Fire Hydrant of Freedom
Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Politics & Religion => Topic started by: Crafty_Dog on January 18, 2018, 06:00:11 PM
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Tucker Carlson has gotten my attention with this theme. Kicking this thread off with VDH:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/455498/tech-companies-facebook-google-hiding-plain-sight&hl=en&geo=US?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202018-01-18&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives
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Second post
see 28:00 of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5XiNojeHF8
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Third post
We Are Suing YouTube for Censoring Our Videos
Dear Valued Subscriber,
As you know, PragerU’s videos are available on a number of platforms, one of which is YouTube. And as you may also know, YouTube has chosen repeatedly to restrict some of our videos for violating their “Community Guidelines.” Those guidelines are meant to protect users against viewing sexual content, violent or graphic content, and hate speech.
As a PragerU viewer, you know as well as I do that our videos contain nothing even remotely close to any of these categories.
To date, YouTube has restricted nearly 40 PragerU videos, addressing topics ranging from religion and freedom of speech to the history of the Korean War.
More than a year ago, we filed a complaint with YouTube, hoping that there was some kind of innocent mistake.
That’s when we were told by YouTube that after reviewing our videos they determined that they were indeed “not appropriate for a younger audience.” Of course, we have this in writing.
Think about the millions of actually inappropriate videos on YouTube and then ask yourself, “Why is our content restricted?”
Unfortunately, the answer is rather obvious, isn’t it? YouTube has restricted PragerU videos for only one reason: Ideological discrimination.
Of course, YouTube is owned by Google, which was founded to, ironically, “Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
YouTube has made some of our most important videos inaccessible to the very audience PragerU seeks to reach: young people.
Let me be clear: they don’t like what we teach and so they intend to stop us from teaching it. This kind of censorship is what we have seen on college campuses for years. But it is far more dangerous in this circumstance because the internet is where the world goes to get informed.
Can you imagine if the left owned the internet the way they own our universities?
Can you imagine what the world would look like if Google is allowed to continue to arbitrarily censor ideas they simply don’t agree with?
Well, this is why Prager University filed suit against YouTube and Google. We are not fighting this only for PragerU—we are taking this on for America and possibly the world.
Can we count on your support as we fight to end the censorship of our conservative ideas by Google/YouTube?
Now, I have to tell you ... this was not an easy decision.
Over the summer, former Governor of California Pete Wilson — who has been a longtime supporter of PragerU — approached us and posited the idea: “We have to sue them,” he said. “Google is hubris.”
Those words weighed heavy on our entire team as we considered our options. Obviously, a fight with Google will be hugely difficult and costly, and we hate the idea of deploying energy and resources away from producing more content and reaching new audiences. We simply cannot do that. So, before taking any such action, we decided we’d attempt a more diplomatic approach one last time. On the one-year anniversary of Google blocking our content, or the “BANniversary” as we had come to call it, we renewed our complaints to YouTube and re-circulated an online petition urging Google to change course. Many articles have been written and many people, including many very prominent and influential people, rallied in support of our cause. To date, well over a quarter-of-a-million people have added their names to our petition.
What was the result of our efforts?
Nothing. YouTube ignored us. In fact, they have since restricted 11 more PragerU videos.
With our hands tied, we knew Governor Wilson was right—Google’s hubris had to be challenged.
So, we have built an all-star legal team, including Governor Wilson’s Law Firm, Eric George, Alan Dershowitz, Barak Lurie, Kelly Shackelford, Mat Staver, and more.
It’s an impressive group, because this is an important case; not only for PragerU, but for the fundamental American right to freedom of speech.
But this is not going to be easy and it isn’t going to be cheap.
Despite the fact that our amazing attorneys have agreed to reasonably cap their legal fees, there will be additional personnel, research, marketing and public relations costs to PragerU.
This case will be tried in the court of public opinion as much as in the courtroom, and we intend to win in both venues.
However, we cannot deplete our operating budget to fight this case. Thanks to you, PragerU has reached more than 1-out-of-4 Americans on the internet. Sixty-three percent of them are under 34. We plan to continue to focus on this growth and reach 3 out of 4 Americans. We can’t let up now.
We are fully committed to the lawsuit but we won’t let them slow the growth of PragerU.
This is why our board of directors and many staff members have donated, in addition to our annual gift, to what we are calling the “YouTube Action Fund.” Dennis Prager, Allen Estrin, and I have all given extra this year.
Now, here is how you can help:
1. Please go to our website and sign the petition against YouTube censorship. It already has nearly 400,000 signatures; please add yours if you haven’t done so already, and ask 10 of your friends to do the same.
2. More importantly, please contribute to our action fund if you can, over and above your planned support for PragerU. Our initial goal for the legal fund is $1 million, and we think we can reach that goal with your help.
Many of you have already given so generously and I am embarrassed to ask for more. But if you think this fight is important please support us in whatever way you can.
It seems like a lot to ask…until you consider how much we have to lose.
Perhaps Goliath could teach Google a little bit about where hubris leads ... when a David comes slinging.
Thank you, and God bless you.
Marissa Streit
CEO, PragerU
Can we count on your support as we fight to end the censorship of our conservative ideas by Google/YouTube?
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-u-s-companies-may-lose-the-ai-race-1516280677
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Stop using anything google. www.startpage.com and ixquick.com and Firefox as a browser. Gab rather than twitter.
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oh yeah . and everything is wireless, everything is going to the 'cloud" and everything connects to everything else..
therefore forget any privacy and don't fool yourself for even a second this is on purpose to increase control profits
criminals who know how to get into this certainly are . just forget law enforcement in this area. it is not existent except for the very few with a LOT of resources if at all.
the younger generations have NO clue.
Not a world I want to live in though I have enjoyed this board for 15 yrs
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http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2017/09/will-facebook-become-the-worlds-most-powerful-government-contractor.html
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http://dailycaller.com/2018/01/19/google-youtube-censorship-demonetize-hate-speech/
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We Are Suing YouTube for Censoring Our Videos
Dear Valued Subscriber,
As you know, PragerU’s videos are available on a number of platforms, one of which is YouTube. And as you may also know, YouTube has chosen repeatedly to restrict some of our videos for violating their “Community Guidelines.” Those guidelines are meant to protect users against viewing sexual content, violent or graphic content, and hate speech.
As a PragerU viewer, you know as well as I do that our videos contain nothing even remotely close to any of these categories.
To date, YouTube has restricted nearly 40 PragerU videos, addressing topics ranging from religion and freedom of speech to the history of the Korean War.
More than a year ago, we filed a complaint with YouTube, hoping that there was some kind of innocent mistake.
That’s when we were told by YouTube that after reviewing our videos they determined that they were indeed “not appropriate for a younger audience.” Of course, we have this in writing.
Think about the millions of actually inappropriate videos on YouTube and then ask yourself, “Why is our content restricted?”
Unfortunately, the answer is rather obvious, isn’t it? YouTube has restricted PragerU videos for only one reason: Ideological discrimination.
Of course, YouTube is owned by Google, which was founded to, ironically, “Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
YouTube has made some of our most important videos inaccessible to the very audience PragerU seeks to reach: young people.
Let me be clear: they don’t like what we teach and so they intend to stop us from teaching it. This kind of censorship is what we have seen on college campuses for years. But it is far more dangerous in this circumstance because the internet is where the world goes to get informed.
Can you imagine if the left owned the internet the way they own our universities?
Can you imagine what the world would look like if Google is allowed to continue to arbitrarily censor ideas they simply don’t agree with?
Well, this is why Prager University filed suit again YouTube and Google. We are not fighting this only for PragerU—we are taking this on for America and possibly the world.
Can we count on your support as we fight to end the censorship of our conservative ideas by Google/YouTube?
Now, I have to tell you ... this was not an easy decision.
Over the summer, former Governor of California Pete Wilson — who has been a longtime supporter of PragerU — approached us and posited the idea: “We have to sue them,” he said. “Google is hubris.”
Those words weighed heavy on our entire team as we considered our options.
Obviously, a fight with Google will be hugely difficult and costly, and we hate the idea of deploying energy and resources away from producing more content and reaching new audiences. We simply cannot do that.
So, before taking any such action, we decided we’d attempt a more diplomatic approach one last time. On the one-year anniversary of Google blocking our content, or the “BANniversary” as we had come to call it, we renewed our complaints to YouTube and re-circulated an online petition urging Google to change course. Many articles have been written and many people, including many very prominent and influential people, rallied in support of our cause. To date, well over a quarter-of-a-million people have added their names to our petition.
What was the result of our efforts?
Nothing. YouTube ignored us. In fact, they have since restricted 11 more PragerU videos.
With our hands tied, we knew Governor Wilson was right—Google’s hubris had to be challenged.
So, we have built an all-star legal team, including Governor Wilson’s Law Firm, Eric George, Alan Dershowitz, Barak Lurie, Kelly Shackelford, Mat Staver, and more.
It’s an impressive group, because this is an important case; not only for PragerU, but for the fundamental American right to freedom of speech.
But this is not going to be easy and it isn’t going to be cheap.
Despite the fact that our amazing attorneys have agreed to reasonably cap their legal fees, there will be additional personnel, research, marketing and public relations costs to PragerU.
This case will be tried in the court of public opinion as much as in the courtroom, and we intend to win in both venues.
However, we cannot deplete our operating budget to fight this case. Thanks to you, PragerU has reached more than 1-out-of-4 Americans on the internet. Sixty-three percent of them are under 34. We plan to continue to focus on this growth and reach 3 out of 4 Americans. We can’t let up now.
We are fully committed to the lawsuit but we won’t let them slow the growth of PragerU.
This is why our board of directors and many staff members have donated, in addition to our annual gift, to what we are calling the “YouTube Action Fund.” Dennis Prager, Allen Estrin, and I have all given extra this year.
Now, here is how you can help:
1. Please go to our website and sign the petition against YouTube censorship. It already has nearly 400,000 signatures; please add yours if you haven’t done so already, and ask 10 of your friends to do the same.
2. More importantly, please contribute to our action fund if you can, over and above your planned support for PragerU. Our initial goal for the legal fund is $1 million, and we think we can reach that goal with your help.
Many of you have already given so generously and I am embarrassed to ask for more. But if you think this fight is important please support us in whatever way you can.
It seems like a lot to ask…until you consider how much we have to lose.
Perhaps Goliath could teach Google a little bit about where hubris leads ... when a David comes slinging.
Thank you, and God bless you.
Marissa Streit
CEO, PragerU
Can we count on your support as we fight to end the censorship of our conservative ideas by Google/YouTube?
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/01/26/facebook-and-google-are-doomed-george-soros-says/?undefined=&utm_term=.b348fa1efd39&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1
Facebook and Google are doomed, George Soros says
By Hamza Shaban January 26 at 3:25 PM
George Soros, billionaire and founder of Soros Fund Management LLC, speaks at an event on day three of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday, Jan. 25, 2018. Simon Dawson/Bloomberg
Billionaire philanthropist and leading donor to liberal causes George Soros predicted Thursday that regulation and taxation will soon dethrone Facebook and Google, describing the tech industry's major players as powerful monopolies that harm individuals, market innovation and democracy.
In a wide-ranging, scathing speech delivered at a dinner event at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Soros applauded the European Union's heightened enforcement aimed at Web giants. He also called for greater regulation of the tech companies, seizing on a growing backlash against Silicon Valley.
“Facebook and Google have grown into ever more powerful monopolies, they have become obstacles to innovation, and they have caused a variety of problems of which we are only now beginning to become aware,” he said, according to a transcript of the speech.
Soros made the remarks as officials in Washington and industry critics continued to ramp up their scrutiny of the tech sector. That pressure has been directed at a broad array of issues, perhaps most prominently online advertising and the spread of disinformation on popular social media platforms. In response, Facebook and Google have said they are open to greater government oversight in their ad operations. But Facebook has gone even further in recent weeks, publicly grappling with its role in global society. Last week Facebook even admitted in a blog post that social media can sometimes harm democracy.
Soros suggested that American officials draw from their European counterparts, particularly E.U. Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, whom he described as the “nemesis” of American tech monopolies. Vestager, a former Danish economy minister, and other E.U. officials have recently advanced a host of enforcement actions against prominent U.S. tech companies. E.U. officials have sued Google over alleged antitrust violations tied to its search engine, its mobile operating system and its ad platform. In 2016, competition authorities ordered Apple to pay Ireland more than $15 billion in uncollected taxes; and Facebook has been penalized by several privacy watchdogs for breaking data protection rules.
Soros acknowledged that Europe's approach to antitrust law and regulation differs from that of the United States. But his criticism of Facebook and Google may empower Democrats who have already expressed skepticism toward Silicon Valley and the broader world of tech and telecom.
In October, for instance, congressional Democrats, with notable support from Republican Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), introduced legislation that would place greater disclosure requirements on Web platforms that run political advertisements. The lawmakers behind the bill say the rules will help prevent Russia and other foreign powers from exploiting social media and undermining U.S. elections. And last summer, the Democratic Party released a broad economic agenda, dubbed a “Better Deal," that included stricter enforcement of antitrust laws and a push against corporate monopolies.
While Soros is often criticized by conservative figures who oppose his political projects, his attack on the tech giants highlights a brewing convergence between leaders on the left and the right who have come to view Silicon Valley as a perverse influence on the country.
“It is only a matter of time before the global dominance of the U.S. IT monopolies is broken,” Soros said. “Davos is a good place to announce that their days are numbered.”
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https://www.dailywire.com/news/26203/facebook-changing-your-newsfeed-heres-how-make-james-barrett?utm_medium=email&utm_content=012718-news&utm_campaign=position5
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https://www.facebook.com/TuckerCarlsonTonight/videos/585398735128783/?hc_ref=ARRKts392ANwladWIF_wWV9zhMkyBhOjPZWd13nABAu8C5qc3PNv8Yp7truOKjpoc94
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MEF Asks for Public's Help Collecting Examples of Tech Censorship
News from the Middle East Forum
February 19, 2018
http://www.meforum.org/7207/mef-asks-for-public-help-collecting-examples
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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dW7k_GZYLwk
Watch it all.
Very important.
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https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e06_1519057581
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Tech Giants Are Less Powerful Than They Seem
A hallmark of companies cresting into middle age is a preoccupation with regulatory politics.
By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
Feb. 23, 2018 6:18 p.m. ET
Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that the Facebook algorithm will be revamped to downgrade third-party “news” may have been a lot of things—a way to calm critics of Facebook’s election role, a way to re-engage users who were turned off by the political din.
But it was also something else: At this late date, Mr. Zuckerberg, with two billion users and a $560 billion market cap, is still hunting for a sustainable product and revenue model for his company.
Idiocy is in a waxing phase in America. We know that. And Facebook and its social-media fellows have plenty to answer for in the court of public opinion, with their algorithms constantly supplying us things to be unhinged about. But antitrust is not a solution for the privacy and fake news problems that come with social media. And neither is antitrust called for on traditional monopoly grounds.
Google is said to be dominant in a certain kind of “search,” but searching for purchasable items now often begins on Amazon. Meanwhile, much of the online information that most preoccupies Americans is to be found inside Facebook, Twitter and other apps whose data isn’t reachable by Google.
Facebook is surely dominant in the business of algorithmically sifting your friends’ posts to decide which you’ll see, but there remain plenty of other ways for friends to exchange information.
Facebook and Google together are said to be dominant in digital advertising. But digital ads are ads, a $540 billion annual market they hardly dominate.
Amazon is said to be dominant in e-commerce, with a 44% share. But its share of total U.S. retail sales is 4%. Its share of global retail sales is less than 0.5%.
What’s more, companies dominant today won’t be dominant a decade or two from now. That’s the lesson of history. Today’s leaders will guard existing cash flows and leave it to others to try to catch the next bit of lightning in a bottle. And for good reason: The iPhone, Google’s search box and the Facebook twist on social media were far from certain to be the windfalls they turned out to be.
Are we not catching whiffs of impending maturity? Amazon is hunting for a second headquarters to house 50,000 new staff. It’s bulking up on storefronts and fleets of trucks and planes. Wasn’t the appeal of digital economics supposed to be the ability to grow without a commensurate rise in overhead? And who will run this sprawling retail conglomerate when Jeff Bezos is gone?
Facebook not only is running out of new users to sign up, its adherents are starting to notice that they see only a tiny, Facebook-biased fraction of what their “friends” intend them to see.
Apple is lashed to a single product, the iPhone, whose latest model is hardly leaping off the shelf. Apple’s fabulous margins are increasingly maintained by jacking up prices. The company is moving into a grandiose new headquarters even as it falls far behind in the video-streaming market it once imagined conquering.
Already visible down the road are wearable technologies, augmented and artificial reality, various services that render the limitations of location meaningless. Anybody who thinks he knows which companies will capture these opportunities is fooling himself.
The truth is, today’s digital giants are providers of easily dispensable or replaceable services, so must act constantly to keep users happy or risk being eclipsed.
Their targeting by activists on the make is the best evidence of their pending maturity. Barry Lynn, a researcher at the Google-sponsored New America Foundation, orchestrated his own firing as a stunt to launch his new anti-“monopoly” research shop. Lina Khan, the Yale Law Journal author, became a national figure in 2017 with her argument that Amazon is too powerful because, you know, it’s too powerful.
No wonder Facebook is frantically doing penance for Russian ads and fake news during the 2016 election. Or that Google has now become the biggest corporate lobbyist in Washington. Or that three of the finalist sites picked by Amazon in its headquarters search are in the Washington area, where Mr. Bezos already owns the Washington Post and clearly craves to increase his sway with the political class.
The tech giants were all but pushed into being influential voices in the net-neutrality fight, not because they believed in the cause, but because anything that centralizes control in Washington naturally appeals to companies with the biggest lobbying clout. At the same time, their greatest fear is Congress deciding their own platforms should be treated as “public utilities” too.
To be absorbed in rent-seeking battles is increasingly the fate of America’s established tech giants. That’s one more reason to expect the next truly big thing to be invented by someone else.
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https://slate.com/technology/2018/02/what-went-wrong-at-newsweek-according-to-current-and-former-staffers.html
", , ,Though Newsweek has had more than its share of instability over the past decade, the rapidity and sensationalism of the magazine’s latest implosion is, in ways, exceptional. (Disclosure: I interned at Newsweek in the summer of 2010.) Few other major U.S. publications have seen their internal strife strewn across national headlines; still fewer have to worry about their owners funneling money to a religious institution, as Newsweek’s parent company is alleged to have done.
"But much of the story, as insiders tell it, will ring disconcertingly familiar to anyone involved in the modern news industry. It’s a tale of a precarious business model, a roller coaster of explosive growth and cruel contraction, mercurial corporate ownership, and journalists forced to produce work so shoddy and craven that they were embarrassed to attach their name to it, all in the name of “saving the company”—and their jobs. At a time when Google and Facebook have become the prime conduits to online news, Newsweek’s downfall highlights the existential vulnerability of even the best-known media brands to the whims of tech companies’ algorithms. It also suggests something more chilling: how quickly a reputable news organization can disintegrate in the hands of the wrong owners.
"All media outlets are on a constant hunt for traffic, but not all newsrooms are managed the same way. With near unanimity, the staffers I spoke to described a newsroom ruled by fear, internecine rivalry, and a slavish obsession with clicks at all costs. They told of reporters covering beats such as science, culture, and foreign affairs being judged not on their work’s merit but on their ability to meet targets of 500,000 or 1 million page views per month. They told of top editors angling for one another’s jobs by trying to persuade higher-ups that they could bring in more traffic. Allegations of sexism, favoritism, and bullying were rampant. , , ,"
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second post:
http://dailycaller.com/2018/02/24/prageru-suing-google-over-youtube-videos/
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third post
Protect the News From Google and Facebook
A partial exemption from antitrust laws would help publishers and readers.
By David Chavern
Feb. 25, 2018 4:42 p.m. ET
42 COMMENTS
The news business is suffering, but not because people don’t want news. They do—more than ever. The problem is that the money generated by news audiences flows mostly to Google and Facebook , not to the reporters and publishers who produce excellent journalism.
The Duopoly now captures 83% of all digital ad revenue growth and 73% of U.S. digital advertising, according to a CNBC report. As a result, newspapers’ online audience growth does not produce revenue to match. According to data from Pew, newspaper advertising revenue fell from $22 billion in 2014 to $18 billion in 2016 even as web traffic for the top 50 U.S. newspapers increased 42%.
Local news is most at risk. As print circulation declines, community news publishers have the hardest time adapting to the ever-changing demands of Facebook and Google algorithms. We think of “fake news” as a national phenomenon, but in the absence of a workable news business model, wild rumors and conspiracy theories could become more influential at the local level, too.
