[MrLemon]

For a long time, I was staunchly against any kind of government control of social media or Internet. But in the last year I've done a 180.

Based on my reading of Constitutional law and theory, it's clear to me that we have NO CHOICE. We must immediately and aggressively break up Google/Twitter/Facebook and related sites. We are in deep, deep shit.

(apologies to the non-Americans in the group, but this is going to be very US-centric).

To understand why this is so important, consider this argument:

Assume it was 1961. John F. Kennedy is President (or maybe it's 1955 and Eisenhower is President---doesn't matter.) A giant corporation like Bell Telephone gathers up enough money to buy controlling interests in EVERY SINGLE major TV and radio station in the US, and most of the major newspapers. They install a single centralized editorial desk, which is personally run by the CEO of the company, which is ultra-efficient and capable of shutting down any story instantly. This mega-news organization then spends the next few years relentlessly shutting down any news article that mentions the Democratic Party. It's a complete news blackout. This culminates in an awesome total blackout that happens right before an important election, in a clear attempt to push the Democratic Party out of power.

If this happened in 1955 or 1961 or whenever, what would the President and Congress of the United States have done? They would have put the CEO of that company in jail so fast, it would have made your head spin. They would have broken up that company and driven the price of the stock to zero. Their goal would have been to PUNISH every single executive or stockholder who participated in any way in this venture. Why? Because this would have been viewed (accurately) as a direct act of war against a healthy democracy, by a few people.

You cannot allow this concentration of power in the hands of a few. This is a direct contradiction of ever principle of American society.

"Freedom of Speech" is a very complex and nuanced concept in the US. The first amendment is only one of thousands of relevant concepts. Above all, there must NEVER be a concentration of press power in the hands of EITHER the government OR any small group of individuals. That is what "free speech" means. Google and Facebook are breaking that covenant in a huge way. It's not a secret plot--it's just a accidental result of the way the Internet works, it allows unprecedented concentration of power, that was never possible with radio, TV, and newspapers (because all these mediums had their range limited by physical constraints).

The tech companies are currently brainwashed by a group of rabid communist employees, who are going freaky batshit crazy. You read the tech journals and these people are INSANE. They will never back down voluntarily. We need black vans and riot troops, en masse, to take these fuckers to jail.

That's my view. Opposing views welcome.

[John Michael Kane]

It must be done. For far too long they have operated as an "open and neutral platform" while at the same time acting as a curator like a media company. The big tech overlords are crushing the 1st Amendment. Trump needs to break them up if we are to have a chance in future elections or culture in general.

[Days of Broken Arrows]

This is a great post.

It reminded me of something I've long wanted to write about on here: How the removal of government regulations resulted in the U.S. having conglomerates control our media and silenced conservative voices in the process.

This was deliberate. And you can blame Bill Clinton.

22 years ago, he signed into law the Telecommunications Act of 1996. This law overturned the strict rule that banned big (i.e. globalist) corporations from owning more than one media entity in any given market unless they got special approval.

Anti-monopoly laws had been put in place via the Communications Act of 1934. The law was passed for a reason: To prevent big companies from owning everything and silencing voices they didn't like. Sound familiar?

The law stayed in place for over half a century. It regulated not just newspapers, but TV and radio. Ever wonder why it seemed like media was more balanced years ago? That's because it was! Now you have a handful of companies who own almost everything (Tribune, Clear Channel, Viacom, etc.).

For over a half century it worked. But once the media anti-monopoly law was overturned, the companies that owned the big daily newspapers (i.e. Tribune Media>Los Angeles Times) started buying up all the region's community papers. They'd either shut them down and absorb the staff or make them "part of the bigger company."

Since community newspapers usually get laughed about, few people cared. But what people didn't realize was these smaller newspapers 1). Gave a voice to the average person and 2). Were usually way more conservative than the big metro dailies.

Losing one or two community newspapers doesn't make much difference. But this law saw hundreds and hundreds of them get absorbed into bigger companies. That did make a difference.

And, yes, ten years later the Internet did more or less kill the newspaper industry, especially smaller indie papers. But Bill Clinton's Telecommunication Act helped make that happen quicker and more severely because it had already weakened the remaining indie papers so badly.

