This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

I don't often watch news programs that talk about polls. but when I do, I always hate that they say "40% of Canadian|Americans say ___" or "60% of Canadians|Americans prefer ____"

Polling is such a mis-used technique of getting public opinion. The media/news want to pretend that its this very precise way of getting to know the electorate and it's just not. It's one tool that can help you if you already have other means of getting in touch with the people.

And I know the news/talk shows knows this, but I think their wording intentionally does not reflect it cause they rather bring on pundits to discuss the poll results and use that to take up airtime. Really wish they would change their wording to "40% of Canadians|American who responded to the poll say ____" every time they bring up a poll result, and then each time they do that, I feel like they're also ethically responsible to provide people with an easy to remember link to a website that elaborates on the methodology used for the polling that is broken down in a way that is easy for lay-people to understand for people who care/have time for that.

Although personally, in my ideal world, poll results would not be publicly available and would be known just by the campaigns of the politicians they involve but :shrug:

Cause maybe this is just my skewed perspective but I am the only one I know in my social circle that answers calls from unknown numbers that half the time turn out to be pollsters and I actually take the time to answer their questions. I don't know of anyone else in my social circle that does this and I am in my thirties. So I get the feeling these pollsters just are not capturing a major part of the population and they don't want to admit that.

We had more people at our local/suburb protest than in June. I think organizers still underestimated attendance as we never even made it to the route of the march. The crowd was trying to funnel through some tight spaces so eventually people just stood on the side of the busy streets and collected horn honks. Atmosphere was great. Everything relaxed. Many choice signs.

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

I'm posting this in ~society rather than ~tech, as I feel like it's more a question of societal change and policy decisions rather than tech change. Please feel free to move if I'm wrong.

Seeing the predictable Discord data breach for age verification, it feels like the walls are closing in. My country has announced a similar policy to the UK just recently and I feel a sense of loss for a crucial part of my life that may go away.

I don't think I'm being too nostalgic by saying that I felt much more comfortable speaking freely on the internet when anonymity was the default. I didn't engage in any illegal activity - or even in my view immoral activity. I just made friends from around the world and learned a lot.

I am not making the argument that the internet of the 90's and 00's were 'safer' - I'm sure there is plenty of bad things that happened without me being aware. But this theoretical bad stuff is still being used to make us mandatorily give our government issued identity documents to corporate entities, and it's not paranoia to think they want to find a way to profit from this, and not invest heavily to defend it.

I get the structural forces that are driving this change, but it still makes me sad. I feel like I'm running a defensive cyber operation with no training or expertise. I do my best to stay private with VPNs, tracker blocking, DNS filters, but I feel like I'm losing. We have a whole department for this at work and they are very busy - I am just a lay person doing their best.

No matter what I do, either the governments of the world or surveillance capitalists will build up a picture of who I am far beyond what I am comfortable with. My meagre efforts are like trying to stop the tide by kicking it.

Do others who grew up with a more open, more anonymous internet feel similarly? Do you try and protect your privacy, are you resigned, or are you somewhere in the middle?

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.