One of the problems is that Google became synonymous with finding true answers. That works great for using a screwdriver. When people are assuming truthfullness and get trolly results, they are duped. These folks want the truth as much as any person. By suggesting to them that what they are reading would normally be in the tabloid section, that in itself would really help most people who aren't ever going to be critical thinkers, and that are on their phone and don't have time nor want to do any research about what they are reading. Again, where are they going to do their research? Google? They just found the article on google. If its "news", and portrayed as such, the same rules should apply to them as anything else we call "news."
Most people don't even know what a gatekeeper is, and would be damned to have you take away their google and facebook.
If they are going to be used as information spots, its time to clean them up. I don't have my children playing in the sewer because its pretty brown water, or so said the last headline. We should be helping people figure out what is actually truthful or not. People have time to read these stories, but say they don't have time to do the research, when in fact most folks if you really ask don't see why they should ever do any research. If you question them, they'll say "Oh, of course it wasn't real, but there must have been some truth to it." If you don't question them, they won't even think about it again until they see the next headline that says something similar, and then it reinforces it, even if they aren't paying any attention to it. We humans pick up info in all sorts of ways, and this type of cognitive reinforcement plays into so many held "beliefs."
So while you may not want gatekeepers for yourself, most people don't care either way, assume everything is working as it should, and that if it was bad, someone would tell them otherwise. Currently there is no one to tell them otherwise. They aren't fist deep into the comments sections debating the morality of being a google or facebook.
They used to be the product of us. I'd google things a long time ago and actually find a good answer. We definitely are becoming the product in the sense that they are rewriting folks brains. These tools have been turned against us and no one knows what to believe anymore. This has now spilled back into print media, or at least this is what most would tell you, therefore invalidating that as a truthful source as well.
We are their products in just about every way. We make them clicks. We consume their mediocre information at will.
That's great and all, but with so many new people showing up on the internet daily, and most having to go through the same learning curve with a whole mess of people preying on their n00biness, there are armies of people that are going through this exact lesson, at any given time, on "how not to be gullible." Until they are trained, they'll be the gullible ones, and there are more to replace them when they do figure it out.
The question is how to help them through the gauntlet of information, whereas now, they are left to the trolls.
Showing folks the right way is not censorship. Pointing out that the sky is not raining purple alien's isn't censoring people.
The problem we run into is that we've made it so easy for folks to get information, it appears that the common person can not differentiate between the tabloid story and the scientific article other than the number of pictures. When you get sites like Drudge that conflate the two along with total junk stories you get folks that say and believe things like "I go to Drudge because I get a good mix of different news outlets because I click on links that point me to all of the news sources."
People just aren't good at critical thinking unless it has everything to do with what they are engaged in at the moment. People feel they are forced to have an answer on everything because if they don't, their peer will "google it" next to them and then have the answer, which in a social setting makes folks uncomfortable. Everyone wants to have the most succinct and correct answer.
Its a hard fight against ourselves as humans. Its a hard fight because what is right for mom and her gossip circles isn't right for dad and his hunting buddies, and none of them should be talking about climate change. Sometimes one wants to look at nonsense, sometimes one wants to look at a full bore technical peer reviewed article. When grandma is reading them all like they have the same weight, while she feels smarter, she is now most likely in favor of whatever she just read.
Google and Facebook's normal results are fine, but when they decided to get into the "News" business, that is the key-word that dictates they should be following the rules we came up with a long time ago due to this exact problem. -Arzaboa
This way they'll have another charge to throw at the perpetrator in case the other 20 don't stick. Plus, this is a great law to have out there to create a bureau to enforce this. How will one enforce the law if no one is scanning the net? Its time to move the rules away from just the spy agencies so that everyone can play.
Seems like every time Microsoft touches something, it gets worse. Adding Microsoft to just about anything seems to equate to adding malvertising bloatware, and create no way for any decent feedback. I suppose the only question I have, is "when do they screw this up so badly, they buy Slack and kill that?"
Even the amoeba's I call my relatives have to use their brains for typing. Now, using ones brain to think about what one is typing is a totally different question.
-- "I'm just a cat with upgraded parts" - Jim Carrey
Yes, but most of us do still have the expectation that things will work past a year. Kill switching normalized is more what I was getting at. But a good note.