***

Digression: The Telecommunications Act of 1996 is what also gave the conglomerate Clear Channel the opportunity to buy countless radio stations and basically control the entire U.S. Top 40.

If you're wondering why there are fewer and fewer new artists and why "all music sounds the same," again, blame Bill Clinton. We used to have lots of local Top 40 playlists in markets all over the country that set their own agendas.

This is why so much regional music broke out decades earlier, from the NYC rap of The Beastie Boys to the grunge acts of Seattle to the freestyle dance music of Florida and Philly/Jersey.

Now, playlists have been automated on a national scale. It's resulted in the Walmart-ization of popular music.

***

F.D.R. signed the Communications Act of 1934 into law for ethical reasons. Bill Clinton overturned it for political reasons -- and probably monetary gain that regular folks don't know about. I'm sure he got donations from media companies.

Here's hoping Donald Trump returns us to F.D.R-like laws. Even super-liberal writer Howard Zinn had issues with what Clinton did. When you have Howard Zinn berating a Clinton, you can be damned sure the Clinton in question made a bad move.

[Steve McQueen]

I'm somewhat surprised that he hasn't acted on this already. If the purge is allowed to continue the info war is all but lost

[godfather dust]

Too late. (((They))) started making their move months ago. The internet was purged going on months. The MSM... Doesn't even need to be said. Good luck getting a bill through the house, and I think the RINO cucks will allow Florida and Arizona to be stolen.

[godfather dust]

They probably caused the GOP to lose the house with the purge. Middle class Facebook women saw zero pro-Trump stuff. I'll find the gateway pundit article later.

[66Scorpio]

I live in China. As such, I don't watch YouTube, use Google or have a Twitter account. I have a Facebook page but only check it once a year. I use WeChat regularly, Youku occasionally but avoid QQ like the plague. So who has it worse: American citizens and their corporate media masters, or the Chinese with their heavy government regulations?

The first and biggest problem in (North) America is that nobody really gives a shit. Voter turnout was the highest for a midterm election in half a century and yet, not even half of eligible voters bothered. Of people using social media there might be 10% on each end of the political spectrum that realize what is going on. The flaming leftists are loving it because the corporate weenies are aiding their agenda while those on the right have to basically suck it up and make contingency plans for an exit when they are demonetized, suspended, and eventually deplatformed. However, the 80% in the middle are just sheeple who want their cat videos and the latest update on what colour of toenail polish Taylor Swift is wearing these days.

The second problem is about how you can "break up" something like Twitter. You can separate certain markets, like Microsoft got hit with (operating systems, browsers and general software). You can break up cross-media ownership (TV, cable, film, publishing). You can even break up vertical integration in terms or production and distribution. But the whole point of Twitter is to have everyone connected to everyone rather than having half a dozen apps to connect with different people that you follow or engage with.

The issue isn't really about monopoly or oligopoly in economic terms. The issue is a clutch of people using that market power to manipulate the flow of information for political ends while lying about it to the public and saying how they support free speech (which as private companies, they don't have to) and claiming to be politically neutral, which is both a marketing ploy and an attempt to keep (Republican) lawmakers and regulators off their backs.

If they were to come out and be the least bit honest about taking a partisan stance, there is nothing to be done precisely due to the First Amendment which would protect them from the government messing with their shit. On the other hand, lies and deception are not protected.

In another thread, I framed this as a consumer fraud issue. If Twitter came out as being unabashed leftists who admitted to censoring right wing opinions and personalities, they would lose a lot of customers. Monsanto is getting hit with billions in law suits over RoundUp. The argument - which at least one jury has bought into - is that Monsanto knew it was carcinogenic but hid their research. If you are selling a product that is toxic the minimum obligation is to warn people about what they are dealing with.

I am no constitutional scholar but I have deep reservations about whether and how these companies can be regulated into being politically neutral as long as they are being above board about their partisanship.

Congress (which at this point means the Senate) should have further investigations to get the people involved to admit what they are doing or face perjury charges.

[Days of Broken Arrows]

(11-10-2018 04:29 PM)godfather dust Wrote:  

They probably caused the GOP to lose the house with the purge. Middle class Facebook women saw zero pro-Trump stuff. I'll find the gateway pundit article later.

