Fake Social Media

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

btw - Putting sites like Daily Caller, etc., on the list is a variation of one of President Trump's favorite forms of persuasion.

It works like this.

1. Lump a bunch of people together to ban them. Within that bunch are (a) people you really want to ban, (b) people you hope to get away with banning, and (c) people who do not belong on such a list.

2. Weather the shit-storm of public outrage about the people who do not belong on such a list.

3. Say, "Oops," then back up and reinstate the people who do not belong on such a list, including any people you had hoped to get away with banning, but who the public is causing a massive stink about.

4. Reap the benefits of the public accepting as the new normal the people you banned and the shift in the Overton Window.

President Trump's technique (as given in The Art of the Deal) is to ask for outrageously more than he wants in a negotiation, then back up during negotiations to what he does want. That feels like a win to the person he is negotiating with, when, most of the time, it is far more than they would have otherwise agreed to.

The elitist crony ruling class, especially the social media giants, are showing that this technique works well with propaganda, too.

Michael

[Jon Letendre]

Products of entrenched crony–statism are not private companies, they are products of entrenched crony–statism.

A  return to freedom necessarily involves the destruction of the propaganda monopolies created and controlled by the crony statists for their retention of power.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

(I wonder what Farrakhan thinks about being the Token Black among that group?  )

Uh oh...

It looks like the Token Black gambit ain't gonna work.

 

 

Michael

[william.scherk]

Paul Joseph Watson needs our support. You can sign up for his personal media-site newsletter at summit.news/newsletter. You can also support him as you do Objectivist Living, with a sustaining pledge (only $4.99 CDN a month) ...

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, william.scherk said:

You can also support him as you do Objectivist Living, with a sustaining pledge (only $4.99 CDN a month) ...

William,

I have no idea what this means.

OL has no monetary connection with PJW, nor with any other media personality. 

What are you doing?

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I should put this retweet by President Trump in the Trump thread, but it is waaaaaaaaay more pertinent here.

Hell, with a platform open to the public like social media platforms, I think the Civil Rights Act might even apply just like it applies to stores.

I'm sure this idea has occurred to the Legal Eagles looking into it.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

As the wise man sayeth in the Fake News thread, so sayeth he here, "Shit, meet fan."

I love this pull-quote: "Social Media & Fake News Media, together with their partner, the Democrat Party, have no idea the problems they are causing for themselves.."

Oh, but they will learn.

 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Hell, with a platform open to the public like social media platforms, I think the Civil Rights Act might even apply just like it applies to stores.

No sooner than I say something like this, I run across it in the media. First, where I got the article from. I just now, at this very moment, watched the following video by Tim Pool. Incidentally, I am quickly becoming a huge fan of Tim's.

He mentioned this article by Will Chamberlain.

Platform Access Is A Civil Right.

 

From the article (my bold):

Quote

Free Speech is more than the First Amendment, which only protects you from the government infringing on your rights. In 2019, that is woefully inadequate. Access to the large social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram – is a prerequisite to meaningful free speech in 2019.

Social media companies certainly will strenuously object to this formulation, but they can hardly complain, given that the federal government has underwritten and undergirded their development.

The vast majority of serious public debate takes place there. Thus, access to large social media platforms is a civil right.

When private companies violate civil rights, we pass laws to stop them from doing so.

That’s what we should do here.

. . .

Conservatives should focus on passing legislation – at BOTH the state and federal levels – that protects all citizens’ access to large social media platforms on civil rights grounds. Access should be forfeitable only if one engages in unlawful speech on a platform.

If a large social media company wrongfully denies you access to or removes you from their platform or, you should be able to walk into court, get an injunction against the company that forces them to restore your account, and be awarded substantial statutory damages.

Notice – I said *both* state and federal laws. It will be a very serious challenge to get a federal law passed protecting this civil right, given the current composition of Congress. But states with heavily Republican legislatures can pass laws that protect their state’s citizens from de-platforming.

And if they do so, Facebook, Twitter, and Google will have to comply if they want to keep doing business in that state.

. . .

If Democrats retake the White House, they can’t constitutionally use laws like the one I proposed above to constrain speech.

First Amendment Law is a one-way ratchet. If a regulator tried to twist the civil rights laws in such a way that they were constraining speech, you could walk into a district court anywhere in the country and get an injunction forcing them to stop.

. . .

