speckxFedware: Government apps that spy harder than the apps they ban
https://www.sambent.com/the-white-house-app-has-huawei-spyware-and-an-ice-tip-line/
>This thing also has a "Text the President" button that auto-fills your message with "Greatest President Ever!" and then collects your name and phone number.
when is the onion going to go bankrupt? it has to be soon, i imagine. no way it can compete with reality at this point.
(the rest of the article is a bit too depressing for me to comment on at the moment, other than saying "wow, gross")
It's ming boggling just how....cringe... these billionaires that want to run the world are. Makes you wonder if the personas that seek billions are correlated strongly with mental illnesses.
I do not think it is the money that made them terrible. I know all sorts of terrible people that would do the exact same things. The only difference really is they do not have the money to execute on those ideas.
Money does not make you a good or bad person. It just makes you more of who you are already.
I specifically did not say money makes them mentally ill, but rather the type of person that seeks to hoard so much wealth that they have billions is correlated with mental illness.
> the type of person that seeks to hoard so much wealth that they have billions is correlated with mental illness
Do we have any actual evidence of this? I know plenty of exorbitantly wealthy people who aren’t hoarding anything, they just didn’t sell their piece of the closely-held business they started, and they spend their time skiing, reading, travelling and taking care of their friends and family.
>Do we have any actual evidence of this?
to be fair, the original comment by malfist started with "makes you wonder", so i dont think they are asserting this as fact.
>I know plenty of exorbitantly wealthy people who aren’t hoarding anything,
some people would see this sentence as contradictory, and they would suggest that the thing those exorbitantly wealthy people are hoarding is money.
> they would suggest that the thing those exorbitantly wealthy people are hoarding is money
And I’d say they’re literally wrong. They may be hoarding capital. And yes, some wealthy people do hoard money per se. But outside the Epstein class there are lots of people we just don’t hear about because they aren’t on social media talking about how rich they are. Because while it’s fun to postulate that the rich have mental illnesses, it’s documented that social-media addiction causes them.
>They may be hoarding capital.
while this distinction may be important to you, i dont think it really changes anything about malfists question/point.
>Because while it’s fun to postulate that the rich have mental illnesses, it’s documented that social-media addiction causes them.
and cigarettes cause cancer. not sure what this has to do with the conversation, but yeah, social media is bad (smoking, too).
(please note: i am not arguing for or against what you or malfist have said, just thought there was a little something lost in translation re: you asking for evidence after a conversation that started with "makes you wonder")
> i dont think it really changes anything about what malfist question/point
Of course it does. Turning capital into spendable or transferable wealth takes work. Plenty of rich people are just enjoying their lives in the same way retirees do.
> not sure what this has to do with the conversation, but yeah, social media is bad
I’m saying the folks we tend to get upset about being rich at are also the rich who are prominently on social media. The problem isn’t that they’re rich. It’s that they’re on social media so much. I think there is a genuine argument to be made that even Elon Musk would have been a better-liked person, maybe even a better person, if he never got on Twitter.
> thought there was a little something lost in translation re: "makes you wonder"
Perhaps. And appreciate your clarifying for them. In 2026 I’m just sceptical of the “just asking questions” bit, particularly when it comes to cultural tropes. (And for what it’s worth, my query for a source was genuine. I’m always down to change my mind on a loosely-held belief.)