Fake Social Media

[Peter]

4 hours ago, tmj said:

If Google is to Coca-Cola, blank is to Pepsi ?

I use MSN and Yahoo on my home page/ it pops up with MSN and Yahoo is a choice on the top bar. I usually search with both. If I am bored with MSN I switch to Yahoo. To me it's Google is to NeHi. Remember it? I used to get their orange if I was on the road and thirsty. 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

It looks like Joe Rogan is jumping ship from YouTube to Spotify and one of the main issues is YouTube censorship. The other is money--a cool $100 million.

Alex Jones has said he will be the first guest of Joe over at Spotify on September 1. This might be hyperbole since, halfway through the video, Tim cut out a section where he stopped recording and had a call with Joe to discuss all these things. Joe told him that, yes, he and Alex talk and he will interview Alex on his show, but Alex likes to embellish things with bombast.

The sleaziest thing I learned about YouTube on this video is that after Alex Jones was banned, nobody could have their videos monetized anymore on YouTube if they showed excerpts from Alex or discussed him as a major topic. However, right before Joe was going to interview Alex--on YouTube--Joe got in contact with YouTube to advise them and they turned the monetization back on for that interview. After all, with the huge spike in Joe and Alex's audience numbers when an interview like this happens, it was easy money...

Heh...

Well, no one can accuse YouTube of consistency or having a single standard in dealing with its audience and content creators.

I agree with Tim. I believe this event will be great for dismantling some of the tech giant censorship of conservative voices.

It has to be said, though, that Alex Jones was banned by Spotify back when there was a coordinated effort to get him off the major social media platforms. Now Joe is going to Spotify. It seems like they promised him they will not censor whoever he interviews, including Alex.

So we will have to see what happens. It's going to be fun watching the ride.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Did anybody notice that the tech giant social media errors--the major ones--always go in the direction of favoring the left?

In apparent 'error,' YouTube has been censoring comments critical of Chinese Communist Party

When it gets to the point of favoring the Communist Party of China, there's another name for this.

It's called selling out.

Disgusting...

Michael

[william.scherk]

From  Nandita Bose and David Shepardson at Reuters: 

Trump executive order takes aim at social media firms: draft

Quote

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to order a review of a law that has long protected internet companies, including Twitter and Facebook, an extraordinary attempt to intervene in the media that experts said was unlikely to survive legal scrutiny.

[...]

The draft order seen by Reuters directs federal agencies to modify the way a law known as Section 230, which protects internet companies from liability for content posted by their users, is implemented. It also orders a review of alleged “unfair or deceptive practices” by Facebook and Twitter, and calls on the government to reconsider advertising on services judged to “violate free speech principles.” [...]

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 hours ago, william.scherk said:

... experts said...

William,

Gotta love these sources...

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here is President Trump on his executive order putting in check the abuse of legal platform status by tech giants.

Finally.

I suggest watching this video, too, because I am seeing an incredible amount of misinformation and disinformation out on the Interwebs regarding what President Trump and AG Barr said.

btw - I am trying to find the full thing on Twitter just to be able to post it here as a SNAFU to them, but so far I haven't.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here is the transcript of the Executive Order.

Quote

The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 28, 2020

EXECUTIVE ORDER

- - - - - - -

PREVENTING ONLINE CENSORSHIP

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Policy. Free speech is the bedrock of American democracy. Our Founding Fathers protected this sacred right with the First Amendment to the Constitution. The freedom to express and debate ideas is the foundation for all of our rights as a free people.

In a country that has long cherished the freedom of expression, we cannot allow a limited number of online platforms to hand pick the speech that Americans may access and convey on the internet. This practice is fundamentally un-American and anti-democratic. When large, powerful social media companies censor opinions with which they disagree, they exercise a dangerous power. They cease functioning as passive bulletin boards, and ought to be viewed and treated as content creators.

The growth of online platforms in recent years raises important questions about applying the ideals of the First Amendment to modern communications technology. Today, many Americans follow the news, stay in touch with friends and family, and share their views on current events through social media and other online platforms. As a result, these platforms function in many ways as a 21st century equivalent of the public square.

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube wield immense, if not unprecedented, power to shape the interpretation of public events; to censor, delete, or disappear information; and to control what people see or do not see.

As President, I have made clear my commitment to free and open debate on the internet. Such debate is just as important online as it is in our universities, our town halls, and our homes. It is essential to sustaining our democracy.

Online platforms are engaging in selective censorship that is harming our national discourse. Tens of thousands of Americans have reported, among other troubling behaviors, online platforms "flagging" content as inappropriate, even though it does not violate any stated terms of service; making unannounced and unexplained changes to company policies that have the effect of disfavoring certain viewpoints; and deleting content and entire accounts with no warning, no rationale, and no recourse.