Tech savvy, digital-only publishers are also struggling. BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti said in December that Google and Facebook are “paying content creators far too little for the value they deliver to users,” and that “this puts high-quality creators at a financial disadvantage, and favors publishers of cheap media.”
A user launches the Facebook app on his phone.
A user launches the Facebook app on his phone. Photo: Elise Amendola/Associated Press
Google and Facebook have become the primary and de facto regulators of the news business, and governments around the world are starting to recognize the danger. British Prime Minister Theresa May announced earlier this month that her government would review the economics of internet news consumption. Regulators in Germany, Israel and South Korea are investigating how Google’s business practices have disrupted the media market and harmed publishers and consumers. U.S. regulators, on the other hand, have rarely looked into Google or Facebook—and never at their influence in the news marketplace.
Some voices on the left and right are calling for Google and Facebook to be regulated as utilities. But there is an easier solution: exempt news publishers from certain aspects of antitrust regulation.
U.S. antitrust laws, designed to promote fair competition and prevent consolidation, actually make it harder for traditional news outlets to compete with Silicon Valley giants. Under current law, for instance, news publishers cannot get together and agree to withhold their product unless they receive a return on their investment. Let’s start by changing that simple inequity. News publishers should be able to use their collective leverage in negotiations with big tech.
Rep. David Cicilline, top Democrat on the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee, is expected to introduce a bill to do that next week. The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act of 2018 is a low-regulation, pro-market way to unleash the news industry’s negotiating power. If antitrust enforcers can’t protect society from the outsize influence of modern-day trusts, the least the government can do is get out of the way and let publishers protect themselves and their readers.
Mr. Chavern is president and CEO of the News Media Alliance, a trade association representing some 2,000 newspapers in the U.S. and Canada.
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Problem noted but solution rejected - MHO.
Note the bias; WSJ is a provider of news. They charge plenty but aren't getting the ad revenue - or enough subscribers. They are in need of a new profit paradigm.
If you are receiving a product for free, you ARE the product, not the customer. Google and Facebook are selling you, not news.
Facebook has a liberal bias and other flaws. It is a fight to get good information from Google when what you seek doesn't fit their narrative, global warming for example. Young people are turning away from Facebook. I would love to turn away from Google, but they give quite a bit of free value and their ads mostly miss me, advertising today what I searched and bought yesterday.
My point is that both of these companies are one competitors' disruptive innovation away from losing their grip on the market, whether it is a year from now or a hundred years.
Content providers, like rock stars, need to get some free play to us until we're hooked, then somewhere down the road they make money and plenty of it if they connect.
WSJ: Good product but they only sometimes set themselves apart. They are looking at other ways to deliver it. I notice they are doing more and more podcasts, not for revenue yet but for exploring avenues. They are way behind the innovation curve.
Drudge Report and Craigslist both built their marketshare to a top 10 internet destination in the world before they started to make money. Craigslist is the first reason all the newspapers are in trouble. Why didn't NYT, LAT, McClatchy or whoever do that first or do it better? Clayton Christensen has an answer for that - the entrenched player in the market CAN'T do it. They would lost too much in revenues to disrupt their own market. I remember having a Wednesday night deadline for Sunday rental ads and being audited by the IRS because the cost was so high when rents were low. To that newspaper, good riddance I wish, you couldn't have provided worse service or value. Google and Facebook have their own life cycle and someday face a similar fate.
DBMA public forum, excellent content! What do we charge readers and how much do we pay our writers? Free information built the internet, there will still be sources of value outside of any cartel.
This problem with media is not new. Look at the fall of Enron. How big was this company? How many people did they impact? Yet there was NOT ONE investigative reporter on it during the whole implosion until after it fell all the way to the ground. The elite media don't have a corner on the information. When they wait until everyone knows to tell us, war breaks out or trump gives a speech, they do not own that news or the rights to sell it.
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http://dailysignal.com/2018/02/28/youtube-quietly-relies-far-left-organization-help-police-content?utm_source=TDS_Email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MorningBell%22&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWXpBd01XVTJPREV5T1RjMSIsInQiOiJjXC9VXC9CMFZvQW1FcmRhcGVKRmRLbWtMYzBra3dBeVdONHdiVEIzVE9Ma1JiakJ1VkxaQmdUMmhIN3BzaHZGQmZjb01NS0ZOTGxOSHlCdjZFeHNWVVJKXC9TVWZMM2JDUmhMbXBIQzl0SnQ1TVlcL1pTOXNtbDFMU2d1RUlETFVpTm0ifQ%3D%3D
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https://gellerreport.com/2018/03/youtubes-new-moderators-mistakenly-pull-right-wing-channels.html/
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https://www.michaelyon-online.com/facebook-blocked-my-account-again.htm
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Third post
http://canoe.com/technology/twitter-ceo-asks-for-help-on-civility-youtube-stumbles-trying-to-deal-with-misinformation
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https://gellerreport.com/2018/03/public-wants-big-tech-regulated-axios-survey.html/
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https://patriotpost.us/articles/54534-facebooks-fake-fact-checkers-bust-the-babylon-bee
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/social-media-companies-discriminate-against-conservatives/
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second post
https://life.spectator.co.uk/2018/02/the-intellectual-dark-web/
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-really-is-spying-on-you-just-not-through-your-phones-mic-1520448644?mod=cx_picks&cx_navSource=cx_picks&cx_tag=video&cx_artPos=4#cxrecs_s
Photos and graphs at the URL
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By Joanna Stern
March 7, 2018 1:50 p.m. ET
161 COMMENTS
“Can I try the Cole Haans in a size 8?”
Later that night on Facebook: An advertisement for Cole Haan pumps.
OK, maybe a coincidence.
“What’s the best high-tech scale?” my wife asks aloud.
Five minutes later on Instagram: An ad for scales.
Wait, are they listening?
“Get the little red Sudafed pills,” my mom says after I sneeze.
That afternoon: An advertisement for Sudafed PE.
Yep, they’ve even wiretapped my bodily functions.
A conspiracy theory has spread among Facebook and Instagram users: The company is tapping our microphones to target ads. It’s not.
“Facebook does not use your phone’s microphone to inform ads or to change what you see in News Feed,” says Facebook.
Yeah, sure, and the government swears it isn’t keeping any pet aliens at Area 51. So I contacted former Facebook employees and various advertising technology experts, who all cited technical and legal reasons audio snooping isn’t possible.
Uploading and scanning that much audio data “would strain even the resources of the NSA,” says former Facebook ad-targeting product manager Antonio Garcia Martinez. “They would need to understand the context of what you are saying—not just listen for words,” says Sandy Parakilas, a former Facebook operations manager.
I believe them, but for another reason: Facebook is now so good at watching what we do online—and even offline, wandering around the physical world—it doesn’t need to hear us. After digging into the various bits of info Facebook and its advertisers collect and the bits I’ve actually handed over myself, I can now explain why I got each of those eerily relevant ads. (Facebook ads themselves offer limited explanations when you click “Why am I seeing this?”)
Advertising is an important staple of the free internet, but the companies buying and selling ads are turning into stalkers. We need to understand what they’re doing, and what we can—or can’t—do to limit them.
What You’ve Bought
The story of how that Sudafed ad got to me begins at Walgreens. As I bought tissues and Afrin, I keyed in my phone number so I could get loyalty points.
When you enter your email address, phone number or other customer ID when checking out at a store, data brokers could get your purchase history.
When you enter your email address, phone number or other customer ID when checking out at a store, data brokers could get your purchase history. Photo: Robert Alcaraz/The Wall Street Journal
Information about the contents of my shopping bag began to spread. A third-party data collector—likely Nielsen-Catalina Solutions—added it to the purchase history it acquires from Walgreens.
Johnson & Johnson, maker of Sudafed, paid the data broker for that information. With the use of Facebook’s tools, the information from my loyalty card—email, phone number, etc.—was matched with my Facebook account. (Data brokers run personal information through an algorithm before uploading so it’s not identifiable, Facebook says, but it still can be matched with Facebook account information.)
Then via Facebook, Johnson & Johnson decided to target adults ages 25 to 54 who bought Sudafed or a competing brand. In other words, me.
Opt Out of Data Gathering
Follow the links below for instructions to stop tracking by the largest data brokers.
Acxiom
Epsilon
Experian
Oracle Data Cloud
TransUnion
WPP
Do this: For starters, either don’t use loyalty cards, or register them to an email address or phone number you don’t use.
Facebook works directly with six data brokers, all of which allow you to opt out from their sharing of your personal data, everything from your email to your purchase history.
Of course, it isn’t easy. You need to go to each broker website and fill out your form with, yes, your personal information.
Where You’ve Been
What could be better than your purchase history? Location, location, location. Did you stop by a shop? This ad will remind you to come back! Are you close to one of our stores? Here’s a coupon!
My colleague Christopher Mims detailed in his recent column how advertisers are using all sorts of location signals—your phone’s GPS, Wi-Fi access points around you, IP addresses, etc.— to follow your breadcrumbs.
Do this: Limit Facebook from knowing where you are. In the mobile app (iOS and Android), go to Settings > Account Settings > Location and turn off location tracking. Disable location history, too.
In Facebook's app, tap Settings then follow these steps to prevent the social network from keeping tabs on your whereabouts.
In Facebook's app, tap Settings then follow these steps to prevent the social network from keeping tabs on your whereabouts. Photo: Wilson Rothman/The Wall Street Journal
Other apps can pinpoint your location and serve you ads back through Facebook. Before granting any app location access, think it through. On the iPhone, go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services and go through the apps you’ve granted location access. (They should all say “Never” or “While Using”—not “Always.”) On Android, go to Settings > Location.
Which Apps You’re Using
A few days before my wife mentioned that digital scale, I downloaded LoseIt, a food-tracking app, to my iPhone. No more than 24 hours later, my entire Facebook and Instagram feeds were taken over with fitness and weight-loss ads. (Yes, Facebook-owned Instagram pulls from the same ad selection.)
The free version of LoseIt shows ads from Facebook’s Audience Network. Even if you don’t log into the app via Facebook, the companies swap information. In my case, LoseIt’s maker FitNow Inc. used my iPhone’s Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), a number stored on my iPhone, to match up any other history associated with my IDFA, including my Facebook account.
In the iPhone's Settings menu, you can limit the ability of advertisers to get hold of your iPhone's unique identifier.
In the iPhone's Settings menu, you can limit the ability of advertisers to get hold of your iPhone's unique identifier. Photo: Wilson Rothman/The Wall Street Journal
FitNow confirmed that, when I opened the app, my IDFA became associated with “Healthy Living” and “Weight Loss,” which are now marked on my Facebook advertising profile.
Do this: Apple gives you the ability to limit advertisers from getting your IDFA. In iOS go to Settings > Privacy > Advertising > switch on Limit Ad Tracking. At the same time you should reset the advertising identifier. With Android’s similar system, just go to Settings > Google > Ads > Opt out of Ads Personalization.
What You’ve Clicked or Tapped
Of course, there’s another way Facebook knows, well, pretty much everything about me: my web browsing history. Facebook Pixel is installed on millions of websites and apps, enabling advertisers and Facebook to see what you do on there. It’s why you may see an ad for a spatula after browsing spatulas. Add something to a shopping cart? Click on a different product or article on the site? Pixel can know.
Do this: Interest-based advertising is used across the web by the big technology companies. Facebook, Amazon, Google and others offer ways to opt out on their own websites. On Facebook, go to Settings > Account Settings > Ads > Ad Settings and turn off all the settings on that page. You can also delete any interests Facebook may have gathered about you previously.
On your computer’s browser, install the Ghostery or Privacy Badger extensions. Both allow you to see—and disable— trackers that are running on webpages.
Who You Really Are
All that information, combined with your activity on Facebook and Instagram—which pages or posts you’ve liked, the people you are friends with and more—gives the social networking conglomerate a very good portrait of you.
The portrait gets clearer with even more information from data brokers: your salary, car preference, home size, political affiliations, spending habits and far more.
It’s what allows any advertiser to log into Facebook Ads Manager and start targeting. Even I was able to log in and laser focus on people in a certain NYC ZIP code who have bought furniture and cooking spices—and who are “likely to move soon.”
Do this: Short of deleting Facebook and living in a bunker, there isn’t anything you can do to stop this entirely.
“When ad targeting is used well, it makes advertising better,” says Facebook spokesperson Joe Osborne. “That’s why we build our targeting tools in a way that doesn’t share people’s personal information with advertisers and that gives people control over the ads they see.”
My problem is, we still don’t have enough transparency about how these ads are getting to us. The more we focus on the realities—not that they’re listening, but how they’re monitoring our app downloads and trips to the supermarket—the more we’ll know where our privacy is at stake.
But hey, if you’re still worried about the mic, by all means, turn it off. (On iPhone, go to Settings > Privacy > Microphone > Facebook. On Android, go to Settings > Apps > Facebook > Permissions > Disable microphone.
In the iPhone's Settings menu, you can disable the Facebook app from accessing your microphone.
In the iPhone's Settings menu, you can disable the Facebook app from accessing your microphone. Photo: Joanna Stern/The Wall Street Journal
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https://gellerreport.com/2018/03/facebook-conservative-unaffected.html/
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https://gab.ai/Matt_Bracken/posts/21258579
To escape the Goolag.
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https://www.michaelyon-online.com/facebook-strikes-again.htm
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Pasting this here from another thread with my take on it in the subject line
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2018/03/12/sadiq-khan-warns-silicon-valley-hate-speech-fake-news-blames-donald-trump/
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second post
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/19/reddit-and-the-struggle-to-detoxify-the-internet?mbid=nl_Daily%20031218&CNDID=50142053&spMailingID=13102971&spUserID=MjAxODUyNTc2OTUwS0&spJobID=1361130200&spReportId=MTM2MTEzMDIwMAS2
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https://gellerreport.com/2018/03/facebook-totalitarianism.html/
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-trump-campaign.html?emc=edit_ta_20180317&nl=top-stories&nlid=49641193&ref=cta
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Pasting this here as well
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/cambridge-analytica-social-media-panic/
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http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/03/20/what-facebook-could-learn-from-wells-fargos-woes/
“What you find is that there’s never just one cockroach in the kitchen,” Warren Buffet explained"
I remember it being announced OBama was using FB information and they gladly shared with the most powerful "ONE" who they must have thought would help Hill win.
with Sandberg's blessing
As Rush pointed out that FB MO is to sell data for marketing purposes
so what is new?
Thats how they make their money.
The only thing new is now the Dems are on the receiving end and now , now we hear them and their media accomplisses having a hissy fit.
Rush was rightly laughing about the ways the Dems are contorting to implicate "russians"
Talk about fake news.
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https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-20/google-and-amazon-antitrust-fears-are-misplaced
Does not address the implications of Google/youtube/FB controlling the town square and steering public discourse through its algorithms.
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-21/youtube-bans-firearm-sales-and-how-to-videos-prompting-backlash
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Are Corporations Poised to Overtake Countries?
It can be difficult to separate the important from unimportant on any given day. Reflections mean to do exactly that — by thinking about what happened today, we can consider what might happen tomorrow.
Corporations such as Facebook and others will continue to outdo the state in accruing massive amounts of personal data on individuals, particularly in the West.
Massive firms could use such information as part of an effort to reshape people’s allegiances.
As states perceive corporations as potential threats to their power, they will take action to keep such companies at bay.
Will the corporation supplant the state as the world's dominant organizational structure in the coming century? It's a question to which many world thinkers adamantly answer "yes." In this bold vision for the future, national borders gradually wither away as transnational companies become ever more powerful, leading governments by the nose in pursuit of perfect supply chain efficiency. For advocates of this vision, the prevailing trends throughout the world, large companies' growing influence, the giant cash piles of companies like Apple and diminishing trade barriers all point to the coming predominance of the corporation. Skeptics, by contrast, say the obituary for the state is decidedly premature but concede that the corporation is likely to eat away at national power in the decades to come.
The Big Picture
Major changes are afoot in the global economy, especially when it comes to advances in technology — the most geopolitically important of which Stratfor follows under its Fourth Industrial Revolution theme. Many of these new technologies will empower corporations, possibly even to the point at which they could challenge states.
The history of the world is essentially a history of the invisible lines that have shaped the global population. The basic societal unit, the human, is largely the same the world over, but systems have emerged to turn humans into cogs in larger machines. Organizations and institutions exercise power thanks to individuals' willingness to subordinate themselves to wider goals. In feudal times, a king's power depended on the loyalty of his lords, who themselves needed to keep their peasants in line to ensure their own continued strength. While ostensibly preoccupied with the world to come, the Catholic Church once wielded a large degree of power in the present realm. Today, however, the institution is a shadow of its former self because it has not succeeded in persuading as large a percentage of the population to believe in it, thereby reducing its power on a relative basis. In the centuries that followed the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the nation-state began to supplant the church, ultimately providing a common sense of identity for which large groups of diverse people were willing to die.
But the idea that individuals could begin to rally around the corporation more than the nation-state is flawed. First off, the favorable geopolitical circumstances that have permitted corporations to thrive over the last seven decades might not continue. Beyond that, however, there are also deeper philosophical problems with the idea, centered on the question of personal motivation.
If corporations are to overtake the state in global importance, individuals would need to collectively switch their primary allegiance (or be compelled to do so by circumstance) to massive companies over their current polities. The situation would also require the average person to prize a corporate identity more highly than a national one – something that few have been willing to do thus far. National identities have coalesced over many centuries, becoming woven into families, cultures, traditions and languages. Corporations, by contrast, are relative newcomers to the realm of identity politics and have not managed to achieve the same degree of penetration into people's lives. Still, recent developments portend a shift in power from country to corporation.
Harnessing Knowledge in Pursuit of Power
In recent years, personal information has become an increasingly important commodity, particularly in Europe and North America. But whereas one would have expected the state to collect such information in the past, today it is the corporation that is amassing such knowledge. Western populations have been relatively content – the present fallout from the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica incident notwithstanding – to allow companies to learn vast amounts of information about them. Over the last two decades, companies such as Facebook, Google and Amazon have become interwoven in the daily lives of Western citizens, and they have amassed extraordinary amounts of information at an individual user level for the purposes of targeted advertising. These developments have given technology corporations the ability to gain access to a degree of knowledge over individuals' lives that a Western politician seeking election could only dream about.
Large proportions of people's lives are migrating online into areas such as social media, and if the trajectory continues at its current rate, corporations such as Facebook and Amazon could soon possess more knowledge about individuals in a Western country than national governments, which are largely restrained in the information they can gather and retain.
Large proportions of people's lives are migrating online into areas such as social media, and if the trajectory continues at its current rate, corporations such as Facebook and Amazon could soon possess more knowledge about individuals in a Western country than national governments, which are largely restrained in the information they can gather and retain. In a battle for hearts and minds, it is not hard to imagine Apple one day enjoying a better chance than a national government of persuading an individual to align with its interests. This could be the key to enormous persuasive power; indeed, it is possible that it could provide corporations with a path to ultimately win the battle for a population's hearts and minds.
Already, it appears that states are preparing a counterattack against the corporate challenger, particularly by resorting to antitrust legislation. Judicial officials in the European Union have launched legal action against major U.S. technology companies through such avenues, while a similar debate has begun in the United States as well.
The planet is a long way from sitting down to watch a World Cup match pitting Amazon versus Facebook instead of the likes of Brazil versus France, yet corporations will continue to make inroads into the lives of people around the globe to the degree that they could come to rival the state for power. As the recent legal proceedings in the European Union show, the first salvoes have been fired in the great battle between the state and the corporation, and more are likely to come.
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http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/03/26/ftc-announces-facebook-investigation-citing-substantial-concerns-about-privacy-practices/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=daily&utm_content=links&utm_campaign=20180326
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second post:
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/03/26/zuckerberg-fundamentally-uncomfortable-deciding-what-counts-as-hate-speech/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=daily&utm_content=links&utm_campaign=20180326
With the pressure on FB and with FB being the progressive organization that it is, a grand compromise wherein pressure is eased up on FB in return for it being a dutiful soldier in the Orwellian mind control mission of the Deep State is the deep danger.
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https://mobile.twitter.com/iamdylancurran/status/977559925680467968
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https://mobile.twitter.com/iamdylancurran/status/977559925680467968
I don't do Facebook and they still probably have everything on me. I surrendered to the free and powerful features of Google and what they have on me is frightening. Leave your cell phone at home if you have anything secretive to attend to...
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Facebook broke campaign laws in Obama campaign
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/facebook-data-scanadal-trump-obama-campaign-election-meddling/
"they were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn't have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side."
