If this is an attempt at blackmail it appears to be failing. It's only been a few days and Trump has already unilaterally capitulated on several major positions. Unless he's blackmailing himself, the 'plan' is backfiring.
"Trump to investors: My policies will never change" - https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-investors-my-policies...
You don't know what capitulations are happening behind the scenes
No, so far we only see the very public capitulations coming from the Trump administration. We're also seeing a lot of signaling, also very public, from every other major economy that they are prepared to move on without the US.
If we translate this into negotiating at a used car dealership, I don’t think it would look that different. Of course everyone is going to project strength in public communications. Doing otherwise would put them in a worse negotiating position. You have to make your opponent think you’ll do something drastic, or else they won’t budge. So you have everyone yelling about how they’re doing something drastic. Just like the first salvos at a used car dealership - dealer sets a ridiculous price, buyer declares they are going to walk away.
By the way I don’t think this is 4D chess. More like basic classical international relations. It just looks more like the 1800s than the 2020s, which makes people confused. It doesn’t take any particular cleverness to enact basic negotiating strategies. It just takes a lack of caring about collateral damage.
> more like the 1800s than the 2020s
No need to go that far. 1970s would suffice.
Can you tell me more about what you mean here? I feel like world wars were the transition point between realism and “liberal order” ideology. I’m curious what change you see happening where the transition point is 1970s.
Given Trump's persona would you expect him to be hush hush about capitulations to him?
I would expect him to post "Tim Apple came to kiss my ass great guy I will allow him to make great computers in America!"
Some of it maybe straight up bribes, aided by Trump's crypto-stuff.
What worries me more is a promise of cooperation helping Trump identify people to put into concentration camps.
There could have been deals/agreements behind the scenes. This is not a republican "first". The democrats did the same to get Facebook and other social media to censor news. Trump is literally playing their book but with his style.
Anyone who can not see the obvious difference in substance, intent, scope, and scale is either willfully ignorant or seriously lacking in reading comprehension and reasoning skills.
Requesting curbs on rampant disinformation is not even close to the same thing as crashing the economy to extort our closest allies and major business and industry players.
Yikes
Censorship is censorship.
Who are you to decide what is or isn't disinformation?
Who is anyone?
I prefer to do my own critical thinking.
It is also well documented that Meta's rampant censorship extends far beyond "disinformation".
https://web.archive.org/web/20250411170102/https://www.drops...
Who are you to decide what is or isn't disinformation?
You can ask this question about any belief or position on a topic. We each decide for ourselves the answer and society decides this through its elected leaders and the judiciary. All societies regulate speech.
A request to not amplify disinformation is NOT censorship. A threat of legal or military action is.
Of course there are edge cases, but blatant and hard-debunked falsehoods such as "The earth is flat", "Contrails are chemical spraying", Russia did not attack Ukraine", "Vaccines cause autism", "Auschwitz and Dachau were not concentration camps where people were killed" are all disinformation, and they are disseminated for the very specific purpose of undermining trust and the capability of western societies to survive, for the purpose of implementing authoritarianism.
If you evidently expect a society to unilaterally disarm and do nothing, you are part of the problem.