This is certainly a fight that Apple and others would love to win. To now say their devices are only good for one year due to "issue X", creates a steep curve into devices that always shut down just after 1 year. If in fact this were to go through, it wouldn't be far fetched to see companies specifically put in a 1 year "kill switch" so that there was no chance that anyone didn't "upgrade" and pay the fee. At a minimum, that could open up companies from having to deal with patching anything older than a year.
Its been fairly clear across all industries that companies want you to use only their brand new equipment, nothing second hand. Don't fix your stuff or we'll glue it in place if you try. This is another shot being fired at consumers. It seems like owning things is going to be the new taboo.
-- "Laws? We make the laws, its called a contract. Now arbitrate!". - Them
Moved on? What on earth are you talking about. China hasn't moved on. South Korea hasn't moved on. The United States hasn't moved on. Japan hasn't moved on. Russia hasn't moved on. The UN is still voting on sanctions ever year since the armistice. There is still a mined no mans zone across the 38th parallel. SK and the US are practicing joint military exercises. The US has 50k or so troops in S.K. What are you talking about? From their point of view, the entire world is trying to crush them, and certainly has their head pinned.
We read daily that the internet functions on our data. We hear constantly, "we are the products, our data is the product."
We are going to hear a million reasons why now this data isn't so valuable. We already see their attempt to flush everyone their "credit monitoring" sham. No one can sue the company in any meaningful way. There are no real remedies that exist for really anyone.
We all do a huge portion of our business online. This hack hits at the true heart of the internet, if we can't figure out who is who, you can not make a transaction. Our internet identities are a very real extension of our physical identities.
This reeks of every single issue that we all see today, from Terms of Service being forced onto folks, one sided contracts that only favor a large company we are forced to deal with whether you want to or not, companies using and selling our data that we have nothing to do with. We are just a commodity, and this really should make everyone feel exactly that.
At what point is having part of us sold and traded ok? Is this where we find out?
Hypocrisy is about to rain down hard. We will not see any meaningful change. We will see all of these folks tell us that in essence, while we can be arrested and profiled online, that our personal data that is essentially "who we are" online, doesn't have the same protections as our person.
It amazes me (well, maybe it shouldn't) as I look through these posts, that these are the same folks that work at these companies who are calling everyone else an 'idiot', but are then the same 'idiots' that have 'dumb ' questions, they may need an answer to, and wonder why they can't reach someone. Its pretty easy to say all questions are dumb when one is an expert on a subject.
I feel like a huge portion of time goes to simply managing the relationships with the large companies. It takes weeks of time, in hours, a year on the phone with every department imaginable to try to sort out even paper mistakes. At some point, this turns the management of all of these tools into a huge amount of work.
Companies seem to be hiding behind the internet now. 20 years ago, they still were answering the phones in most cases. I do remember when it wasn't considered a bad thing to tell a customer to read the manual, spend 10 seconds pointing them to the page and everyone being happy. Seems like companies doing this, and the rise of being able to alert the world to how unhappy one was with a product have moved simultaneously.
My thought is that no plant in the right environment should need any *cide's. Even if every neighbor only doses one bush, it does have a cumulative effect large enough to matter. Most would use the same argument, a smart guy like me should be able to use it so... Think about the people you hear say that and roll your eyes at. Just because bees aren't in there, others are, and just because they aren't bees, doesn't mean they aren't having the same effects on them. This stuff is just bad. So while you aren't a farm causing a 25% loss, even a 5% loss matters. Just because we haven't studied the other 'pests', as well doesn't mean they aren't as important. If they exist, there is a biological reason they are in your bushes.
Tailoring a yard for the local environment with local plants, or food, has so many benefits. Plants that are naturally occurring don't need all this "help", and stay under control with light pruning/cutting. Local plants only need what rain falls locally. It certainly may not look the same as mom's house, but that doesn't mean its not very pretty. It is hard for humans to change what makes them comfortable.
With that said, I get the shortcuts. It is hard to do. We are not setup for it in this country for many reasons. Everyone wants a nice looking piece of grass, but no one has the time. Stores stock cheap products, mostly produced all in the same cycle of plants that need their fertilizer, that are roundup-resistant. Its easy to keep control of a cycle like that. There is no incentive to change it for the large companies involved selling what most can "afford" or just that is stocked. The expensive stores are just that, so by definition, most shop at large retailers for plants where they can get their discount for a homogeneous selection of plants.