... the laws I am proposing do not necessarily require regulators to enforce.

By creating a private right of action that allows citizens to walk into court and get their accounts restored, it will be judges – not regulators – that protect the civil right to platform access.

This is the similar to how other civil rights are protected. While there are regulators that try to stop civil rights violations ex ante, much of the “regulation” is done through ex post litigation. I see very few conservatives complaining about courts’ ability to issue injunctions and impose fines to remedy racial discrimination.

. . .

Conservatives should frame de-platforming as a civil rights issue – because it is one.

And Republicans in friendly state legislatures should pass laws protecting that civil right – because they can.

I left out the smart-ass ending of the last two sentences because, as a rhetorical device, it works, but cognitively, it's misleading. (For the record, here is what was written: "Conservative objections to this plan are “peacetime” objections. And we are not at peace.")

The last sentence in the quote means "they can" not in the sense that might makes right, but, using the context of the article, it means that some states are politically constituted that this legislation is viable, while in the federal government, it isn't just yet.

As to the part I bolded, the idea is that since the federal government paid for a huge chuck of of these platforms and a commons in the hands of a few giant companies developed as a result, the "public domain" concept comes in. Notice, this is not the same as a private company doing the whole thing as would happen under a laissez-faire system. This is a de facto public-private partnership where the law has not yet caught up with the technology.

Normally, when the federal government pays for something, the product goes into the public domain or the public has access to it (unless there are public safety concerns like with classified documents). That the government paid for these companies, but still allows them to exist as private, is reward enough to compensate their own initiatives. That said, they should not be allowed to take money by force from people they refuse to serve (i.e., taxpayers). And since they did--and still do--take that money, they need to provide public access to their platforms as a civil right. 

Under this thinking, they still have the right to moderate and ban users, but only as concerns legal and illegal activity. Not political agenda, religion or anything else protected under the First Amendment.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Paul Joseph Watson further explains this thinking:

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Sorry, but this is a back door to fascism.

Let things work out naturally. Conservative haste makes freedom waste. 

--Brant

[Jon Letendre]

1 hour ago, Brant Gaede said:

Sorry, but this is a back door to fascism.

Let things work out naturally. Conservative haste makes freedom waste. 

--Brant

It is going to work out naturally: They will be Anti–Trusted to oblivion and replaced with many new enterprises in a fair, free, market environment. 

Yours is a serious concern and I’d share it if the context was right, but the context is different. These enterprises rose with the collusion of the traitors that will be going away for long prison terms soon. They conspired in the attempted coup, this will all be shown. They’re morally irretrievable organizations.

[Brant Gaede]

1 hour ago, Jon Letendre said:

It is going to work out naturally: They will be Anti–Trusted to oblivion and replaced with many new enterprises in a fair, free, market environment. 

Yours is a serious concern and I’d share it if the context was right, but the context is different. These enterprises rose with the collusion of the traitors that will be going away for long prison terms soon. They conspired in the attempted coup, this will all be shown. They’re morally irretrievable organizations.

Law is based on morality. However, morality is not based on law--that is, there is no effective law to base it on.

That Zuckerburg is a Harvard twit won't land a brilliant businessman in the slammer.

Now, certain members of the deep state, they are going down.

Philosophically, the corporation is fascistic. There is nothing in Objectivist or libertarian political theory (same thing) that justifies it's political marriage. Practically speaking there's nothing to be done about that. BUT, in the context of state sanctioned and protected corporatism the state may lay down rules of conduct. That too is fascistic. HOWEVER, there's nothing much to be done about that either, so go beat him up. I'm willing to bring a bat out of that. "Brother, you asked for it!"

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Addendum

Anarchism is not a political theory but a grab bag of supposed existences without a state. The state is a necessary concomitant of human existence and as an inoculation against the inevitable political evil of all government or governance.

The state is force. This is a fact Rand couldn't deal with but pretended to and many libertarians logically ran with and ran away from Rand too. The common quest for perfection drove them apart. Perfection is the fallacy. Only imperfection can bring them back together for imperfection is the human commonality.

The state is the punching bag so punch it! 

 --Brant

what's to punch if it's not there to punch?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

9 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Sorry, but this is a back door to fascism.

Brant,

Nah...

Ignoring the problem--and what caused it--is the back door to fascism. 

Principles operate in contexts.

For example, the principle of private property was practically useless when the Titanic was sinking. As were all the principles of good seamanship.