Federal law "bans corporations from making 'direct or indirect' contributions to federal candidates."
Exactly what they did. read the whole piece and the links within it.
Law with no enforcement or consequence, util a Republican or conservative does it. Then watch out!
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https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/978714961450061826
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http://discovery.economist.com/features/21735026-which-antitrust-remedies-welcome-which-fight-techlash-against-amazon-facebook-and-161617744
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http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/04/02/mark-zuckerberg-proposes-facebook-supreme-court-to-rule-on-hate-speech/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=daily&utm_content=links&utm_campaign=20180402
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http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/04/04/report-facebook-messenger-analyzes-what-you-send-to-friends-family/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=daily&utm_content=links&utm_campaign=20180404
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http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/04/04/report-facebook-messenger-analyzes-what-you-send-to-friends-family/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=daily&utm_content=links&utm_campaign=20180404
Creeps. Maybe their excesses will be their downfall.
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"Maybe their excesses will be their downfall."
May their excesses be their downfall.
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https://www.dailywire.com/news/29175/facebook-deems-pro-trump-diamond-and-silk-unsafe-joseph-curl
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http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/04/06/delingpole-smash-big-techs-robber-baron-cartel-now/
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http://discovery.economist.com/features/21735026-which-antitrust-remedies-welcome-which-fight-techlash-against-amazon-facebook-and-161617744?kw=all&csid=socialpr&ref=features&aid=5650068264
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second post
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-07/facebook-gave-money-85-house-committee-questioning-zuckerberg-next-week
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I am not sure why but I really detest Zuckerberg and always have.
I don't like Google's Schmidt either.
With there phony political correctness while in effect stealing and selling our personal data. I certainly was not a fan of their coziness with Obama .
What do we know about *their* personal lives.. How many women did Schmidt pay off to silence them from exposing with regards to "MeToo "?
For some reason Steve Jobs or Bezos don't bother me. I admire them and only wish I DID buy Amazon when it dipped to ~ 30 during the tech crash ~2000.
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OMG . He even uses the same body language coach. Tell me who the lip biting pose reminds you of:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/facebook-ceo-apologizes-says-company-155501276.html
addendum I don't know what happened to the picture but it was of Zuck biting his lip.
Looked EXACTLY like when Clinton would bite his lip while trying to con us that he was showing contrition.
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http://ace.mu.nu/archives/374730.php
The surveillance economy.
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syphilis to who - my question - ok then what?
stock the drug stores in a given county with more penicillin.
send fliers to the gays who are mainly the ones spreading this to be sure to wear their condoms?
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/apr/9/syphilis-outbreaks-predicted-google-searches-tweet/
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https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/04/09/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-should-answer-these-questions-when-he-testifies-before-congress/?utm_source=TDS_Email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MorningBell%22&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWXpBM1ptWmpZakl6WXpObSIsInQiOiJ0WVlIWFhoXC96WU1jK2VUT0lHazdxK3ZuOVpOTFRhc3lxcXZ6MlFQQ2gxdzBBTDBySDMxbkUwUGpKRWpJU0lGTGR5MHFIMzlTdFZtUCtRK29ScU9TcnpyTkt6RTVvS0tPWUoyWGxnMzBUVmtFdXhlelwvVDlXOFg5OUdVU2NGdGNyIn0%3D
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http://jackbaruth.com/?p=9609
You May Not Be Interested In Social Credit, But Social Credit Is Interested In You
Posted on April 9, 2018 by Jack Baruth
It’s an idea that is four or five years old now, but the Chinese government is finally taking baby steps towards putting its “social credit” system into production. What is social credit, you ask? Well, it’s a system by which ordinary citizens are rated for their behavior. You can lose points for breaking minor laws, speaking out against the government, or for associating with people who do those things.
Users with high social credit get preferred placement on dating apps, free loaner bicycles, and other benefits. If your social credit is low, on the other hand, you might find yourself unable to buy a business-class travel ticket… or you might find that you have no ability to buy a ticket at all. Your children might be denied access to good schools, and you might be removed from lists of applicants for available jobs. Participation in the system is mandatory for Chinese subjects, er, citizens.
So-called “heritage Americans” rightly view this sort of thing as an utterly horrific abomination, particularly since it is backed by the government itself, but the Chinese don’t share our mistrust of social conditioning or coercive behavior. Look for Social Credit to be a massive success, both for the compliant citizens who score highly under the system and for high-ranking members of the Chinese government who will benefit from its chilling effect on potential critics or activists.
And we could leave the whole subject there, except for one little thing.
We know that “foreign” corporations will be subject to the whims of the Social Credit system, which means that even if Westerners are not individually ranked in Social Credit they will be evaluated as part of the credit rating given to their employer. It’s a nifty way to ensure that foreign critics of the Chinese government don’t have a chance to participate in the Chinese market.
It seems unlikely to think that it will stop there. In much the same way as Facebook creates “ghost profiles” of people who do not choose to have a Facebook account, there is no reason to think that the Social Credit system will not eventually expand to rate foreigners. Are you interested in visiting China? Better have good social credit. Do you want to work for a Chinese company, even if that company is an American-market pork producer? Then you’ll want to watch what you say. There are quite a few Chinese-owned American companies, from the Chicago Stock Exchange and the Waldorf-Astoria to AMC Theatres.
There is also, of course, the possibility — scratch that, the certainty — that the system will be subject to considerable error. For Americans, it’s likely to result in nothing more than some inconvenience or lost work opportunities. For a Chinese citizen, trapped in the country without the ability to buy a ticket out?
Luckily we have no such social credit system in the United States. Except we do, of course. It was just built using venture capital. We all understand now that nothing on Facebook is private, but in a world where employers are demanding access to the Facebook accounts of their employees there’s never been a better time to walk away from your veal pen in Zuckerberg’s Information Farm. Failing that, you should just create a short and sweet profile with no personal information and no political affiliations that might cost you opportunities in the future. You can be fired nowadays simply for holding conservative views — and if the rulings so far on James Damore’s lawsuit against Google are any indication, it’s perfectly legal for an employer to do so.
As for your humble author, maybe now’s the time for me to hurry up and take out a loan on a lightly-used Viper ACR. My financial credit score is way better than my social credit score is going to be.
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The LEFT is so fond of quotas for minorities and women etc but what about quotas for political persuasions . The counted political affiliations at FB of high level exucs shows a 45 to 10 bias for Obama Hillary lovers vs Romney huggers and ZERO for Trump.
No bias there
And what is the BS about artificial intelligence the Zuck keeps telling us?
As though that would take him off the hook and make it all nonparitison
AI still has to be created by people with all their biases.
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Skynet via FB , , , , , ,
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Isn't it creepy that Zuckerberg wants to be regulated? What does that tell us? Regulation will help hold together their monopoly. Regulation legalizes what he is doing, selling private information. Then he only has to compare his business to the laws he helps write, not to an arbitrary standard of right versus wrong, with damages and liability.
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AND he serves the Deep State in sending American Creed thinking down the memory hole.
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"Then he only has to compare his business to the laws he helps write, not to an arbitrary standard of right versus wrong, with damages and liability."
one of the questioners pointed this out.
don't know if true but it has been pointed out online that he has contributed to every Senator on the panel.
there are no shortage of big shots who want in to his money.
the power of billions for all to see.
He is running for President too.
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"He is running for President too."
Now that I've seen and heard him, I don't fear him as a candidate, and this scandal isn't helping him in that regard. It looks like he has his hands full running FB, should have sold it before this all blew up.
I was actually impressed with the self awareness I saw in response to Sen Cruz's questioning. Silicon Valley, where they hire and operate, is a 'very far left' place. To admit that means the political bias discovered in FB is more solveable than it anywhere else, such as in mainstream media or academia. They have 15,000 to 20,000 people going through content. If they want to serve both sides of a badly divided country all they might need to do is create and enforce balance on those teams. In other words, have conservatives, not liberals, look for hate speech in conservative content.
If he doesn't do that, soon(!), he is serving half the market and setting the stage for voluntary breakup. Let FB be a liberal social media website and leave a market opening for new entrants, like MSM did for Fox.
I forgot which Senator (Lindsey Graham?) I heard ask, Are you a Monopoly? Who is your biggest competitor? And most telling, why did you buy Instagram?
If we are concerned with monopolistic concentrations of power, why are we allowing Facebook to buy competitive social media sites, why did we allow Google to buy youtube, eBay to buy Paypal, etc? We allow competitors and market participants to be swallowed up, and then talk about a breakup. Once again, government was asleep at the wheel and now we have a problem.
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Doug, 4/11: "Isn't it creepy that Zuckerberg wants to be regulated? What does that tell us? Regulation will help hold together their monopoly. Regulation legalizes what he is doing..."
Jonah Goldberg, National Review, 4/13:
https://townhall.com/columnists/jonahgoldberg/2018/04/13/tighter-regulation-would-probably-make-facebook-more-profitable-n2470497
Tighter Regulation Would Probably Make Facebook More Profitable
Why would the titans of capitalism welcome regulation? Because regulation is the best protection against competition. It stabilizes prices, eliminates uncertainty and writes profits into law
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and they have the resources to bribe politicians who make the laws hire batteries of lawyers to interpret and game the law and still have cash left over to protect their image and put everyone else out of business or buy them out..
Breaking them up ? is that the way to go? :|
I don't want this squirt running the world and all our lives. some kids might not care or see the problems with it because they are young but I do.
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Facebook and Cambridge Analytica
In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, news articles and
commentators have focused on what Facebook knows about us. A lot, it
turns out. It collects data from our posts, our likes, our photos,
things we type and delete without posting, and things we do while not on
Facebook and even when we're offline. It buys data about us from others.
And it can infer even more: our sexual orientation, political beliefs,
relationship status, drug use, and other personality traits -- even if
we didn't take the personality test that Cambridge Analytica developed.
But for every article about Facebook's creepy stalker behavior,
thousands of other companies are breathing a collective sigh of relief
that it's Facebook and not them in the spotlight. Because while Facebook
is one of the biggest players in this space, there are thousands of
other companies that spy on and manipulate us for profit.
Harvard Business School professor Shoshana Zuboff calls it "surveillance
capitalism." And as creepy as Facebook is turning out to be, the entire
industry is far creepier. It has existed in secret far too long, and
it's up to lawmakers to force these companies into the public spotlight,
where we can all decide if this is how we want society to operate and --
if not -- what to do about it.
There are 2,500 to 4,000 data brokers in the United States whose
business is buying and selling our personal data. Last year, Equifax was
in the news when hackers stole personal information on 150 million
people, including Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, and
driver's license numbers.
You certainly didn't give it permission to collect any of that
information. Equifax is one of those thousands of data brokers, most of
them you've never heard of, selling your personal information without
your knowledge or consent to pretty much anyone who will pay for it.
Surveillance capitalism takes this one step further. Companies like
Facebook and Google offer you free services in exchange for your data.
Google's surveillance isn't in the news, but it's startlingly intimate.
We never lie to our search engines. Our interests and curiosities, hopes
and fears, desires and sexual proclivities, are all collected and saved.
Add to that the websites we visit that Google tracks through its
advertising network, our Gmail accounts, our movements via Google Maps,
and what it can collect from our smartphones.
That phone is probably the most intimate surveillance device ever
invented. It tracks our location continuously, so it knows where we
live, where we work, and where we spend our time. It's the first and
last thing we check in a day, so it knows when we wake up and when we go
to sleep. We all have one, so it knows who we sleep with. Uber used just
some of that information to detect one-night stands; your smartphone
provider and any app you allow to collect location data knows a lot
more.
Surveillance capitalism drives much of the internet. It's behind most of
the "free" services, and many of the paid ones as well. Its goal is
psychological manipulation, in the form of personalized advertising to
persuade you to buy something or do something, like vote for a
candidate. And while the individualized profile-driven manipulation
exposed by Cambridge Analytica feels abhorrent, it's really no different
from what every company wants in the end. This is why all your personal
information is collected, and this is why it is so valuable. Companies
that can understand it can use it against you.
None of this is new. The media has been reporting on surveillance
capitalism for years. In 2015, I wrote a book about it. Back in 2010,
the Wall Street Journal published an award-winning two-year series about
how people are tracked both online and offline, titled "What They Know."
Surveillance capitalism is deeply embedded in our increasingly
computerized society, and if the extent of it came to light there would
be broad demands for limits and regulation. But because this industry
can largely operate in secret, only occasionally exposed after a data
breach or investigative report, we remain mostly ignorant of its reach.
This might change soon. In 2016, the European Union passed the
comprehensive General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. The details
of the law are far too complex to explain here, but some of the things
it mandates are that personal data of EU citizens can only be collected
and saved for "specific, explicit, and legitimate purposes," and only
with explicit consent of the user. Consent can't be buried in the terms
and conditions, nor can it be assumed unless the user opts in. This law
will take effect in May, and companies worldwide are bracing for its
enforcement.
Because pretty much all surveillance capitalism companies collect data
on Europeans, this will expose the industry like nothing else. Here's
just one example. In preparation for this law, PayPal quietly published
a list of over 600 companies it might share your personal data with.
What will it be like when every company has to publish this sort of
information, and explicitly explain how it's using your personal data?
We're about to find out.
In the wake of this scandal, even Mark Zuckerberg said that his industry
probably should be regulated, although he's certainly not wishing for
the sorts of comprehensive regulation the GDPR is bringing to Europe.
He's right. Surveillance capitalism has operated without constraints for
far too long. And advances in both big data analysis and artificial
intelligence will make tomorrow's applications far creepier than
today's. Regulation is the only answer.
The first step to any regulation is transparency. Who has our data? Is
it accurate? What are they doing with it? Who are they selling it to?
How are they securing it? Can we delete it? I don't see any hope of
Congress passing a GDPR-like data protection law anytime soon, but it's
not too far-fetched to demand laws requiring these companies to be more
transparent in what they're doing.
One of the responses to the Cambridge Analytica scandal is that people
are deleting their Facebook accounts. It's hard to do right, and doesn't
do anything about the data that Facebook collects about people who don't
use Facebook. But it's a start. The market can put pressure on these
companies to reduce their spying on us, but it can only do that if we
force the industry out of its secret shadows.
This essay previously appeared on CNN.com.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/26/opinions/data-company-spying-opinion-schneier/index.html
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http://michellemalkin.com/2018/04/11/the-student-data-mining-scandal-under-our-noses/
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comedian posts abusive posts from liberals and HE gets blocked by Zuck book. Is this a glitch that offensive posts are seen and immediately wrongly concluded they came from him though they came from others and he automatically gets blocked?
Or you are not allowed to repost abusive posts from others ?
Or is this a concerted effort to censor a conservative? Don't know:
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/04/18/facebook-suspends-conservative-comedian-terrence-williams-for-posting-abusive-messages-he-received/
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comedian posts abusive posts from liberals and HE gets blocked by Zuck book. Is this a glitch that offensive posts are seen and immediately wrongly concluded they came from him though they came from others and he automatically gets blocked?
Or you are not allowed to repost abusive posts from others ?
Or is this a concerted effort to censor a conservative? Don't know:
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/04/18/facebook-suspends-conservative-comedian-terrence-williams-for-posting-abusive-messages-he-received/
I think it's safe to assume Facehugger is always acting in bad faith.
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http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/04/24/exclusive-research-google-search-manipulation-can-swing-nearly-80-percent-undecided-voters/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=daily&utm_content=links&utm_campaign=20180425
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/04/25/dr-robert-epstein-no-paper-trail-for-google-search-manipulation/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=daily&utm_content=links&utm_campaign=20180425
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"EXCLUSIVE — Research: Google Search Manipulation Can Swing Nearly 80 Percent of Undecided Voter"
no surprise
MSM dead silent except when it hurts their leftist side (cambridge) then suddenly the outrage is expressed
I certainly would not trust that snake Schmidt .
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Since Google and Facebook discriminate against conservative search results, someone else should step in and fill that gap. There is a skill to using Google, estimating what is the most succinct combination of keywords that will take you right to what you are looking for.
That doesn't work when looking for facts, evidence and opinion on the conservative side of an issue such as climate science or economics. If you searched during the campaign for specific, negative stories on Hillary it gave you all positive.
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How does Duck stack up?
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How does Duck stack up?
It's not bad. For my professional work, I still use goolag, but now make sure to run it through the brave browser.
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http://nymag.com/selectall/2018/04/jaron-lanier-interview-on-what-went-wrong-with-the-internet.html
This dovetails with something you’ve said in the past that’s with me, which is your phrase Digital Maoism. Do you think that the Digital Maoism that you described years ago — are those the people who run Silicon Valley today?
I was talking about a few different things at the time I wrote “Digital Maoism.” One of them was the way that we were centralizing culture, even though the rhetoric was that we were distributing it. Before Wikipedia, I think it would have been viewed as being this horrible thing to say that there could only be one encyclopedia, and that there would be one dominant entry for a given topic. Instead, there were different encyclopedias. There would be variations not so much in what facts were presented, but in the way they were presented. That voice was a real thing.
And then we moved to this idea that we have a single dominant encyclopedia that was supposed to be the truth for the global AI or something like that. But there’s something deeply pernicious about that. So we’re saying anybody can write for Wikipedia, so it’s, like, purely democratic and it’s this wonderful open thing, and yet the bizarreness is that that open democratic process is on the surface of something that struck me as being Maoist, which is that there’s this one point of view that’s then gonna be the official one.
And then I also noticed that that process of people being put into a global system in which they’re supposed to work together toward some sort of dominating megabrain that’s the one truth didn’t seem to bring out the best in people, that people turned aggressive and mean-spirited when they interacted in that context. I had worked on some content for Britannica years and years ago, and I never experienced the kind of just petty meanness that’s just commonplace in everything about the internet. Among many other places, on Wikipedia.
On the one hand, you have this very open collective process actually in the service of this very domineering global brain, destroyer of local interpretation, destroyer of individual voice process. And then you also have this thing that seems to bring out this meanness in people, where people get into this kind of mob mentality and they become unkind to each other. And those two things have happened all over the internet; they’re both very present in Facebook, everywhere. And it’s a bit of a subtle debate, and it takes a while to work through it with somebody who doesn’t see what I’m talking about. That was what I was talking about.
But then there’s this other thing about the centralization of economic power. What happened with Maoists and with communists in general, and neo-Marxists and all kinds of similar movements, is that on the surface, you say everybody shares, everybody’s equal, we’re not gonna have this capitalist concentration. But then there’s some other entity that might not look like traditional capitalism, but is effectively some kind of robber baron that actually owns everything, some kind of Communist Party actually controls everything, and you have just a very small number of individuals who become hyperempowered and everybody else loses power.
And exactly the same thing has happened with the supposed openness of the internet, where you say, “Isn’t it wonderful, with Facebook and Twitter anybody can express themselves. Everybody’s an equal, everybody’s empowered.” But in fact, we’re in a period of time of extreme concentration of wealth and power, and it’s precisely around those who run the biggest computers. So the truth and the effect is just the opposite of what the rhetoric is and the immediate experience.
A lot of people were furious with me over Digital Maoism and felt that I had betrayed our cause or something, and I lost some friends over it. And some of it was actually hard. But I fail to see how it was anything but accurate. I don’t wanna brag, but I think I was just right. I think that that’s what was going on and that’s what’s happening in China. But what’s worse is that it’s happening elsewhere.
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http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/04/27/facebook-blocks-pamela-geller-reporting-muslim-anti-semitism-germany/
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http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/05/01/facebook-is-now-ranking-news-organizations-based-on-trustworthiness/
I have no idea how they can "rank" news based on likes or dislikes or truthfulness alone without political agendas entering into the equation
Can't be done .
And am I supposed to believe because "AI " what ever that is , is used that it is somehow more accurate or indiscriminant?
That is certainly flawed .
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interesting that George Gilder's next book is called Life after Google. Big tech disruption coming. That makes more sense to me than the current feeling that this current state of affairs is permanent.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/richkarlgaard/2018/02/09/why-technology-prophet-george-gilder-predicts-big-techs-disruption/#577ea14e2d21
Any Gilder interview could go in a number of threads. He quotes Scott Grannis at the start.
Gilder: "I see a kind of rebirth of the Silicon Valley dream. It defies the current Silicon Valley re-centralization of leviathan companies that chiefly buy up their own rivals and buy up their own stocks"
...
"The clouds [cloud computing] are dispersing into the skies—sky computing rendered on your laptop and smartphone, spread across blockchains, transparent and transformative."
Gilder is always an interesting read. Good to see someone looking beyond the Google Facebook complex.
