@ThacoBell is very correct about how little workers have protection in some states (they are typically very red states but that is neither here nor there). I am fairly shocked jobs like simple retail or fast food care about Facebook however. In my experience those are the types of places that go through workers as quickly as they do toilet paper. And the background check industry is huge.
Frankly, I'm not sure that the emergence of social media is the core problem. The problem is that America, by and large, treats it's workers like shit, and works them and uses them in ways that would probably horrify most of Europe. Social media is just another excuse for them to assert more control.
There is nothing wrong with owning a business. That's great, that's part of what the country is about. The problem is that (by and large) this country WORSHIPS business owners and sees workers as little more than serfs or peons who are there to do the bidding of the almighty entrepreneur, and very little else. We are alot closer to Ayn Rand's John Galt fantasy than anyone would like to admit. Especially if you end up on the lower rung of the ladder. You never feel secure, you always feel disaster is just around the corner. Of course, the constantly lambasted social safety net programs (meager as they are) like food stamps are used by and large by the WORKING poor, not people sitting around on the couch.
From a psychological perspective, many of these jobs are absolutely soul-crushing. In their pay, in their monotony, in how even a single absence from work could put you in danger of losing your job. Again, the problem is that America doesn't much care about it's workers, only it's employers. All our policies favor them, and the zeitgeist of our national psyche favors them. Most people who have held jobs in this country instinctively understand how skewed this power structure is, and it only starts to go away once you reach a certain level of professional/financial stability, which frankly most people never do.
@jjstraka34 Isn't exaggerating in the slightest. I was literally told by my previous employer that I should chose my job over my son's life. This was after he cancelled my family medical leave that had already been approved by the store manager that he had replaced literally a week earlier.
@jjstraka34 Isn't exaggerating in the slightest. I was literally told by my previous employer that I should chose my job over my son's life. This was after he cancelled my family medical leave that had already been approved by the store manager that he had replaced literally a week earlier.
And this comment basically mirrors a news story I read earlier this month about a women who called into work because her son was on LIFE SUPPORT, and her manager basically told her that she was willfully terminating her own employment by not coming in. Eventually, this manager was fired, but I strongly suspect that only happened because the story got out into (once again) social media.
Background checks are really common when applying for a job here in the US. There are entire companies built around finding your presonal information for your employer. Chaning your name and whatnot to try and hide is also a non solution. You really think a self in witness protection program is better than just, say, protecting your right to express yourself when not working?
As someone who has hired before, I can say social media checks was a given in my hiring process. Being able to fit into the team and culture that was already established was a high priority.
While working for a company who outsourced to other companies, a strong web presence from not only the out sourced company but any public workers from that company was also essential. We wanted to know who we were hiring and if they’d be able to meet strict deadlines.
And if it is a company like Chic-fil-a hiring me, my response of “I don’t have one,” still applies.
I know there are companies that specialize in finding a person’s web presence, I’d be highly surprised if a place like Chic-fli-a uses one. They may theaten to use one, but scare tactics are scare tactics.
John McCain will not be continuing his cancer treatment. It seems he won't be with us much longer.
I am generally more critical of McCain than most people who discuss politics, mostly because I never bought into the whole "maverick" persona, which I view mostly as a myth created by the media, when alot of his votes that crossed the aisle/bucked the trend over the years had alot to do with personal retribution against a specific political figure (more on that in a bit). His stance on the Iraq War was a disaster. I also am conflicted about 2008. On the one hand, he unleashed Sarah Palin on the country, the proto-Trump. On the other hand, late in the campaign, he shut down the woman at his rally who was spouting the Obama conspiracy nonsense that would become the bread and butter of the GOP in the next 8 years. During that exchange, you can almost see the wheels turning in his head thinking "what have I done??" In the end, I highly suspect he deeply regrets ever putting Palin on the ticket, and what it unleashed, as do alot of people associated with his campagin.
BUT.....John McCain is the only Republican who has made a meaningful stand against Trump this entire time. And of course that was the famous "thumbs down" healthcare vote where he destroyed the all but certain attempt by his party to rip health insurance away from 24 million people. There was a running commentary about it that night in the old thread. In the end, it was McCain in a nutshell. It was heavily dramatized and set up for maximum impact on television, and I highly suspect it didn't have much to do with agreeing or disagreeing with the bill, but with wanting to give Trump a giant middle finger, and it is something that still pisses Trump off to this very day. In the end, his last true act as a public figure was saving the health care coverage of millions of people. I don't care what his motives were, the end result avoided total disaster. And for that, I can thank him, even given my massive amounts of other problems with him over the years. He was also half of the famed McCain/Feingold campaign finance reform bill, even though it was rendered essentially meaningless by the Supreme Court a short time later. A very complex public figure, and one of the last Republican office holders with a shred of integrity.
