I remember Brave was popular among MAGA-type people during Trump’s first term. I suspect it’s likely the same.

The logo has a striking resemblance to one I remember seeing on a big pro-Trump community. It’s described here https://www.vox.com/2019/8/29/20838289/trump-fascist-lion-head-bull-testicles-video-twitter basically the logo is associated with Mussolini.

In addition if you check the Wikipedia article you’ll notice this:

In August 2016, the company had received at least US$7 million in angel investments from venture capital firms, including Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Propel Venture Partners, Pantera Capital, Foundation Capital and the Digital Currency Group.[13]

Moreover some right-wing type people expressed their “solidarity” with Brendan Eich for his anti LGBT stance so they used Brave.

I see, I guess I’ll have to see if I can find any troubleshooting information or take it up with Zip.

One thing that I think Europe is really overlooking is part why the US is the way it is today is because the education system is based around trying to train people to be suitable for employment rather than educating and enriching the next generation of people. Basically obedient and not thinking for yourself. I hear politicians say schools should focus on jobs way too often.

To mitigate the harmful effects of tech Europe needs to ensure that schools focus on making sure students are resilient with strong media literacy, aware of propaganda, how to use reliable sources as opposed to shaping one’s views with unreputable “TikToks”, “Tweets” and things like that. Also skills like resiliency, habits, attention span and emotional regulation. Social media attacks all of these things. Meta, Google and Twitter are like modern day Tobacco companies. Just like the Tobacco companies they buy politicians rather than admit their products are harmful and shut down or make changes. Schools should also emphasize civic duty and societal impact of personal choices.

I haven’t ever tried using Spotify on mobile. What issue do you run into?

That meaning YouTube or Spotify? For YouTube I do know a workaround: you can request the desktop version of the website and it will allow you to continue playing music even when locking your screen or using another app.

It’s buried in my post but I feel the most ethical solution would be to use Spotify with an ad-blocker and use the free tier. Also I believe using YouTube with an ad blocker is pretty ethical too since you’re not financially support Google by viewing ads. I think Apple can also be used for free but I never tried it. Prime I would recommend boycotting because even the paid version has ads.

I see your point about my Apple example. I ended up thinking about this more and removed it from my post because it’s not a good example.

I will say I did research where Spotify has the most employees and it says they have the most in the United States so it’s not built solely by Swedish people. In fact I suspect the percentage of Spotify built by Swedish people to be somewhat low or very likely less than 50% but I don’t have enough information to be sure on this, this is conjecture on my part.

For far-right I’m saying that Trump is far-right so supporting Trump is supporting the far-right in America.

Joe Rogan actually isn’t the most extreme right wing person. What I object to most is his willingness to spread disinformation. Here’s a good article about him: https://www.mediamatters.org/joe-rogan-experience/joe-rogan-wrapped-year-covid-19-misinformation-right-wing-myths-and-anti-trans

In fact the very first line in the article is “Joe Rogan: “You can say whatever you want. We’re on Spotify.””.

I suspect that yes the “far-left” would be allowed to use Spotify and a quick glance seems to show that it’s allowed.

About shutting things down because of disagreements I understand you there. If someone believed all bike sheds should be painted blue and someone else thought they should be painted green in that case it’s likely blue advocates would try to shut down the green advocate’s podcasts simply due to disagreements even thought it would be wrong to do so.

But now let’s imagine this: the people in favor of blue paint started to be dishonest by spreading disinformation and advocated for harming people who wanted green paint. Isn’t that different morally? I do thank platforms should take a stance against disinformation.

Also with my paint example neither opinion causes harm to society. What happens if someone advocates for things that are harmful to others like anti-vax? That has real world consequences.

About trying to make better points that’s also a good point, no matter if Rogan is allowed or not we should be doing this.

The website you posted has a history of collaborating with other fake news fascist websites.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SouthFront#Disinformation_and_propaganda

In 2016, Finnish journalist Jessikka Aro described SouthFront as “an allegedly citizen-sourced project that looks more like a suspicious information operation”. Describing it as “a fascinating hybrid of revealingly detailed military intelligence and totally bogus stories”, she said that the site’s content centers on “the success of Russia’s armed forces, and showing off Russia’s weapons”.[13]

In 2017, researchers at Oxford University’s Internet Institute studied the collaboration of SouthFront with two US-based fascist fake news sites, Veterans Today and its sister site Veterans News Now.[14][15]

Philip N. Howard, one of the paper’s coauthors, told McClatchy DC that the three websites underlay “an entire ecosystem of junk news about national security issues that is deliberately crafted for U.S. veterans and active military personnel … a complex blend of content with a Russian view of the world – wild rumors and conspiracies”.[16] The Oxford researchers concluded that the three sites were more successful on Twitter than on Facebook, saying “on Twitter there are significant and persistent interactions between current and former military personnel and a broad network of Russia-focused accounts, conspiracy theory focused accounts, and European right-wing accounts.”[14] SouthFront representatives responded to a Politico story about the Oxford study with an email saying they had no connection to Russia’s government, adding that describing them as part of a Kremlin network was “contrary to the principles of freedom of speech and … discriminatory against Russians.”[15]

Hey Bubbles,

I notice you’ve been posting some articles from Sputnik news. Do you know about Sputnik news?

