> Actual product support is killed, and instead user supported forums are promoted. Useful idiots do the work unpaid for a mere digital badge.
Wow, that is a misanthropic take if I have ever seen one. People helping out other people for free are called "useful idiots".
While it might be an ethically bad move of the company, it certainly should not be used to disparage helpers. Otherwise, would you classify all unpaid FOSS work the work of "useful idiots"?
It depends. One prominent figure of the right-wing populist party AfD in Germany has been called a Nazi. When he sued the originator the court decided that, considering the circumstances, was not an insult in the sense of the law.
That was argued to be a satirical skit rather than sincere statement I think. Which is quite an outlier but would be still probably quite interesting to compare with other cases.
But in general if you were walking down the street or talking about something on the internet and somebody else called out or posted and said you are a nazi. Hate speech?
As mentioned before - it depends on the circumstances. If you call someone wearing a full Nazi outfit a Nazi, it probably will not be seen as hate speech/insult. If you call someone showing nothing in that regard a Nazi out of the blue, it could. But that would be handled as personal insult, then. For hate speech it needs to affect more than one person, I believe.
That was a overall very rarely occurring abuse of power of a politician in charge of leading local law enforcement. It was declared illegal later. And you take that as a proof for what about the whole of Germany?
> > His unit has successfully prosecuted about 750 hate speech cases over the last four years.
> But sure, abuse of power is so rare. Nothing to see here.
This would make your point if those hate speech cases were all the same as your Andy Grote example.
Otherwise it's like pointing at one defendant winning a road traffic law case due to dashcam footage showing the police were making things up, as evidence that all road traffic law prosecutions are abusing power.
You're missing the point. That's exactly how democratic governments cloak fascist behavior everywhere: The punishment IS THE PROCESS.
People in Germany (and the UK and other places) have to self censor because they don't want to be visited by the police and then dragged through courts for months/years, even though it eventually gets thrown out and you get to walk away innocent, you still had to suffer the entire prosecution process, which nobody wants to, so they keep their mouth shut.
The stress toll of having to go through all that annoying grind through the legal system, even though you did nothing wrong and what the government is doing will be considered illegal, is how the government preemptively keeps people in line.
>That was a overall very rarely occurring abuse of power
Very rare?! Unless there's direct consequences with actual punishment on government officials for illegally abusing the legal system on citizens just because they hear stuff they don't like, then they will keep throwing prosecutions at innocent people just to keep them in check since currently they have nothing stopping them from this abuse turning from rare to being the norm.
Except for the Grote case you can very well criticize politicians, even in somewhat questionable language without LE raiding your home. That one case was an exception.
Just look at any political thread in any social media in German language. There is plenty of criticism or even insults regarding government officials, without them getting raided. It is only extreme cases (often with calls for violence) which trigger LE. So the chilling effect is missing or at least it has little influence.
> So yes - in a reasonably functioning capitalist market (which the U.S still is in my eyes) I expect gross inefficiencies to not be prevalent.
I am not sure that is true, though. Assume for a moment that Google would waste 50% of their profits. Truly, a huge inefficiency. However, would that make it likely some other corp could take their search/ad market share from them? I doubt it, given the abyss of a moat.
One could say: True, therefore search is not a reasonably functioning capitalist market.
Yeah, I know, this can turn into "no true capitalist market". Still, it seems reasonable to say that many markets work in a certain kind of way (with lots of competition), and search is not one of those markets.
The parent was referring to the whole US as "market". In that sense the numerous exceptions and non-functioning markets invalidate the statement, IMHO.
At least until they are running out of customers. And/or societies with mass-unemployment destabilize to a degree that is not conducive for capitalists' operations.
Wow, that is a misanthropic take if I have ever seen one. People helping out other people for free are called "useful idiots".
While it might be an ethically bad move of the company, it certainly should not be used to disparage helpers. Otherwise, would you classify all unpaid FOSS work the work of "useful idiots"?
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