volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@ShadSterling It's like using a screwdriver to pry parts apart: it's not what the tool is for, but you can use it when you want to.

That aside, even without pooling from multiple investors corporate structures still allow easier capitalization over and above liability shielding.

@dcjohnson

@anarchic_teapot The privilege of being a publicly traded company in the US comes with a whole lot of regulations and responsibilities, everything from public disclosure requirements through fiduciary responsibilities.

So yes, it does change things.

@MarkAB @GottaLaff

@dcjohnson you need to go farther, though: often enough executives don't do things either, leaving the actual work to employees below them.

And sorting that sort of thing out is why we have corporate structures in the first place and start, from the beginning, as treating corporate activity as if the corporation did do the thing.

So, we hold the corporation accountable, which provides the incentive for the responsible parties to be held responsible by their owners who lost out.

It's the opposite of letting an executive off the hook. It's incentivizing ongoing policing first hold them responsible and make sure it doesn't happen again.

Sometimes government policy is in place because it's simply a good idea.

@ShadSterling

No, not really.

The main point of a corporation is to provide a standard and reliable way for people to more easily and effectively pool their resources to accomplish some goal.

It provides a legal framework for funding enterprises that no one person would likely be able to afford on his own, no matter how good an idea the effort might be.

Things like legal liability are just parts of the framework to sort out how ownership stakes should be treated, but they serve the ends of helping people combine their resources.
@dcjohnson

@SpaceLifeForm the CU ruling emphasized that it was about empowering actual humans to express themselves, not empowering corporations as if they were human.

Kennedy wrote at length about that in the ruling, though points like this are so frequently misreported/misunderstood.

https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep558/usrep558310/usrep558310.pdf

@dcjohnson

@anarchic_teapot well, it's slightly complicated in that Fox is a publicly traded company, and so while Murdochs own the majority of shares, the corporation is still subject to normal laws governing publicly traded corps in the US.

Mainly I'd say Fox seems to be after profit rather than kingmaking here. They enjoy their market niche and exploit that rather than push for successful candidates.

For example, Fox support for Trump gets them cash even if he's not the most capable candidate.

@MarkAB @GottaLaff

@fasnix one thing to keep in mind is the difference between the website and the user and content.

If you see the website as just the front end, the interface, then sure, get to the website via domain names as usual. Heck, at that point you can have more than one website serving as interfaces to the same system. That's still distributed even though it involves domain names.

But, user handles and content have to be unique, so you can still disconnect that from domain names even as the web interfaces still use them.

@reiver @laurenshof

@Martin no, that's not what Bush v Gore was about, it wasn't what the justices voted on.

In Bush v Gore the question before the Court was whether a lower court had acted legally and appropriately in interfering with Florida's voting process. The question was not whether the recount should proceed.

The Court found that the lower court had exceeded its authority and thus its ruling wasn't legal.

I really wish more people had been better informed about what happened in that case.

@OccuWorld @trans_caracal

It's a misleading description of what the Court found in that case.

The union wasn't to be sued for mere striking, but for arranging active sabotage of the employer beyond mere striking.

That's why the ruling was adopted by a broad coalition of justices and not just a few ideologues.

@realTuckFrumper she's so divisive in moments like this.

Just really a bad choice for a nominee, she doesn't have the high road.

And it's a really low bar against Trump. The only

@realTuckFrumper I'd say the poor choices to react at all.

As we say, don't feed the trolls.

Trump is looking to get a reaction. Don't give it to him.

@rhys That's not how PACs legally work, though.

The guardian is not a reliable source for news on US current events.

@rhys That's not how PACs legally work, though.

The guardian is not a reliable source for news on US current events.

@Jerry I hate to break it to you, but I personally have heard from people who have said they gave up on Harris after her performance in the last couple of weeks, from the interview last week through her skipping the charity dinner.

So yeah, Trump has gotten new votes.

Because Harris is just that much of a train wreck, and we need to hold Democratic Party officials accountable for making that obviously dumb choice to nominate her without a public process.

@jschauma we don't know that, though.

Specifically, we don't know a way to implement a solution that the people get behind, and unfortunately, turns out you have to get to people to get behind a solution if you are asking them to get behind it.

So no, we don't know the solution. If we knew the solution we would have done it by now.

@benda

Yeah, it's one of the drums that I bang that I can't believe the Democratic Party (the party itself, not party members, not the everyday person) has botched this so badly.

This should not be close. Harris was a terrible choice that the party made, and if they had had even an abbreviated competition, maybe at the convention, to choose the new nominee, heaven forbid with a process that was vaguely democratic, they would have come up with pretty much any other nominee that would have run circles around Trump.

And I just really feel like we need to hold the party accountable for this whole mess.

@arrrg

@arrrg never forget that so many Trump supporters support him specifically because of this sort of behavior out of him.

He's melting down? He's babbling? Well yeah, that's the sort of stuff that a bulk of his supporters gravitate toward him for. So he's just responding to his audience by embracing that sort of behavior.

To them it's a feature, not a bug.

@jenzi The algorithms are absolutely accountable because if people don't like them people leave the platform, so that's how we hold them accountable.

SO MANY PEOPLE don't want to hear anything else about this election. They don't want to hear about either of these candidates, or about voting, they just want an escape from it all, and the algorithms are serving them by giving them the stuff they want instead of stuff about voting.

So defending stupidity? No not at all! I am solidly supporting these platforms that are giving people the experience that they want instead of subjecting them to nonsense about voting that they don't want to see, because they are just sick of it.

@Nonilex a lot of users are tired of that kind of content, though.

Mrs. Frazzled comes across as being disappointed that she can't force her content on people that might not want to see it, might not be interested in it, and even might be specifically trying to get away from that kind of stuff on the platform.

It's not the end of democracy, if anything in a way it's democracy outvoting Mrs. Frazzled in terms of the type of platform they want to participate in.