Twitter now selectively decides to place a warning label on certain tweets in a manner that clearly reflects political bias. As has been reported, Twitter seems never to have placed such a label on another politician's tweet. As recently as last week, Representative Adam Schiff was continuing to mislead his followers by peddling the long-disproved Russian Collusion Hoax, and Twitter did not flag those tweets. Unsurprisingly, its officer in charge of so-called "Site Integrity" has flaunted his political bias in his own tweets.

At the same time online platforms are invoking inconsistent, irrational, and groundless justifications to censor or otherwise restrict Americans' speech here at home, several online platforms are profiting from and promoting the aggression and disinformation spread by foreign governments like China. One United States company, for example, created a search engine for the Chinese Communist Party that would have blacklisted searches for "human rights," hid data unfavorable to the Chinese Communist Party, and tracked users determined appropriate for surveillance. It also established research partnerships in China that provide direct benefits to the Chinese military. Other companies have accepted advertisements paid for by the Chinese government that spread false information about China's mass imprisonment of religious minorities, thereby enabling these abuses of human rights. They have also amplified China's propaganda abroad, including by allowing Chinese government officials to use
their platforms to spread misinformation regarding the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, and to undermine pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

As a Nation, we must foster and protect diverse viewpoints in today's digital communications environment where all Americans can and should have a voice. We must seek transparency and accountability from online platforms, and encourage standards and tools to protect and preserve the integrity and openness of American discourse and freedom of expression.

Sec. 2. Protections Against Online Censorship. (a) It is the policy of the United States to foster clear ground rules promoting free and open debate on the internet. Prominent among the ground rules governing that debate is the immunity from liability created by section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act (section 230(c)). 47 U.S.C. 230(c). It is the policy of the United States that the scope of that immunity should be clarified: the immunity should not extend beyond its text and purpose to provide protection for those who purport to provide users a forum for free and open speech, but in reality use their power over a vital means of communication to engage in deceptive or pretextual actions stifling free and open debate by censoring certain viewpoints.

Section 230(c) was designed to address early court decisions holding that, if an online platform restricted access to some content posted by others, it would thereby become a "publisher" of all the content posted on its site for purposes of torts such as defamation. As the title of section 230(c) makes clear, the provision provides limited liability "protection" to a provider of an interactive computer service (such as an online platform) that engages in "'Good Samaritan' blocking" of harmful content. In particular, the Congress sought to provide protections for online platforms that attempted to protect minors from harmful content and intended to ensure that such providers would not be discouraged from taking down harmful material. The provision was also intended to further the express vision of the Congress that the internet is a "forum for a true diversity of political discourse." 47 U.S.C. 230(a)(3). The limited protections provided by the statute should be construed with
these purposes in mind.

In particular, subparagraph (c)(2) expressly addresses protections from "civil liability" and specifies that an interactive computer service provider may not be made liable "on account of" its decision in "good faith" to restrict access to content that it considers to be "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing or otherwise objectionable." It is the policy of the United States to ensure that, to the maximum extent permissible under the law, this provision is not distorted to provide liability protection for online platforms that -- far from acting in "good faith" to remove objectionable content -- instead engage in deceptive or pretextual actions (often contrary to their stated terms of service) to stifle viewpoints with which they disagree. Section 230 was not intended to allow a handful of companies to grow into titans controlling vital avenues for our national discourse under the guise of promoting open forums for debate, and then to provide those
behemoths blanket immunity when they use their power to censor content and silence viewpoints that they dislike. When an interactive computer service provider removes or restricts access to content and its actions do not meet the criteria of subparagraph (c)(2)(A), it is engaged in editorial conduct. It is the policy of the United States that such a provider should properly lose the limited liability shield of subparagraph (c)(2)(A) and be exposed to liability like any traditional editor and publisher that is not an online provider.

(b) To advance the policy described in subsection (a) of this section, all executive departments and agencies should ensure that their application of section 230(c) properly reflects the narrow purpose of the section and take all appropriate actions in this regard. In addition, within 60 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Commerce (Secretary), in consultation with the Attorney General, and acting through the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), shall file a petition for rulemaking with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requesting that the FCC expeditiously propose regulations to clarify:

(i) the interaction between subparagraphs (c)(1) and (c)(2) of section 230, in particular to clarify and determine the circumstances under which a provider of an interactive computer service that restricts access to content in a manner not specifically protected by subparagraph (c)(2)(A) may also not be able to claim protection under subparagraph (c)(1), which merely states that a provider shall not be treated as a publisher or speaker for making third-party content available and does not address the provider's responsibility for its own editorial decisions;

(ii) the conditions under which an action restricting access to or availability of material is not "taken in good faith" within the meaning of subparagraph (c)(2)(A) of section 230, particularly whether actions can be "taken in good faith" if they are:

(A) deceptive, pretextual, or inconsistent with a provider's terms of service; or

(B) taken after failing to provide adequate notice, reasoned explanation, or a meaningful opportunity to be heard; and

(iii) any other proposed regulations that the NTIA concludes may be appropriate to advance the policy described in subsection (a) of this section.