Microsoft bought Linkedin to profit off of users data. Users on Linkedin specifically post info so it is shared. Most users were members long before MS bought the social network. I certainly didn't have any say in this purchase, or my data. I don't appreciate that they can buy my public data, 3rd party website or not, and then act holier than though about it.
I'm not sure MS could create a social network that worked based on their past history. They've already changed the behavior of the site to promote more clicks and revenue, which would have seriously turned me off if they were in place when it started. Unfortunately, I put up, for now.
For MS to go to court and now say they are protecting their users is shameful. By throwing the users in front of the judge for their purposes is using the users as human shields. We all know this is about profits, and not being saved from another evil corp.
Apply this to Microsoft's practices across their platform, and its the users that need further protections from them. For them to throw us in front of a judge to claim this is for anything, even semi related to privacy, is a joke.
At best, this is the pot calling the kettle black.
I was trying to give you info to dial in your argument, but it appears you don't find that helpful, even when you are wrong. I suppose I'll make it easy for you.
Your comment "Above the surface we probably had two dozens, not thousands." Per the US government, there were 100 above ground tests, not ~24. Those numbers do not include the "world." If you include Russia, that more than doubles the # of tests above ground in the world. Citation
I would like to see a project to begin firing off "seed bags" to every planet we can point a barrel at. Sure, most won't survive but it very well may be one way we can tell what is out there way down the road.
Suppose we found say, these 4 rocky planets, but life hadn't been kickstarted. It seems like it would be our duty to help them thrive. Within 100 years of crash down, we could theoretically see the possible beginning of a planet that could host life like ours.
By searching the cosmos, over the thousands of planets we "seeded", we then could narrow down our search for "habitable" planets by simply looking at the atmosphere, vs. trying to get a close up picture of alien ants. This would certainly shorten the time to search for a planet to use as a base for further exploration.
If life is so different, there may not be any collateral damage to another planet. All of the other planets do not need to be "spared" human involvement. Save a few for the scientists and lets begin colonization on the microbial level.
That would be a nice idea, but most people don't have in person friends anymore, so that DVD only makes it to the couple they do have, at best. People also put their names on the DVD and want it back.
Online, folks have sometimes thousands of "friends" that they are happy to share everything with, and they don't have to return the digital stream link.
To your point, I do enjoy Netflix willing to let people share passwords. If history is any hint of the future, Disney will not be as excited to do this.
If companies are saving billions now on my cohorts dying earlier, I want that pension back that was taken away from us because we were "living too long."
The nitpicking over data points, taken out of context of the larger data set seems at best trolling.
This whole "thought," started a long time ago with the old adage.. "Don't shit where you eat"
We don't shit where we eat because we may get a disease, its not healthy, the ground doesn't produce the same, it soils our water.
Take that to the next step, burning our trash. Our neighbors don't appreciate it because it creates smoke, which makes one cough, naturally telling the human being that "smoke isn't great for the lungs." On a small scale when there were not 7+ billion people on the planet, that would be fine, but if every citizen of NYC or Paris burned their trash, people would get sick and do.
Coal burning plants have destroyed forests next to them due to the amount of waste produced. Sludge contaminating the water. Smoke contaminating the air. Acid rain killing all vegetation around them is well documented. Citation
Put enough industrial plants on the planet, and that "backyard of waste" is now the entire planet.
The full effect is the considerable change to our environment, from polluted waterways, acidification of the oceans, and a rising temperatures, just to name a few.
So what is the best name to use instead of "Climate Change", so that we can quit arguing over trivial data points when its fairly clear to anyone with eyes, ears and a nose that we are shitting on the environment that we live and eat in?
But reality is that Most people spend half of their lives at work. Is life really "life" when you have to stick your head in the sand for half of it so as not to possibly offend something?
Most of these folks live in the same communities as each other as well. Should "not talking" extend outside of work as well?
If this is the case, why even have elections? When corporations "policies" are the creeds that run everyone's lives, and everyone is beholden to a contract based on not irking your co-worker or damaging the bottom line or political capital of the company, this dilutes communities to those that "conform" vs. "those that don't conform."
While I don't want to hear politics in every setting, when one company owns so much, and controls so much, this can do exactly what the author of this letter says it does. Its a slippery slope.