@FinneousPJ No, there isn't any LEGAL obligation. Just your livelyhood. Don't bow to your employer's demands? There goes your job. I don't care what people say about the state of our economys' recovery, finding a job is balls hard here in the US, even just a minimum wage one. I've personally worked for Big Lots, Culver's, and Chic-Fil-A who all required access to your social media.
In my opinion the social media is not the problem here. The problem is "Don't bow to your employer's demands? There goes your job." Fix that and most of this social media stuff is irrelevant. I enjoy a level of protection unimaginable perhaps in the US. Nevertheless I do not mention my employer on my profile or in my posts, because I want to avoid any unnecessary risk.
@deltago I assure you, the background checks are not scare tactics. Big Lots is a dollar store chain with UNGODLY turnover and they run background checks on every employee by policy. They actually lost a class action lawsuit a couple years back because they did so without telling their employees/applicants. Now they are allowed to do it as long as they tell you. Applying for the job is accepting their terms.
@FinneousPJ I agree. The problem ABSOLUTELY lies in the culture of employer power.
I'd like to point out this headline from CBS News as the reason alot of people on the left laugh or roll our eyes when it is insisted that the media is liberal:
First of all, this is flat-out NOT what Beto O'Rourke said. His actual quote was "I can think of nothing more American than to peacefully stand up, or take a knee, for your rights, anytime, anywhere, or any place." But moreover, this whole narrative that the NFL players are protesting the "anthem" is like suggesting that Rosa Parks was protesting buses. They are very respectfully protesting police brutality. But more to the point, this is the media buying into the right-wing narrative that Donald Trump wants them to buy into, and it's a result of 30+ years of working the refs until the default position in this country is that anyone on the left is automatically doing something "unpatriotic" or "un-American". This is a narrative that never goes away, and apparently will never go away, even when the current Republican President appears to have sold out his country to the highest bidder. The media long ago bought into the idea that the right is patriotic and left hates their country. This is a pure distillation of it. And this does not mean that CBS News is "fake". It simply means that much like nearly every other mainstream press outlet, they have been conditioned to believe this dynamic is true. CBS did eventually edit their story to reflect more accurately on what O'Rourke said and a more honest take on what the players are doing after they were lambasted on Twitter. But the point of this post is that, contrary the popular belief, liberals have just as many gripes with the media as conservatives do. We just haven't made a cottage industry out of pointing them out at every given opportunity. Which frankly probably needs to change.
Edit: CBS News eventually deleted the tweet, which is why it is no longer linked in the post.
@ThacoBell what you are describing wouldn’t fly here in Canada maybe because we have more left leaning parties that would raise a stink about workers rights and privacy laws.
That said, a company does still need to protect its image. There is a happy balance between supervisors monitoring a person’s private life (they should have more important things to do) and employees having carte blanche on what they say publicly about the company or representing the company. I honestly don’t think this is a problem anywhere else but the States.
Apparently, McCain even requested Obama give one of the eulogies at his funeral. The other will be George W. Bush. I'm guessing someone who currently occupies that office likely isn't even going to be welcome at the funeral. Sign of the times.
Funny enough, in my previous post, I never mentioned my actual interaction with John McCain. Well, it wasn't much of one, but on our Senior year trip to Washington DC in the year 2000, we were taking our tour of the Capitol building, and were in the underground portion where there is a tram. I'm not sure how many of my peers recognized it, but I saw John McCain getting on the tram, and waved. He waved back to our group. I also remember when Ted Kennedy collapsed at the dinner following Obama's inauguration. McCain was at his rival and friend's side right up til the point they put him in the ambulance. These are personal stories, not political ones.
In the big, political picture, McCain is the man who deserved to win the Republican nomination in 2000. A John McCain Administration circa 2000 would have been far, far different than the Bush years. It took some incredibly dirty pool for the Bush camp to beat him in South Carolina and kill his momentum. Sadly, after that point, the only chance he had of getting the nomination in 2008 was to tie himself to Bush. When the Iraq War fell apart and the economy collapsed, he had no shot. There is no scenario where a Republican would have won in 2008 given how events played out.