Point taken. Let me add to it.

I think it's also because those same middle class women didn't see any articles debunking or questioning the Kavanaugh accusations. All they saw was the steady flow of #metoo stories.

For all I know, every one of those stories might have been true. But who cares. That's not the point. And that's not the way the media would have covered this decades ago.

The media's job isn't to frame unsubstantiated accusations with scads of similar stories. It's to question what's being put forth. And that's a job they didn't do.

It was as if they were covering a car accident, but instead of looking at what caused it they only offered testimony from victims of totally unrelated car crashes. It played on emotions (especially women's), but basically adds nothing real to the subject at hand.

The media has become more of a Greek Chorus than a skeptical observer, and that's becoming a disaster for democracy. With the Kavanaugh hearings, they didn't report, they manipulated....women.

[godfather dust]

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/11...n-females/

Gateway pundit on middle class woman tampering by (((facebook)))

Headline;

FACEBOOK DELIVERS FOR DEMOCRATS: Erased 2 Billion GOP Page Views in Purge, Eliminated Conservative Content to Suburban Females

[SlickyBoy]

(11-10-2018 05:23 PM)66Scorpio Wrote:  

I live in China. As such, I don't watch YouTube, use Google or have a Twitter account. I have a Facebook page but only check it once a year. I use WeChat regularly, Youku occasionally but avoid QQ like the plague. So who has it worse: American citizens and their corporate media masters, or the Chinese with their heavy government regulations?

I think in the end the Chinese will have it better, for many different reasons - national security and social stability being two of them. I met a Chinese tourist visiting the US not long ago - showed me their WeChat account and sure enough there were things posted there about touchy subjects (Falun Gong) that did not show up in the accounts of their US friends (with US phones, IP addresses, etc.), but unless you had the two phones right next to each other, the person posting the restricted message from a Chinese account would never know about the shadow ban.

Sounds very familiar, yes. The difference is they at least have Chinese people censoring Chinese citizens. Here, we've got people who sound like they just jumped off the plane yesterday determining which "redneck" gets to talk about what.

People will screech at this kind of government level censorship, but ignore it when it happens with utter unaccountability at the hands of soy-run companies like Twitter, Facegoogle, etc. "We're a private business; we can do what we want" they say. Yeah? Well so is AT&T - they can't take away Farrakhan's phone number just because they don't like what he's talking about - nor can they take away Obama's line when he picks up Farrakhan's call. They damned sure can't listen in on the conversation without running into serious legal trouble. The protections there took years of legal case work to develop, and in some cases congressional action. This was possible in an era when technological change moved at the pace of a snail.

Yet with the Silicon Valley companies, there has been no gradual change, and there are no protections. Instead, those who step out of sync are fed throwaway lines about non-existent terms of service and sent packing by smug, snickering bugmen and their NPC acolytes repeating chants of "We don't support hate!"

I don't expect anything to change soon. The oligarchs will likely never suffer at the hands of the US regulators since so many cucks from both parties are already bought. Ironically, it is fellow liberals in Europe who are dealing an unintended uppercut to US tech companies via the GDPR regulation. While this is not precisely a content matter, it does bitch-slap Silicon Valley into realizing they can't Gofundme their way to social engineering all regulation out of their profit model. That, and heavy-handed taxation is more likely to come from European governments desperate for new ways to pay for crowd-pleasing social programs, especially now that they've got even more dead weight in the form of refugees to support.

The Silicon Valley giants grew at the hands of a few socially retarded autistic nerds who benefitted from just about zero regulation or even a complete understanding of their own products. By the time government caught up they were just beginning to examine nearly outdated technology while the nerds moved on to something else. Now we are seeing the second and third order effects of letting this much power concentrate in a small cluster of unfit subversives who shouldn't be trusted with a blind date, never mind a C-level position in a zillion dollar corporation with petabytes of sensitive data on each member of the public.