Slashdot Mirror
One of the problems is that Google became synonymous with finding true answers. That works great for using a screwdriver. When people are assuming truthfullness and get trolly results, they are duped. These folks want the truth as much as any person. By suggesting to them that what they are reading would normally be in the tabloid section, that in itself would really help most people who aren't ever going to be critical thinkers, and that are on their phone and don't have time nor want to do any research about what they are reading. Again, where are they going to do their research? Google? They just found the article on google. If its "news", and portrayed as such, the same rules should apply to them as anything else we call "news."
-Arzaboa
Most people don't even know what a gatekeeper is, and would be damned to have you take away their google and facebook.
If they are going to be used as information spots, its time to clean them up. I don't have my children playing in the sewer because its pretty brown water, or so said the last headline. We should be helping people figure out what is actually truthful or not. People have time to read these stories, but say they don't have time to do the research, when in fact most folks if you really ask don't see why they should ever do any research. If you question them, they'll say "Oh, of course it wasn't real, but there must have been some truth to it." If you don't question them, they won't even think about it again until they see the next headline that says something similar, and then it reinforces it, even if they aren't paying any attention to it. We humans pick up info in all sorts of ways, and this type of cognitive reinforcement plays into so many held "beliefs."
So while you may not want gatekeepers for yourself, most people don't care either way, assume everything is working as it should, and that if it was bad, someone would tell them otherwise. Currently there is no one to tell them otherwise. They aren't fist deep into the comments sections debating the morality of being a google or facebook.
-Arzaboa
They used to be the product of us. I'd google things a long time ago and actually find a good answer. We definitely are becoming the product in the sense that they are rewriting folks brains. These tools have been turned against us and no one knows what to believe anymore. This has now spilled back into print media, or at least this is what most would tell you, therefore invalidating that as a truthful source as well.
We are their products in just about every way. We make them clicks. We consume their mediocre information at will.
That's great and all, but with so many new people showing up on the internet daily, and most having to go through the same learning curve with a whole mess of people preying on their n00biness, there are armies of people that are going through this exact lesson, at any given time, on "how not to be gullible." Until they are trained, they'll be the gullible ones, and there are more to replace them when they do figure it out.
The question is how to help them through the gauntlet of information, whereas now, they are left to the trolls.
Showing folks the right way is not censorship. Pointing out that the sky is not raining purple alien's isn't censoring people.
The problem we run into is that we've made it so easy for folks to get information, it appears that the common person can not differentiate between the tabloid story and the scientific article other than the number of pictures. When you get sites like Drudge that conflate the two along with total junk stories you get folks that say and believe things like "I go to Drudge because I get a good mix of different news outlets because I click on links that point me to all of the news sources."
People just aren't good at critical thinking unless it has everything to do with what they are engaged in at the moment. People feel they are forced to have an answer on everything because if they don't, their peer will "google it" next to them and then have the answer, which in a social setting makes folks uncomfortable. Everyone wants to have the most succinct and correct answer.
Its a hard fight against ourselves as humans. Its a hard fight because what is right for mom and her gossip circles isn't right for dad and his hunting buddies, and none of them should be talking about climate change. Sometimes one wants to look at nonsense, sometimes one wants to look at a full bore technical peer reviewed article. When grandma is reading them all like they have the same weight, while she feels smarter, she is now most likely in favor of whatever she just read.
Google and Facebook's normal results are fine, but when they decided to get into the "News" business, that is the key-word that dictates they should be following the rules we came up with a long time ago due to this exact problem.
-Arzaboa
This way they'll have another charge to throw at the perpetrator in case the other 20 don't stick. Plus, this is a great law to have out there to create a bureau to enforce this. How will one enforce the law if no one is scanning the net? Its time to move the rules away from just the spy agencies so that everyone can play.
-Arzaboa
Seems like every time Microsoft touches something, it gets worse. Adding Microsoft to just about anything seems to equate to adding malvertising bloatware, and create no way for any decent feedback. I suppose the only question I have, is "when do they screw this up so badly, they buy Slack and kill that?"
Even the amoeba's I call my relatives have to use their brains for typing. Now, using ones brain to think about what one is typing is a totally different question.
--
"I'm just a cat with upgraded parts" - Jim Carrey
Yes, but most of us do still have the expectation that things will work past a year. Kill switching normalized is more what I was getting at. But a good note.
This is certainly a fight that Apple and others would love to win. To now say their devices are only good for one year due to "issue X", creates a steep curve into devices that always shut down just after 1 year. If in fact this were to go through, it wouldn't be far fetched to see companies specifically put in a 1 year "kill switch" so that there was no chance that anyone didn't "upgrade" and pay the fee. At a minimum, that could open up companies from having to deal with patching anything older than a year.