Sec. 3. Protecting Federal Taxpayer Dollars from Financing Online Platforms That Restrict Free Speech. (a) The head of each executive department and agency (agency) shall review its agency's Federal spending on advertising and marketing paid to online platforms. Such review shall include the amount of money spent, the online platforms that receive Federal dollars, and the statutory authorities available to restrict their receipt of advertising dollars.

(b) Within 30 days of the date of this order, the head of each agency shall report its findings to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.

(c) The Department of Justice shall review the viewpoint-based speech restrictions imposed by each online platform identified in the report described in subsection (b) of this section and assess whether any online platforms are problematic vehicles for government speech due to viewpoint discrimination, deception to consumers, or other bad practices.

Sec. 4. Federal Review of Unfair or Deceptive Acts or Practices. (a) It is the policy of the United States that large online platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, as the critical means of promoting the free flow of speech and ideas today, should not restrict protected speech. The Supreme Court has noted that social media sites, as the modern public square, "can provide perhaps the most powerful mechanisms available to a private citizen to make his or her voice heard." Packingham v. North Carolina, 137 S. Ct. 1730, 1737 (2017). Communication through these channels has become important for meaningful participation in American democracy, including to petition elected leaders. These sites are providing an important forum to the public for others to engage in free expression and debate. Cf. PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74, 85-89 (1980).

(b) In May of 2019, the White House launched a Tech Bias Reporting tool to allow Americans to report incidents of online censorship. In just weeks, the White House received over 16,000 complaints of online platforms censoring or otherwise taking action against users based on their political viewpoints. The White House will submit such complaints received to the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

(c) The FTC shall consider taking action, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to prohibit unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce, pursuant to section 45 of title 15, United States Code. Such unfair or deceptive acts or practice may include practices by entities covered by section 230 that restrict speech in ways that do not align with those entities' public representations about those practices.

(d) For large online platforms that are vast arenas for public debate, including the social media platform Twitter, the FTC shall also, consistent with its legal authority, consider whether complaints allege violations of law that implicate the policies set forth in section 4(a) of this order. The FTC shall consider developing a report describing such complaints and making the report publicly available, consistent with applicable law.

Sec. 5. State Review of Unfair or Deceptive Acts or Practices and Anti-Discrimination Laws. (a) The Attorney General shall establish a working group regarding the potential enforcement of State statutes that prohibit online platforms from engaging in unfair or deceptive acts or practices. The working group shall also develop model legislation for consideration by legislatures in States where existing statutes do not protect Americans from such unfair and deceptive acts and practices. The working group shall invite State Attorneys General for discussion and consultation, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law.

(b) Complaints described in section 4(b) of this order will be shared with the working group, consistent with applicable law. The working group shall also collect publicly available information regarding the following:

(i) increased scrutiny of users based on the other users they choose to follow, or their interactions with other users;

(ii) algorithms to suppress content or users based on indications of political alignment or viewpoint;

(iii) differential policies allowing for otherwise impermissible behavior, when committed by accounts associated with the Chinese Communist Party or other anti-democratic associations or governments;

(iv) reliance on third-party entities, including contractors, media
organizations, and individuals, with indicia of bias to review content; and

(v) acts that limit the ability of users with particular viewpoints to earn money on the platform compared with other users similarly situated.

Sec. 6. Legislation. The Attorney General shall develop a proposal for Federal legislation that would be useful to promote the policy objectives of this order.
Sec. 7. Definition. For purposes of this order, the term "online platform" means any website or application that allows users to create and share content or engage in social networking, or any general search engine.

Sec. 8. General Provisions.
(a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

DONALD J. TRUMP

THE WHITE HOUSE,
May 28, 2020.

There goes the secret weapon (hidden in plain sight) of the Dems and Deep State to rig the November elections.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Just to make clear what all this means, here is how I predict it will play out, at least in part.

Currently, the tech giants still have their platform liability shield in place.

But, shortly (if not already in the works), the DOJ or a private citizen or some entity is going to sue one of the Social Media Tech Giants (or more) for a specific instance of acting outside the bounds of platform protection, for abusing its legal standing, and ask, judicially, that the social media platform be recognized in the courts as a publisher, with all the legal liability that entails.

This will go through appeals and probably be fast-tracked to the Supreme Court.

Along the way, since this is an election year, I expect Congress to move quickly on legislation clarifying all this, and, ironically, I suspect the tech giants will support this legislation, even though it will clip their wings hard.

Why? Because along the way to the Supreme Court, they will start dying from death by a thousand cuts as all kinds of disgruntled users sue them for unjustly being restricted on--or banned from--their platforms, especially over political speech.

But that's not the biggest worry Big Tech has. Their biggest worry will be the massive number of class action suits that will spring up. There are deep pockets out there to fund these class action suits. And the liability sums involved are massive.

So expect to see Alex Jones & Co. make a surprising reappearance soon on all the major social media giants.

Their ability to rig the upcoming election just got blown out of the water big time. Right now, they have to scramble for their very survival as they see the tidal wave of doom coming at them.