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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/may/2/facebook-brings-in-jon-kyl-to-probe-political-bias/
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/breaking-up-tech-giants-conservative-case/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202018-05-16&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/breaking-up-tech-giants-conservative-case/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202018-05-16&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives
Mark me down as skeptical on this. We should prosecute illegal tactics, not illegal size or market share, IMHO.
It reminds me of the case against Microsoft brought by Janet Reno and Bill Clinton in March 2000. Government attacking the nation's most successful company ever (at the time) triggered the tech crash, was devastating to investors of all tech.
Facebook is a choice. There are other ways to stay in touch with people. 25% choose not to participate and many of those in are not active.
Google also is a choice, or a series of choices. In both cases, they take, store and sell more of your privacy, security and information than they disclose. Maybe a civil lawsuit would be a better choice, better than have the government decide how these frozen in time services should be allocated.
All of these mentioned are companies people love to hate. Ripe for disruption through market forces. Turning the decision of how big a private sector company should be over to big government does not look like a solution to me.
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from CDs post :
"there is another option to deal with this situation that would reduce the power of these companies and serve the public interest. That is breaking these monopolies up into smaller, more focused entities."
I am a conservative in THIS camp.
I don't listen to Gilder anymore.
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For the purpose of conversation, I take the other side:
Monopoly power may not be used to leverage outside of its area. FB is using its monopoly power to suppress conservative thought. It is doing so through a sustained pattern of deceptive business practices.
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I would add Google also does this
as well as Twitter whose /CEO makes no bones about doing this.
So, CD do you advocate regulation or break up or neither?
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My thinking is not yet fixed, but at the moment I am sympathetic to a notion I vaguely remember from some cases I saw in law school concerning a shopping mall (private property) being constructively considered to be the "town square" (the nature of the town was that there was no "town square") and that the mall had to allow political speech. Frankly I don't know whether this line of precedent remains valid or not.
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My thinking is not yet fixed, but at the moment I am sympathetic to a notion I vaguely remember from some cases I saw in law school concerning a shopping mall (private property) being constructively considered to be the "town square" (the nature of the town was that there was no "town square") and that the mall had to allow political speech. Frankly I don't know whether this line of precedent remains valid or not.
My thought is to use antitrust laws like a meat ax on the goolag and it's fellow travelers. Why? Because it's war, so fcuk them.
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Continuing the conversation:
FEATURED ANALYSIS
The Cultural Shift Against Free Speech
Brian Mark Weber
At first, Twitter seemed like a great idea: quickly and concisely communicating our thoughts with just a few keystrokes, rather than babbling on and on. Still, something didn't seem quite right about that 140-character limitation, even when it was doubled to 280 characters last year. Somehow, it still seemed a restriction on our speech.
But that was just the beginning. This simple social media platform is now going far beyond limiting our character-count to controlling what we think and how we interact with our fellow citizens.
One of the core problems created by social media behemoths like Twitter and Facebook is not that their policies are posing any serious legal threat to the First Amendment. As David French writes at National Review, "The law of free speech has mainly improved. Americans might have more legal defenses against government censorship now than they ever have before. If the government moves against your speech based on your viewpoint and you fight back, you're likely to win."
But social media platforms can bypass the Constitution altogether by creating a paradigm shift in the way current and future generations understand the important role free speech plays in our society. French adds, "The culture of free speech has decayed. Individuals and organizations are far more sensitive and far less tolerant of dissent than they were even in the recent past."
Twitter thinks it has the answer, but its users won't be freer to speak their minds.
In 2016, Twitter launched an Orwellian "Trust & Safety Council" made up of more than 40 organizations, some of which have a history of suppressing free speech. Having thus created a council with representation from a very limited range of ideological perspectives, the company tipped its authoritarian hand.
Twitter explained that in order for users to "express themselves freely and safely on Twitter, we must provide more tools and policies."
Somehow we've managed to build a thriving civilization without having our social interactions with others flagged by an intrusive authority, but now Twitter thinks we need just that. After all, society itself has embedded cultural norms and practices over time to ensure civil discourse. But these cultural norms are under actually threatened by the advent of technology and the pervasive use of social media by millions of Americans.
Sure, some of Twitter's changes seem benign on the surface. For example, the latest push by CEO Jack Dorsey purports to focus on people who are routinely blocked by other users, those who send tweets to accounts they don't follow, and those who launch multiple accounts from a single IP address. But how far will this go? Dorsey himself said that "this is a step, but we can see this going quite far."
Indeed, it may well go too far.
This week, The Verge posted an internal Google video imagining a future in which social media is used not merely to referee online interaction, but to socially engineer our entire society.
If that doesn't send chills down your spine, then maybe we're already closer to that world than we realize.
For now, Twitter asserts that it's merely trying to rid the platform of "spammy behavior." But earlier this year, James O'Keefe's Project Veritas revealed (via The Daily Wire) "Twitter employees admitting that they 'shadow ban' right-leaning accounts, which essentially bans them from the platform without letting them know that they have been banned while allowing left-leaning accounts to slip through without the same scrutiny."
That wouldn't be so bad if Twitter were merely trying to filter out inappropriate or abusive online behavior without regard to ideology. But while middle-of-the-road conservative groups and individuals are being shadow-banned, Twitter has no qualms about allowing groups like Hamas to freely express their hatred and their calls for violence simply because Hamas is a democratically elected government entity that claims to be part of the Middle East "peace process." Remember, Hamas was deemed a foreign terrorist organization by none other than President Bill Clinton in 1997, and it orchestrated the recent violence on the Gaza border that lead to the deaths of dozens of its soldiers.
Our Founding Fathers wisely protected us against government's intrusion into what we say and how we say it. Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms, however, are subversively changing the very way Americans think about communication.
And these changes are also occurring in academia and in the workplace, where the anti-free speech culture being fostered online is also part of the broader culture. The result is that we've become conditioned by social media to accept environments in which simply sharing an opinion can lead to being flagged, suppressed or outright banned from a social community. This is having a ripple effect on the way Americans interact with one another away from social media.
Of course, no one is suggesting that the government take action against private companies. As Reason's Robby Soave writes, "Twitter is a private company. It is free to make whatever speech rules it wants. Forcing Twitter to permit more kinds of speech would not actually be pro-free speech — in fact, it would violate the First Amendment."
And that's why one of the greatest challenges our society will face in the 21st century is maintaining a culture of free speech when so many of us discuss politics and social issues not in the public square where everyone can speak freely, but in the privately-run realms of the Internet.
The time has come for Americans to speak up, before it's too late. This is no longer a discussion about cleaning up social media, but about preserving a civilization whose great strength has always derived from its First Amendment.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/19/technology/facebook-deletion-center-germany.html?nl=top-stories&nlid=49641193ries&ref=cta
Germany Acts to Tame Facebook, Learning From Its Own History of Hate
A country taps its past as it leads the way on one of the most pressing issues facing modern democracies: how to regulate the world’s biggest social network.
At a Facebook deletion center in Berlin, the agents, who work for a third-party firm, remove illegal hate speech from the social network.CreditGordon Welters for The New York Times
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• • By Katrin Bennhold
May 19, 2018
BERLIN — Security is tight at this brick building on the western edge of Berlin. Inside, a sign warns: “Everybody without a badge is a potential spy!”
Spread over five floors, hundreds of men and women sit in rows of six scanning their computer screens. All have signed nondisclosure agreements. Four trauma specialists are at their disposal seven days a week.
They are the agents of Facebook. And they have the power to decide what is free speech and what is hate speech. This is a deletion center, one of Facebook’s largest, with more than 1,200 content moderators. They are cleaning up content — from terrorist propaganda to Nazi symbols to child abuse — that violates the law or the company’s community standards.
Germany, home to a tough new online hate speech law, has become a laboratory for one of the most pressing issues for governments today: how and whether to regulate the world’s biggest social network.
Around the world, Facebook and other social networking platforms are facing a backlash over their failures to safeguard privacy, disinformation campaigns and the digital reach of hate groups.
In India, seven people were beaten to death after a false viral message on the Facebook subsidiary WhatsApp. In Myanmar, violence against the Rohingya minority was fueled, in part, by misinformation spread on Facebook. In the United States, Congress called Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, to testify about the company’s inability to protect its users’ privacy.
As the world confronts these rising forces, Europe, and Germany in particular, have emerged as the de facto regulators of the industry, exerting influence beyond their own borders. Berlin’s digital crackdown on hate speech, which took effect on Jan. 1, is being closely watched by other countries. And German officials are playing a major role behind one of Europe’s most aggressive moves to rein in technology companies, strict data privacy rules that take effect across the European Union on May 25 and are prompting global changes.
“For them, data is the raw material that makes them money,” said Gerd Billen, secretary of state in Germany’s Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection. “For us, data protection is a fundamental right that underpins our democratic institutions.”
Germany’s troubled history has placed it on the front line of a modern tug-of-war between democracies and digital platforms.
In the country of the Holocaust, the commitment against hate speech is as fierce as the commitment to free speech. Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” is only available in an annotated version. Swastikas are illegal. Inciting hatred is punishable by up to five years in jail.
But banned posts, pictures and videos have routinely lingered on Facebook and other social media platforms. Now companies that systematically fail to remove “obviously illegal” content within 24 hours face fines of up to 50 million euros.
The deletion center predates the legislation, but its efforts have taken on new urgency. Every day content moderators in Berlin, hired by a third-party firm and working exclusively on Facebook, pore over thousands of posts flagged by users as upsetting or potentially illegal and make a judgment: Ignore, delete or, in particularly tricky cases, “escalate” to a global team of Facebook lawyers with expertise in German regulation.
Some decisions to delete are easy. Posts about Holocaust denial and genocidal rants against particular groups like refugees are obvious ones for taking down.
Others are less so. On Dec. 31, the day before the new law took effect, a far-right lawmaker reacted to an Arabic New Year’s tweet from the Cologne police, accusing them of appeasing “barbaric, Muslim, gang-raping groups of men.”
The request to block a screenshot of the lawmaker’s post wound up in the queue of Nils, a 35-year-old agent in the Berlin deletion center. His judgment was to let it stand. A colleague thought it should come down. Ultimately, the post was sent to lawyers in Dublin, London, Silicon Valley and Hamburg. By the afternoon it had been deleted, prompting a storm of criticism about the new legislation, known here as the “Facebook Law.”
“A lot of stuff is clear-cut,” Nils said. Facebook, citing his safety, did not allow him to give his surname. “But then there is the borderline stuff.”
Complicated cases have raised concerns that the threat of the new rules’ steep fines and 24-hour window for making decisions encourage “over-blocking” by companies, a sort of defensive censorship of content that is not actually illegal.
The far-right Alternative of Germany, a noisy and prolific user of social media, has been quick to proclaim “the end of free speech.” Human rights organizations have warned that the legislation was inspiring authoritarian governments to copy it.
Other people argue that the law simply gives a private company too much authority to decide what constitutes illegal hate speech in a democracy, an argument that Facebook, which favored voluntary guidelines, made against the law.
“It is perfectly appropriate for the German government to set standards,” said Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s vice president of communications and public policy. “But we think it’s a bad idea for the German government to outsource the decision of what is lawful and what is not.”
Richard Allan, Facebook’s vice president for public policy in Europe and the leader of the company’s lobbying effort against the German legislation, put it more simply: “We don’t want to be the arbiters of free speech.”
German officials counter that social media platforms are the arbiters anyway.
It all boils down to one question, said Mr. Billen, who helped draw up the new legislation: “Who is sovereign? Parliament or Facebook?”
Learning From (German) History
When Nils applied for a job at the deletion center, the first question the recruiter asked him was: “Do you know what you will see here?”
Nils has seen it all. Child torture. Mutilations. Suicides. Even murder: He once saw a video of a man cutting a heart out of a living human being.
And then there is hate.
“You see all the ugliness of the world here,” Nils said. “Everyone is against everyone else. Everyone is complaining about that other group. And everyone is saying the same horrible things.”
The issue is deeply personal for Nils. He has a 4-year-old daughter. “I’m also doing this for her,” he said.
The center here is run by Arvato, a German service provider owned by the conglomerate Bertelsmann. The agents have a broad purview, reviewing content from a half-dozen countries. Those with a focus on Germany must know Facebook’s community standards and, as of January, the basics of German hate speech and defamation law.
“Two agents looking at the same post should come up with the same decision,” says Karsten König, who manages Arvato’s partnership with Facebook.
The Berlin center opened with 200 employees in 2015, as Germany was opening its doors to hundreds of thousands of migrants.
That year a selfie went viral.
Image
Anas Modamani, a Syrian refugee, posed with Chancellor Angela Merkel and posted the image on Facebook. It instantly became a symbol of her decision to allowing in hundreds of thousands of migrants.
Soon it also became a symbol of the backlash.
The image showed up in false reports linking Mr. Modamani to terrorist attacks in Brussels and on a Christmas market in Berlin. He sought an injunction against Facebook to stop such posts from being shared but eventually lost.
The arrival of nearly 1.4 million migrants in Germany has tested the country’s resolve to keep a tight lid on hate speech. The law on illegal speech was long-established but enforcement in the digital realm was scattershot before the new legislation.
Posts calling refugees rapists, Neanderthals and scum survived for weeks, according to jugendschutz.net, a publicly funded internet safety organization. Many were never taken down. Researchers at jugendschutz.net reported a tripling in observed hate speech in the second half of 2015.
Mr. Billen, the secretary of state in charge of the new law, was alarmed. In September 2015, he convened executives from Facebook and other social media sites at the justice ministry, a building that was once the epicenter of state propaganda for the Communist East. A task force for fighting hate speech was created. A couple of months later, Facebook and other companies signed a joint declaration, promising to “examine flagged content and block or delete the majority of illegal posts within 24 hours.”
But the problem did not go away. Over the 15 months that followed, independent researchers, hired by the government, twice posed as ordinary users and flagged illegal hate speech. During the tests, they found that Facebook had deleted 46 percent and 39 percent.
“They knew that they were a platform for criminal behavior and for calls to commit criminal acts, but they presented themselves to us as a wolf in sheep skin,” said Mr. Billen, a poker-faced civil servant with stern black frames on his glasses.
By March 2017, the German government had lost patience and started drafting legislation. The Network Enforcement Law was born, setting out 21 types of content that are “manifestly illegal” and requiring social media platforms to act quickly.
Officials say early indications suggest the rules have served their purpose. Facebook’s performance on removing illegal hate speech in Germany rose to 100 percent over the past year, according to the latest spot check of the European Union.
Platforms must publish biannual reports on their efforts. The first is expected in July.
At Facebook’s Berlin offices, Mr. Allan acknowledged that under the earlier voluntary agreement, the company had not acted decisively enough at first.
“It was too little and it was too slow,” he said. But, he added, “that has changed.”
He cited another independent report for the European Commission from last summer that showed Facebook was by then removing 80 percent of hate speech posts in Germany.
The reason for the improvement was not German legislation, he said, but a voluntary code of conduct with the European Union. Facebook’s results have improved in all European countries, not just in Germany, Mr. Allan said.
“There was no need for legislation,” he said.
Mr. Billen disagrees.
“They could have prevented the law,” he said. YouTube scored 90 percent in last year’s monitoring exercise. If other platforms had done the same, there would be no law today, he said.
A Regulatory Dilemma
Germany’s hard-line approach to hate speech and data privacy once made it an outlier in Europe. The country’s stance is now more mainstream, an evolution seen in the justice commissioner in Brussels. Vera Jourova, the justice commissioner, deleted her Facebook account in 2015 because she could not stand the hate anymore.
“It felt good,” she said about pressing the button. She added: “It felt like taking back control.”
But Ms. Jourova, who grew up behind the Iron Curtain in what is now the Czech Republic, had long been skeptical about governments legislating any aspect of free speech, including hate speech. Her father lost his job after making a disparaging comment about the Soviet invasion in 1968, barring her from going to university until she married and took her husband’s name.
“I lived half my life in the atmosphere driven by Soviet propaganda,” she said. “The golden principle was: If you repeat a lie a hundred times it becomes the truth.”
When Germany started considering a law, she instead preferred a voluntary code of conduct. In 2016, platforms like Facebook promised European users easy reporting tools and committed to removing most illegal posts brought to their attention within 24 hours.
The approach worked well enough, Ms. Jourova said. It was also the quickest way to act because the 28 member states in the European Union differed so much about whether and how to legislate. But the stance of many governments toward Facebook has hardened since it emerged that the consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had harvested the personal data of up to 87 million users. Representatives of the European Parliament have asked Mr. Zuckerberg to come to Brussels to “clarify issues related to the use of personal data” and he has agreed to come as soon as next week.
Ms. Jourova, whose job is to protect the data of over 500 million Europeans, has hardened her stance as well.
“Our current system relies on trust and this did nothing to improve trust,” she said. “The question now is how do we continue?”
The European Commission is considering German-style legislation for online content related to terrorism, violent extremism and child pornography, including a provision that would include fines for platforms that did not remove illegal content within an hour of being alerted to it.
Several countries — France, Israel, Italy, and Canada among them — have sent queries to the German government about the impact of the new hate speech law.
And Germany’s influence is evident in Europe’s new privacy regulation, known as the General Data Protection Regulation, or G.D.P.R.. The rules give people control over how their information is collected and used.
[Here’s what G.D.P.R. means for you, and the internet.]
Inspired in part by German data protection laws written in the 1980s, the regulation has been shaped by a number of prominent Germans. Ms. Jourova’s chief of staff, Renate Nikolay, is German, as is her predecessor’s chief of staff, Martin Selmayr, now the European Commission’s secretary general. The lawmaker in charge of the regulation in the European Parliament is German, too.
“We have built on the German tradition of data protection as a constitutional right and created the most modern piece of regulation of the digital economy,” Ms. Nikolay said.
“To succeed in the long-term companies needs the trust of customers,” she said. “At the latest since Cambridge Analytica it has become clear that data protection is not just some nutty European idea, but a matter of competitiveness.”
On March 26, Ms. Jourova wrote a letter — by post, not email — to Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer.
“Is there a need for stricter rules for platforms like those that exist for traditional media? Is the data of Europeans affected by the current scandal?” she asked, referring to the Cambridge Analytica episode. And, if so, “How do you plan to inform the user about this?”
She demanded a reply within two weeks, and she got one. Some 2.7 million Europeans were affected, Ms. Sandberg wrote. But she never answered Ms. Jourova’s question on regulation.
“There is now a sense of urgency and the conviction that we are dealing with something very dangerous that may threaten the development of free democracies,” said Ms. Jourova, who is also trying to find ways to clamp down on fake news and disinformation campaigns.
“We want the tech giants to respect and follow our legislation,” she added. “We want them to show social responsibility both on data protection and on hate speech.”
So do many Facebook employees, Mr. Allan, the company executive, said.
“We employ very thoughtful and principled people,” he said. “They work here because they want to make the world a better place, so when an assumption is made that the product they work on is harming people it is impactful. People have felt this criticism very deeply.”
A Visual Onslaught
Nils works eight-hour shifts. On busy days, 1,500 user reports are in his queue. Other days, there are only 300. Some of his colleagues have nightmares about what they see.
Every so often someone breaks down. A mother recently left her desk in tears after watching a video of a child being sexually abused. A young man felt physically sick after seeing a video of a dog being tortured. The agents watch teenagers self-mutilating and girls recounting rape.
They have weekly group sessions with a psychologist and the trauma specialists on standby. In more serious cases, the center teams up with clinics in Berlin.
In the office, which is adorned with Facebook logos, fresh fruit is at the agents’ disposal in a small room where subdued colors and decorative moss growing on the walls are meant to calm fraying nerves.
To decompress, the agents sometimes report each other’s posts, not because they are controversial, but “just for a laugh,” said another agent, the son of a Lebanese refugee and an Arabic-speaker who has had to deal with content related to terrorism generally and the Islamic State specifically. By now, he said, images of “weird skin diseases” affected him more than those of a beheading. Nils finds sports injuries like breaking bones particularly disturbing.
There is a camaraderie in the office and a real sense of mission: Nils said the agents were proud to “help clean up the hate.”
The definition of hate is constantly evolving.
The agents, who initially take a three-week training course, get frequent refreshers. Their guidelines are revised to reflect hate speech culture. Events change the meaning of words. New hashtags and online trends must be put in context.
“Slurs can become socialized,” Mr. Allan of Facebook explained.
“Refugee” became a group protected from the broad hate speech rules only in 2015. “Nafri” was a term used by the German police that year to describe North Africans who sexually harassed hundreds of women, attacking and, in some cases, raping them. Since then, Nafri has become a popular insult among the far-right.
