Before Elon Musk bought Twitter the previous owners engaged in different kinds of editorial control. The people who argued that editorial control of Twitter was something the owners had the right to do on their private platform and the people who argued that the government should find some legal mechanism to characterize this editorial control as some kind of crime so they could force Twitter not to do it, were flipped from what they are now.
> Before Elon Musk bought Twitter the previous owners engaged in different kinds of editorial control. The people who argued that editorial control of Twitter was something the owners had the right to do on their private platform and the people who argued that the government should find some legal mechanism to characterize this editorial control as some kind of crime so they could force Twitter not to do it, were flipped from what they are now.
Well I've been against this regardless of owners. Honestly, this stuff is really concerning. I spent a bunch of years working in social media, and back then I was sceptical that algorithmic content selection should be regarded as publication, but given how easy it is to shift the Overton window with changes here, I think that it probably needs to happen.
I do think that this will cause lots of downstream impacts that I like, but this much power is bad in anyone's hands, regardless of how much I agree with them.
Owning land. Whoever came up with this idea needs to be hung and revived a million times, and then tortured to death a million more. Our society has been mutilated as a result.
I think you could ascribe this to either NIMBY or YIMBY harebrained thinking. We need a third option that's pro-human.
Most of NIMBY legislature and processes that block private construction also block public construction. So most YIMBY arguments to improve the situation apply to both public and private constructions. (Not to mention that public construction has a plenty of problems specific to it.)
There is no trade-off or contradiction between public housing and YIMBY deregulation to allow more private development. I want both. They are complementary.
There's also overlap between YIMBYs are Georgists, they share some skepticism around private land ownership.
This is a fictitious trade-off. Deregulation (of parking minimums, height limits) helps ensure public housing is affordable for the taxpayer and environmentally friendly. If it also helps private developers as a side effect, and that is no loss for public housing.
> I suspect most who go by YIMBY would also oppose this.
Well I'm not sure what you're proposing but if it can be characterised as "mass public housing" it sounds like a terrible idea on the face of it, and most people would probably oppose it on that ground. But the YIMBYs would have to agree that you're allowed to try it if you want, otherwise they'd be NIMBYs, on the basis that they are telling other people they can't build on their land.
That guy had been overstaying a tourist visa for something like 17 years, and only started the green card process in April 2025. I don't think people who have overstayed tourist visas for 17 years should be eligible for any kind of permanent residency in the US, and would support laws making it impossible for someone in his position to get a green card or a work permit.
The fact that he is a white Irishman is legally irrelevant and enforcing immigration law in a race-neutral way is pretty un-Gestapo-like behavior.
Only because we made the "overstaying" an illegal offense. But there's no reason to -- if the guy was paying taxes the whole time, and never committed a serious crime, then we should be happy to welcome such guys, ramping up our GDP.
Don't forget that the paperwork costs a lot, if one has children, can get close to $10k.
Look at Spain -- instead of deporting "illegals", they just made them "legals" (those without a criminal record). Easy, problem solved.
You make it sound like deportations happen because of some mistaken legal wording. That's distortion of reality. A significant amount of US citizens voted for them to happen. I'm sure they heard about GDP many times and still found other reasons more important. It wouldn't be a wild guess to assume that they won't buy Spain as a good example.
I just point out that to me "overstaying visa" is such a completely artificial concept, with arbitrary timelines, and is not explainable by any rational considerations of the state. Otherwise they'd neglect it.
Or, as I saw myself in another country, a border guy is like "Wow, you overstayed your visa by N years! Don't worry, let me correct that. I recommend getting a permanent residency, would be easier for you to pay taxes and use our government systems. Welcome!"
Not of course. If you know you're not willing to understand why people think the way they do then what's the point in drawing conclusions from your biases?
> I just point out that to me "overstaying visa" is such a completely artificial concept
So is the concept of a "country" or a "state". Everything is an artificial concept. The first duty of the state is to have border integrity, so the country means something, and that includes deciding who can come in and for how long. This is very, very basic stuff that's normal in every country in the world.
The US lets the most people in legally in the entire world, and by quite some measure[0]. If you think it's some xenophobic nightmare of a place then that seems an extremely narrow understanding of the world and the US's place in it.
