It's still up right now, they plan to kill it by 2024 and YTMP will supposedly be online by then. I suppose this has to do with reallocating their developers and avoiding redundant apps. Not that they're consistent with the latter.
AlbigensianGhoul
It's not like podcast players are particularly complex to build and maintain, so they don't require that much cashflow. Podbean sustains itself quite well with the odd image ad and AntennaPod is FOSS. I think the problem is more the opposite, since competition is so easy and monetising it would suck interest out of it, Google has no interest in actually competing. Which is why they're trying to build their own walled garden with uploading your podcasts only directly to YouTube, RSS feeds be damned.
But if they blow up every house, there'll plenty of housing to be built later on by EU companies. That's basically the same thing, right? That's what the citizens want, right?
Usually, yeah, reading and investigation is the main basis for getting informed. Specially for something so far away. How do you get "informed"? Through sheer willpower and thought?
It's the Sargon of Akkad tactic of screaming "I don't care!" while inserting themselves into every single conversation. Somehow they seem to think their dumb uninformed opinions are always equally worthy of merit despite doing zero homework. If you look into the thread, you'll notice most people didn't even read the article.
I don't follow. Yes, they are at war. How does that justify labour conscriptions and banning fleeing? I do care about people not dying and having dignity, you see. But sending teenagers into slaughter or forcing them to work to that same slaughter industry doesn't help anybody. It is basically a self-genocide by the Ukrainian government. No wonder that it started as a war against eastern Ukrainians.
Who here exactly defends genocide when the only thing I want in this war is for the suicidal tactics of the Ukrainian government to pause for a second so that civilians can flee and live better lives elsewhere? But you don't care about that, you're a liberal who will justify every war crime from your favourite North Atlantic countries and their puppet governments, under the guise of empathy.
See, 2 can play that game of ad hominem. Answer the question: "How is this not comparable to a modern slave state?"
Care to elaborate? AFAIK, forced labour under the threat of harm and no conditions for escape fits very well into most modern definitions of slavery. But go on, why should I support Ukraine despite this?
People over here sound so much like CK2 players that I get flashbacks to the thrashfire Pagan Fury dlc soundtrack. "You don't understand, they're fighting a genocide! Which is why we must conscript and self-genocide the entirety of Ukraine to prevent the separatist half of Ukraine from being genocided by their allies!"
I'm quoting again:
The new draft law on the mobilization of workers is intended to "ensure the functioning of the national economy under martial law", in the words of those drafting the law. It is noteworthy that in early August, Ukraine began to talk about a likely ban against military conscripts leaving the country for three years following an eventual end to military hostilities and martial law. Just such a proposal was recently made by Vadym Denysenko [...], head of the Ukrainian Institute for the Future and a former advisor to the head of the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs. Denysenko said, "I am sure that even after the war it will be necessary to extend the ban on men traveling abroad for at least another three years. Otherwise, we simply will not survive as a nation."
Please illuminate me in your wisdom, how banning people from leaving while conscripting them to either fight in the front or forced labour is not a form slavery. Whose lives are being saved by arresting people trying to flee the country?
So are we just supposed to allow (heck, even support!) Ukraine despite them implementing a system of modern slavery for their people, blocking civilians from fleeing, and forced conscription, some of it even slated to last even beyond the end of the war, because to even criticise it is "helping Russia"? Helping Russia do what, exactly? Look better than Ukraine? That's on Ukraine to be the big boy.
This is not Call of Duty, a war is waged for political reasons, and therefore the politics of it should be laid bare.
In early August, deputies of the Ukraine president's 'Servant of the People' party in the national legislature ('Rada') introduced a bill that provides for the conscription of forced labor of all those who have not been conscripted to the armed forces. Formally free citizens who already cannot legally leave the country due to wartime restrictions will now also be subjected to forced labor.
This was really inevitable, yeah.
Gotta remember to come back in 8 hours lol. This might be a fun experiment, since basically every corporate social media wants to be tiktok already.