Nils and his colleagues must determine whether hateful content is singling out an ethnic group or individuals.
That was the challenge with a message on Twitter that was later posted to Facebook as a screenshot by Beatrix von Storch, deputy floor leader of the far-right party, AfD.
“What the hell is wrong with this country?” Ms. von Storch wrote on Dec. 31. “Why is an official police account tweeting in Arabic? Do you think that will appease the barbaric murdering Muslim group-raping gangs of men?” she continued.
A user reported the post as a violation of German law, and it landed in Nils’s queue. He initially decided to ignore the request because he felt Ms. von Storch was directing her insults at the men who had sexually assaulted women two years earlier.
Separately, a user reported the post as a violation of community standards. Another agent leaned toward deleting it, taking it as directed at Muslims in general.
They conferred with their “subject matter expert,” who escalated it to a team in Dublin.
For 24 hours, the post kept Facebook lawyers from Silicon Valley to Hamburg busy. The Dublin team decided that the post did not violate community standards but sent it on for legal assessment by outside lawyers hired by Facebook in Germany.
Within hours of news that the German police were opening a criminal investigation into Ms. von Storch over her comments, Facebook restricted access to the post. The user who reported the content was notified that it had been blocked for a violation of section 130 of the German criminal code, incitement to hatred. Ms. von Storch was also notified too.
In the first few days of the year, it looked like the platforms were erring on the side of censorship. On Jan. 2, a day after Ms. von Storch’s post was deleted, the satirical magazine Titanic quipped that she would be its new guest tweeter. Two of the magazine’s subsequent Twitter posts mocking her were deleted. When Titanic published them again, its account was temporarily suspended.
Since then, things have calmed down. And even Mr. Allan conceded: “The law has not materially changed the amount of content that is deleted.”
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On "60 Minutes" later today, The Power of Google, Steve Kroft reports on the power of Google, its critics who say the company has stifled competition, and an antitrust enforcer who is taking action.
Liberal media (CBS) won't take them on for their political bias, search results manipulation, but maybe they will expose the troubling privacy violation issues.
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https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/17/17344250/google-x-selfish-ledger-video-data-privacy
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https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/17/17344250/google-x-selfish-ledger-video-data-privacy
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Second post
==================
Hmmm , , ,
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/transhumanism-promise-immortality-glorified-body-ersatz-christian-hope/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202018-05-14&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives
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https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/17/17344250/google-x-selfish-ledger-video-data-privacy
Big Brother is Nudging you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choice_architecture
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https://donate.prageru.com/give/184491/#!/donation/checkout
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http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/05/23/demonitized-amazon-cuts-off-conservative-blog-legal-insurrection/
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https://pjmedia.com/trending/facebook-demands-drivers-license-social-security-number-for-anti-obama-book-ad/?utm_source=PJMCoffeeBreak&utm_medium=email&utm_term=May2018
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https://pjmedia.com/trending/facebook-demands-drivers-license-social-security-number-for-anti-obama-book-ad/?utm_source=PJMCoffeeBreak&utm_medium=email&utm_term=May2018
Facebook won't mis-use your private data. They are gathering it for re-sale purposes only.
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Not all EU member states have enacted national laws on data protection, and many will have difficulty shouldering the costs of doing so.
The second half of 2018 will provide early indicators of how much the European Union can influence large technology companies to address the privacy concerns of EU citizens.
Uncertainty regarding the severity of national enforcement could influence the regional development of technology, especially in terms of small and medium-sized enterprises.
The Big Picture
In preparation for Stratfor's upcoming 2018 Third-Quarter Forecast, we are releasing a series of supporting analyses, focusing on critical topics, regions and sectors. These assessments have been designed specifically to contextualize and augment the upcoming quarterly global forecast.
Data privacy and protection regulations have become increasingly critical elements of corporate strategy, especially as more sectors integrate artificial intelligence (AI). Just before the start of the third quarter of 2018, the European Union will begin enforcing sweeping modifications to its personal data privacy protections, giving the first indications regarding the enforcement of the policy across the Continent and how companies and member states will approach implementation.
See 2018 Annual Forecast
The Details of the GDPR
In an effort to allay the privacy concerns of EU citizens and make data privacy laws consistent across members' borders, the European Union began enforcing its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on May 25. For two years, companies worldwide have been preparing for the changes, which will be widespread and significantly impact their day-to-day operations.
The new regulations deepen data protection for European citizens in several ways. First, they expand the scope of the definition of personal data and provide avenues to enforce greater transparency at all stages of data collection and use. The regulations emphasize informed consent (through simple, understandable language) and grant more control to the individual, including the right to be forgotten and the right to access all collected data. The regulations also lay out strict data storage requirements and set a time limit (72 hours) for the issue of breach notifications. Finally, the GDPR includes language that makes the reuse of data by third parties difficult, while also stipulating severe fines for violations.
How Will Countries Implement the GDPR?
Though the GDPR standardizes data protection policies across the European Union, each individual member state must place its own language into national law, leaving the door open for countries to interpret and implement the regulations in different ways. This process is meant to streamline the regulation and legislation of data privacy, making the country in question the single authority on the matter within its borders. But in practice, this means countries across the European Union can all monitor and fine businesses in different ways.
The regulatory and financial limitations of EU member states will be the primary factors determining how each proceeds in implementing the GDPR. Several countries did not even pass national GDPR bills before May 25, and according to a Reuters survey, a majority of the participants don't believe they'll have the funding or power to enforce the legislation they do eventually establish.
A map of Europe's GDPR enforcement across various countries
Portuguese authorities have been vocal about their inability to afford the costs of enforcing the data privacy regulations, and authorities from France and the Netherlands have already indicated that they will be lenient in the initial months after the GDPR goes into effect. Traditionally, Berlin has had stricter data privacy protection legislation. Germany was among the first countries to implement national laws with regards to GDPR and will likely continue to be on the stricter end of the spectrum in terms of enforcement.
How Will Companies Handle the GDPR?
For businesses, simply bringing their security measures and customer interfaces up to the new standards of the GDPR will be an expensive task. Companies of all size are reportedly behind schedule on implementing the necessary changes, and starting in the third quarter, it will be important to keep an eye on how countries levy fines against companies based on size, region of operation and the location of their headquarters.
Smaller companies will face the biggest challenge, as they will have a larger per employee cost of implementation, though the record-processing requirements are somewhat relaxed for companies employing fewer than 250 people. For companies small enough that they operate in a single country, the European Union's country-by-country implementation strategy will have a massive impact. Nations with looser enforcement and more forgiving penalties will offer potential areas where smaller technology companies in Europe can still thrive.
Large, international companies, meanwhile, will be obliged to keep track of the different legislation throughout the European Union. But they will also have the money both to implement the new changes fairly easily and to fight any eventual fines in court.
The GDPR is likely to hit the middle tier of companies in the European technology sector the hardest. These businesses are large enough that they operate across multiple borders, but they don't have the financial heft to fight the legislation long term.
The GDPR's Impact on AI Development
The European Union recently released a road map plotting the future of artificial intelligence (AI) in the bloc. France is leading the charge, as well as promoting a start-up culture within the country itself. But an extensive study from the Center of Data Innovation indicates that the GDPR has the potential to delay or disrupt AI development in Europe. Data – corporate, personal and more – fuels AI, and the more the GDPR limits the sharing repurposing and reusing of data, the higher the cost will be for various AI applications.
The criteria that European countries develop to enforce data privacy will be a good indicator of whether the Continent prioritizes the GDPR or the somewhat incongruent goals of AI development. France, in particular, will be important to watch closely due to the stated goals of President Emmanuel Macron's government. The same goes for Germany, given that it has traditionally functioned as a strict enforcer of data privacy and protection.
Implications Beyond the European Union
How massive international tech companies handle the new regulations will indicate the degree to which the GDPR impacts the global market and the European Union's place within it. If companies such as Apple, Google and Facebook begin separating their European market from others by applying the privacy standards on the Continent alone, that would spell trouble for the European Union's ability to develop AI and keep pace with North American and Asian competitors. However, if these big corporations begin applying the privacy standards of the GDPR more broadly (Facebook already plans to offer EU safeguards to users globally), the European Union will be able to set the tone for future data privacy discussions and regulations on an international level.
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anyone else notice that when I try to view a story from Drudge or other online source that I often can not see it for the following message:
video is restricted - must log into Google accounts. ?
This is happening more and more lately
I resent this from one of the masters of the universe
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anyone else notice that when I try to view a story from Drudge or other online source that I often can not see it for the following message:
video is restricted - must log into Google accounts. ?
This is happening more and more lately
I resent this from one of the masters of the universe
What browser are you using?
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Smells of an anti-trust violation. You're not supposed to leverage a (quasi) monopoly in one market (e.g. search engine) for competitive advantage in a distinct market.
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Google Chrome
or Safari
I haven't thought if it different from one to another. I will try to figure that out.
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Google Chrome
or Safari
I haven't thought if it different from one to another. I will try to figure that out.
Brave.com
Try that.
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https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/03/technology/facebook-device-partners-users-friends-data.html?nl=top-stories&nlid=49641193ries&ref=cta
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/techs-titans-tiptoe-toward-monopoly-1527783845
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/techs-titans-tiptoe-toward-monopoly-1527783845
When I wrote I wasn't worried about Facebook, they will someday fall to competition, but I forgot our braindead government already allowed them to eat up all their competitors. Yes, there is something wrong with that.
From the article:
"Imagine a not-too-distant future in which trustbusters force Facebook to sell off Instagram and WhatsApp."
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Working from memory from my FTC days, using market dominance in one market to achieve advantage in another market is anti-competitive.
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second post
by Michael LaForgia and Gabriel J.X. Dance
June 5, 2018
Facebook has data-sharing partnerships with at least four Chinese electronics companies, including a manufacturing giant that has a close relationship with China’s government, the social media company said on Tuesday.
The agreements, which date to at least 2010, gave private access to some user data to Huawei, a telecommunications equipment company that has been flagged by American intelligence officials as a national security threat, as well as to Lenovo, Oppo and TCL.
The four partnerships remain in effect, but Facebook officials said in an interview that the company would wind down the Huawei deal by the end of the week.
Facebook gave access to the Chinese device makers along with other manufacturers — including Amazon, Apple, BlackBerry and Samsung — whose agreements were disclosed by The New York Times on Sunday.
The deals were part of an effort to push more mobile users onto the social network starting in 2007, before stand-alone Facebook apps worked well on phones. The agreements allowed device makers to offer some Facebook features, such as address books, “like” buttons and status updates.
Facebook officials said the agreements with the Chinese companies allowed them access similar to what was offered to BlackBerry, which could retrieve detailed information on both device users and all of their friends — including work and education history, relationship status and likes.
Huawei used its private access to feed a “social phone” app that let users view messages and social media accounts in one place, according to the officials.
Facebook representatives said the data shared with Huawei stayed on its phones, not the company’s servers.
Senator John Thune, the South Dakota Republican who leads the Commerce Committee, has demanded that Facebook provide Congress with details about its data partnerships. “Facebook is learning hard lessons that meaningful transparency is a high standard to meet,” Mr. Thune said.
His committee also oversees the Federal Trade Commission, which is investigating Facebook to determine whether the company’s data policies violate a 2011 consent decree with the commission.
Senator Mark Warner of Virginia pointed out that concerns about Huawei were not new, citing a 2012 congressional report on the “close relationships between the Chinese Communist Party and equipment makers like Huawei.”
“I look forward to learning more about how Facebook ensured that information about their users was not sent to Chinese servers,” said Mr. Warner, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee.
“All Facebook’s integrations with Huawei, Lenovo, Oppo and TCL were controlled from the get-go — and Facebook approved everything that was built,” said Francisco Varela, a Facebook vice president. “Given the interest from Congress, we wanted to make clear that all the information from these integrations with Huawei was stored on the device, not on Huawei’s servers.”
Banned in China since 2009, Facebook in recent years has quietly sought to re-establish itself there. The company’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has tried to cultivate a relationship with China’s president, Xi Jinping, and put in an appearance at one of the country’s top universities.
Last year, Facebook released a photo-sharing app in China that was a near replica of its Moments app, but did not put its name on it. And the company has worked on a tool that allowed targeted censorship, prompting some employees to quit over the project.
Still, Facebook has struggled to gain momentum, and in January an executive in charge of courting China’s government left after spending three years on a charm campaign to get the social media service back in the country.
None of the Chinese device makers who have partnerships with Facebook responded to requests for comment on Tuesday.
Huawei, one of the largest smartphone manufacturers in the world, is a point of national pride for China and is at the vanguard of the country’s efforts to expand its influence abroad. The company was the recipient of billions of dollars in lines of credit from China’s state-owned policy banks, helping to fuel its overseas expansion in Africa, Europe and Latin America. Its founder, Ren Zhengfei, is a former engineer in the People’s Liberation Army.
The United States government has long regarded the company with suspicion, and lawmakers have recommended that American carriers avoid buying the network gear it makes. In January, AT&T walked away from a deal to sell a new Huawei smartphone, the Mate 10.
United States officials are investigating whether Huawei broke American trade controls by dealing with Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria. The Trump administration has taken aim at Huawei and its rival ZTE in recent weeks, and in April the Federal Communications Commission advanced a plan to bar federally subsidized telecom companies from using suppliers that are considered national security threats.
Facebook has not entered into a data-sharing agreement with ZTE, officials at the social network said.
TCL, a consumer electronics firm, has accused the Trump administration of bias against Chinese companies and last June dropped a bid to buy a San Diego-based company that makes routers and other hardware.
Lenovo, a maker of computers and other devices, recently shelved ambitions to acquire BlackBerry after the Canadian government signaled that such a deal could compromise national security.
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Working from memory from my FTC days, using market dominance in one market to achieve advantage in another market is anti-competitive.
Yes, and it is a subjective, unevenly applied area of law. Insert the word unfair in the above and what you describe very likely can be.
News article 2012:
https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/04/09/facebook-buys-instagram-for-1-billion/?mtrref=www.google.com&gwh=438B1C8F85FF12B13DDCF23828F172AF&gwt=pay
Who was President then? This was approved WHY? No one could see in 2012 that there might be a future monopolistic problem with Facebook? Entering other markets is one thing but being allowed to eat up your competitors and potential competitors is the most anti-competitive business practice of all.
What about google then? Dominant in search engines, should not have been allowed to enter email or develop an operating system for smartphones, buy and build cell phones, compete with Skype. Oops, Microsoft bought SKype in 2011: https://www.wired.com/2011/05/microsoft-buys-skype-2/
MICROSOFT BUYS SKYPE FOR $8.5 BILLION.
Which administration let THAT happen? The party of government, make that crony government. The party who thinks there is a role for government to regulate runaway capitalism was AWOL when it came to regulating their elitist buddies of massive powers. And people wonder why Silicon Valley is Democrat?
----------------------
Back a few decades, it was widely rumored that Pitney Bowes propped up its competitors to avoid achieving 100% market share and being broken up in in the permanent and forever essential business of postage meters. Times change. Now we have young adults who have never mailed a letter.
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Back when I worked in the Anti-Trust division of the FTC (second summer law school) my primary case concerned the FTC looking to UNDO a merger-- i.e. to compel divestiture-- a really stupid idea in this case, asserting anti-competitive effects having to do with dominance in car batteries and windshield wipers if I remember correctly.
The relevant precedent (working from memory here) was a SCOTUS decision in a case in which Dupont had bought a paint company and the government sought to impose divestiture. A key question presented was whether the passage (DECADES in this case!!!) of a lot of time estopped the government from seeking divestiture. The answer was that it did not because "laches does not run against the government" with the government's right to seek divestiture being based upon Section 7 of the Clayton Act.
Assuming this remains valid case law, the fact that the mergers/acquisitions in question went through does not block the government from subsequently insisting upon divestiture.
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Back when I worked in the Anti-Trust division of the FTC (second summer law school) my primary case concerned the FTC looking to UNDO a merger-- i.e. to compel divestiture-- a really stupid idea in this case, asserting anti-competitive effects having to do with dominance in car batteries and windshield wipers if I remember correctly.
The relevant precedent (working from memory here) was a SCOTUS decision in a case in which Dupont had bought a paint company and the government sought to impose divestiture. A key question presented was whether the passage (DECADES in this case!!!) of a lot of time estopped the government from seeking divestiture. The answer was that it did not because "laches does not run against the government" with the government's right to seek divestiture being based upon Section 7 of the Clayton Act.
Assuming this remains valid case law, the fact that the mergers/acquisitions in question went through does not block the government from subsequently insisting upon divestiture.
Very interesting. I'm not sure if breaking up FB with Instagram in this case would have any real effect on the FB monopoly, but the business practice of eating up your potential competitors is anti-competitive by definition. I can see a proper role for government here, with plenty of danger of going too far or making things worse.
In my tech background circles, people made hundreds of millions investing in start-up networking technology companies that got bought up by the giants, Cisco in one case, to not have the new technology brought to market.
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"Back when I worked in the Anti-Trust division of the FTC "
A cousin of mine who would be about your age worked for the FTC as an attorney I think in the early 90's was based I think in Miami.
Would you have known someone in Miami?
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Summer of 1980 IIRC in Washington DC for me.
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http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2018/06/09/brownells-youtube-terminated/
http://www.recoilweb.com/brownells-youtube-channel-terminated-138180.html
https://www.dailywire.com/news/31698/youtube-shuts-down-firearms-parts-dealers-channel-james-barrett
http://www.breachbangclear.com/google-shuts-down-brownells-video-channel/
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/20...publicity-youtube-restores-brownells-channel/
https://www.ammoland.com/2018/06/yo...minate-brownells-video-account/#axzz5IVtoaJKE
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/s...mporarily-blocks-gun-video-channel/690347002/
https://www.dailywire.com/news/31698/youtube-shuts-down-firearms-parts-dealers-channel-james-barrett
https://www.facebook.com/BrownellsI....128761.48772207991/10155675556837992/?type=3
https://www.facebook.com/BrownellsI...3741844.48772207991/10155678459977992/?type=3
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/tech-companies-antitrust-regulation-not-best-way-to-foster-competition/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202018-06-11&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives
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https://pjmedia.com/trending/eric-holders-law-firm-launches-investigation-into-facebooks-anti-conservative-bias/
Ok Holder maybe not involved but who could trust this.
And Holder will not leak any findings or influence is some way?
He is one of the most political lawyers in the country
ONly Repubs could be so stupid ..........
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Hat tip GM
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/08/vdh-for-elizabeth-heng.php
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Second post
https://mailchi.mp/prageru/ji95s4o01m-449289?e=24192a6e80
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http://www.thediplomad.com/2018/08/conspiracies.html
Wednesday, August 8, 2018
Conspiracies!
I don't think I have ever read anything written by Alex Jones or listened to any of his broadcasts/podcasts. One of my sons finds him entertaining, and has on occasion told me about some one or another of Jones's "conspiracy" theories, e.g., the Sandy Hook shooting being a hoax--I ain't buying it. So, if Jones quietly had disappeared from our public discourse, I would have been among the last to realize it. But, of course, he has not just quietly disappeared. He has been "disappeared" by the combined might of Apple, Google, Twitter, YouTube, etc. Why? Well, it seems these massive American corporations, each of them with a net worth more than that of most nations' GDP, "suddenly" decided that Jones was spewing hate and unfounded conspiracy, so we, the world's public, had to be protected from that. What rubbish. What toxic rubbish.
The Jones ban forms part of a well-coordinated progressive assault on "unpopular" speech, in other words, one the first amendment of or Constitution. The ACLU, once the sterling knight who rode to the defense of the First Amendment, is rather muted about it all, only making a tepid remark. A conspiracy?
We hear progs throwing back in conservative faces the line, "Well, they are private companies, so . . . " Yes, they are indeed private companies . . . I wonder if that prog pro-property argument would hold if these tech giants also owned bakeries and refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding? Or refused to allow Muslims, blacks or hispanics access to their platforms? You know the answer.
I think we need some clever conservative lawyers to revisit the whole public accommodation argument that's been used to open up hotels, restaurants, etc., and expand the definition of a "public accommodation." I wonder if the progs would support that expansion of government power at the expense of the private sector?
Speaking of hateful conspiracies, the single most active one is the whole Russia Collusion narrative. Maybe it's time to shut down anybody pushing that factless nonsense? CNN, you're off the air!
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/opinion/the-expensive-education-of-mark-zuckerberg-and-silicon-valley.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion&action=click&contentCollection=opinion®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront
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"Here’s how I see it: Facebook, as well as Twitter and Google’s YouTube, have become the digital arms dealers of the modern age."
you mean when Obama used FB data to game the 2012 election ?
only now it needs to be front and center to delegitimize Trump.