And those are great principles. The problem was the ship was going down. Once there are no people and no ship, principles mean what? Nothing, that's what.

Would you have fought the different Communist takeovers of the different countries last century with syllogisms and principles? Many people did and look what it got them. What about that big pile of bodies, millions and millions of them, from Communist purges? Do dead people use syllogisms?

In today's world, allowing government protected communication cartels to skew the next election toward an authoritarian elite because of a principle that doesn't work with government protected cartels is playing with that kind of fire and, frankly, it is a foolish way to enforce individual rights against a hightech cartel (one that is protected by the government) that is starting to run amok. Go on and let fascists win by cheating, then see how they act.

Hell, just look what they did when they didn't win by cheating. For over two years they tried to ram a big fat lie down the public's throat that could have started WWIII had it worked and grown in the wrong direction, and they misused the intelligence forces and legal system to do it. (Not to mention all that blackmail due to pedophilia and other misbehavior of powerful insiders).

In other words, we will not drift into fascism by recognizing a commons where private Internet companies can operate, but includes the protection of individual rights on that commons. The current social media giants are already practicing fascism there.

Most people don't realize how much money and resources they received from the government and the extent of the secret contracts they have with the government, including massive surveillance contracts, facial recognition contracts, and so on.

There is another issue. These Internet companies want to have the legal protections of private platforms, but want to act like publishers in operating their platforms. You see, publishers can choose the slant of their content. They can choose who they publish or not. But they are also legally liable for what they publish. Platforms are not legally liable for what is published on them. They want the powers of publishers, but the legal situation of platforms. This is a question of the law not catching up to technology while mixing in a lot of government money and legal cartel-oriented protections.

Note: these companies are not de facto private companies. They have the shells of private companies, but they have the substance of something more like the Federal Reserve. They are intertwined with the government on many, many different levels. And now they are going fascistic.

This problem of fascism is not something in the future to avoid. It is something in the present and we have to deal with it now, especially since it is still at a size we can deal with it. After it grows to a tipping point, we will no longer be able to deal with it through peace and law. 

Look at what they are doing--what they are doing right now and right here--and see if growth of that to a dictatorship by technocrats that will have no use for individual rights can be ignored.

I, for one, have no intention to ignore it while cautioning about virtual back doors. I mean, who needs to worry about a back door when the fascists have already come in through the front door?

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Michael,

The real current power of the social media giants will be corrected privately through technology given a relatively small amount of time. In any case that power is minuscule compared to The New York Times and that piece of s***t owned  by Bezos.

'It's not me disagreeing with what you've said in particular; It's just you being too quick out of the starting gate. It would give those social media giants time to put the current controversy to bed with superficial modifications of behavior leaving them more entrenched. 

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

40 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

The real current power of the social media giants will be corrected privately through technology given a relatively small amount of time. In any case that power is minuscule compared to The New York Times and that piece of s***t owned  by Bezos.

Brant.

It is exactly the contrary.

There is a lot under the hood and I think you don't believe much in it because it's new and you aren't familiar with the extents and proofs.

Look at it this way for just one angle. The NYT is constantly struggling to stay alive financially. And without Bezos, WaPo would have folded. The amount of money these companies generate and need to operate is very small compared to the financial world of the social media giants. It's the elephant and mouse thing.

What's worse, but more of an indication of the influence of these giant Internet companies, they made their billions and billions in the last ten years or so from practically nothing. That's not much time at all.

Besides, neither NYT nor WaPo convince anyone of anything these days. They don't change hearts and minds. They sing to a small diminishing (but loyal) choir while resting on their reputations from years past.

The social media giants are based on behavioral science at the root. Once you learn what they do, how they do it, and see the results according to split testing, you really get creeped out. (Look up growth hacking sometime if you are curious.)

The only reason traditional media is still relevant financially is because of old connections with old advertising models. Once the ad world wakes up, they will leave traditional media and chase bigger payoffs for their clients elsewhere. This is already starting to happen.

I could go into a lot of detail, but I don't have time. I believe Obama started the deep corruption of the tech giants. He (and his COBS people) helped them engineer the Arab Spring and they began to believe they could partner with political power to topple dictatorships and remold the world. These are nerds and that kind of power went to their heads. Once tasted, that kind of power is more addictive to nerds than their algorithms. Obama also put lots of his folks into Google while putting lots of Google folks into the government. I could go on and on about all this.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

There will always be a billionaire to bail out TNYTs. I think one already has, that guy from Mexico. As long as the Times sets the liberal-progressive standard the social media giants will stagger along in its footsteps. It's gone to shit journalism, which the social media giants don't pretend to do; they just eat it up and pass it around.

