Sure, but this whole line of reasoning is irrelevant to what I'm saying. The problem isn't that China is influencing us. Just look at TFA itself. Its obviously part of an influence campaign to discredit objectors at local government zoning hearings by dismissing them as chinese sympathizers. If you think that influencing people so that they form opinions that are counter to their interests is bad, you shouldn't worry about ten thousand dollars worth of social media posts. You should worry about the US based company that makes 50 billion dollars a year doing it.

Whats more is that fundamentally it is reasonable for people to be influenced by ideas counter to their interests and without it society would cease to function.

I don't buy some things I see ads for, so yes, there are ads that don't affect me.

Do you buy everything you see an ad for?

Being able to entertain a thought without believing it is one of the things that separates us from the animals.

Controlling an entry in the blockchain ledger is not the same thing as controlling a banknote in physical reality. The control of the blockchain entry relies on others attesting that I have control over it, but for a physical banknote, I merely need to physically control it and don't need any 3rd party attestations. Note that this does not rely on any kind of mumbo jumbo about the economic value of either one represents.

Its not a currency. At best, its a title to nothing.

Can you at least make an internally consistent post? White people made California the shithole that it is today.

Does XBOX pay Azure market rate for cloud services? If so, maybe they should shop around. The economics of streaming games is never going to make sense at market rate cloud costs.

Who cares? Google is out here trying to influence my opinion on literally everything under the sun. If Google makes me believe I need a new swiffer mop, or that I should care about soccer, or that I should care about whatever interesectional identity is the current flavor of the month: the opinions they helped me get are real opinions. Similarly, just because China influences people's opinions, that doesn't invalidate the very real opinions that they have.

Arguing that people's opinions are irrelevant is a uhhhh.. interesting hot take for people to have who say they believe in democracy. Then again, who published this story again? Maybe they don't.

Interesting idea, but what does the science say?

So? Recording in public is still normalized by it and if social networks are the problem, lets shut em down.

The world hates me because I ate all the ham. Not because I barely speak a single language.

Most modern busses are equipped with cameras....

Did you ask Ukrainians how they feel about it? They have agency and can make their own decisions. From the outside it looks like it's what they want.

Go ahead and ask me. All the worry back then was for nothing. Did you ever talk to a WW2 veteran? What you are proposing is madness. Russia is already well on its path to being a hermit kingdom and IMO that's enough. Unfortunately, so is the USA but that's entirely self inflicted.