Far from it. Concept of "country" or a "state" are way less artificial. Up until 1924 USA welcomed almost anyone with any background. Many countries don't care about it today. Australia was populated with literal criminals.
The concept of a "state" and its borders is to determine where its laws apply to. Historically, there was rarely even resources to mark the boundary in any meaningful way. But the problem of two kinds claiming sovereignty over a territory got resolved pretty easily -- whoever has the ability to collect taxes (aka tribute). Immigration was not a major concern at all. If anything, a feudal was more concerned of their tax base moving OUT of their jurisdiction, not preventing movement IN.
As I said above, Spain just gave permanent residency to everyone "overstaying" the visa. Does the concept of Spain as a country stopped "meaning something"?
> The US lets the most people in legally in the entire world, and by quite some measure[0]. If you think it's some xenophobic nightmare of a place then that seems an extremely narrow understanding of the world and the US's place in it.
USA immigration process is very hostile, compared to almost any other country in the world (IMO only UK and Switzerland are comparable). I went through it, as well as in other countries, can compare. Why are you so sure I have the "extremely narrow understanding"? Even paying $700+ for just one form, without any guarantees or money back is already sus.
I like this theory of paying taxes is a felony, tell me more!!
Levity aside, working on a tourist visa is a violation but generally isn't prosecuted as a felony.
Also the grandparent post said "They seized a white Irishman last October who had a valid work permit and was just about to head to his green card interview."
If he had a valid work permit I suppose this means that he was allowed to work and pay taxes on that work, in other words - no, he was not committing a felony.
All you need to pay taxes is an SSN.
One can get an SSN in many ways, e.g. long ago on another visa. Same as income to pay on -- can be earned in many ways.
The first lady originally came to the US on a tourist visa before getting work as a model and eventually applying for a green card several years later. Musk came to the US on a student visa for a program that he never actually enrolled in. Even if you want to argue its "race-neutral", it's certainly not "proximity to the president neutral" so it still is very much "Gestapo-like behavior".
Some people have this weird view of history in which everything is judged by the end state. They believe we can’t compare a situation to something like Nazi Germany if it is not identical to the final stages of that fascist regime. The problem with that thinking is it ignores how these regimes got to that point.
Not only do they constantly escalate their atrocities growing worse over time, but many of those atrocities simply weren’t and won’t be known until the regime is deposed meaning the in the moment understandings of their evilness is incomplete.
It's not Gestapo-like, and whatever is your position on political spectrum it's ridiculous to put things like Stalin-Hitler-Mao-Pol Pot repressions on the same level as anything happening in the US.
Understandable, but sometimes there isn't a better alternative that doesn't do user support via Discord. That's why it's important to have alternatives that work, so unrelated companies don't pick centralized platform chat software that happens to be convenient for their immediate needs.
Those people were people who previously made the decision to illegally immigrate to the US. Lots of people start their day normally and then get arrested by militarized cops because they are wanted for murder or assault or burglary or cryptocurrency fraud. The fact that the US has a criminal justice system including police that arrest people suspected of crimes, isn't new, isn't obviously worse than competing systems (e.g justice via informal militia/lynch mob), and doesn't have any implications for the use of Discord today that it didn't have a decade ago.
That assumes that e. g. ICE were only involved against people who have broken the law. First and foremost - this is not the case. Second: when you look at the two executions of US citizens, that is also something not touched by your comment. It is not good to try to describe e. g. ICE without also mentioning the negative sides, such as them having shot dead at the least two US citizens already for no justifiable reason.
Did you even read the article? He entered the country on a tourist visa and never left. That is entering the country illegally. Getting married and applying for adjustment of status does not give him legal status. He should rightfully be deported.
Except most US voters disagree with you. Someone married to a US citizen does have residency rights, notwithstanding the paperwork quirk that you're supposed to exit and re-enter, which typically involves flying somewhere going to the US embassy to get a stamp and flying back. So just as most people don't support the death penalty for speeding, most people don't support criminal deportation for someone who has the right to be in the US but for whatever reason (perhaps lack of money or perhaps fear of strip searching and disappearing to the gulag) didn't follow the proper process. Because most voters don't see this situation as a crime and certainly not one requiring deportation, the law doesn't treat this situation as a serious crime, or actually a crime at all.