Its been fairly clear across all industries that companies want you to use only their brand new equipment, nothing second hand. Don't fix your stuff or we'll glue it in place if you try. This is another shot being fired at consumers. It seems like owning things is going to be the new taboo.
--
"Laws? We make the laws, its called a contract. Now arbitrate!". - Them
Moved on? What on earth are you talking about. China hasn't moved on. South Korea hasn't moved on. The United States hasn't moved on. Japan hasn't moved on. Russia hasn't moved on. The UN is still voting on sanctions ever year since the armistice. There is still a mined no mans zone across the 38th parallel. SK and the US are practicing joint military exercises. The US has 50k or so troops in S.K. What are you talking about? From their point of view, the entire world is trying to crush them, and certainly has their head pinned.
We read daily that the internet functions on our data. We hear constantly, "we are the products, our data is the product."
We are going to hear a million reasons why now this data isn't so valuable. We already see their attempt to flush everyone their "credit monitoring" sham. No one can sue the company in any meaningful way. There are no real remedies that exist for really anyone.
We all do a huge portion of our business online. This hack hits at the true heart of the internet, if we can't figure out who is who, you can not make a transaction. Our internet identities are a very real extension of our physical identities.
This reeks of every single issue that we all see today, from Terms of Service being forced onto folks, one sided contracts that only favor a large company we are forced to deal with whether you want to or not, companies using and selling our data that we have nothing to do with. We are just a commodity, and this really should make everyone feel exactly that.
At what point is having part of us sold and traded ok? Is this where we find out?
Hypocrisy is about to rain down hard. We will not see any meaningful change. We will see all of these folks tell us that in essence, while we can be arrested and profiled online, that our personal data that is essentially "who we are" online, doesn't have the same protections as our person.
You're right.
It amazes me (well, maybe it shouldn't) as I look through these posts, that these are the same folks that work at these companies who are calling everyone else an 'idiot', but are then the same 'idiots' that have 'dumb ' questions, they may need an answer to, and wonder why they can't reach someone. Its pretty easy to say all questions are dumb when one is an expert on a subject.
I feel like a huge portion of time goes to simply managing the relationships with the large companies. It takes weeks of time, in hours, a year on the phone with every department imaginable to try to sort out even paper mistakes. At some point, this turns the management of all of these tools into a huge amount of work.
Companies seem to be hiding behind the internet now. 20 years ago, they still were answering the phones in most cases. I do remember when it wasn't considered a bad thing to tell a customer to read the manual, spend 10 seconds pointing them to the page and everyone being happy. Seems like companies doing this, and the rise of being able to alert the world to how unhappy one was with a product have moved simultaneously.
My thought is that no plant in the right environment should need any *cide's. Even if every neighbor only doses one bush, it does have a cumulative effect large enough to matter. Most would use the same argument, a smart guy like me should be able to use it so... Think about the people you hear say that and roll your eyes at. Just because bees aren't in there, others are, and just because they aren't bees, doesn't mean they aren't having the same effects on them. This stuff is just bad. So while you aren't a farm causing a 25% loss, even a 5% loss matters. Just because we haven't studied the other 'pests', as well doesn't mean they aren't as important. If they exist, there is a biological reason they are in your bushes.
Tailoring a yard for the local environment with local plants, or food, has so many benefits. Plants that are naturally occurring don't need all this "help", and stay under control with light pruning/cutting. Local plants only need what rain falls locally. It certainly may not look the same as mom's house, but that doesn't mean its not very pretty. It is hard for humans to change what makes them comfortable.
With that said, I get the shortcuts. It is hard to do. We are not setup for it in this country for many reasons. Everyone wants a nice looking piece of grass, but no one has the time. Stores stock cheap products, mostly produced all in the same cycle of plants that need their fertilizer, that are roundup-resistant. Its easy to keep control of a cycle like that. There is no incentive to change it for the large companies involved selling what most can "afford" or just that is stocked. The expensive stores are just that, so by definition, most shop at large retailers for plants where they can get their discount for a homogeneous selection of plants.
Its not your fault. It is by design.
Microsoft bought Linkedin to profit off of users data. Users on Linkedin specifically post info so it is shared. Most users were members long before MS bought the social network. I certainly didn't have any say in this purchase, or my data. I don't appreciate that they can buy my public data, 3rd party website or not, and then act holier than though about it.