Instead of dealing in truth they bury it. Burying the truth was better done in the pre-Internet days. Now it's popping up all over the place.

--Brant

[anthony]

12 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Addendum

Anarchism is not a political theory but a grab bag of supposed existences without a state. The state is a necessary concomitant of human existence and as an inoculation against the inevitable political evil of all government or governance.

The state is force. This is a fact Rand couldn't deal with but pretended to and many libertarians logically ran with and ran away from Rand too. The common quest for perfection drove them apart. Perfection is the fallacy. Only imperfection can bring them back together for imperfection is the human commonality.

The state is the punching bag so punch it! 

 --Brant

what's to punch if it's not there to punch?

Yes, the state is ~necessary~ force, Brant. Otherwise you'd have a full -time job only protecting your assets. Try dealing alone with the hyenas 'at the door' without the moral force vested in the state (which you mostly have there). 

[william.scherk]

23 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

On 5/4/2019 at 10:34 AM, william.scherk said:

You can also support him as you do Objectivist Living, with a sustaining pledge (only $4.99 CDN a month) ...

I have no idea what this means.

You can support PJW a number of ways -- this includes helping him out with money. One way of helping him out with money is by a monthly member's subscription to his Youtube channel. 

 

Edited May 5, 2019 by william.scherk
Changed 'via' to 'to'; added link to PJW Youtube channel

[Jon Letendre]

4 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

There will always be a billionaire to bail out TNYTs. I think one already has, that guy from Mexico. As long as the Times sets the liberal-progressive standard the social media giants will stagger along in its footsteps. It's gone to shit journalism, which the social media giants don't pretend to do; they just eat it up and pass it around.

Instead of dealing in truth they bury it. Burying the truth was better done in the pre-Internet days. Now it's popping up all over the place.

--Brant

No, from Saudi Arabia. He had you, though, didn’t he? How long have you thought that? Didn’t make all those billions in oil, either, so how did he make all those billions? How did he really make all those billions? Whatever it was, I’m sure you can trust the official story, it’s not like he fooled you about who he is or where he is from.

[william.scherk]

31 minutes ago, Jon Letendre said:

5 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

There will always be a billionaire to bail out TNYTs. I think one already has, that guy from Mexico.

No, from Saudi Arabia. He had you, though, didn’t he? How long have you thought that? Didn’t make all those billions in oil, either, so how did he make all those billions?

Who Owns The New York Times?

Quote

Ownership

Since 1967, the company has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol NYT. Of the two categories of stock, Class A and Class B, the former is publicly traded and the latter is held privately—largely (nearly 90%) by the descendants of Adolph Ochs, who purchased The New York Timesnewspaper in 1896.

Carlos Slim loan and investment

On January 20, 2009, The New York Times reported that its parent company, The New York Times Company, had reached an agreement to borrow $250 million from Carlos Slim, a Mexican billionaire "to help the newspaper company finance its businesses".^[28] The New York Times Company later repaid that loan ahead of schedule.^[29] Since then, Slim has bought large quantities of the company's Class A shares, which are available for purchase by the public and offer less control over the company than Class B shares, which are privately held.^[29] Slim's investments in the company included large purchases of Class A shares in 2011, when he increased his stake in the company to 8.1% of Class A shares,^[30] and again in 2015, when he exercised stock options—acquired as part of a repayment plan on the 2009 loan—to purchase 15.9 million Class A shares, making him the largest shareholder.^[29][31] As of March 7, 2016, Slim owned 17.4% of the company's Class A shares, according to annual filings submitted by the company.^[32][33][34] While Slim is the largest shareholder in the company, his investment only allows him to vote only for Class A directors, a third of the company's board.^[29]

Who Is Carlos Slim?  Is he 'from Saudi Arabia,' or are the two discussants above thinking of someone else? 