It would be petty if he didn't spend an inordinate amount of time questioning the patriotism of others, when he himself doesn't even seem to know what the colors of the flag and (previously) didn't know the words to "God Bless America". Sorry, but these attacks are what you open yourself up to when you weaponize nationalistic symbolism for political purposes. If he is going to throw stones at people who kneel during the anthem, he sure as shit better know how to color a flag or the words to a well-known patriotic song. But since he doesn't, it just reveals him to be the complete fraud that he is. Even when it comes to the faux-patriotism that is part of the bread and butter of his appeal, he is nothing more than someone who didn't study the whole semester trying to bullshit his way through the final exam. Point being, if you are someone who is going to go down this rabbit-hole (in this case the rabbit-hole is using the influence of the Executive Branch of the United States to try get employees fired), it would be best to have your shit together when it comes to actual knowledge of patriotic symbols. Trump made the NFL anthem protests an honest to god First Amendment issue the moment he put himself directly in the middle of them (whereas they really wouldn't have been otherwise), thus even a single slip-up in proper conduct or general knowledge of the flag or any other similar symbol becomes legitimate criticism. Trump wants to live in the gutter. Not everyone can stay out of the gutter and expect to defeat him. Some people have to get down there and fight him at his own game.
Right back to the faux-patriotism and respect for the troops....yesterday the White House flag was at half-staff to honor McCain. Typically in these scenarios, the flag stays there until interment. This morning, the flag is back to full-staff. I'll give everyone one guess as to who ordered that to happen. I am so sick to death of being lectured about patriotism by these scumbags. Whatever you think of his politics, he spent years in captivity being tortured. Trump's ego cannot even withstand more than 24 hours of a flag flying at half-staff for someone who opposed him publically. If we are going to talk about petty, let's throw this at the top of the all-time list.
“We share, for all our differences, a fidelity to something higher - the ideals for which generations of Americans and immigrants alike have fought, marched and sacrificed. Few of us have been tested the way John once was, or required to show the kind of courage that he did, but all of us can aspire to the courage to put the greater good above our own. At John’s best, he showed us what that means. And for that, we are in his debt.”
Obama on McCain with a couple of hidden jabs towards Trump sprinkled through out.
“We share, for all our differences, a fidelity to something higher - the ideals for which generations of Americans and immigrants alike have fought, marched and sacrificed. Few of us have been tested the way John once was, or required to show the kind of courage that he did, but all of us can aspire to the courage to put the greater good above our own. At John’s best, he showed us what that means. And for that, we are in his debt.”
Obama on McCain with a couple of hidden jabs towards Trump sprinkled through out.
The thing is, I'm not even as fond of McCain as most are. I still found it in me to type out two fairly lengthy posts giving the man his due and honoring his life out of respect. Trump is incapable of such basic human decency.
In other news, Trump seems to be claiming that we are leaving NAFTA when all he seems to be doing is changing the name and continuing to threaten Canada. Read full thread from Canadian journalist, as it cuts through his bullshit in a way ours don't:
Seriously, read the whole thing. As with everything else, it's a total joke of an announcement. Trump absolutely relies on people being too stupid to know any better. Which is possibly a good bet and his only real skill.
Yep, how this happened is US and Mexico literally kicked Canada from the table so they can hash out the biggest issues between the two countries (mainly automobiles) which they did.
Canada still needs to come back to the table, look at what they agreed to and either sign off on it or throw wrench in it and demand something to change.
Trump is hoping to bully Canada into just signing it, however, that tactic hasn't worked any other time they tried it so0o0o...
This deal then has to be ratified by Congress. Chances are, the automobile industry, who still has a lot of production in Ontario, will balk at having Canada excluded from the 75% threshold. It wouldn't surprise me if it gets amended to add Canada to that 75% even if Canada doesn't sign off on it.
This part of the deal only involves automotive. There is more to NAFTA than cars, so this is far from a done deal.
“We share, for all our differences, a fidelity to something higher - the ideals for which generations of Americans and immigrants alike have fought, marched and sacrificed. Few of us have been tested the way John once was, or required to show the kind of courage that he did, but all of us can aspire to the courage to put the greater good above our own. At John’s best, he showed us what that means. And for that, we are in his debt.”