If you want to aggressively going after folks who have skirted immigration rules perhaps the place to begin is in the east wing (if it still existed).
He has resided and worked in the country illegally for 16 years. Getting married at the end of that time doesn't automatically grant you legal status, you have to apply for adjustment of status at which point they will review your history with adhering to US immigration law. He could have chosen to be deported, per the terms of the visa waiver program he entered on, but he chose not to so he can wait in detention until the legal process he has repeatedly avoided proceeds.
Majority of Americans are against illegal immigration. Only liberal elites want it in order to stay in power. The people do not want this. Every poll confirms this.
> Those people were people who previously made the decision to illegally immigrate to the US.
There are no limits here and there many publicly available proofs of people getting harassed and detained regardless of legal status and deported contrary to court rulings that apply to their situation. You don't need to repeat the current ICE/DOJ lies - they can speak for themselves.
The legal immigrants have it the worst --- they're the ones who got in legitimately, that already being a struggle as it is, only to be cheated by all the ones who didn't.
What does it mean to be "cheated by all the ones who didn't"? Their ire, if it's a real thing, is directed at the wrong people. They should direct it at the ones who made becoming an American citizen a long, drawn-out bureaucratic process, not their fellow immigrants who came to the US seeking a better life through hard work. As a true blue and red-blooded American, I'd vote a hundred times to make it as simple for those people to become an American citizen as it was for my forefathers, who only had to hop on a boat over in Europe and not shit themselves to death before they got here.
>They should direct it at the ones who made becoming an American citizen a long, drawn-out bureaucratic process, not their fellow immigrants who came to the US seeking a better life through hard work.
No one is entitled to come to the US. We are not the world's soup kitchen. You follow the process we the people have decided or you go somewhere else. Period.
You alone don't get to decide this, these laws were passed by a democratically elected Congress.
> No one is entitled to come to the US. We are not the world's soup kitchen. You follow the process we the people have decided or you go somewhere else. Period.
I strongly disagree. Everyone is entitled to come to the US, and we should welcome them with open arms. Immigrants built this country and immigrants make it better, whether they're highly qualified programmers and doctors, or refugees from "shithole countries" who had to bribe their way across the border and now work on a dairy. All are welcome! Though please spare me your inevitable "have you let them into your home?!" bullshit, it's a tired argument.
> You alone don't get to decide this, these laws were passed by a democratically elected Congress.
"Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all.'" — Martin Luther King Jr.
“The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.” — Henry David Thoreau
“Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.” — Henry David Thoreau
"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" — The poem engraved on the plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty
Though please spare me your inevitable "have you let them into your home?!" bullshit, it's a tired argument.
You are the one who's spouting bullshit, and alongside the usual deliberate confusion of legal immigrants with illegal ones. We don't need any more of the latter, especially the ones who commit violent crimes and are otherwise a threat to society.
You would have to include ALL actions, including ICE troopers shooting dead US citizens too. You can not merely confine it to "this is what they do in theory"; you need to look at what they do in practice.
This narrative has been debunked many times already. Legal residents, even citizens, have been arrested, deported, or shot. And people get denied entry based on social media posts. Your comment is way off base and severely detached from reality.
If the US criminal "justice" system arrests people suspected of crimes, why are the criminals running the country while innocents get locked up?
IRC is a much more impoverished chat experience than Discord/Slack in a bunch of ways. Suggesting that people "get back on IRC" is not a serious proposal for making it possible for groups of people to chat online without being subject to identity verification or censorship.
Way, way fewer. Any billionaire you've heard of is almost certainly a net creator of a huge amount of value, by successfully leading a company in a capitalist system that made enough money selling products or services to make its shareholders worth billions of dollars. This isn't forcibly extracting money from society, this is exactly what net-value-creation looks like in the world.
It's definitely interesting to see what ideas 1984 had that were salient to Asimov writing in 1980 - and also to see which of those ideas still have relevance in 2026, when the world has changed considerably again from when Asimov was writing.
reply