Yes but the difference is that there were reasonable grounds to suspect that prolonged exposure to RF waves might possibly cause some harmful effects. The WHO didn’t categorize radio frequency radiation as a potential carcinogen based on no evidence at all:
https://www.iarc.who.int/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/pr208_E.pdf
The possibility of there being a link was not absurd, per se.
To be fair, the evidence about a link between cell phone radiation and cancer has been inconclusive for quite some time. After all, a series of inconclusive or null results doesn’t mean there is categorically no link – it could equally mean that more research is needed.
That said, I do agree that if there were a casual link in this case then it would have made itself apparent by now, given the huge increase in cell phone usage over the past few decades.
As someone who has lived in Thailand, I get why Thais were pissed. The hotel, the taxi, the public transport all look like they’re from 30 years ago. Yes, you do still find run-down buildings and tuk-tuks in Bangkok today, but it’s generally a lot more developed and modern than westerners expect on first arrival. Instead of showing the reality, the creators of this ad went out of their way to portray an outdated caricature.
To an outsider it might seem like nitpicking, but Thais are fed up with being presented this way to an international audience.
Being profoundly ignorant on a topic has never stopped him from tweeting about it.
Because he is the owner of the very platform that helped to stir up the recent neofascist riots in the UK that led to POC being attacked and terrorized and properties looted and burned. His tweets are seen by millions of people, and greatly contribute towards online extremism and polarization.
Oh, don’t get me wrong - Budweiser/Coors/Michelob etc. are all awful. However, most US states have good local breweries and craft beers. Lagers are generally not as popular as IPAs, but you can still get good ones. Admittedly, this varies quite a bit depending on where you are in the US.
As a cooking ingredient, maybe, but if you’re using butter on toast, bread, etc. then Irish/French/British butter is clearly better.
Also, the superiority of European chocolate isn’t to do with the cocoa content or the sweetness - it’s just creamier and has a smoother texture.
I’ll agree with you on the beer, though.
Or the EMF generators they carry around with them in their pockets, A.K.A their phones.
I see what you’re getting at, but that’s a flawed analogy.
Firstly, public roads are paid for collectively through taxes but everyone can benefit from them, not just large multinational corporations. That’s not currently how user data is used in the context we are discussing, since the users themselves do not benefit materially from the data they produce.
A more accurate use of a road analogy would be to say that, at the moment, the users build the roads themselves (generate their data), and the private companies say to the users “Thanks very much for building the roads, we’re now going to charge anyone who wants to use them and keep 100%. Oh, and you have no ownership rights, so we can restrict access to these roads as we see fit.”
Yes, and legislation that forces companies to pay higher wages (or in this case, royalties given back to users) is itself a form of wealth distribution that can help to reduce income inequality.
We can talk about the overthrow of capitalism, if you like, but that’s a whole separate issue.
Right, so instead of big tech companies keeping all the profits made from utilizing user data, a big chunk of it goes back into the pockets of the users themselves. Like a cooperative organization that shares profits with its workers.
The point of it is to redistribute wealth using the existing capitalist framework, which is a left-wing endeavour.
Private ownership ≠ capitalism. Monopoly is a critique of free market capitalism, which naturally leads to a concentration of wealth for those who hold all the assets. Giving people ownership of their own data would help redistribute that wealth in a more equitable way.
No, it won’t fix the underlying problem of Capitalism, but it would at least be a step in the right direction.
That’s fine for the tech-literate minority of us, but totally unrealistic for the average citizen.
So basically don’t interact with 99% of online platforms, then?
Big tech companies making vast profits off of users providing data for free instead of paying workers wages in exchange for manufacturing goods is only going to deepen the disparity of wealth in society.
What we desperately need is essentially a Digital Bill of Rights so that we can legally own our own data.
I’d be interested in buying a Nothing phone if they weren’t all so huge.
All true, but that doesn’t disprove my point. The risk was non-zero, so it was still worth investigating.