Obama on McCain with a couple of hidden jabs towards Trump sprinkled through out.
The thing is, I'm not even as fond of McCain as most are. I still found it in me to type out two fairly lengthy posts giving the man his due and honoring his life out of respect. Trump is incapable of such basic human decency.
In other news, Trump seems to be claiming that we are leaving NAFTA when all he seems to be doing is changing the name and continuing to threaten Canada. Read full thread from Canadian journalist, as it cuts through his bullshit in a way ours don't:
Seriously, read the whole thing. As with everything else, it's a total joke of an announcement. Trump absolutely relies on people being too stupid to know any better. Which is possibly a good bet and his only real skill.
Typical "I am the only one who matters" stuff. He said that regarding his failure to even find people to nominate for empty Department of State jobs. "I'm the only one who matters." That's great and all but then he flip flops and changes his mind and doesn't tell others so presenting a united front is impossible. And we wind up looking stupid as a country because he just wings things based on whatever the worst possible idea could be.
Influencing opinions is part of the democratic process, is it not? At what point does it illegitimize an election? Domestic intervention is different to foreign, I should think.
And it's difficult to define what is meant by influencing anyway. What they say they are doing is trying to close down sites set up by other countries to interfere in the US election process. If the IT companies decided not to do anything about that interference, that would in itself reflect a political viewpoint.
Everything Zeke said was right, but he used the buzz words of the day “collude” “influence” and “elections” to give what the companies are doing a negative connotation.
If you read the story, they are meeting to discuss ways to prevent trolling sites from manipulating their software and sites prior to the midterm election to prevent the negative backlash they received after the last election.
Along that line, Trump, in another early-morning tweet storm accused Google of a.) manipulating search results to make him look bad b.) claimed this was likely illegal (what??) and c.) claimed that it was going to be "addressed" (how??).
I swear to god, there is nothing that defines the modern conservative movement, coalesced under Trump, than this all-encompassing sense of aggrievment. The idea that not just some aspects of culture, but EVERY aspect of culture is out to get them. You know, despite being able to have full governmental power while having the minority of votes in both Presidential and Congressional elections. If that is how persecution is now defined, sign me up.
Moreover, I guess if Trump doesn't like Google, he can direct the MAGA crowd to Lycos. Maybe convince his hordes of followers to dump Google Chrome and use an old version of Netscape Navigator. I'm sure that will work out splendidly for them. I thought this was the party of brilliant free market ideas and entrepreneurship?? So create a conservative search engine and conservative web browser. What is stopping them??
I am old enough to remember last year, when the practices of "countering russian trolls online" and other nice-sounding buzzword laden pretenses were discussed by Twitter under oath.
Twitter was targeting and silencing tweets under the #PodestaEmails and #DNCLeak hashtags, some of the most politically relevant issues of the time. Half of the #DNCLeak tweets were silenced. They estimate that 0.84-4% of the hashtag tweets were actually Russian related.
That is very revealing. Either they deliberately silence issues that have nothing to do with any foriegn influence operation like they claim, or they are incapable of distinguishing between the two when it matters. Either way the end result is the same, suppression of perfectly valid political expression under false pretenses.
I would love to live in a world where we could trust some of the richest, most powerful, and most influential companies in the world to always be straightforward and honest with us about everything. There is no indication we live in such a world.
Given the actions of these companies over the past year and a half I think my interpretation of events is more than justified.
Comments
Frankly, I'm not sure that the emergence of social media is the core problem. The problem is that America, by and large, treats it's workers like shit, and works them and uses them in ways that would probably horrify most of Europe. Social media is just another excuse for them to assert more control.
There is nothing wrong with owning a business. That's great, that's part of what the country is about. The problem is that (by and large) this country WORSHIPS business owners and sees workers as little more than serfs or peons who are there to do the bidding of the almighty entrepreneur, and very little else. We are alot closer to Ayn Rand's John Galt fantasy than anyone would like to admit. Especially if you end up on the lower rung of the ladder. You never feel secure, you always feel disaster is just around the corner. Of course, the constantly lambasted social safety net programs (meager as they are) like food stamps are used by and large by the WORKING poor, not people sitting around on the couch.