Michael

[Strictlylogical]

I find it a little ironic that on the one hand I advocate for a system where there would be little to no public property, state media, public utilities of any kind.  Where all is privately owned, traded, rented, sold and used in the free market. Yet I almost am tempted to treat the various media service platforms as coming within the public sphere, I almost conflate their private with public good and their private action with government action...but reason brings me back from the brink.

 

My only consolation is the double negative... that since we live in a mixed economy there no doubt is favouritism and cronyism which needs to be reined in by force of regulation.

[william.scherk]

When we invite 'the public interest' into discussion, assessing and determining  it takes up a lot of time, in my opinion. The closer to life and death the quicker cases tend to leap to appeals and to the Supreme Court docket. Put more simply than down below, I foresee a similar kind of set of events as Michael, just over a longer period of time, and with less confidence that some judicial happenings will happen.

5 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

8 hours ago, william.scherk said:

... experts said...

William,

Truncquote!

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Just to make clear what all this means, here is how I predict it will play out [...]

I can use another guide to what all this means, legal expertise or not. 

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I expect Congress to move quickly on legislation [...]

But that's not the biggest worry Big Tech has. Their biggest worry will be the massive number of class action suits that will spring up. There are deep pockets out there to fund these class action suits. And the liability sums involved are massive.

So expect to see Alex Jones & Co. make a surprising reappearance soon on all the major social media giants.

I just don't see Congress warp speed legislation soon, definitely not before the votes are counted after November 3 (if to insert statutory versions of the executive order).  With Alex Jones if not & Co who in particular, which 'officer' might instruct YouTube and Facebook and Twitter to re-instate the terminated accounts? A judge? Before the election? As that libertarian might say, who would be showing up with the gun?

Quote

Their ability to rig the upcoming election just got blown out of the water big time. Right now, they have to scramble for their very survival as they see the tidal wave of doom coming at them.

I am more on the fence about Big Tech's (insofar Twitter) "very survival."  In re rigging -- it could be argued that if the GOP really knows more-or-less how "The Enemy Party" gets away with wholesale fraud at various levels of count-by-county and county-with-county collusion, they might ought do their own dirty deeds, given what they will know to be happening all over the place.  In any case, does anybody sometimes find "rigging" to be a pretty non-specific word? Rigging is rigging. Rig! Big massive deep massive bigtime scramble. Tidal wave of doom.

I believe that Twitter made a significant error, that it was a mistake to craft a special "Famous political figure who has a personal account that kind of stands in for the policy organ of a major nation's executive" rule that applied only two times so far. Who wants the weight of this special 'flagger' uniform? A staff of how many to baby-sit a special class of account?  My kneejerk me says It's clunky, it's dumb, it's unworkable, it's a kludge. I thought one of the hardest lines on Trump's Twitter behaviour was from Kamala Harris -- back when she urged Trump's private account be disciplined according to Twitter's avowed rules, already existing rules -- whether timeout, delete-or-timeout-forever, "please feel free to appeal your termination," what have you.  Fellow hopefuls mocked or had proxies castigate her.  They eat their own, them people.  But anyway ...

Specially-crafted add-a-tag-with-link rules quickly banged together to apply to one particular situation? Pfui.

I agree with Michael in spirit at least that "Big Tech" in the guise of Twitter brought on the executive order and its formal policy directive, however we disagree on the proximate or ultimate outcome of the issues in the snarl. The more cynical me would say the machinery of sustained, broad-based administration media oversight may take some time to get rolling, but Jared could shirley figure that out. If there was ever a time to go after enemies, it's now.

If you were, say, a Trump-doubter or someone with full-blown political hatred derangement, you might be saying, "Thanks, Twitter." In the ironic tense.  

Edited May 29, 2020 by william.scherk
Added intro, took out some crap, added more crap

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 hours ago, william.scherk said:

When we invite 'the public interest' into discussion, assessing and determining  it takes up a lot of time, in my opinion.

William,

I agree.

For instance, it was in the public interest to see if the President of the United States had been fraudulently elected due to Russian interference and that issue took over three years of mainstream news outrage-laced hysteria, countless investigations including a big one (Mueller) costing about $30 million or so, an impeachment in Congress and so on despite no evidence appearing anywhere except in the mouths of pundits or politicians who swore the contrary under oath away from the public.

That was a really long time for no evidence, but as you say, public interest takes a lot of time to discuss, assess and determine when it is invited to be a part of such activities.

Imagine if public interest had been ordered instead of invited.

Michael

 

[Peter]

Libel. They committed libel to dishonestly destroy a person. What if it had gone to "false imprisonment?" 
 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

3 hours ago, william.scherk said:

With Alex Jones if not & Co who in particular, which 'officer' might instruct YouTube and Facebook and Twitter to re-instate the terminated accounts?

William,

Be careful with your kneejerks.