Combine this will their political leanings in the form of open borders and giveaway citizenship and any discussion of free speech seems quaint and woefully naive. That might have worked pre-1965, but when the culture was allowed to change, so did the norms. They want us to wake up and realize it isn't 1965 anymore? Fine - I am doing just that. We no longer share the same culture or even language, hence it just makes sense to adapt to what the new culture respects. You can be sure it is less likely to respect open discourse, Voltaire, Rousseau and modern Libertarian kool aid, but rather heavy handed authority. I didn't wish for this reality, but it's the landscape we've been provided.

In any event, shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater was never covered under the First Amendment; neither should political arson be allowed to flourish at the peril of what's left of the host country.

Regulation or not, Silicon Valley will get their comeuppance, one way or another.

[Leonard D Neubache]

The entire premise of not abusing power in a Western government is that in theory doing so will cause more harm in the long-run than good. This is considered a fundamental premise of Western politics. You kill a political opponent and when their party gains power they kill two of yours and so on and so forth.

Having said that, talk about the First Amendment and due process regarding what the social media giants are obligated to do or not do has reached a point of being utterly farcical. It's like knowing that ANTIFA are drawing up plans to come to your house and murder everyone therein and they're only waiting for Soros to drop the AKs off at their clubhouse, but all your flatmates can do is sit around and debate about whether loading a dozen magazines and sighting in your rifles will legally infer prior intent to escalate the scenario to actual violence.



At this point can anyone tell me with a straight face that the blowback of Trump sending in military teams to round up these chief silicon valley conspirators and dumping them in Guantanamo awaiting trial would not pale in comparison to the horrors awaiting us if heritage Westerners cannot wrestle the grip of our future from these Marxist psychopaths?

Team wait-and-see has been humiliated. Team 400-D-chess has been exposed. Let's not even get started on team-Q.

Trump could have historically kept the house if not for his inaction in dealing with this problem and now he's looking at two years of pointless political churn with the possibility of having his 2020 campaign reduced to what's on Fox.

Trump needs to find a way to cut off all funding to these organisations and then appoint an IRS team that will crawl up their ass with a microscope made of bayonets, then toss "fair play" out the window and gut them for every conceivable infraction down to the last missing dot on an i and the last missing dash on a t, complete with "cease and desist trade" orders at every opportunity.

The deeps state and their Democrat goons have already made it clear that they think due process is for chumps, and America now stands at a junction where Heritage America can no longer afford fair play. There is no finessing a man that brings a machine gun to a fistfight. Either Trump dispenses with the Marquess of Queensberry rules or the match is already lost.

In my opinion his apparent total and utter inaction on the most damaging threat to his nation and his Presidency is shifting from "disappointing" to "suspicious". I've said before that Trump's election is not about Trump, it's about a shift in the will of the people. When I said "send the military to the border" lots of self appointed experts ridiculously chided me that it was constitutionally impossible and yet he's sending them to deal with the caravan, though only now that a failure to do so would totally destroy him. What gives?

Two years with the House and the Senate. No wall. Not even a temporary manned military barricade. No voter ID laws. No pursuit of Democrat election rigging. No action against Silicon Valley. No pursuit of hatecrimes against Conservative Americans, particularly his own MAGA hat wearing supporters. Fuck all arrests and deportations, even in places where you can't toss a rock without hitting an illegal.

Just a bit further down the road from team wait-and-see is team we've-been-had where speculation begins to lie that Trump's total focus on the economy and total failure at regaining ground on culture, freedom of speech and demographics begins to mark him as a political pressure relief valve and an asset put in place purely to Make America Solvent Again, largely for the benefit of its greatest ally.

Team accelerate-the-demise is back on track to make solid gains. Trump appears at best incapable of grappling with silicon valley, and at worst he's complicit in one of history's greatest charades.

[Belgrano]

At least during Trump's first term in office, the government...

• won't break up Google
• won't break up Facebook
• won't break up Twitter
• won't break up Amazon
  

Not gonna happen.
So don't get your hopes up.

[Leonard D Neubache]

Trump has stomped over the territorial and trade interests of giants like China with plenty of gusto yet has willingly projected a total sense of impotence in the face of what is essentially a no-vote-loss battle with Silicon Valley. He could get them audited to hell. He could arrest hundreds of high-tier managers for technical violations of privacy laws. He could level federal hatespeech charges at their board of directors for racist content they refuse to take down until their stocks dropped like a rock and they begged for public square protections in exchange for ceasing censorship. Hell, he could even tweet once in a while about their abuse of foreign workers including children making phones in cancerous shitholes that need suicide nets to keep the drones from jumping out the windows.