From a psychological perspective, many of these jobs are absolutely soul-crushing. In their pay, in their monotony, in how even a single absence from work could put you in danger of losing your job. Again, the problem is that America doesn't much care about it's workers, only it's employers. All our policies favor them, and the zeitgeist of our national psyche favors them. Most people who have held jobs in this country instinctively understand how skewed this power structure is, and it only starts to go away once you reach a certain level of professional/financial stability, which frankly most people never do.
While working for a company who outsourced to other companies, a strong web presence from not only the out sourced company but any public workers from that company was also essential. We wanted to know who we were hiring and if they’d be able to meet strict deadlines.
And if it is a company like Chic-fil-a hiring me, my response of “I don’t have one,” still applies.
I know there are companies that specialize in finding a person’s web presence, I’d be highly surprised if a place like Chic-fli-a uses one. They may theaten to use one, but scare tactics are scare tactics.
BUT.....John McCain is the only Republican who has made a meaningful stand against Trump this entire time. And of course that was the famous "thumbs down" healthcare vote where he destroyed the all but certain attempt by his party to rip health insurance away from 24 million people. There was a running commentary about it that night in the old thread. In the end, it was McCain in a nutshell. It was heavily dramatized and set up for maximum impact on television, and I highly suspect it didn't have much to do with agreeing or disagreeing with the bill, but with wanting to give Trump a giant middle finger, and it is something that still pisses Trump off to this very day. In the end, his last true act as a public figure was saving the health care coverage of millions of people. I don't care what his motives were, the end result avoided total disaster. And for that, I can thank him, even given my massive amounts of other problems with him over the years. He was also half of the famed McCain/Feingold campaign finance reform bill, even though it was rendered essentially meaningless by the Supreme Court a short time later. A very complex public figure, and one of the last Republican office holders with a shred of integrity.
@FinneousPJ I agree. The problem ABSOLUTELY lies in the culture of employer power.
First of all, this is flat-out NOT what Beto O'Rourke said. His actual quote was "I can think of nothing more American than to peacefully stand up, or take a knee, for your rights, anytime, anywhere, or any place." But moreover, this whole narrative that the NFL players are protesting the "anthem" is like suggesting that Rosa Parks was protesting buses. They are very respectfully protesting police brutality. But more to the point, this is the media buying into the right-wing narrative that Donald Trump wants them to buy into, and it's a result of 30+ years of working the refs until the default position in this country is that anyone on the left is automatically doing something "unpatriotic" or "un-American". This is a narrative that never goes away, and apparently will never go away, even when the current Republican President appears to have sold out his country to the highest bidder. The media long ago bought into the idea that the right is patriotic and left hates their country. This is a pure distillation of it. And this does not mean that CBS News is "fake". It simply means that much like nearly every other mainstream press outlet, they have been conditioned to believe this dynamic is true. CBS did eventually edit their story to reflect more accurately on what O'Rourke said and a more honest take on what the players are doing after they were lambasted on Twitter. But the point of this post is that, contrary the popular belief, liberals have just as many gripes with the media as conservatives do. We just haven't made a cottage industry out of pointing them out at every given opportunity. Which frankly probably needs to change.
Edit: CBS News eventually deleted the tweet, which is why it is no longer linked in the post.
That said, a company does still need to protect its image. There is a happy balance between supervisors monitoring a person’s private life (they should have more important things to do) and employees having carte blanche on what they say publicly about the company or representing the company. I honestly don’t think this is a problem anywhere else but the States.
And since we’re on the topic of labour laws:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/25/judge-trump-order-firing-federal-workers
What's wrong with this idiot. He's obviously got red there.
He says kneeling NFL players protesting police violence are somehow insulting to the flag but this moron doesn't even know the colors of the flag.
Apparently, McCain even requested Obama give one of the eulogies at his funeral. The other will be George W. Bush. I'm guessing someone who currently occupies that office likely isn't even going to be welcome at the funeral. Sign of the times.
Funny enough, in my previous post, I never mentioned my actual interaction with John McCain. Well, it wasn't much of one, but on our Senior year trip to Washington DC in the year 2000, we were taking our tour of the Capitol building, and were in the underground portion where there is a tram. I'm not sure how many of my peers recognized it, but I saw John McCain getting on the tram, and waved. He waved back to our group. I also remember when Ted Kennedy collapsed at the dinner following Obama's inauguration. McCain was at his rival and friend's side right up til the point they put him in the ambulance. These are personal stories, not political ones.