It will probably be the employees of the Tech Giants themselves who invite Alex Jones & Co. back, either by announcement or by silence and default after Alex barges in (as he is wont to do).

btw - You have no idea of the sheer quantity of money, and the sheer amount of legal talent, available to Alex for lawsuits. The public impression of Alex's court activities are colored by the mainstream press, which likes to harp on Sandy Hook and so on. So people who look on the surface think he's a legal loser.

But think about this. Alex was removed from a bunch of Internet platforms by a (probably illegal) cartel-like action in tandem over a couple of days by many of the main Tech Giants, yet he is still standing. Don't you think the courts should have abolished his businesses and thrown in him jail by now? Are his enemies that weak in the litigation department? They certainly look that weak when we see him publicly growing fast as usual compared to the image they conveyed in public about how they demolished him.

I guess they don't have juice in the courts. All hat and no cattle, as the saying goes.

Also, that cartel removal of Alex & Co. is a sweet sweet lawsuit waiting for the right time for his legal team to pounce. And think of all the money involved from all those Tech Giants if (when) he wins.

Alex is the kind of person you have to kill if you make a move to take him out. If you don't, when he comes back, it's not pretty--not pretty at all for those who made the move.

Don't forget, he helped elect President Trump in 2016. Try to go back to that time in your imagination when Hillary Clinton's "deplorables" comment was prompted by her irritation with him. Imagine what you felt back then. Everybody on your side thought Alex Jones was a joke. Nothing to be taken seriously. And they thought that about his audience, too.

Then Trump won.

Imagine what Alex's ubiquitousness is going to be like after the Social Media Giants start running for the hills, especially after President Trump is reelected with Trump-friendly Republican majorities in both houses of Congress.

Let's see what happens, but I have a prediction. I believe your worldview is going to get shattered--in one detail at the very least: the respect you have for your fearless leaders in Silicon Valley. I predict almost all of them will sell out big-time (meaning do an about face on the values you champion). And they will probably get rid of a lot of the employees they hired during Obama's massive employee-swaps between them and the government.

Hell, Marc Zuckerberg is already dissing Jack Dorsey in public to suck up to President Trump. You can almost hear him go, "Gulp," and saying, "See? We aren't the ones who did it. They did!" at the same time he is sticking it to Jack.

That sure didn't take long.

It's a pretty sight, no?

 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

13 hours ago, Strictlylogical said:

I find it a little ironic that on the one hand I advocate for a system where there would be little to no public property, state media, public utilities of any kind.  Where all is privately owned, traded, rented, sold and used in the free market. Yet I almost am tempted to treat the various media service platforms as coming within the public sphere, I almost conflate their private with public good and their private action with government action...but reason brings me back from the brink.

 

My only consolation is the double negative... that since we live in a mixed economy there no doubt is favouritism and cronyism which needs to be reined in by force of regulation.

S,

AG Barr gives a pretty good short explanation of what happened in practice: bait and switch.

You might be interested to know that all these tech giants, starting with Google, used a Marxist system to get where they are.

That is part of the bait and switch AG Barr is talking about--the root, so to speak.

I wrote about this last year. George Gilder is the one who made it clear to me.

On 7/7/2019 at 2:43 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Let's just say that without government protections, funding and resources like satellites and subsidized power (in addition to way too much stuff to list here), Google would not be the Google behemoth it is today.

Here's a 2018 book for ya': Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy by George Gilder.

Gilder is the guy who correctly predicted a bunch of important stuff about big tech and even the Internet back during the television years. And he's been right over and over since. You might be interested to know that the view of human nature of the Google folks is essentially Marxist (and, by extension, this applies to other big tech folks as well, but not as much as with Google). I'm going to push the bounds of fair use and provide some  relevant quotes from Gilder's book.

Quote

... Silicon Valley seems to have adopted what can best be described as a neo-Marxist political ideology and technological vision. You may wonder how I can depict as “neo-Marxists” those who on the surface seem to be the most avid and successful capitalists on the planet.

Marxism is much discussed as a vessel of revolutionary grievances, workers’ uprisings, divestiture of chains, critiques of capital, catalogs of classes, and usurpation of the means of production. At its heart, however, the first Marxism espoused a belief that the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century solved for all time the fundamental problem of production.

The first industrial revolution, comprising steam engines, railways, electric grids, and turbines—all those “dark satanic mills”—was, according to Marx, the climactic industrial breakthrough of all time. Marx’s essential tenet was that in the future, the key problem of economics would become not production amid scarcity but redistribution of abundance.

In The German Ideology (1845), Marx fantasized that communism would open to all the dilettante life of a country squire: “Society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have in mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.”

Marx was typical of intellectuals in imagining that his own epoch was the final stage of human history. William F. Buckley used to call it an immanentized eschaton, a belief the “last things” were taking place in one’s own time. The neo-Marxism of today’s Silicon Valley titans repeats the error of the old Marxists in its belief that today’s technology—not steam and electricity, but silicon microchips, artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud computing, algorithmic biology, and robotics—is the definitive human achievement. The algorithmic eschaton renders obsolete not only human labor but the human mind as well.