And none of this would lose him a vote. The MAGA voter base that put him in power hate Silicon Valley.

Team wait-and-see have been routed. Facebook censorship tipped the election. There is no 100D chess here.

Trump never needed to break up the SV giants (you'd just end up with twice as many fuckhead organisations). He could have done something to put them on the back foot but it seems that this giant striding through the world is incapable of doing anything to thwart the Zuckerbergian megachads except to occasionally tweet "It's not fair!!!"

That's reasonable grounds for bullshit alarms to start pinging.

[redpillage]

(11-16-2018 11:04 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  

Trump has stomped over the territorial and trade interests of giants like China with plenty of gusto yet has willingly projected a total sense of impotence in the face of what is essentially a no-vote-loss battle with Silicon Valley. He could get them audited to hell. He could arrest hundreds of high-tier managers for technical violations of privacy laws. He could level federal hatespeech charges at their board of directors for racist content they refuse to take down until their stocks dropped like a rock and they begged for public square protections in exchange for ceasing censorship. Hell, he could even tweet once in a while about their abuse of foreign workers including children making phones in cancerous shitholes that need suicide nets to keep the drones from jumping out the windows.

And none of this would lose him a vote. The MAGA voter base that put him in power hate Silicon Valley.

Team wait-and-see have been routed. Facebook censorship tipped the election. There is no 100D chess here.

Trump never needed to break up the SV giants (you'd just end up with twice as many fuckhead organisations). He could have done something to put them on the back foot but it seems that this giant striding through the world is incapable of doing anything to thwart the Zuckerbergian megachads except to occasionally tweet "It's not fair!!!"

That's reasonable grounds for bullshit alarms to start pinging.

Could have not put it any better. Bottom line is that, judging by the increasing pace of demonetizations and outright bans across social media, there will be no major conservative voice left by the time the 2020 election truly picks up momentum. It's going to be one giant Marxist echo chamber and hapless voters are going to deliver accordingly.

[oilbreh]

Shiva had a good idea about using the postal service as a way to roll out secure communication tools. I dont know how it would work in practice though looking at that whole obama care website fiasco.

[SweViking]

I don´t like Facebook, I think people should switch to VK instead.

[Leonard D Neubache]

Perspective:

[demolition]

I agree entirely with this post. If the 2016 election was held in 2018's online environment, how would it have played out? Well, Trump would have lost handily. The media has clamped down HARD on everyone on the Right who isn't actually directly in office or a commentator on Fox News. I can definitely remember that there was real ENERGY behind the Trump phenomenon. People were riled up, commentators were coming out of the woodwork on YT and elsewhere online sticking it to the man. Now? There's a few diehards, but the wellspring has dried up. YouTube's demonetization lie strategem killed the idea that you could possibly make well-liked commentary on YouTube and earn money for giving your opinion -- Now that's only for the literati class that the media designates, and a few e-beggars on YouTube who rely on Patreon. And of course Patreon itself is in the very same pocket that's controlling the banks and the tech companies -- Start voicing opinions and realities that are too far outside the mainstream, too influential, too dangerous? You'll be cut off instantly.

A similar story can be told on Facebook. Thought you had reach or influence with your Right-wing / Conservative / Traditionalist groups or advertising? They've quickly put the kibosh on that. Anything you post is now strictly sandboxed, shadowbanned, downranked, or just not displayed. "It was the algorithm's fault!" We've seen the fallout with the midterm elections. Loss. Even against Hillary, the state of information in the US right now is so throttled by big tech, so beholden to the media companies, that Hillary of all people will win when she runs in 2020 unless action is taken soon.