In the big, political picture, McCain is the man who deserved to win the Republican nomination in 2000. A John McCain Administration circa 2000 would have been far, far different than the Bush years. It took some incredibly dirty pool for the Bush camp to beat him in South Carolina and kill his momentum. Sadly, after that point, the only chance he had of getting the nomination in 2008 was to tie himself to Bush. When the Iraq War fell apart and the economy collapsed, he had no shot. There is no scenario where a Republican would have won in 2008 given how events played out.
There are plenty of very real reasons to criticise and outright protest the current President but this just seems petty.
Yes it is petty. Which is exactly what he deserves for pretending to be the sole source of patriotism. He attacks others (NFL players, Democrats and others) as not being patriotic so the little man deserves to be called out for being an abject failure on the subject. This is proven repeatedly there's the failure to hold his hand over his heart during the national anthem where immigrant Melania had to nudge him to do it early in his Presidency, there's his flubbing the words to God Bless America, there's his saying he's smart to not pay taxes, another time he was yaking and telling jokes about ratings to a fox news interviewer during a military ceremony and many more examples. Now he doesn't know the colors of the flag. Screw him.
He is a fake patriot and deserves to be called out.
-----------------
In other news, at least 11 dead and injured in yet another mass shooting this time targeting a video game tournament in Florida. What's going to happen gun legislation or thoughts and prayers? This comes three days after Betsy Devos is trying to use federal grant money meant for student access to art and music, mental health and technology programs at the nation’s most impoverished schools to get guns into every school in America.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/trump-files-donald-sick-infant-medical-care/
Obama on McCain with a couple of hidden jabs towards Trump sprinkled through out.
In other news, Trump seems to be claiming that we are leaving NAFTA when all he seems to be doing is changing the name and continuing to threaten Canada. Read full thread from Canadian journalist, as it cuts through his bullshit in a way ours don't:
Seriously, read the whole thing. As with everything else, it's a total joke of an announcement. Trump absolutely relies on people being too stupid to know any better. Which is possibly a good bet and his only real skill.
Canada still needs to come back to the table, look at what they agreed to and either sign off on it or throw wrench in it and demand something to change.
Trump is hoping to bully Canada into just signing it, however, that tactic hasn't worked any other time they tried it so0o0o...
This deal then has to be ratified by Congress. Chances are, the automobile industry, who still has a lot of production in Ontario, will balk at having Canada excluded from the 75% threshold. It wouldn't surprise me if it gets amended to add Canada to that 75% even if Canada doesn't sign off on it.
This part of the deal only involves automotive. There is more to NAFTA than cars, so this is far from a done deal.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kevincollier/tech-companies-are-gathering-for-a-secret-meeting-to
If you read the story, they are meeting to discuss ways to prevent trolling sites from manipulating their software and sites prior to the midterm election to prevent the negative backlash they received after the last election.
I swear to god, there is nothing that defines the modern conservative movement, coalesced under Trump, than this all-encompassing sense of aggrievment. The idea that not just some aspects of culture, but EVERY aspect of culture is out to get them. You know, despite being able to have full governmental power while having the minority of votes in both Presidential and Congressional elections. If that is how persecution is now defined, sign me up.
Moreover, I guess if Trump doesn't like Google, he can direct the MAGA crowd to Lycos. Maybe convince his hordes of followers to dump Google Chrome and use an old version of Netscape Navigator. I'm sure that will work out splendidly for them. I thought this was the party of brilliant free market ideas and entrepreneurship?? So create a conservative search engine and conservative web browser. What is stopping them??
Twitter was targeting and silencing tweets under the #PodestaEmails and #DNCLeak hashtags, some of the most politically relevant issues of the time. Half of the #DNCLeak tweets were silenced. They estimate that 0.84-4% of the hashtag tweets were actually Russian related.
That is very revealing. Either they deliberately silence issues that have nothing to do with any foriegn influence operation like they claim, or they are incapable of distinguishing between the two when it matters. Either way the end result is the same, suppression of perfectly valid political expression under false pretenses.
I would love to live in a world where we could trust some of the richest, most powerful, and most influential companies in the world to always be straightforward and honest with us about everything. There is no indication we live in such a world.
Given the actions of these companies over the past year and a half I think my interpretation of events is more than justified.
https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/download/10-31-17-edgett-testimony