Quote

Early life

Slim was born on 28 January 1940, in Mexico City,^[10] to Julián Slim Haddad (born Khalil Salim Haddad Aglamaz) and Linda Helú Atta, both Maronite Catholics from Lebanon.^[11][12][13]

Slim always knew he wanted to be a businessman and began to develop his business and investment acumen at a young age.^[4][14] He received business lessons from his father Julián, who taught him finance, management and accounting, teaching him how to read financial statements as well as the importance of keeping accurate financial records, a practice that Slim carries on to this day.^[15]

At the age of 11, Carlos invested in a government savings bond that taught him about the concept of compound interest. He eventually saved every financial and business transaction he made into a personal ledger book which he keeps to this day.^[16] At the age of 12, he made his first stock purchase, by purchasing shares in a Mexican bank.^[17] By the age of 15, Slim had become a shareholder in Mexico's largest bank.^[9] At the age of 17, he earned 200 pesos a week working for his father's company.^[18] He went on to study civil engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where he also concurrently taught algebra and linear programming.^[19][20][21]

Though Slim was a civil engineering major, he also displayed an interest in economics. He took economics courses in Chile once he finished his engineering degree.^[14] Graduating as a civil engineering major, Slim has stated that his mathematical ability and his background of linear programming was a key factor in helping him gain an edge in the business world, especially when reading financial statements.^[15][22][23]

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

13 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

It's gone to shit journalism, which the social media giants don't pretend to do...

Brant,

Yes they do.

That's what you are not seeing.

They are using the Matt Drudge model of journalism: presenting headlines of news articles in a certain order and including only those that tweak their agenda.

Notice that Drudge shows predominantly pro-progressive headlines one day, headlines that are chosen to get people riled up (threats, offensive things, etc.), then he presents the conservative knockout headlines the next day, including lots of headlines that put conservatives on the moral high ground.

That's just one form of doing that. The tech giants learned it and added a gazillion others, especially through micro-targeting. Take a good look at their news feeds some day. Or the items they say are "trending."

Or take a look at the same ads that keep showing up everywhere you go on the Internet. This is called "retargeting" and is mostly commercial stuff, but pay attention to the political things. You will see mostly easily debunked fringe things when conservative issues show up in these retargeted ads, and plenty of uplifting-like message ads from Dem establishment people like Kamala Harris.

btw - Just for people to know, retargeting happens when a pixel of an image is placed on your harddrive with instructions embedded in it. You don't give permission for the pixel to be placed there. It just happens when you visit certain sites and interact with something on them.

My joy and hope stem from the current stupidity of the social media giants. Instead of keeping to their covert stuff, they have gone full-on authoritarian and think they will persuade by persecuting certain individuals at a cartel level (notice Alex Jones was eliminated from a bunch of places all within the same 24 hour period). You can do that and be persuasive in a dictatorship where people will show up in the middle of the night, drag your ass out of bed and either put you in a political prison or kill you. You persuade thus by fear. But when you do that to Americans, they get really pissed and some strange alliances pop up to stand up to the bullies.

Look at this authoritarian urge showing its ugly face with the midnight raid on Roger Stone by a large number of law enforcement people armed to the teeth. The fake news media was right there covering it all in real time. And the news feeds showed nothing but that for a time. They want nightime arrests of political opponents. They want their political opponents silenced and punished by the state with jail or worse. They salivate at the image and take joy in it.

These people are enemies of individual rights, not victims of the state when they are restricted from doing harm to the individuals they wish to target for political differences.

This is the press, you say? Not social media? The truth is, they are in bed with social media giants right now, sharing the same advertising sponsors. That is their leverage. Social media giants and the fake news media know what each other is doing. They are colluding.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Slip, meet slope, but this is where it's all going.

 

I'm not fan of Chris Hughes (he's an Obama dude--also, while surfing on a vanity project due to his massive wealth, he ran The New Republic into the ground, although that was not so bad since it was a progressive rag  ). However, I don't see how what he's saying about breaking up Facebook will be any different than what will happen.

His promotion of trust-busting social media, especially Facebook, is not a perfect solution--by far--but it does solve a good chunk of the problem.

And because of that, I believe it will happen as some kind of Internet bill of rights (whether using those words or not) ultimately turns into law.

Michael

[william.scherk]

It is Ben Shapiro Day on Fake Social Media (Branch Twitterians) ...

 

[william.scherk]

Deep Fake humour ...

On 9/4/2018 at 9:49 AM, william.scherk said:

Adjacent to "Deep Fake" videos ... from Peter Rejcek at Singularity Hub.

The New AI Tech Turning Heads in Video Manipulation