"They have weaponized social media. They have weaponized the First Amendment. They have weaponized civic discourse. And they have weaponized, most of all, politics."
weaponize the first amendment? you mean like the MSM does every day?
"I certainly did not see it coming, either, when I first met him, in the fall of 2005, although in hindsight the signs that he would get it really wrong were right there in front of me."
We on the Forum have been pointing this out for many years but since Z is a lib you didn't care.
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http://www.speroforum.com/a/ZKBQYSMIBE52/83824-YouTube-uses-WikiPedia-factchecks-to-overrule-climate-change-skeptics?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=HKFTYZDGVG4&utm_content=ZKBQYSMIBE52&utm_source=news&utm_term=YouTube+uses+WikiPedia+factchecks+to+overrule+climate+change+skeptics#.W2234nrcB2A
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“Wikipedia can be edited by anyone at any moment.”
Yes and so who is going to factcheck Wikipedia?
I thought we were heading into the Golden Age of information .
Instead there is more and more propaganda and it is hard to discern who is telling the truth. And those claiming to tell the truth
are like cons telling you they are honest.
Saying one is honest doesn't make em so.
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https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/08/conservative-journalists-receive-warning-from-twitter-after-publishing-damning-articles-on-feinstein-and-crooked-hillary/
Note well the reference to the possible use of bots to trigger the review. This may well be the coming tactic , , ,
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"Apparently this triggered the left-wing attack machine, possibly with the help of bots to mass report his tweet."
I just looked up wikipedia for "bots" and this could refer to endless types with all different goals from getting into a computer to spying to altering ones data and many more functions.
Is there any oversight of this?
Who is monitoring and does ANYone know what exactly these bots are doing?
I suppose we are at the mercy of the companies.
With a known left winger at the helm we cannot trust this.
More from wikipedia:
"Detecting non-human Twitter users has been of interest to academics.[7][30] Indiana University has developed a free service called Botometer[31] (formerly BotOrNot), which scores Twitter handles based on their likelihood of being a Twitterbot.[32][33][34] One significant academic study estimated that up to 15% of Twitter users were automated bot accounts.[35][36] The prevalence of Twitter bots coupled with the ability of some bots to give seemingly human responses has enabled these non-human accounts to garner widespread influence.[37][38][39][40]
Political[edit]
A subset of Twitter bots programmed to complete social tasks played an important role in the United States 2016 Presidential Election.[41] Researchers estimated that pro-Trump bots generated four tweets for every pro-Clinton automated account and out-tweeted pro-Clinton bots 7:1 on relevant hashtags during the final debate. Deceiving Twitter bots fooled candidates and campaign staffers into retweeting misappropriated quotes and accounts affiliated with incendiary ideals.[42][43][44] Concerns about political Twitter bots include the promulgation of malicious content, increased polarization, and the spreading of fake news.[45][46] In the last few months of the 2016 election, Twitter bots operated by Russian agents retweeted Trump an estimated half a million times.[47]"
Ok so some academics are looking at this. Of course since they are 90 % libs I am discouraged again as to the objectiveness of the above - notice it is all about the Russian thing.
I will try to search more when I have time to find out more about bots .
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https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/11/technology/youtube-fake-view-sellers.html
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https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/ap-report-google-knows-where-you-are-even-if-you-disable-tracking/
VODKAPUNDIT
AP Report: Google Knows Where You Are, Even If You Disable Tracking
BY STEPHEN GREEN AUGUST 13, 2018
Private detective capturing a photo suspiciously from around a corner while using a retro camera
Don't be evil or whatevs.
In an exclusive report this morning, the AP says, "Google tracks your movements, like it or not." Their investigation found that "many Google services on Android devices and iPhones store your location data even if you’ve used privacy settings that say they will prevent it from doing so," and their findings were confirmed by computer-science researchers at Princeton.
According to the story, Google claims smartphone users can "pause" location tracking, or even "turn off Location History at any time," which promises that "the places you go are no longer stored."
AP says quite boldly "that isn't true," because even with Location History paused, "some Google apps automatically store time-stamped location data without asking." And of course all that data goes back to the Mothership in Menlo Park, CA. From there, your data goes... well, I suppose to goes to wherever Google chooses to send it -- your metadata is their data, bub.
None of which should surprise you in the least.
Google and Apple got into a tiff a while back, when Apple allowed iPhone and iPad owners to disable web tracking, but then Google started inserting browser code to do so anyway without the user's permission -- or knowledge.
Privacy should matter to you, even if you aren't planning on murdering anyone in Raleigh.
Let me explain, as briefly as I can.
Remember when we still went to the mall to shop? Picture yourself on a Saturday trip to the local mall -- one of the half-day trips where you start at the big anchor store on one end of the mall and slowly work your way down to the other anchor store on the other end.
While you're there you run into a helpful fellow named Java Script. It's a weird name and he's a weird guy. And when I say he's helpful, I don't mean he's helpful to you -- he's there at the behest of every store in the mall.
And what Java does is follow you around, and loudly announce to every employee what you look at, what you put in your shopping bag, what you put back, what you buy, how much you spent, and how long you spent on each activity. Sometimes he gets in your way to bother you with information about other stores at the mall, and what they're selling, and for how much. And you can't get rid of the guy. He shouts out everything you do, and stays so on top of you that a two-hour trip takes closer to three.
Maybe he waits outside the bathroom when you stop to pee -- maybe. If Mr. Script is working for Google, he probably follows you in there, too. Taking notes.
I told you he was weird.
Probably you haven't bought anything less innocuous than a couple of sport shirts, lunch at the food court, and a gift card for someone's birthday. But Java has been on your heels the whole time, telling everyone exactly what you're up to. Just how long did you linger in front of Victoria's Secret, anyway? All Vicky has to do is ask Java Script.
Actually she doesn't even need to ask.
Eventually, if you're a red-blooded American, you're going to want to punch him in the mouth.
You would never go shopping anywhere that had Mr. Java Script badgering you, yet that's exactly what shopping on the web is like. That's exactly what doing much of anything on the web is like: Constantly followed, tracked, your most personal information shared with every impersonal corporation. And with the government, too.
Everybody does it, but Google probably does it more, it certainly does it the most effectively, and as the AP reported today, Google doesn't give a damn about your feeble little efforts to enable privacy features.
Your phone is the ultimate spy because it's on your person almost all of the time, and it has GPS tracking built in. If you're an iPhone user, you don't have to install any Google apps. If you're an Android owner, the Google spyware is baked in.
About two years ago I swore off of all Google products. No Google or Google-owned apps on my phone, and no Google search or services like Gmail on my computers. Giving up Waze, the navigation app, was really hard -- like a lot of Google's products and services, it's the best in its class. But Google gave up on the whole "Don't be evil" thing before they even started, and it's also abundantly clear that the company's culture despises people who think like I do, and probably nearly every reader of PJMedia, too. So I'm happy to return the favor.
You should, too.
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So what do I do to keep my Iphone from spying on me?
PS: Didn't GM start a thread about this sort of thing?
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So what do I do to keep my Iphone from spying on me?
PS: Didn't GM start a thread about this sort of thing?
I sure did!
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Feel free to remind us of its name :-D
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break the A - F - G stranglehold on the world's information ?
https://www.westernjournal.com/facebook-challenger-something-zuckerberg-offer-freedom/
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VERY intriguing!
What happens next with this? What to look for? How to take advantage of it/support it?
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I don' t totally understand it but it seems like its growth is through referral and "token" rewards
intriguing (too good to be true) but it would sure be nice to break the "bare naked choke hold" the titans have on everyone in the world. I am sick of them already .
I resent them and they cannot be trusted with such power. No one really can:
https://www.minds.com/
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Feel free to remind us of its name :-D
G M's guide to online privacy !
:-D
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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/08/16/google-staff-demand-transparency-censored-search-engine-plans/
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Opinion Commentary
A Better Way to Regulate Social Media
A multistakeholder ‘content congress’ could take account of everyone’s concerns.
By Danielle Tomson and
David Morar
Aug. 19, 2018 3:45 p.m. ET
You don’t have to be a fan of conspiracy theories to worry about the precedent Apple , YouTube and Facebook set by banning Alex Jones and Infowars.com. Mr. Jones complained that it was like “something out of ‘1984,’ ” as he does not know how to rebut Facebook’s decision. The company does not divulge how it makes these decisions, for fear that users would deliberately push boundaries.
Mr. Jones isn’t alone in being concerned with the seemingly authoritarian power of tech giants to decide what gets removed in an opaque content-moderation process. As de facto arbiters of speech and access to audiences, companies with such consolidated publishing power have unique responsibilities to be transparent with the public.
Instead of making decisions in private isolation, companies would do better by engaging one another and their users to shape content-moderation policies in a more transparent and consistent way. We propose a deliberative body, a “content congress,” where stakeholders—including companies, civil-society groups and even constituencies of end-users—could hash out best practices, air grievances, and offer rebuttals.
How would it work? Multistakeholder initiatives take varied forms, and we aren’t advocating for a specific one. We offer multistakeholderism because simple calls for government regulation or self-regulation are not enough—the public wants input. Such a body should not be a legally binding authority but an arena for transparent coordination, public representation and human engagement in an industry dominated by algorithms and machines. Companies want feedback; government wants more insight into decision-making; and people want to be heard.
The content congress should have issue-based working groups, which would proactively or reactively address complicated use cases. For instance, how do you address videos depicting unjust violence or death? Facebook faced backlash for censoring videos of police brutality that resulted in on-camera death posted by social-justice groups. How do you curb pornography, without censoring images of female breasts in instances of breastfeeding or health advocacy?
And what should the protocol be when social media stars inspire violent trolls among their followings? A content congress could facilitate a transparent process in handling Mr. Jones, whose fans harassed parents of Sandy Hook victims, or Milo Yiannopoulos, whose followers hacked actress Leslie Jones’s website and harassed her until she left Twitter . Given the public nature of a content congress, Messrs. Jones and Yiannpoulos would probably have a say too.
For private companies to be part of such a loose organization might sound strange, but there is a precedent. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a nonprofit governance body, maintains the functions of the Domain Name System through multistakeholder decision-making. Early Internet advocates rejected direct government control and sought a more open and inclusive way to make policy; Icann, with its sometimes-slow or complex decision-making, was the answer. Stakeholders include businesses, nonprofits, activists and governments.
Another example is the Global Network Initiative, an international nonprofit dedicated to internet freedom and privacy rights. Drawing from the expertise of stakeholders ranging from the Harvard Berkman-Klein Center to the Committee to Protect Journalists, it helps companies like Facebook and Vodafone resist government requests to surveil or censor users and their communications.
Beyond tech, there are similar examples in the finance industry’s coordination to fix systemic issues and avoid disaster. Algorithmically enhanced trading once posed a threat to healthy financial markets in creating volatile high-frequency trading. Proactive self-regulation through the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority brought together industry stakeholders to come up with solutions, staving off disaster and more government regulation.
Multistakeholder initiatives can be complex or slow, but they are preferable to the current slew of black-box content-moderation practices, or to heavy-handed government regulation. Many communities online—left, right and center—have experienced the arbitrary decision-making of powerful content platforms. These frustrated communities are starting to call their representatives to demand government action.
Companies would do well to be proactive by engaging each other and stakeholders in solution-making before government or courts step in. Recently, key industry players have expressed willingness to collectively discuss their content moderation practices in a more open forum. This participation is a signal of goodwill and an opportunity to create a sustainable, innovative multistakeholder body within the industry.
Ms. Tomson is director of the Personal Democracy Forum. Mr. Morar recently received his doctorate from George Mason University’s Schar School.
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http://ace.mu.nu/archives/376849.php
August 31, 2018
Lee Smith: FaceBook, Google, and Twitter are Not Platforms But Publishers and Should, Therefore, Not Have the Special Protections for Neutral Platforms in the Communications Decency Act
His article was recently flagged by FaceBook as "spam," as so many articles written by conservative-leaning journalists are these days.
And he has some thoughts.
View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter
Lee Smith
@LeeSmithDC
Can you see it @ragipsoylu ?
11:51 AM - Aug 31, 2018
33
39 people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy
Lee Smith
@LeeSmithDC
I'll say something about social media & publishing. I don't believe FB or Twitter or any platform is obliged to let me post. But if they're making editorial decisions, then they should not enjoy exemptions of CDA Section 230 but rather face same liabilties as publishers 1/
Lee Smith
@LeeSmithDC
Can you see it @ragipsoylu ?
View image on Twitter
12:07 PM - Aug 31, 2018
271
165 people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy
Lee Smith
@LeeSmithDC
Right now they are disguising their roles as publishers by employing euphemisms like "community standards," rather than being forced to acknowledge they are in fact making editorial decisions. 2/
Lee Smith
@LeeSmithDC
I'll say something about social media & publishing. I don't believe FB or Twitter or any platform is obliged to let me post. But if they're making editorial decisions, then they should not enjoy exemptions of CDA Section 230 but rather face same liabilties as publishers 1/ https://twitter.com/LeeSmithDC/status/1035601032146046976 …
12:09 PM - Aug 31, 2018
159
111 people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy
Lee Smith
@LeeSmithDC
They are immensely powerful publishers—with FN worth roughly 100x more than @nytimes, and swallowed up digital ads that were supposed to keep legacy media whole. Result is prestige media brands, like NYT etc, are nothing more than blogs published on FB etc. 3/
Lee Smith
@LeeSmithDC
Right now they are disguising their roles as publishers by employing euphemisms like "community standards," rather than being forced to acknowledge they are in fact making editorial decisions. 2/ https://twitter.com/LeeSmithDC/status/1035604888582012929 …
12:12 PM - Aug 31, 2018
81
47 people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy
By "FN" he meant "FB," or FaceBook, of course.
Lee Smith
@LeeSmithDC
Financial collapse of press led to its ethical & professional collapse as well. Two generations of media experience & expertise wiped out since rise of internet is a major reason why media is so reckless now—not enough people to say, eg., "Hey kids, Russiagate is a hoax." 4/
Lee Smith
@LeeSmithDC
They are immensely powerful publishers—with FN worth roughly 100x more than @nytimes, and swallowed up digital ads that were supposed to keep legacy media whole. Result is prestige media brands, like NYT etc, are nothing more than blogs published on FB etc. 3/ https://twitter.com/LeeSmithDC/status/1035605575059628033 …
12:16 PM - Aug 31, 2018
59
41 people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy
Lee Smith
@LeeSmithDC
This is why it's bizarre to see journalists of all people defend 'deplatforming' when it is only by making social media platforms accountable like all other publishers that there is any chance at all to protect a vital American institution—our free press. 5/
Lee Smith
@LeeSmithDC
Financial collapse of press led to its ethical & professional collapse as well. Two generations of media experience & expertise wiped out since rise of internet is a major reason why media is so reckless now—not enough people to say, eg., "Hey kids, Russiagate is a hoax." 4/ https://twitter.com/LeeSmithDC/status/1035606261541298177 …
12:20 PM - Aug 31, 2018
32
25 people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy
Lee Smith
@LeeSmithDC
That journalists are not "resisting" dangers of social media exemptions & demanding laws written during days of dialup connex but are rather vying to become courtiers in tech oligarch's retinues is evidence of profound cynicsm. That's partly where Russiagate hoax comes from END
Lee Smith
@LeeSmithDC
This is why it's bizarre to see journalists of all people defend 'deplatforming' when it is only by making social media platforms accountable like all other publishers that there is any chance at all to protect a vital American institution—our free press. 5/ https://twitter.com/LeeSmithDC/status/1035607396863959040 …
12:25 PM - Aug 31, 2018
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19 people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy
Meanwhile, someone posted a clearly threatening meme on Twitter -- a picture of someone pointing a gun at a grieving Meghan McCain, with the caption "This one's for you" -- and it took more than a day of lobbying by her husband to convince Twitter to overrule its leftwing SJW low-level Censorship Squads and categorize it correctly as threatening.
View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter
MediaResearchCenter
✔
@theMRC
Users Blast Twitter For Not Addressing Photoshopped Image of a Gun Aimed at Meghan McCain http://ow.ly/hdvd101evP2
8:15 AM - Aug 31, 2018
26
40 people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy
That also just happened with Dana Loesch, of course.
Given that Twitter and FaceBook have a hair-trigger response to anything said by someone on the right, but permit leftwingers to threaten to kill people and their children as well, how can these billion dollar corporations claim that they are neutral platforms rather than biased publishers picking and choosing what appears on their media sites?
And how can they claim to the protections of s. 230 of the Communications Decency Act which only provides safe harbor for disinterested platforms, not interested-and-opinionated publishers?
Dana Loesch and Meghan McCain should have the right to sue Twitter for being a willing, knowing facilitator of threats and intentional emotional distress. They are choosing to allow threats against conservatives because they like such threats.
Therefore, they should not have the immunity a neutral platform does.
Don't expect any help from this from the Corporate Republican Political Class, however, as almost all of them are bought off and have already decided to sell your ass down the river to keep the Big Tech "lobbying" (bribe) money coming.
Meanwhile, the Corporate Owned NeverTrump, Inc. faction wonders why people actually support Trump:
View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter
Fox News
✔
@FoxNews
.@POTUS: "We will not let large corporations silence conservative voices."
6:29 PM - Aug 30, 2018
1,862
812 people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy
Trump: Google, FaceBook, and Amazon in a "very antitrust situation."
President Donald Trump warned Google, Facebook, and Amazon that they are in a "very antitrust situation" in an interview Thursday, stopping short of saying he'd break them up.
...
Trump added that "conservatives have been treated very unfairly" by Google, which is owned by Alphabet. "I tell you there are some moments where we say, 'Wow that really is bad, what they’re doing.'"
The president has been stepping up his attacks on tech giants like Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Twitter the past few weeks for their censorship of conservatives, saying Aug. 20 that it's "very dangerous".
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WSJ weekend interview is George Gilder:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/sage-against-the-machine-1535747443
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Tucker Carlson tonight was a special episode dedicated to the Goolag.
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/social-media-companies-made-mistakes-censorship-wont-fix/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Saturday%202018-08-25&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives
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https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/2018/08/30/google-and-mastercard-cut-a-secret-ad-deal-to-track-retail-sales#gs.geGQ0vM
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=f9_o42QaVnA
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second post
http://thehill.com/policy/technology/405177-justice-to-convene-meeting-on-whether-social-media-companies-are?userid=188403
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Big Tech in the Dock
The companies are tempting government intervention.
128 Comments
By The Editorial Board
Sept. 5, 2018 7:44 p.m. ET
Twitter and Facebook executives were grilled on Capitol Hill Wednesday, amid the growing debate over political bias in social media and search. The tech giants say they don’t intentionally suppress conservatives, and perhaps that’s true. But their nonchalance risks alienating users—and government intervention.
Complaints about anti-conservative bias by tech platforms have been growing for some time. While the evidence is mostly anecdotal, the seemingly synchronized and vaguely justified decisions by Apple , Facebook and Google to ban right-wing fabulist Alex Jones’s Infowars in August for “hate speech” raised more doubts about their purported neutrality.
President Trump belly-flopped in as usual on Twitter. “They have it RIGGED,” he tweeted last week. “Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!” Mr. Trump warned later at the White House that tech companies are “treading on very, very troubling territory” and had “better be careful.”
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow then said the Administration will investigate the tech giants, and on Wednesday The Journal reported the Justice Department will examine whether the social-media giants are “intentionally stifling” certain viewpoints.
***
Consider conservative radio host Dennis Prager, whose “PragerU” educational videos on topics such as “Did Bush Lie About Iraq?” and “Is America Racist?” have been restricted by Google’s YouTube unit. None of the 50 or so censored videos included violent, sexually explicit or hateful content that violated Google’s Community Guidelines.
YouTube’s algorithms and “community” of users can flag videos as objectionable, but Google guidelines require an internal review team to remove them. So Google employees ostensibly had to have agreed. PragerU has sued Google and claims in its lawsuit that YouTube “declined to provide any explanation for why the videos were restricted or demonetized because they purportedly ‘can’t share more details about our review process, as doing so could benefit channels that do not play by the rules (those who game the system).’”
Conservative Doug Wead recently complained on The Federalist website that Google barred him from buying an ad to promote a Fox Business interview. He says a Google employee told him the crawler along the bottom of the video, which quoted Mr. Trump calling the Mueller investigation a “witch hunt,” was hate speech.