All this is temporal provincialism and myopia, exaggerating the significance of the attainments of their own era, of their own companies, of their own special philosophies and chimeras—of themselves, really. Assuming that in some way their “Go” machine and climate theories are the consummation of history, they imagine that it’s “winner take all for all time.” Strangely enough, this delusion is shared by Silicon Valley’s critics. The dystopians join the utopians in imagining a supremely competent and visionary Silicon Valley, led by Google with its monopoly of information and intelligence.

AI is believed to be redefining what it means to be human, much as Darwin’s On the Origin of Species did in its time. While Darwin made man just another animal, a precariously risen ape, Google-Marxism sees men as inferior intellectually to the company’s own algorithmic machines.

 

Gilder continues in the quote below. The reason I separated the passage (it continues from the previous one) is that, although it does not deal specifically with Marx, it shows how the Marxist model inevitably leads to "walled gardens" and "company stores" with arbitrary market practices, both of which need a massive security system in place for protection. He also shows the bait and switch of "free" software in this Marxist model. The free not only serves as the bait, it isolates Google from complying with many legal business requirements.

Quote

Life after Google makes the opposing case that what the hyperventilating haruspices Yuval Harari, Nick Bostrom, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Tim Urban, and Elon Musk see as a world-changing AI juggernaut is in fact an industrial regime at the end of its rope. The crisis of the current order in security, privacy, intellectual property, business strategy, and technology is fundamental and cannot be solved within the current computer and network architecture.

Security is not a benefit or upgrade that can be supplied by adding new layers of passwords, pony-tailed “swat teams,” intrusion detection schemes, anti-virus patches, malware prophylactics, and software retro-fixes. Security is the foundation of all other services and crucial to all financial transactions. It is the most basic and indispensable component of any information technology.

In business, the ability to conduct transactions is not optional. It is the way all economic learning and growth occur. If your product is “free,” it is not a product, and you are not in business, even if you can extort money from so-called advertisers to fund it.

If you do not charge for your software services—if they are “open source”—you can avoid liability for buggy “betas.” You can happily evade the overreach of the Patent Office’s ridiculous seventeen-year protection for minor software advances or “business processes,” like one-click shopping. But don’t pretend that you have customers.

Security is the most crucial part of any system. It enables the machine to possess an initial “state” or ground position and gain economic traction. If security is not integral to an information technology architecture, that architecture must be replaced.

The original distributed Internet architecture sufficed when everything was “free,” as the Internet was not a vehicle for transactions. When all it was doing was displaying Web pages, transmitting emails, running discussion forums and news groups, and hyperlinking academic sites, the Net did not absolutely need a foundation of security. But when the Internet became a forum for monetary transactions, new security regimes became indispensable. EBay led the way by purchasing PayPal, which was not actually an Internet service but an outside party that increased the efficiency of online transactions. Outside parties require customer information to be transmitted across the Web to consummate transactions. Credit card numbers, security codes, expiration dates, and passwords began to flood the Net.

With the ascendancy of Amazon, Apple, and other online emporia early in the twenty-first century, much of the Internet was occupied with transactions, and the industry retreated to the “cloud.” Abandoning the distributed Internet architecture, the leading Silicon Valley entrepreneurs replaced it with centralized and segmented subscription systems, such as Paypal, Amazon, Apple’s iTunes, Facebook, and Google cloud. Uber, Airbnb, and other sequestered “unicorns” followed.

These so-called “walled gardens” might have sufficed if they could have actually been walled off from the rest of the Internet. At Apple, Steve Jobs originally attempted to accomplish such a separation by barring third-party software applications (or “apps”). Amazon has largely succeeded in isolating its own domains and linking to outside third parties such as credit card companies. But these centralized fortresses violated the Coase Theorem of corporate reach. In a famous paper, the Nobel-laureate economist Ronald Coase calculated that a business should internalize transactions only to the point that the costs of finding and contracting with outside parties exceed the inefficiencies incurred by the absence of real prices, internal markets, and economies of scale.6 The concentration of data in walled gardens increases the cost of security. The industry sought safety in centralization. But centralization is not safe.

The company store was not a great advance of capitalism during the era of so-called “robber barons,” and it is no better today when it is dispersed through the cloud, funded through advertising, and combined with a spurious sharing of free goods. Marxism was historically hyperbolic the first time round, and the new Marxism is delusional today. It is time for a new information architecture for a globally distributed economy.

Fortunately, it is on its way.

The help on the way that Gilder talks about is blockchain and cryptocurrency.

This is one of the reasons I am outside of the typical O-Land stance on private companies when talking about Internet tech giants.

The issue is more complex than simply we live in a mixed economy. And there's this. The surveillance state cannot exist without these tech giants.

Notice that all these tech giants are trying to harness blockchain and cryptocurrency with exclusivity, but they can't do it by its very nature. Also, they have no way to keep their censorship going if they do set up their own blockchain and cryptocurrency services and that is making them nuts.

