teawrecks

The thing I've been wondering about is, to what extent will they try quantitative easing and/or bailouts, as was the 2008 strategy. I don't think trump will endorse QE, but I think it's possible the establishment of the crypto reserve is so he can bail out his buddies. But instead of saying "I'm bailing out these billionaires" which wouldn't play well with his base, he'll say "I'm using USD reserves to diversify investments into crypto". Which pumps whatever coin he chooses, after which all his buddies dump on the taxpayers.

So, first off, any content made to change your mind is propaganda. Doesn't matter how true or false it is, doesn't matter if it's cherry-picking info, doesn't matter if it doesn't make any claims at all, doesn't matter if it's paid for by a state or a religious group or a single individual. And it HAS to be defined this way, because there does not exist an impartial arbitrating party to draw a distinction for us. If we try to limit it only to information meant to mislead, then we have to figure out who decides whether something is misleading.

A poster that just says "hang in there" or "just give up" can be used as propaganda if you post it all over the place to raise or lower morale. It's not making any claims, it's not pushing a certain brand, it's just trying to change what you think about. That's propaganda.

Second, this whole thing assumes no one ever wants to see an advertisement. But if you're arguing honestly, the reality is that sometimes you do. You want to know your favorite band is playing downtown. You want to know that the roofing company across town that does good work even exists. You want to know about whatever new silly product was made that aligns with your hobbies. In order to have an honest conversation, we need to agree that not all advertising is unwanted.

all television commercials and magazine inserts and pop up ads and billboards are gone we can start debating the nuance of where exactly the line is drawn

Would PSAs be banned? Those are nothing if not propaganda. How about billboards advertising a religious group? What if I buy a magazine because it does a great job at making me aware of products I actually do often want to buy?

You would have to report that income on your taxes

And what if I benefit in an indirect, difficult way to trace outside of being paid? Or what if it's MY company?

know we currently do not, but it is possible to treat an individual and a business/corporation differently...It is possible to hold an organizations speech to different standards than an individual.

As a small business owner, how do I make customers aware that I exist?

until the point you try to organize and artificially broadcast that speech wider than you could on your own.

Where is that line? We've invented so many things that amplify our speech wider than what we could do "on our own". A megaphone reaches more people than if I yell. A 10ft sign in my yard reaches more people than a tshirt. A social media account with 1 million followers reaches people than 1000 followers reaches more than 10 followers. Should I be able to make a flyer? Should I be able to use a printing press to copy that flyer? Should i be able to nail copes of that flyer all over the door of the catholic church and start a Reformation? Where is the line?

(It's also worth reading up on the history of advertising in television in the UK. The idea of creating legislation to limit the prevalence of advertising is not new, and neither are the methods used to work around them.)

In summary, this is a very hard problem, but...I think the solution could be solved democratically. I don't think the solution lies in trying to rigorously define what constitutes an ad, only for the form of an ad to morph. Rather, it lies in disincentivizing people seeing unwanted ads in the first place. The fact that people look around and see ads they don't want to see needs to be translated directly into some kind of proportional tax.

Ex. If you poll the people, and they say "I see too many McDonalds ads" then the people (i.e. govt) should penalize McDonalds proportionally. If we poll again, and the penalty doesn't result in people reporting seeing fewer unwanted McDonalds ads, then increase the penalty. When the penalty is high enough, it won't be worth it for McDonalds to run so many aggressive ads, and they'll have to reduce advertising in order for the people to report fewer unwanted ads in order for the penalty to drop. That's the only possible implementation I see as actually working.

That'd be great, but the "how" is a much harder question. What counts as advertising? Because there's a reason Google, Meta, etc. have their fingers in so many different industries: every single thing that gets attention could be leveraged for advertising, even the act of suppressing mentions of competitors.

Should I be able to say "X product has been great, I recommend it!" Only if I'm not being paid, you say? How could you possibly know?

As discussed in the article, "propaganda" is illegal. So any discussion about how terrible trump is would also be illegal. Propaganda doesn't mean false, it just means it's trying to convince you of something. An advertisement. Heck, the article itself could be considered a form of advertising for legislation.

It's just so trivial of a concept to say, but the moment you spend any amount of time thinking about it, it falls apart. It's like trying to ban the Ship of Theseus from a club.

Good example. Hard to say if any of this rational will ever apply, though. I just expect him to either ignore anything a court says, or push it to the supreme court where the president is above the law.

Do you believe that the film industry didn't start until the 40s and 50s? Of course not. The first "films" came out around 1900, but the technology was still improving, and the industry was still figuring itself out. It wasn't until the 20s that both had progressed enough for real "traditional" films could be made.

Similarly, the gaming industry collapsed and rebounded twice before the 90s because it wasn't getting off the ground. The tech wasn't there yet. So yes, if you look at a timeline of the gaming industry, it was objectively in its infancy until "like the late 90s". The same way the dotcom bubble came and went a decade before the vast majority of people even realized the internet had anything to offer them. I get that maybe you were in a nerdy little bubble of early adopters, but I'm talking about the world outside that bubble.

• Note that revenue in ~1975 and ~1990 are basically the same. Industry revenue was mostly sideways for 20 years.
• Then the 90s came. People shifted from arcades to handhelds, mobile, PC, the internet.
• The number of games published per year increased significantly.
• And an explosion of objectively "influential titles" were published in this era. Many of which are featured in Bafta's list. (Though obviously Rogue should be on there).

To be fair, the video game industry is relatively young, and the games that built it to what it is today did come out during the years that correspond with millennial youthhood. If we made a list of most influential films today, a lot of them would be from the 40s and 50s, but that wouldn't be because a bunch of Silent Gens showed up to vote.

IANAL, but I assume lawyers are always looking for any precedent.

If someone claims someone else scammed them (in a civil or criminal case), they're going to appeal to past similar cases. The civil case might even depend on the outcome of a criminal case against the same person. If they're actually found not-guilty in a criminal case, then a civil case probably isn't going to go anywhere. So if trump can convince a civil class action lawsuit to settle because it looks like they won't win, then he can just pocket the difference.

All of this is my own conjecture as I see it, not to be considered factual.

It's actually really surprising that Pokemon isn't on this list. I guess people forget that the gameboy games started it all.

Dude...imagine if we could convince Trump/Musk and Space Force/Space X to do this. It's like philosophy's version of the Torment Nexus!

Yeah, the rest are like "ok sure, but maybe not in that order". But BG3 and KCD2 are like 90% recency bias. Great games, but probably on par with Witcher 3 or the RDR games.

But they didn't do any research here, they didn't have a panel of judges, they just put it up to a vote of the internet. By "influential" they really meant a popularity contest.

I just don't know why that seems to include someone like Hawk Tuah girl.

I think Trump is eventually going to make the same argument she does, "I didn't know the the people I was working with were professional crypto grifters. I don't know anything about crypto, I'm one of the victims here (who happened to also make out like a bandit). They just said it would be good for the ecosystem, and we would make some profit from the value we created."

I have to assume all these crypto pardons are his team of lawyers trying to limit any precedent for inevitible lawsuits brought by people who lost money through TRUMP coin, once they've become disillusioned with the man. That, or he's buying favors from people willing to do crimes.