According to https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/sputnik-news/

Sputnik news is a right-wing biased website known for “Russian Propaganda, Conspiracy, Lack of Transparency, Some Fake News”. It’s factual reporting is “very-low” and it was created via a presidential decree by Vladimir Putin.

This article claims there are very initial signs that you might get your wish: https://inews.co.uk/opinion/process-trying-undo-brexit-begun-4106581

I personally can’t get over the fact that a 50% majority was all that was needed for such a drastic change. The US despite all its flaws requires more than 50% for certain major things like amending the constitution. Hopefully you can one day rejoin and then make it so it would require a higher threshold like 2/3 majority before another brexit would be possible.

That’s a great update! Also remember to include the foreign ownership. According to https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/newsmax-bias-credibilty-reliability/

In 2024, it was reported that between 2019-2020, Former Qatari government official Sheikh Sultan bin Jassim Al Thani invested $50 million in Newsmax through Heritage Advisors. The paper cited sources employed at Newsmax at the time as saying that they were urged to soften news coverage of Qatar — a claim that the outlet rejects.

It reminds me a little of how GB News is owned by an investment firm in Dubai. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legatum

Legatum Limited is a private investment firm, headquartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.[1] Legatum was founded in 2006 by Christopher Chandler. Legatum owns the British broadcaster GB News.

* of course I’m just joking about including this in the article, it would be too long for the table to list all the problems with Newsmax, what you have is great!

I was shocked to learn that Spotify was based in Europe. They seem equally evil to US big tech companies so I assumed they were based in America. Reminder that Spotify is paying lots of money to fund Joe Rogan so he can spread disinformation and lies.

I did some research on this and found out it’s part of the streamed channels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_DTT_channels_in_the_United_Kingdom#Streamed_channels. I couldn’t find a contact form on the Freeview website but I sent a message to the “Channels” partner with us email address. I also sent an email to Stop Funding Hate about this to see if they would be interested in taking it on.

For what it’s worth the article I linked to claims that Fox News is available in France through something called “Free” I suspect it’s this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_(ISP) and “Orange, France Telecom (Voyage SAS)”. I guess those fall under the Pay TV umbrella.

EDIT: See comrade_twisty’s comment. This might only be part of the AFN: https://lemmy.zip/post/55893766/23606295

In that case nevermind. Here’s what I originally wrote:

I completed the contact form https://astra.de/kontakt. Here’s the message I wrote to them:

Dear Astra,

I noticed Fox News was listed as one of the options for channels (https://astra.de/channels/fox-news-channel). I strongly urge Astra to consider dropping Fox News from your channel lineup. Former Fox News executives have said that say they now believe the conservative broadcaster has become a “disinformation machine” that’s destabilising democracy. (source: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/fox-news-executives-disinformation-dominion-b2374308.html)

So Fox News isn’t a real news station, it’s a disinformation and propaganda machine that spreads hate and lies. I suspect very few Astra customers actually watch this channel yet depending on your agreements with Fox you may be giving the station a lot of money. Please consider dropping the channel as soon (I should have said as soon as possible I made a typo that I didn’t notice before I hit send). Thank you so much for your consideration.

If there is someone who I can better address this matter to please pass along their contact information.

I’ll admit I’m not the best writer and it probably wasn’t the best move sending it in English but I felt it was likely better just to use my own words rather having AI write it in German or use a machine translator. Maybe it would be better to ask for help next time and have someone in the country the station is assist with the message if someone is willing.

However don’t worry about this too much because I suspect volume and the basic message is what matters most: the more TV providers are contacted about this the better the chances are they will drop it so don’t let the fact that I contacted them prevent you from contacting them. In fact if anything I hope it will encourage others to do likewise. It only took me a few minutes to fill out the form.

Keep talking about it and never give up! If you convince even one person it’s a victory!

Non Twitter link for those who don’t want to sign in to Elon Musk’s Nazi-bar to view the tweet: https://nitter.net/getplebbit/status/1790903398960640239

Why did they do it? Was it something a little like the Scunthorpe problem (ex: they got suspended because it contained Nazi content but they didn’t realize the purpose was to expose Nazis)?

I’ll admit actually this time I’m in Apple’s favor. Personally I don’t think there should be any tracking even opt-in but it’s good they give people a way to opt-out.

If you want change you got to direct your comments to the HDMI forum. Here we can talk about it forever and if they never see anything they won’t change. I sent the following email to: admin@hdmiforum.org

Dear HDMI Forum,

I was recently saw the news that the HDMI forum was blocking open source implementations of the HDMI 2.1 specifications and I want to express that I really believe this is a bad idea. I hope the HDMI Forum will consider allowing it. I can’t say I understand what the concern is or the reason for blocking it but I really doubt that whatever issue is envisioned will actually come to fruition, instead I believe that allowing open source implementations will be beneficial for adoption of the standard and since if I understand correctly the licensing fees are based on hardware sold so having open source code will of course not exempt anyone from HDMI licensing rules.

Thank you so much for your consideration,

(Name)

Maybe it’s not perfect (I already wished I worded one sentence better) but I think what matters most is just trying your best and using your voice whenever you can. Be sure to send your email too, the more they receive hopefully the higher the chances that this works but of course be sure to use your own wording, I just put that here for an example.