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[Eric Blank]

Thats like shark fin trade, it's probably banned because slowpoke suppliers are leaving the poor 'mons to die without their tails

[King Zultan]

I still don't get why they don't eat the entire thing instead of just the fin, I mean you've already gone through the effort of catching the thing to get the fin so why let the rest go to waste?

[Eric Blank]

Nonono, they're selling it. The people catching the sharks and cutting off their fins are selling them to the people eating them. They have no interest in eating the sharks, and buyers dont want to eat any other part of the shark, it's all about money. It's like a special delicacy or something, like sturgeon caviar.

Like you could eat any other part of the animal, but that part is special somehow so it's the only thing fancy rich assholes want to buy.

[Mech#4]

Shark also has a lot of mercury in it, being a fish that eats other fish, so the concentration is a lot higher because of their diet. Not really the best thing to be eating.

[delphonso]

It's not even for flavor. Shark fins have little flavor, it's genuinely just for the texture. It's incredibly cruel.

[jipehog]

Still not as weird as that artic shark which contains poisonous substance and must be left to decompose for a few month before it can be eaten.

Otherwise that fin situation sounds a little like the ivory situation with elephants

[scriver]

Except ivory has a long and widespread history of use as decoration behind it, and shark fin eating was just made up like yesterday iirc

[delphonso]

It gained popularity during the Qing dynasty, which is what people say when they want something to sound old, even though that starts in the 1600s and ends in 1912. It exploded alongside the economies in Asia. Hong Kong being a big place for it, but also China in the 2000s and Thailand in there somewhere too.

A lot of 'traditional' stuff in China is far younger than you'd expect. Traditional Chinese Medicine, as it stands today, is actually from the Cultural Revolution in the late 60s and 70s. It's important to understand how wild the last 100 years have been here and how quickly things have gone through several huge changes.

[jipehog]

Would not be surprised if it was used to improve sexual prowess, I doubt there is any exotic stuff that wasn't used for that purpose (its the ancient world amendment to rule34), and i assume its better than eating tiger penis

[Loud Whispers]

If I said that politicians around the world are using massive social media bot networks to spread propaganda and astroturf political opinions to influence the outcome of elections, would you believe me?

Probably. We all know about the influence the Russians had on the 2016 elections, but this issue is much bigger than Russia. I first learned about this when I heard about the Canadian government using bots to promote controversial gun legislation (and downvote/bury opinions that opposed it), but recently I've learned that the Americans are doing it too.

Today I've suddenly grasped the scale of this problem, and the implications terrify me. I struggle to see how democracy can survive if governments and political parties develop the ability to control political discourse this strongly. Dissenting opinions will have almost no room to be heard. What little that does make it through will be crippled by peer pressure. People generally aren't the best at independent thought after all.

Trying to imagine how this technology will develop in the future genuinely makes me feel sick to my stomach.

The answer is to nuke twitter and reddit with giant magnets. But more seriously I don't know how you can practically tackle such large botnets since the kinds of people who pay attention to the activities of such bots are also not exactly the target demographic of the botnets anyways

[jipehog]

If I said that politicians around the world are using massive social media bot networks to spread propaganda and astroturf political opinions to influence the outcome of elections, would you believe me?

Probably. We all know about the influence the Russians had on the 2016 elections, but this issue is much bigger than Russia. [..] Today I've suddenly grasped the scale of this problem[..]

This is not matter of belief. Oxford have been studying this trend for a few years, example report: Industrialized Disinformation: 2020 Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation) (Also one of the reasons I am concerned about AI taking it the next level )

However, I am not sure based on what you got the sense that this is bigger than Russia.. From everything I seen Russia has been at the forefront of international manipulation campaign's, its low cost high impact solution perfect for weaker Russia that sought out asymmetric solutions. As well as one of the least free countries in the world which has little trouble manipulating elections and suppressing dissent.

[Lord Shonus]

Russia and China are very much at the forefront of organized social media misinformation campaigns. That doesn't necessarily mean they're the most dangerous vectors. Arguably, a much bigger problem is that a lot of misinformation is spread not by deliberate "push this narrative" decisions by anybody in power, but by the way social media algorithms operate to boost "engagement". Fringe crap and conspiracy theories tend to get a lot of views and a lot of reactions (largely negative... at first), which has made Facebook and Twitter and the like decide people want to see more content like that, which drives more engagement which gets more content pushed in an escalating spiral. And, over time, the garbage starts to look less and less crazy through sheer exposure - the first time you hear about Evil Pedo Tunnels it gets dismissed entirely because it is so obviously bullshit. But you keep seeing it, until you start reacting less with "what are these people smoking" and more "ah, this nonsense again". Then it gradually becomes less "ah, this nonsense again" and "You know, I've been hearing a lot about this, am I sure there's nothing to it?". Especially if you are also seeing a lot of other, crazier stories that have popped up and shifting your credulity window. This is not a conscious process, but rather a slow mental erosion that it is far too easy to sink into, especially if it aligns with your existing biases.

This is made worse by grifters, politicians, and foreign agents (circling back around, Russia's provably dumped a lot of garbage intended to appeal to every political faction (their alignment with the far right has been known for awhile, and a number of leftist personalities were just arrested as Russian agents) in the US into the datastream for the sole purpose of increasing partisanship) catching on and deliberately exploiting it, but the pure mechanical grind is really scary.

[scriver]

It gained popularity during the Qing dynasty, which is what people say when they want something to sound old, even though that starts in the 1600s and ends in 1912. It exploded alongside the economies in Asia. Hong Kong being a big place for it, but also China in the 2000s and Thailand in there somewhere too.

A lot of 'traditional' stuff in China is far younger than you'd expect. Traditional Chinese Medicine, as it stands today, is actually from the Cultural Revolution in the late 60s and 70s. It's important to understand how wild the last 100 years have been here and how quickly things have gone through several huge changes.

That's interesting, that is a lot of actual history then. My thoughts was that it was more a "some rich people started doing this in the 70s" kind of thing or something, so thanks for the correction.

[King Zultan]

I always thought the reason they ate the shark fins was the same reason they ate the tiger penises, because they thought it'd give them boners or something like that.

[delphonso]

Yeah, it's one of those things that only royalty had done before, and likely the rest of the shark wasn't going to waste. Probably around the 70's (or a bit later) is when the demand started to grow like crazy, and the rest of the shark wasn't desired at all. That's when it became a problem.

KZ, because TCM isn't based in reality, practitioners can ascribe any result to anything else. The more subjective, the better!