I'm not sure MS could create a social network that worked based on their past history. They've already changed the behavior of the site to promote more clicks and revenue, which would have seriously turned me off if they were in place when it started. Unfortunately, I put up, for now.
For MS to go to court and now say they are protecting their users is shameful. By throwing the users in front of the judge for their purposes is using the users as human shields. We all know this is about profits, and not being saved from another evil corp.
Apply this to Microsoft's practices across their platform, and its the users that need further protections from them. For them to throw us in front of a judge to claim this is for anything, even semi related to privacy, is a joke.
At best, this is the pot calling the kettle black.
I was trying to give you info to dial in your argument, but it appears you don't find that helpful, even when you are wrong. I suppose I'll make it easy for you.
Your comment "Above the surface we probably had two dozens, not thousands."
Per the US government, there were 100 above ground tests, not ~24. Those numbers do not include the "world." If you include Russia, that more than doubles the # of tests above ground in the world. Citation
--
Data is an amazing thing.
U.S. alone had 216 nuclear tests. Citation Here are 60 you can watch online.
True True.
I would like to see a project to begin firing off "seed bags" to every planet we can point a barrel at. Sure, most won't survive but it very well may be one way we can tell what is out there way down the road.
Suppose we found say, these 4 rocky planets, but life hadn't been kickstarted. It seems like it would be our duty to help them thrive. Within 100 years of crash down, we could theoretically see the possible beginning of a planet that could host life like ours.
By searching the cosmos, over the thousands of planets we "seeded", we then could narrow down our search for "habitable" planets by simply looking at the atmosphere, vs. trying to get a close up picture of alien ants. This would certainly shorten the time to search for a planet to use as a base for further exploration.
If life is so different, there may not be any collateral damage to another planet. All of the other planets do not need to be "spared" human involvement. Save a few for the scientists and lets begin colonization on the microbial level.
--
To Infinity and Beyond! - B.L.
Just gotta be. Too soon?
That would be a nice idea, but most people don't have in person friends anymore, so that DVD only makes it to the couple they do have, at best. People also put their names on the DVD and want it back.
Online, folks have sometimes thousands of "friends" that they are happy to share everything with, and they don't have to return the digital stream link.
To your point, I do enjoy Netflix willing to let people share passwords. If history is any hint of the future, Disney will not be as excited to do this.
Used to commercials? I wont be able to ingest my 30 hours of TV a day unless its commercial free!
If companies are saving billions now on my cohorts dying earlier, I want that pension back that was taken away from us because we were "living too long."
If it was irony, I'd cry, but its not.
The nitpicking over data points, taken out of context of the larger data set seems at best trolling.
This whole "thought," started a long time ago with the old adage.. "Don't shit where you eat"
We don't shit where we eat because we may get a disease, its not healthy, the ground doesn't produce the same, it soils our water.
Take that to the next step, burning our trash. Our neighbors don't appreciate it because it creates smoke, which makes one cough, naturally telling the human being that "smoke isn't great for the lungs." On a small scale when there were not 7+ billion people on the planet, that would be fine, but if every citizen of NYC or Paris burned their trash, people would get sick and do.
Coal burning plants have destroyed forests next to them due to the amount of waste produced. Sludge contaminating the water. Smoke contaminating the air. Acid rain killing all vegetation around them is well documented. Citation
Put enough industrial plants on the planet, and that "backyard of waste" is now the entire planet.
The full effect is the considerable change to our environment, from polluted waterways, acidification of the oceans, and a rising temperatures, just to name a few.
So what is the best name to use instead of "Climate Change", so that we can quit arguing over trivial data points when its fairly clear to anyone with eyes, ears and a nose that we are shitting on the environment that we live and eat in?
But reality is that Most people spend half of their lives at work. Is life really "life" when you have to stick your head in the sand for half of it so as not to possibly offend something?
Most of these folks live in the same communities as each other as well. Should "not talking" extend outside of work as well?
If this is the case, why even have elections? When corporations "policies" are the creeds that run everyone's lives, and everyone is beholden to a contract based on not irking your co-worker or damaging the bottom line or political capital of the company, this dilutes communities to those that "conform" vs. "those that don't conform."
While I don't want to hear politics in every setting, when one company owns so much, and controls so much, this can do exactly what the author of this letter says it does. Its a slippery slope.