ(TM)re not because it would be bad for business and doesnâ(TM)t make them money.

Censorship (let's be clear about the type of censorship that could have happened here: a private company may have stopped carrying a program that its users don't like) of dangerous speech (hate speech, extreme misinformation) is VERY much different from censoring music that has "salacious beats".

In this case - Joe Rogan (and, hence, Spotify) amplified the idea that the pandemic is not real. That is _dangerous_. That will (and is) lead to thousands of deaths due to ignoring health guidelines. People subscribing to Spotify have the right to be angry about that and end their subscriptions. Spotify has the right to decide that it's in their best interest to end carrying that kind of message. This is simply free market forces (which I thought Republicans liked?) at work.

I, myself, was a long-term Spotify subscriber. I canceled my membership over this. Do I actually think it will make any difference to Spotify? No - probably not... but at least I am not giving dollars to an organization that is actively promoting dangerous speech. That's my right.

But what do you do about people peddling _harmful_ speech? The guy on Rogan's podcast was saying the pandemic doesn't exist and is "mass hysteria". That kind of stuff can lead (and is leading) to thousands of people dying due to not following health guidelines.

Should we tolerate that kind of speech? Even better - does Spotify, as a private company, have to amplify that type of speech?

The judicial system has long-upheld the idea that there are limits on the freedom of speech (even in the context of the government). The classic case being that you cannot say something that directly leads to harm (like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded room which leads to mass panic and death). I don't see any difference between that and saying the pandemic isn't real - it is speech that leads to harm.

"And one of that rights you give up is the right to refuse service to people you don't like."

No - you lose the right to refuse service to _protected groups_, such as black people, religious groups, gays, etc. A nutjob conspiracy theorist saying that the pandemic is a hoax is NOT a protected group. A snowflake Trump supporter that won't follow health guidelines is NOT a protected group. No one is compelled to service them.

No - I would have no problems with Spotify censoring LGBT content. It would make me personally not use their service - but I would not be calling for any legal action. They are a company and can do what they want.

I am pro "free speech" when that speech is factually based and not leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. That includes both speech on the left and the right. Talking about how gay couples should have rights and not be discriminated against is NOT the same thing as saying that the pandemic is a hoax.

Don't project your fascism on people on the left.

"The disparity in how participants are being treated"

This is COMPLETE BS made up by conservative media. BLM participants were arrested and tried _in droves_. There were more than 14,000 arrests for BLM protests: https://www.forbes.com/sites/r... . That's in addition to getting actually beaten, gassed, shot with rubber bullets, etc. on the spot. Hell, Trump gassed a huge group of them just so he could get a picture with him holding a bible upside down. In comparison - only 6 people were arrested on January 6th itself.

You are absolutely right - breaking the law should come with being arrested and tried. The reality is that both groups are getting what they deserved... BLM protestors got arrested and tried like crazy... and the January 6th insurrectionists are (finally) getting arrested and tried for the crimes they committed... and those crimes (disrupting the process of certifying a vote for the president of the US) ARE worse than throwing a bottle through a window. One affects only the person who owns the window (which is bad - but localized)... the other effects 300M Americans.

I know it's different everywhere - but here we utilize the free "pickup" services offered by grocery stores. Order online, drive up, they put it in the back of our vehicle... and we drive home. It's incredibly fast and convenient. It saves us literally hours a week of grocery shopping.

I know that it wouldn't work in NYC... but any place where the majority of people drive to work is a place where free order pickup will win.

Ummm - you have this exactly backwards. GOG is a boat anchor: https://www.theverge.com/2021/...

I hear what you're saying... but at this point Netflix is effectively as ubiquitous as the "Guide" button... in fact, I bet a lot more people will press the Netflix button. I don't mind having a shortcut to something so many people used placed in a convenient spot.

Iâ(TM)ll admit to being a geek and adding to the problem. As I got older I absolutely traded the âoeright thingâ for the âoeconvenient thingâ. I used to solely run Linux as my only OS (using Wine to game)⦠now I havenâ(TM)t touched anything that isnâ(TM)t an Apple device in the last 10 years. Blah blah - insert justification about life getting complicated and needing things to just workâ¦

I canâ(TM)t be the only oneâ¦

I know it wasnâ(TM)t free - I understand the point of JIT⦠but now you have companies missing out on sales due to having no inventory⦠so JIT is not free either.

There is a balance somewhere⦠that is apparently more stock than what companies have been using.

While everyone in here wants to yell and scream at the opposite political party⦠I truly think that this has more to do with businesses relying too heavily on Just In Time inventory management/manufacturing.

Back in the day you would stock months worth of parts that are critical to your business. Through the 80s and 90s JIT came into vogue and businesses started running âoeleanâ⦠where the parts they needed would show up at exactly the right time.

Unfortunately, this meant that any disruption to the global supply chain could cascade⦠and boy has it. If companies would have had plenty of inventory of parts and products then the system could have absorbed some of the slowdown instead of grinding everything to a halt.

It will be interesting to see if businesses change their practices after this gets cleaned up. There is no doubt that businesses are currently losing out on many possible sales (and hence $$). The next time this happens (and it will) the businesses that learned their lesson will be in a great position to capitalize on the situation.

I just went and looked and Amazon touts that the Luna controller is âoecloud direct, reducing round trip latency by 17-30ms compared to Bluetooth on a PCâ⦠so it sounds like theyâ(TM)re doing the same thing Stadia isâ¦

Before hating on cloud gaming all together⦠see my writeup above about why Google Stadia can achieve _excellent_ lag time that is very similar to consoles (and possibly much less than any time you are using a Bluetooth controller/keyboard on a PC).

Total round trip from button press to seeing the result can be in the 50ms (possibly even less) range⦠but the trick is that the direct Wi-Fi connected controller can get a button press to Googleâ(TM)s servers very quickly (15ms in my above writeup). That makes it have a VERY responsive feel.

Everyone should try Stadia with one of their controllers and a Chromecast ultra before completely writing off cloud gaming. It seriously works.