[MrLemon]

(11-16-2018 11:04 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  

Trump has stomped over the territorial and trade interests of giants like China with plenty of gusto yet has willingly projected a total sense of impotence in the face of what is essentially a no-vote-loss battle with Silicon Valley. He could get them audited to hell. He could arrest hundreds of high-tier managers for technical violations of privacy laws. He could level federal hatespeech charges at their board of directors for racist content they refuse to take down until their stocks dropped like a rock and they begged for public square protections in exchange for ceasing censorship. Hell, he could even tweet once in a while about their abuse of foreign workers including children making phones in cancerous shitholes that need suicide nets to keep the drones from jumping out the windows.

And none of this would lose him a vote. The MAGA voter base that put him in power hate Silicon Valley.

Team wait-and-see have been routed. Facebook censorship tipped the election. There is no 100D chess here.

Trump never needed to break up the SV giants (you'd just end up with twice as many fuckhead organisations). He could have done something to put them on the back foot but it seems that this giant striding through the world is incapable of doing anything to thwart the Zuckerbergian megachads except to occasionally tweet "It's not fair!!!"

That's reasonable grounds for bullshit alarms to start pinging.

All true, but the reason might be disappointing: Trump is old. He doesn't understand the Internet.

[Mage]

(11-17-2018 01:31 AM)MrLemon Wrote:  

(11-16-2018 11:04 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  

Trump has stomped over the territorial and trade interests of giants like China with plenty of gusto yet has willingly projected a total sense of impotence in the face of what is essentially a no-vote-loss battle with Silicon Valley. He could get them audited to hell. He could arrest hundreds of high-tier managers for technical violations of privacy laws. He could level federal hatespeech charges at their board of directors for racist content they refuse to take down until their stocks dropped like a rock and they begged for public square protections in exchange for ceasing censorship. Hell, he could even tweet once in a while about their abuse of foreign workers including children making phones in cancerous shitholes that need suicide nets to keep the drones from jumping out the windows.

And none of this would lose him a vote. The MAGA voter base that put him in power hate Silicon Valley.

Team wait-and-see have been routed. Facebook censorship tipped the election. There is no 100D chess here.

Trump never needed to break up the SV giants (you'd just end up with twice as many fuckhead organisations). He could have done something to put them on the back foot but it seems that this giant striding through the world is incapable of doing anything to thwart the Zuckerbergian megachads except to occasionally tweet "It's not fair!!!"

That's reasonable grounds for bullshit alarms to start pinging.

All true, but the reason might be disappointing: Trump is old. He doesn't understand the Internet.

Didn't he like win due to (among other things) a great twitter game?

[SlickyBoy]

Trump may not understand the internet but he was wise enough to never use email. That, and by odd irony he is the single most significant factor keeping Twitter alive right now. They never posted a profit before he came to town.

[felix_vagabondo]

(11-10-2018 01:58 PM)MrLemon Wrote:  

[...] You read the tech journals and these people are INSANE.

Citations/examples, please. This is like a comment about the quality of girls in a city that posts no pics.

Quote:

The average American uses eight different apps to communicate with their friends[...]

Zuckerberg

I am not really buying the argument that a single tech company is capable of unilaterally choking off the flow of information in a way that would affect the entire market. There's always going to be a different platform people can go to if they don't like the one they're on, or if it bans them.



Facebook is both a publisher and a platform.

A publisher is like a newspaper, and they can choose to say or not to say whatever they want.

A platform is like a bar, a private club or an amusement park.

Management reserves the right to refuse service and cancel your admission for any reason (in many cases)

Facebook is exactly like the classified ads section of a hard-copy newspaper. The public can get coverage, but the company owns the distribution privately, so they get to decide who they will and won't cover.

[Barron]

Felix lmao... did you really just skip over to this thread after your arguments on the same issue didn't hold up in the Trump thread?

Reported.

[felix_vagabondo]

(05-20-2019 04:12 AM)Barron Wrote:  

[...] did you really just skip over to this thread after your arguments on the same issue didn't hold up in the Trump thread?

Sorry I didn't ask you permission first before commenting on a thread.

To answer your question, no. I'm still in that other thread. I'm in whatever thread I want to be in.

In fact, your arguments are the ones that aren't holding up too well. I've demolished your most recent argument in the Trump thread and you haven't even replied.

So what exactly are you reporting?

[Leonard D Neubache]

My guess is the "no women or homos allowed" rule.