 

They need to get their hands on the government and shut down crypto before this stuff destroys them.

That, to me, is one of the reasons why they are doing some really stupid stuff these days. They are in a panic mixed with the elation of almost getting away with their crap.

Michael

[william.scherk]

15 hours ago, william.scherk said:

The more cynical me would say the machinery of sustained, broad-based administration media oversight may take some time to get rolling, but Jared could shirley figure that out. If there was ever a time to go after enemies, it's now.

If you were, say, a Trump-doubter or someone with full-blown political hatred derangement, you might be saying, "Thanks, Twitter." In the ironic tense.  

 

[Ellen Stuttle]

On May 29, 2020 at 10:15 AM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

You might be interested to know that all these tech giants, starting with Google, used a Marxist system to get where they are.

That is part of the bait and switch AG Barr is talking about--the root, so to speak.

I wrote about this last year. George Gilder is the one who made it clear to me.

Thanks for reposting the excerpts from Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy by George Gilder.

I meant to buy that and forgot.  I just ordered it.

Ellen

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

On 5/28/2020 at 7:22 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

... along the way to the Supreme Court, they will start dying from death by a thousand cuts as all kinds of disgruntled users sue them for unjustly being restricted on--or banned from--their platforms, especially over political speech.

But that's not the biggest worry Big Tech has. Their biggest worry will be the massive number of class action suits that will spring up. There are deep pockets out there to fund these class action suits. And the liability sums involved are massive.

This thing is already starting to take root.

Jimmy has nothing specific in the works yet, but he's talking about what people can now do legally. Like sue.

That's the seed growing roots. Pretty soon a little sprout will poke it's little head through the soil.

In your mind's eye, can you see any lawyer on the left looking at this and start to feel his palms itch?  

 

Also, take a look at this article from John Daniel Davidson at The Federalist:

Twitter And Social Media Are A Cancer On Our Civic Life. They Don’t Deserve Protection

From the article (my bold

Quote

 

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was passed in 1996, back when Congress was grappling with new technology and trying to make the internet as open as possible. Harsanyi and others worry that if liability protections are taken away, there would be a flood of lawsuits. Media companies might abandon open platforms altogether. Social media as we know it might cease to exist.

Let’s hope so. It wouldn’t be the end of the world—or even of free speech—if we went back to an Internet without comment sections, without Twitter mobs, and without aggressively politicized social media companies.

And anyway, in all likelihood we wouldn’t go backward but forward. New kinds of platforms and new methods of communications would emerge, maybe a more diverse array of companies, too. Somewhere along the way, someone might even devise a social media platform that doesn’t incessantly turn us against one another and stoke division and civic unrest.

The future is uncertain, but the present state of affairs is not. Let’s admit what we all know: Twitter and the other tech giants are a cancer on our body politick. We owe them nothing, certainly not special protection from liability. Let them figure out how to operate like the traditional publishers they have decided to be—and if they can’t, let them die.

 

Do you think any lawyers of the itching palms variety on the right are paying attention? Hmmmmmm?  

 

And look at this from the establishment left crowd (from Politico).

But first, remember this:

On 5/28/2020 at 7:22 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Their ability to rig the upcoming election just got blown out of the water big time. Right now, they have to scramble for their very survival as they see the tidal wave of doom coming at them.

The Trump-Twitter fight ropes in the rest of Silicon Valley

The content is not as important as the headline. Did you just hear a big-ass gulp?

I sure did.

 

The idiots who wrote this article frame it as a political issue about the upcoming election only. Look how the article ends:

Quote

 

But where some in the industry had thought Trump was likely to roll out some such order in the chaotic run-up to the November election, as part of a targeted anti-social-media appeal to his base, having this tit-for-tat escalation break out in May means the fight could suck up much more oxygen and burn longer.

“Everybody expected this fight," Wexler said. "They just thought that it would happen in September or October as part of a get-out-the-vote push."

 

But that's bullshit to keep their crowd pacified.

In the middle is where their real concern is hidden (as is usual with articles coming from this news culture).

Quote

 

As Trump and Twitter sparred this week, NetChoice — whose members include Facebook, Twitter, Google and scores of other big-name online companies — rushed into an effort to convince the American public that Trump is wrong about an obscure provision of a quarter-century-old communications law.

The move, relying on Facebook posts, tweets and explainer videos, is a shift from the group's more typically insidery strategy of lobbying Hill staffers or members of Congress. And it suggests a more expansive approach to how Silicon Valley plans to engage in the messaging battle over the laws governing social media.

The rest of Silicon Valley’s robust lobbying presence has kicked into higher gear as well.

The Internet Association, which represents Twitter, Google and Facebook, among others, speedily released a video arguing that the internet depends on the liability protections at the center of the fight. The Computer and Communications Industry Association deliberated the impact of Trump’s actions with its member companies. And the Consumer Tech Association says it is expecting to make a big push to the Senate’s Judiciary and Commerce committees, as well as tech and business-focused caucuses among both parties — including some lawmakers they don’t typically target.