Google has a serious problem if its employees can’t distinguish news and opinion from hate speech. Infowars may have deserved to be banned, but the ill-defined justifications offered by the tech companies have unsettled even many conservatives who disdain Mr. Jones but worry that they could be next. This has allowed Mr. Jones to pose as a free-speech martyr, which he isn’t.
Some conservatives also say their content is being discriminated against in Google News and search. Google says its algorithms aren’t politically biased and incorporate dozens of variables, some of which are based on location and may change by the hour. Thus it would be difficult to prove its algorithms discriminate since each user’s experience is unique.
Most discrimination is also likely to be incidental—for instance, favoring sites with the most clicks and links, which may be liberal outlets that don’t charge for content. But this underscores the bigger problem, which is that social media and search platforms wield significant influence over public debate, yet their editorial judgments are opaque and often arbitrary.
Google controls 90% of all search. When accused of bias, it hides behind automated and non-transparent algorithms. Look, Ma, no hands! All the while its employees exercise significant control over what users see and don’t see. According to the PragerU lawsuit, human reviewers appear to enjoy carte blanche to block flagged content.
Facebook and Google also control 60% of digital ad revenues, and both have used their market dominance to undercut competitors. Facebook has blocked publishers from promoting their content on its news stream by tagging the ads as political.
***
In 2012 Federal Trade Commission staff issued a report recommending a lawsuit against Google for anti-competitive conduct. The commission led by Obama appointee Jon Leibowitz voted against a lawsuit, but Google’s competitors have continued to grouse about predatory practices.
Meantime, fury on the political left and right is converging and amplifying demands for government action. Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley last year launched an investigation into Google’s business practices, and other states may follow. Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia has proposed stripping platforms of some of their legal protection for user-generated content under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Senator Ted Cruz has said the predicate for Section 230 immunity is “you’re a neutral public forum.”
The Trump FTC has said it will reopen the agency’s probe of Big Tech. The commission could hamstring the monopolists with regulation—perhaps appointing government monitors to oversee content reviews—and watch out if Elizabeth Warren is elected President.
Then there’s the private litigation threat. PragerU’s charge that Google violated its free-speech rights is unlikely to prevail in court because Google isn’t the government and can choose to exclude certain content under the law. But claims that Google engaged in unfair business practices by violating its own terms and conditions are stronger.
Count us among the skeptics that government has an answer to this, and we don’t need an Internet version of the Fairness Doctrine (1949-1987). But history shows that Americans will eventually ask politicians to rein in businesses that appear to be unaccountable. The lords of Big Tech will pay a price if they create the perception that they are the censorship arm of the political left.
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Google 90% donate to crats
https://www.spartareport.com/2018/09/shock-overwhelming-majority-of-google-employees-donate-to-democrats/
ethnic make up :
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/37-percent-of-silicon-valley-foreign-born
foreigners in Silicon Vallery:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/311810/google-employee-ethnicity-us/
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https://www.conservativebookclub.com/book/life-after-google-blockchain-economy
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https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/09/twitter-suspends-benghazi-hero-after-criticism-of-president-obama/
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The brazenness of it staggers the mind , , ,
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The brazenness of it staggers the mind , , ,
Well, to be fair, Twitter also banned Louis Farrakhan and HAMAS.
Just kidding, of course they didn’t. Both have active accounts.
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http://www.theamericanmirror.com/twitter-blocks-posts-that-use-phrase-illegal-alien-as-hateful-content/
1984 wasn't supposed to be a guidebook.
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" Control the language and control thought
« Reply #153 on: Today at 02:54:56 PM »
Reply with quote
http://www.theamericanmirror.com/twitter-blocks-posts-that-use-phrase-illegal-alien-as-hateful-content/"
Well yeah . They don't want to piss off 1/2 their work force.
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China's social and businees credit system
Discussed on John Batchlor show last night (though I cannot find a link) China will soon implement over 600 million cameras that will record the behavior of its people inside its' borders
If you go to communist party meeting your credit score goes up. If you go to church it goes down - among many other things.
One can not help see similar trends here with political correctness. With lefties vying to be more PC then the next. IF your PC is low you need to be harrassed up the wazoo till you confrom.
Same thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System
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We already know this but this makes the solid case for it:
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-google-leaderships-dismayed-reaction-to-trump-election/
NOW COMBINE THIS WITH THE SOCIAL CREDIT SYSTEM IN CHINA AND WE SEE WHERE ALL THIS IS HEADING IN THE UNITED STATES
WE NEED TO MAKE GOOGLE FB AND AMAXON INTO UTILITIES. OR ELSE
in my humble o
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We already know this but this makes the solid case for it:
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-google-leaderships-dismayed-reaction-to-trump-election/
NOW COMBINE THIS WITH THE SOCIAL CREDIT SYSTEM IN CHINA AND WE SEE WHERE ALL THIS IS HEADING IN THE UNITED STATES
WE NEED TO MAKE GOOGLE FB AND AMAXON INTO UTILITIES. OR ELSE
in my humble o
We need to make them obsolete not legislate their permanence.
Getting the web addresses for the Republican Challengers to Tina Smith and Tammy Baldwin out of Google my previous post elsewhere was like pulling teeth. Anyone who thinks their web searches are not biased has never tried to look up conservative side information. There has to be a better way!
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We already know this but this makes the solid case for it:
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-google-leaderships-dismayed-reaction-to-trump-election/
NOW COMBINE THIS WITH THE SOCIAL CREDIT SYSTEM IN CHINA AND WE SEE WHERE ALL THIS IS HEADING IN THE UNITED STATES
WE NEED TO MAKE GOOGLE FB AND AMAXON INTO UTILITIES. OR ELSE
in my humble o
We need to make them obsolete not legislate their permanence.
Getting the web addresses for the Republican Challengers to Tina Smith and Tammy Baldwin out of Google my previous post elsewhere was like pulling teeth. Anyone who thinks their web searches are not biased has never tried to look up conservative side information. There has to be a better way!
I can tell you that they really disappear/memory hole unpleasant information for the left.
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Somehow, neither the man who sent me this (very tech savvy) nor I can post this on FB: https://foia.state.gov/searchapp/DOCUMENTS/HRCEmail_NovWeb/280/DOC_0C05793123/C05793123.pdf
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Somehow, neither the man who sent me this (very tech savvy) nor I can post this on FB: https://foia.state.gov/searchapp/DOCUMENTS/HRCEmail_NovWeb/280/DOC_0C05793123/C05793123.pdf
You have been able to post other pdf files on Facehugger?
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Ah, maybe that's it.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/01/technology/china-google-censored-search-engine.html
Despicable.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/01/technology/china-google-censored-search-engine.html
Despicable.
Oh, it's just practice for censoring information here.
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How I Was Rejected by Facebook - and Won
by Phyllis Chesler
Arutz Sheva: Israel National News
September 13, 2018
https://www.meforum.org/articles/2018/how-i-was-rejected-by-facebook-and-won
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Funny I was just thinking that we need another internet that is truly free and unbiased and the Left can keep their propaganda silos aka Google FB and the rest and I read this from
Eric Schit of Google :
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/20/eric-schmidt-ex-google-ceo-predicts-internet-split-china.html
I wonder how many babes he paid off to avoid the metoo thing.
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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-travelban/google-staff-discussed-tweaking-search-results-to-counter-travel-ban-wsj-idUSKCN1M103O
Google staff discussed tweaking search results to counter travel ban: WSJ
2 MIN READ
(Reuters) - Google employees brainstormed ways to alter search functions to counter the Trump administration’s controversial 2017 travel ban, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing internal emails.
FILE PHOTO: A Google logo in an office building in Zurich September 5, 2018. REUTERS/Arnd WIegmann/File Photo
Google employees discussed how they could tweak the company's search-related functions to show users how to contribute to pro-immigration organizations and contact lawmakers and government agencies, the WSJ said. The ideas were not implemented. on.wsj.com/2DePzWh
President Donald Trump’s travel ban temporarily barred visitors and immigrants from seven majority Muslim countries. It spurred public outcry and was revised several times. Trump said the travel ban was needed to protect the United States against attacks by Islamist militants, and the Supreme Court upheld the measure in June.
The Google employees proposed ways to “leverage” search functions and take steps to counter what they considered to be “islamophobic, algorithmically biased results from search terms ‘Islam’, ‘Muslim’, ‘Iran’, etc.” and “prejudiced, algorithmically biased search results from search terms ‘Mexico’, ‘Hispanic’, ‘Latino’, etc,” the Journal added, quoting from the emails.
A Google spokesperson said the emails represented brainstorming and none of the ideas were implemented. She said the company does not manipulate search results or modify products to promote political views.
“Our processes and policies would not have allowed for any manipulation of search results to promote political ideologies,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
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https://theintercept.com/2018/09/21/google-suppresses-memo-revealing-plans-to-closely-track-search-users-in-china/
GOOGLE SUPPRESSES MEMO REVEALING PLANS TO CLOSELY TRACK SEARCH USERS IN CHINA
Ryan Gallagher, Lee Fang
September 21 2018, 10:18 a.m.
GOOGLE BOSSES HAVE forced employees to delete a confidential memo circulating inside the company that revealed explosive details about a plan to launch a censored search engine in China, The Intercept has learned.
The memo, authored by a Google engineer who was asked to work on the project, disclosed that the search system, codenamed Dragonfly, would require users to log in to perform searches, track their location — and share the resulting history with a Chinese partner who would have “unilateral access” to the data.
The memo was shared earlier this month among a group of Google employees who have been organizing internal protests over the censored search system, which has been designed to remove content that China’s authoritarian Communist Party regime views as sensitive, such as information about democracy, human rights, and peaceful protest.
According to three sources familiar with the incident, Google leadership discovered the memo and were furious that secret details about the China censorship were being passed between employees who were not supposed to have any knowledge about it. Subsequently, Google human resources personnel emailed employees who were believed to have accessed or saved copies of the memo and ordered them to immediately delete it from their computers. Emails demanding deletion of the memo contained “pixel trackers” that notified human resource managers when their messages had been read, recipients determined.
The Dragonfly memo reveals that a prototype of the censored search engine was being developed as an app for both Android and iOS devices, and would force users to sign in so they could use the service. The memo confirms, as The Intercept first reported last week, that users’ searches would be associated with their personal phone number. The memo adds that Chinese users’ movements would also be stored, along with the IP address of their device and links they clicked on. It accuses developers working on the project of creating “spying tools” for the Chinese government to monitor its citizens.
People’s search histories, location information, and other private data would be sent out of China to a database in Taiwan, the memo states. But the data would also be provided to employees of a Chinese company who would be granted “unilateral access” to the system.
To launch the censored search engine, Google set up a “joint venture” partnership with an unnamed Chinese company. The search engine will “blacklist sensitive queries” so that “no results will be shown” at all when people enter certain words or phrases, according to documents seen by The Intercept. Blacklisted search terms on a prototype of the search engine include “human rights,” “student protest,” and “Nobel Prize” in Mandarin, said sources familiar with the project.
According to the memo, aside from being able to access users’ search data, the Chinese partner company could add to the censorship blacklists: It would be able to “selectively edit search result pages … unilaterally, and with few controls seemingly in place.”
That a Chinese company would maintain a copy of users’ search data means that, by extension, the data would be accessible to Chinese authorities, who have broad powers to obtain information that is held or processed on the country’s mainland. A central concern human rights groups have expressed about Dragonfly is that it could place users at risk of Chinese government surveillance — and any person in China searching for blacklisted words or phrases could find themselves interrogated or detained. Chinese authorities are well-known for routinely targeting critics, activists, and journalists.
“It’s alarming to hear that such information will be stored and, potentially, easily shared with the Chinese authorities,” said Patrick Poon, a Hong Kong-based researcher with the human rights group Amnesty International. “It will completely put users’ privacy and safety at risk. Google needs to immediately explain if the app will involve such arrangements. It’s time to give the public full transparency of the project.”
ON AUGUST 16, two weeks after The Intercept revealed the Dragonfly plan, Google CEO Sundar Pichai told the company’s employees that the China plan was in its “early stages” and “exploratory.” However, employees working on the censored search engine were instructed in late July, days before the project was publicly exposed, that they should prepare to get it into a “launch-ready state” to roll out within weeks, pending approval from officials in Beijing.
“It will completely put users’ privacy and safety at risk.”
The memo raises new questions about Pichai’s claim that the project was not well-developed. Information stored on the company’s internal networks about Dragonfly “paints a very different picture,” it says. “The statement from our high-level leadership that Dragonfly is just an experiment seems wrong.”
The memo identifies at least 215 employees who appear to have been tasked with working full-time on Dragonfly, a number it says is “larger than many Google projects.” It says that source code associated with the project dates back to May 2017, and “many infrastructure parts predate” that. Moreover, screenshots of the app “show a project in a pretty advanced state,” the memo declares.
Most of the details about the project “have been secret from the start,” the memo says, adding that “after the existence of Dragonfly leaked, engineers working on the project were also quick to hide all of their code.”
The author of the memo said in the document that they were opposed to the China censorship. However, they added, “more than the project itself, I hate the culture of secrecy that has been built around it.”
The memo was first posted September 5 on an internal messaging list set up for Google employees to raise ethical concerns. But the memo was soon scrubbed from the list and individuals who had opened or saved the document were contacted by Google’s human resources department to discuss the matter. The employees were instructed not to share the memo.
Google reportedly maintains an aggressive security and investigation team known as “stopleaks,” which is dedicated to preventing unauthorized disclosures. The team is also said to monitor internal discussions.
“More than the project itself, I hate the culture of secrecy that has been built around it.”
Internal security efforts at Google have ramped up this year as employees have raised ethical concerns around a range of new company projects. Following the revelation by Gizmodo and The Intercept that Google had quietly begun work on a contract with the military last year, known as Project Maven, to develop automated image recognition systems for drone warfare, the communications team moved swiftly to monitor employee activity.
The “stopleaks” team, which coordinates with the internal Google communications department, even began monitoring an internal image board used to post messages based on internet memes, according to one former Google employee, for signs of employee sentiment around the Project Maven contract.
Google’s internal security team consists of a number of former military and law enforcement officials. For example, LinkedIn lists as Google’s head of global investigations Joseph Vincent, whose resume includes work as a high-ranking agent at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s Homeland Security Investigations unit. The head of security at Google is Chris Rackow, who has described himself as a former member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s hostage rescue team and as a former U.S. Navy SEAL.
For some Google employees, the culture of secrecy at the company clashes directly with its public image around fostering transparency, creating an intolerable work environment.
“Leadership misled engineers working on [Dragonfly] about the nature of their work, depriving them of moral agency,” said a Google employee who read the memo.
Google did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
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https://theintercept.com/2018/09/13/google-china-search-engine-employee-resigns/
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https://pjmedia.com/trending/new-movie-claims-google-handed-the-popular-vote-to-hillary-clinton-in-2016/
New Movie Claims Google Handed the Popular Vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016
BY TYLER O'NEIL SEPTEMBER 23, 2018
When Donald Trump surprised the world by winning the 2016 election, liberals clung to the idea that his victory was illegitimate because Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. According to a psychologist who supported Clinton in 2016, however, Google's bias in Clinton's favor may remove even that symbolic victory from her.
Almost all of Clinton's popular vote margin could be attributed to Google bias, making her win "negligible." Dr. Robert Epstein, a psychologist who earned his Ph.D. at Harvard, actually reported this finding last year, but he explains how it works in the upcoming film "The Creepy Line."
Epstein made a stir in 2015 by reporting in Politico that Google could "rig" the 2016 election. This story discussed the results of his study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). That study found that "biased search ranking can easily shift the voting preferences of undecided voters from 20% or more — up to 80% in some demographic groups."
In a white paper published by the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology in June 2017, Epstein followed up on this PNAS study, suggesting that Clinton's popular vote margin was almost entirely attributable to pro-Clinton bias at Google.
"Extrapolating from the mathematics introduced in this report ... the lead author of the PNAS study [Epstein himself] predicted that a pro-Clinton bias in Google's search results would, over time, shift at least 2.6 million votes to Clinton. She won the popular vote in the November election by 2,864,974 votes," Epstein wrote with his co-author Ronald E. Robertson.
"Without the pro-Clinton bias in Google's search results, her win margin in the popular vote would have been negligible," Epstein wrote.
On Friday, the psychologist confirmed to PJ Media that this stunning result has not been previously reported. PJ Media learned of the study in a screening for "The Creepy Line" on Wednesday night.
"It's actually at the end of the paper I released months ago, quite a while ago," Epstein told PJ Media on Friday.
"From my perspective, it's pretty straightforward. It's just math," the psychologist said. He noted that "the math in the 2015 PNAS paper is pretty solid. There's even a table in there that allows you to figure out whether or not you can use search rankings to flip an election based on the projected win margin."
During the interview, Epstein lamented Trump's win and his presidency, but he insisted that Google's power is a much more important and terrifying issue.
Google Exec Boasted About Helping Hillary Clinton by Boosting Latino Turnout in 2016
"This is not a problem for conservatives. This is a problem for humanity," the psychologist told PJ Media. "Who gave a handful of executives in Silicon Valley the right to decide what billions of people around the world can see and cannot see? Who gave them that power?"
In "The Creepy Line," New York Times bestselling author Peter Schweizer argued that "we did. We all did," by signing the user agreements. Epstein disagreed with that idea.
"I don't believe that meeting ever took place. I don't think there was ever a vote on that issue for that matter," he told PJ Media.
Epstein has long studied the impact of search engines like Google, and their ability to sway opinion. He has proven that search engine manipulation effect (SEME) can impact how people see the world — and how they see political figures specifically.
SEME works in a few ways. When you type a word into a Google search, Google will present various suggestions for a search. Epstein's research has found that if all the suggestions are positive, people are more likely to see positive websites for that person or issue. But if there is one negative suggestion included under that search bar, the negative result is likely to get ten to fifteen times more clicks.
Similarly, Google presents ten search results per page, and the very first search result is considered the most reliable. For questions like, "What is the capital of France?" the correct answer, "Paris," comes to the top. But on issues of opinion — and especially when researching political candidates — the search results and their ranking can have tremendous thorny implications.
As Epstein says in "The Creepy Line," "Google and Facebook have the power to undermine democracy with no one knowing it has been undermined. If they exercise these powers, democracy is an illusion."
"We found systematic bias in favor of one candidate, Hillary Clinton," he says in the film. They found the bias "in all ten search positions on the first page. If you took away this bias, it is possible the popular vote would have been even."
According to Epstein's research, Google's search results favored Hillary Clinton, and SEME can sway 20 percent of voters — and 80 percent, in certain demographic groups. He himself — again, a Clinton supporter in 2016 — suggested that the bias swayed 2.6 million votes, on the low end.
State AGs, DOJ Target Facebook, Google for Creating 'a Virtual Fence Around the Free Market'
With liberals still convinced Clinton should have won the election, these results are extremely important to report. Some corners of the Internet are already claiming that if Clinton and Trump had a do-over today, the Democrat would prevail. Some of the vitriol might subside if liberals understood the implications of Epstein's work, and realized that Trump's appeal may have been even stronger — given that Google may have put its tremendous thumb on the scale.
Earlier this month, Tucker Carlson unveiled an email from a Google executive bragging about helping to increase the Latino vote, assuming that Latinos would heavily favor Clinton. Shortly after that, the Daily Caller released a video of Google executives lamenting Trump's victory. On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal's John D. McKinnon and Douglas MacMillan reported that Google employees schemed about how to tweak the search function to harm Trump's travel ban.
Liberals may like the idea that Google helped Hillary Clinton, but even they should be afraid of the kind of suggestive power that Google has, Epstein said.
"We all need to rise above our political biases and understand there's a much larger problem here."
Indeed, Schweizer told PJ Media Thursday that Benito Mussolini, Vladimir Lenin, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong "would dream about" the kind of "control or influence" that Facebook and Google have over billions of people.
"The Creepy Line" reveals just how much power Google and Facebook have. Epstein is working to set up a monitoring system to alert people to exactly what these companies are doing in real time. You can request a screening of the film at this link.
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https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2018/09/23/why-im-leaving-chrome/
Why I’m done with Chrome
This blog is mainly reserved for cryptography, and I try to avoid filling it with random 512px-Google_Chrome_icon_(September_2014).svg“someone is wrong on the Internet” posts. After all, that’s what Twitter is for! But from time to time something bothers me enough that I have to make an exception. Today I wanted to write specifically about Google Chrome, how much I’ve loved it in the past, and why — due to Chrome’s new user-unfriendly forced login policy — I won’t be using it going forward.
A brief history of Chrome
When Google launched Chrome ten years ago, it seemed like one of those rare cases where everyone wins. In 2008, the browser market was dominated by Microsoft, a company with an ugly history of using browser dominance to crush their competitors. Worse, Microsoft was making noises about getting into the search business. This posed an existential threat to Google’s internet properties.