 

Do you know what the subtext of this is? Do you know why this was written and why these companies are doing all this lobbying?

Easy.

Fear of class action lawsuits. Gobs and gobs of 'em.

Let's not forget that the tech giants are so flush with cash, they don't know where to put their money.

 

In fact, do you remember this old joke?

How can you tell if a lawyer is lying?
His lips are moving.

Now, here is a similar one that is relevant for today's social media situation.

How can you tell which people in a public space are trade lawyers?
They are the ones dancing jigs and jumping up and down for joy.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here it's starting to come from the other end.

 

Bring it all on.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

And so it starts. A bit tangentially, but still the same animal.

Google faces $5 billion lawsuit in U.S. for tracking 'private' internet use

Google tracked users and compiled date when user browsers were in "private" mode.

And what kind of lawsuit is this?

Class action, of course.

Michael

[Peter]

It was a hear say story but the news was saying Apple was turning off its "tracking ability" of Apple phones that were stolen during the rioting. Then the police and phone owners can't locate their stolen phones. 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here it is right in their own words.

James O'Keefe hits Facebook hard.

Facebook Content Moderator: ‘If Someone is Wearing a MAGA Hat, I Am Going to Delete Them for Terrorism’

Quote

Project Veritas today released one of the most damning undercover investigation reports—this time insiders used hidden cameras to document rampant censorship occurring at social media giant: Facebook.

• Facebook Insider Zach McElroy: I Will Testify Before Congress About the Facebook Bias I Witnessed Against Trump Supporters, Conservative Causes
• McElroy: “We are essentially in charge of what gets said and what gets stifled”
• McElroy: 75-to-80 percent of Posts Selected by Facebook’s Algorithm for Moderator Review Support President Donald Trump, Republicans and Conservative Causes
• Facebook Content Review Lead: “It’s a Very Progressive Company, Who’s Very Anti-MAGA”
• Facebook’s Human-Directed Restriction of Free Speech Raises Questions Regarding Company’s Protections under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act

Project Veritas today released one of the most damning undercover investigation reports—this time insiders used hidden cameras to document rampant censorship occurring at social media giant: Facebook.

This one is really bad for Facebook.

Here is a YouTube video that is in the article. I tried to find a BitChute version, but it hasn't gone up yet. If this YouTube video goes down, I am sure one will be there and I will replace the YouTube version.

This is really really really bad for Facebook.

This time there is no way to spin it if someone sees the video.

The people are even naming their friends who work at Facebook and who are censoring pro-Trump people.

They said they tolerate President Trump himself because they have to, but it was easy to pick off his supporters.

Fake-ass Social Media.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

They are not even trying to hide it anymore.

It's almost like they are begging for an antitrust suit.

How in hell can Twitter justify a tweet that has more likes than views?

Un-friggin' believable.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The issue is not just promoting the left at Facebook, it's full-on racism when it comes to politics, with the Facebook folks being the racists.

And, election interference is the policy.

 

Here is the fuller version.

 

 

Also, Twitter was not amused. (Maybe the following tweet will not stay up.)

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Incidentally, so many high-profile Trump people are moving to Parler, an upstart competitor of Twitter, I think President Trump will soon follow.

A few of them are Dan Bongino, Eric Trump, Lara Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Team Trump, Rand Paul, Ron Paul, Mark Levin, Katrina Pierson, Devin Nunes, Ted Cruz, Dan Scavino, Jack Posobiec, and, of course, the press I tend to prefer over the mainstream press: Breitbart, Washington Examiner, Infowars, The Epoch Times, Zero Hedge, and people thrown off the social media giants like Carpe Donktum, Paul Joseph Watson, David Knight, Tommy Robinson, Pamela Geller, Laura Loomer and on and on and on. Even the NRA is over there.

Parler started a while back with a few luminaries in the Trump orbit, but the migration is now turning into a stampede. The famous people user base (and, of course, the normal people user base) is growing so fast it's hard to keep up with them all

Here is a most recent Parley (or whatever you call a post over there) by Laura Loomer about her lawsuit against Twitter. I'm testing to see if it embeds here on OL.

https://share.par.pw/post/68ad26bfaccd4fa2a95ab20b9e49ee99

Looks like not yet.

But I'll figure something out before too long.

Michael

 

EDIT: Interesting. When I click on the link, a new tab opens to a mostly barren page that has the following image in the middle. This is definitely going to get easier over time.

Apropos, Laura's campaign is going really, really well. She looks like she is going to win it so far.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

On 6/23/2020 at 12:21 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

James O'Keefe hits Facebook hard.

Facebook Content Moderator: ‘If Someone is Wearing a MAGA Hat, I Am Going to Delete Them for Terrorism’

Facebook just did this to Tim Pool's sidekick because he's not well known, but his video was going viral.

All he said was he was now going to vote for Trump whereas before he was not. The video took off. Facebook deleted it.

Facebook is really asking for it.

Michael