In this setting, Chrome was a beautiful solution. Even if the browser never produced a scrap of revenue for Google, it served its purpose just by keeping the Internet open to Google’s other products. As a benefit, the Internet community would receive a terrific open source browser with the best development team money could buy. This might be kind of sad for Mozilla (who have paid a high price due to Chrome) but overall it would be a good thing for Internet standards.
For many years this is exactly how things played out. Sure, Google offered an optional “sign in” feature for Chrome, which presumably vacuumed up your browsing data and shipped it off to Google, but that was an option. An option you could easily ignore. If you didn’t take advantage of this option, Google’s privacy policy was clear: your data would stay on your computer where it belonged.
What changed?
A few weeks ago Google shipped an update to Chrome that fundamentally changes the sign-in experience. From now on, every time you log into a Google property (for example, Gmail), Chrome will automatically sign the browser into your Google account for you. It’ll do this without asking, or even explicitly notifying you. (However, and this is important: Google developers claim this will not actually start synchronizing your data to Google — yet. See further below.)
Your sole warning — in the event that you’re looking for it — is that your Google profile picture will appear in the upper-right hand corner of the browser window. I noticed mine the other day:
foo
The change hasn’t gone entirely unnoticed: it received some vigorous discussion on sites like Hacker News. But the mainstream tech press seems to have ignored it completely. This is unfortunate — and I hope it changes — because this update has huge implications for Google and the future of Chrome.
In the rest of this post, I’m going to talk about why this matters. From my perspective, this comes down to basically four points:
Nobody on the Chrome development team can provide a clear rationale for why this change was necessary, and the explanations they’ve given don’t make any sense.
This change has enormous implications for user privacy and trust, and Google seems unable to grapple with this.
The change makes a hash out of Google’s own privacy policies for Chrome.
Google needs to stop treating customer trust like it’s a renewable resource, because they’re screwing up badly.
I warn you that this will get a bit ranty. Please read on anyway.
Google’s stated rationale makes no sense
The new feature that triggers this auto-login behavior is called “Identity consistency between browser and cookie jar” (HN). After conversations with two separate Chrome developers on Twitter (who will remain nameless — mostly because I don’t want them to hate me), I was given the following rationale for the change:
IMG_3331
To paraphrase this explanation: if you’re in a situation where you’ve already signed into Chrome and your friend shares your computer, then you can wind up accidentally having your friend’s Google cookies get uploaded into your account. This seems bad, and sure, we want to avoid that.
But note something critical about this scenario. In order for this problem to apply to you, you already have to be signed into Chrome. There is absolutely nothing in this problem description that seems to affect users who chose not to sign into the browser in the first place.
So if signed-in users are your problem, why would you make a change that forces unsigned–in users to become signed-in? I could waste a lot more ink wondering about the mismatch between the stated “problem” and the “fix”, but I won’t bother: because nobody on the public-facing side of the Chrome team has been able to offer an explanation that squares this circle.
And this matters, because “sync” or not…
The change has serious implications for privacy and trust
The Chrome team has offered a single defense of the change. They point out that just because your browser is “signed in” does not mean it’s uploading your data to Google’s servers. Specifically:
While Chrome will now log into your Google account without your consent (following a Gmail login), Chrome will not activate the “sync” feature that sends your data to Google. That requires an additional consent step. So in theory your data should remain local.
This is my paraphrase. But I think it’s fair to characterize the general stance of the Chrome developers I spoke with as: without this “sync” feature, there’s nothing wrong with the change they’ve made, and everything is just fine.
This is nuts, for several reasons.
User consent matters. For ten years I’ve been asked a single question by the Chrome browser: “Do you want to log in with your Google account?” And for ten years I’ve said no thanks. Chrome still asks me that question — it’s just that now it doesn’t honor my decision.
The Chrome developers want me to believe that this is fine, since (phew!) I’m still protected by one additional consent guardrail. The problem here is obvious:
If you didn’t respect my lack of consent on the biggest user-facing privacy option in Chrome (and didn’t even notify me that you had stopped respecting it!) why should I trust any other consent option you give me? What stops you from changing your mind on that option in a few months, when we’ve all stopped paying attention?
The fact of the matter is that I’d never even heard of Chrome’s “sync” option — for the simple reason that up until September 2018, I had never logged into Chrome. Now I’m forced to learn these new terms, and hope that the Chrome team keeps promises to keep all of my data local as the barriers between “signed in” and “not signed in” are gradually eroded away.
The Chrome sync UI is a dark pattern. Now that I’m forced to log into Chrome, I’m faced with a brand new menu I’ve never seen before. It looks like this:
Thing
Does that big blue button indicate that I’m already synchronizing my data to Google? That’s scary! Wait, maybe it’s an invitation to synchronize! If so, what happens to my data if I click it by accident? (I won’t give it the answer away, you should go find out. Just make sure you don’t accidentally upload all your data in the process. It can happen quickly.)
In short, Google has transformed the question of consenting to data upload from something affirmative that I actually had to put effort into — entering my Google credentials and signing into Chrome — into something I can now do with a single accidental click. This is a dark pattern. Whether intentional or not, it has the effect of making it easy for people to activate sync without knowing it, or to think they’re already syncing and thus there’s no additional cost to increasing Google’s access to their data.
Don’t take my word for it. It even gives (former) Google people the creeps.
Big brother doesn’t need to actually watch you. We tell things to our web browsers that we wouldn’t tell our best friends. We do this with some vague understanding that yes, the Internet spies on us. But we also believe that this spying is weak and probabilistic. It’s not like someone’s standing over our shoulder checking our driver’s license with each click.
What happens if you take that belief away? There are numerous studies indicating that even the perception of surveillance can significantly greatly magnify the degree of self-censorship users force on themselves. Will user feel comfortable browsing for information on sensitive mental health conditions — if their real name and picture are always loaded into the corner of their browser? The Chrome development team says “yes”. I think they’re wrong.
For all we know, the new approach has privacy implications even if sync is off. The Chrome developers claim that with “sync” off, a Chrome has no privacy implications. This might be true. But when pressed on the actual details, nobody seems quite sure.
For example, if I have my browser logged out, then I log in and turn on “sync”, does all my past (logged-out) data get pushed to Google? What happens if I’m forced to be logged in, and then subsequently turn on “sync”? Nobody can quite tell me if the data uploaded in these conditions is the same. These differences could really matter.
The changes make hash of the Chrome privacy policy
The Chrome privacy policy is a remarkably simple document. Unlike most privacy policies, it was clearly written as a promise to Chrome’s users — rather than as the usual lawyer CYA. Functionally, it describes two browsing modes: “Basic browser mode” and “signed-in mode”. These modes have very different properties. Read for yourself:
Untitled 2Untitled 3
In “basic browser mode”, your data is stored locally. In “signed-in” mode, your data gets shipped to Google’s servers. This is easy to understand. If you want privacy, don’t sign in. But what happens if your browser decides to switch you from one mode to the other, all on its own?
Technically, the privacy policy is still accurate. If you’re in basic browsing mode, your data is still stored locally. The problem is that you no longer get to decide which mode you’re in. This makes a mockery out of whatever intentions the original drafters had. Maybe Google will update the document to reflect the new “sync” distinction that the Chrome developers have shared with me. We’ll see.
Update: After I tweeted about my concerns, I received a DM on Sunday from two different Chrome developers, each telling me the good news: Google is updating their privacy policy to reflect the new operation of Chrome. I think that’s, um, good news. But I also can’t help but note that updating a privacy policy on a weekend is an awful lot of trouble to go to for a change that… apparently doesn’t even solve a problem for signed-out users.
Trust is not a renewable resource
For a company that sustains itself by collecting massive amounts of user data, Google has managed to avoid the negative privacy connotations we associate with, say, Facebook. This isn’t because Google collects less data, it’s just that Google has consistently been more circumspect and responsible with it.
Where Facebook will routinely change privacy settings and apologize later, Google has upheld clear privacy policies that it doesn’t routinely change. Sure, when it collects, it collects gobs of data, but in the cases where Google explicitly makes user security and privacy promises — it tends to keep them. This seems to be changing.
Google’s reputation is hard-earned, and it can be easily lost. Changes like this burn a lot of trust with users. If the change is solving an absolutely critical problem for users , then maybe a loss of trust is worth it. I wish Google could convince me that was the case.
Conclusion
This post has gone on more than long enough, but before I finish I want to address two common counterarguments I’ve heard from people I generally respect in this area.
One argument is that Google already spies on you via cookies and its pervasive advertising network and partnerships, so what’s the big deal if they force your browser into a logged-in state? One individual I respect described the Chrome change as “making you wear two name tags instead of one”. I think this objection is silly both on moral grounds — just because you’re violating my privacy doesn’t make it ok to add a massive new violation — but also because it’s objectively silly. Google has spent millions of dollars adding additional tracking features to both Chrome and Android. They aren’t doing this for fun; they’re doing this because it clearly produces data they want.
The other counterargument (if you want to call it that) goes like this: I’m a n00b for using Google products at all, and of course they were always going to do this. The extreme version holds that I ought to be using lynx+Tor and DJB’s custom search engine, and if I’m not I pretty much deserve what’s coming to me.
I reject this argument. I think It’s entirely possible for a company like Google to make good, usable open source software that doesn’t massively violate user privacy. For ten years I believe Google Chrome did just this.
Why they’ve decided to change, I don’t know. It makes me sad.
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https://www.fastcompany.com/90243936/exclusive-tim-berners-lee-tells-us-his-radical-new-plan-to-upend-the-world-wide-web
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https://www.wnd.com/2018/08/tech-icon-envisions-prosperous-new-world-after-google/
"...privacy in terms of ownership of your own data and ownership of your identity and the ability to conduct transactions without exposing all your personal information to be used and abused...
That’s what the new cryptocosm affords.
The technology is not easy to explain without using unfamiliar terms.
Gilder describes it as essentially “a new security architecture that allows you to keep your own personal details to yourself and transact anonymously across the network."
....
Even though he's probably about 20 years ahead of his time again, let's hope he is right.
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The concept makes sense.
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Pence Calls on Google to Drop Mobile Search Project in China
Vice President Pence said U.S. companies should reconsider turning over intellectual property as they expand in China
Vice President Mike Pence called on Google to immediately end developing a mobile search app in China, which he said would strengthen Communist Party censorship. Shown, the vice president at the Hudson Institute on Thursday.
Vice President Mike Pence called on Google to immediately end developing a mobile search app in China, which he said would strengthen Communist Party censorship. Shown, the vice president at the Hudson Institute on Thursday. Photo: Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg News
53 Comments
By Michael C. Bender and
Dustin Volz
Updated Oct. 4, 2018 5:10 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON—The Trump administration took aim at Google Thursday, calling on the tech giant to halt development of a project it said would accelerate censorship efforts in China.
In a speech that outlined the White House’s long list of frustrations and grievances with Beijing, Vice President Mike Pence called on companies to reconsider business practices in the world’s second-largest economy that involve turning over intellectual property or “abetting Beijing’s oppression.”
“For example, Google should immediately end development of the Dragonfly app that will strengthen Communist Party censorship and compromise the privacy of Chinese customers,” Mr. Pence said in his speech at the Hudson Institute, a conservative, Washington-based think tank focused on security and economic issues.
Related
Google Woos Partners for Potential China Expansion (Aug. 12)
U.S. Confronts China Over Suspected Cyberattack as Fugitive Guo Wengui Appears in Washington (Oct. 6, 2017)
Mr. Pence’s speech was the latest sign from the White House that the warm relations between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping haven’t trickled through the administration ranks. Trade tensions between the two countries have been escalating for months, and disputes continue over military cooperation, espionage and territorial claims in the South China Sea.
Mr. Pence said Thursday that China is working to remove Mr. Trump from office and described a broad effort to influence political opinion and manipulate academic institutions and U.S. companies.
Last week, President Trump accused China of trying to interfere in the U.S. midterm elections in November to hurt him and the Republican Party in retaliation for his stance on trade.
Senate Democrats asked the Trump administration Thursday for evidence to support assertions of election meddling. In a letter to Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats, three senators asked whether the accusation from Mr. Trump “aligns with the intelligence community’s assessments of Beijing’s intentions, plans and activities.”
Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon, Martin Heinrich of New Mexico and Kamala Harris of California, who all serve on the Senate Intelligence Committee, asked for a response by Oct. 8 “so that the public and members of Congress have the information in advance of the election.”
A spokeswoman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the letter had been received and that Mr. Coats would respond to it. Chinese officials have said they don’t interfere internally in other countries.
In a project dubbed “Dragonfly,” Google is testing a mobile version of its search engine that would adhere to China’s strict censors. While it has drawn pointed questions from a bipartisan group of senators, Mr. Pence’s speech was the first public condemnation from the White House.
A spokeswoman for Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., declined to comment on Mr. Pence’s speech and instead referred to a previous statement that described the company’s work as exploratory and “not close to launching a search product in China.”
Mr. Pence repeated Mr. Trump’s warning that U.S. tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese imports could increase, and vowed the White House would “stand strong” to support national security.
Beijing, Mr. Pence said, “is also taking steps to exploit its economic leverage, and the allure of China’s large domestic market, to advance its influence over American corporations.”
Related Video
Tensions Rise Between Washington and Beijing
Tensions Rise Between Washington and Beijing
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis canceled a trip to China, and President Trump accused China of election interference. The WSJ's Gerald F. Seib explains how U.S.-China tensions are rising. Photo: Getty
He said Delta Air Lines was forced to apologize for not identifying Taiwan as a “province of China,” and Marriott was pressured to fire a U.S. employee who used a company account to “like” a Tibetan separatist group’s Twitter post.
Mr. Pence criticized Chinese censors who object to criticism “even in minor ways,” pointing to the 2012 remake of the iconic 1984 movie “Red Dawn” that was digitally edited to portray North Korea as the villain, instead of China. He also accused China of seeking to “foster a culture of censorship” in academia. He cited a speech from Yang Shuping, a University of Maryland student from China who became a target of criticism there after praising the “fresh air of free speech” in America.
He said Ms. Yang was the “victim of a firestorm of criticism” on China’s tightly controlled social media and her family back home was harassed.
He said the Hudson Institute was the target of a suspected cyberattack from Shanghai after it hosted an event with Guo Wengui, a fugitive Chinese businessman and political dissident who has alleged corruption within China’s leadership. “You know better than most that the Chinese Communist Party is trying to undermine academic freedom and the freedom of speech in America today,” Mr. Pence told the group.
Write to Michael C. Bender at Mike.Bender@wsj.com
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This is a great move in a number of ways. Google is called out and put on notice. US companies are advised to stop signing away technology rights to China. The squeeze on China's economy is increased. The effort of Xi to outlast Trump the person as president is foolhardy because even if Democrats took the house, impeach the president and somehow got 67 votes for removal from office in the Senate, it would make Mike Pence president and he has just promised to continue the same policies until China stops its cyber and technology war.
It looks to me like Mike Pompeo is the author of this, President Trump fully approved, Mike Pence is elevated on a world stage and our allies should follow suit and dial up the pressure on China.
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This is a great move in a number of ways. Google is called out and put on notice. US companies are advised to stop signing away technology rights to China. The squeeze on China's economy is increased. The effort of Xi to outlast Trump the person as president is foolhardy because even if Democrats took the house, impeach the president and somehow got 67 votes for removal from office in the Senate, it would make Mike Pence president and he has just promised to continue the same policies until China stops its cyber and technology war.
It looks to me like Mike Pompeo is the author of this, President Trump fully approved, Mike Pence is elevated on a world stage and our allies should follow suit and dial up the pressure on China.
It is almost disorienting to see such competent people in power, working on our behalf.
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https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/10/08/report-google-hid-user-data-breach-from-public-out-of-fear-congress-would-take-action/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=daily&utm_content=links&utm_campaign=20181008
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https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a23643766/facebook-portal-privacy/
Facebook Takes a Break from Privacy Scandals to Release a Smart Camera That Films You in Your Home
The news comes weeks after another high-profile data breach rocked the company.
By Sam Blum
Oct 8, 2018
On Monday morning Facebook announced Portal, a new hardware component similar to an iPad that allows people to video chat with friends via the social network. As a video released by the company explains, a roving camera built in to the device can track your movements to ensure you're in frame during a conversation. You know, exactly the kind of thing any reasonable person would be enthused to purchase from Facebook right now.
The product's debut comes in the wake of myriad high-profile scandals that have dogged Facebook this year. Only weeks ago, the company confirmed a security breach by hackers affected 50 million accounts. A day prior, reporting from Gizmodo detailed the company's invasive advertising practices. In April, the Cambridge Analytica data-mining crisis saw Mark Zuckerberg grilled by the United States Senate over a tense and highly publicized two days in Washington DC.
Unlike everything else offered by Facebook, Portal and its larger counterpart Portal+ can be yours for a price, at $199 and $349, respectively. Portal's rollout speaks to the company's ambition to trade in hardware in addition to web content. It draws parallels to Facebook's ill-fated partnership with HTC, which twice delivered to market smartphones with baked-in Facebook apps. (Zuckerberg promised Facebook phones would be a very big thing in 2011, but you're not holding one now, are you?)
Portal comes with an AI-enabled smart camera and sound, with Amazon's Alexa serving as its home assistant. The company ensures that Portal's cameras run locally and not on Facebook's servers. "Portal conversations stay between you and the people you’re calling," the company says. Users can also disable Portal's microphone or physically shutter its camera in the Zuckerberg style. In other words, Facebook maintains that your data will remain yours—which you have every reason to take as a cold comfort.
In a world already full of video chat apps and home assistance, Facebook's addition is late to the party and and arriving with awkward timing given the company's past year of PR nightmares. And that's to say nothing of Facebook's business model syphon your data for the sake of advertising revenue when it's not leaking that data to outside sources. On top of all that, Portal is sure to add fire to the common (but mostly unfounded) conspiracy theory that Facebook's app eavesdrops on conversations to target people with ads.
But if you're still using Facebook in spite of all that's been unfolding, maybe it actually makes sense to just dive all the way in.
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big IT trying to get the Dem vote out.
I log into the Yahoo page this evening and at the top is a register to vote link
They assume this will get the Democrat vote but pretend this is politically neutral
we know its no
https://search.yahoo.com/search?p=register+to+vote&fr=regvotefp&type=regvotefp
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https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-08/fuk-you-all-hell-google-exec-threatens-gop-over-kavanaugh-confirmation
Correctly if I am wrong, but the MSM totally memory-holed this story, correct?
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https://gellerreport.com/2018/10/media-cover-up-migrant-rape.html/
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https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/10/09/the-good-censor-google-admits-concerns-about-political-neutrality-are-now-mainstream/
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I am surprised we don't hear more about law enforcement aimed at getting hackers and increasing the penalties
no they ain't all in bulgaria or manchuria somewhere
and we need to have extremely strong punishment against the foreigners but going after their governments
you don't turn these criminals over you will be penalized bigtime
Yeah we can yell all we want about FB GOOGLE etc but what about the criminals actually doing these crimes
I would think a politician who adds strong enforcement of cyber crime to his platform would be a winner
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"I would think a politician who adds strong enforcement of cyber crime to his platform would be a winner"
Yes. Cyber security and cyber privacy. There is a role for government. Stop trespassing and theft.
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https://www.popsci.com/facebook-account-hack-check?CMPID=ene101418
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https://www.wsj.com/video/whats-google-and-how-do-i-know-if-i-have-an-account/9EF651BA-7050-40DD-98CB-C17F3130E521.html?mod=trending_now_video_4
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For any of us who may have missed GG on Levin. I am listening again :-o.
He was excellent I must say. GG has won me back. He did make me millions in the late 90s to 2000s- only to lose it all in the crash My fault not his . :cry:
The "cryptocosm " is one of different subjects Mark and GG discuss.
The cryptocosm
The description of the new architecture would seem to prevent mass theft and spying in a mass scale . Such as stealing a lot of data from millions or ID information etc.
but for individuals or single entities I don't see how it would protect them . He suggests each entity has its own lifelong unique blueprint , ID . I am not sure why another sleuth could not just find that blueprint and use it. I can think of a few ways this could be avoided but a lot of food for thought
It would certainly take a lot of the power away from the big tech and give it back to ourselves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZuluc2NpHM
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Dear Fellow Patriot,
By now I'm sure you've heard of Facebook and Twitter's efforts to silence conservatives, but that was just the tip of the iceberg.
Just weeks ago, MasterCard colluded with the Southern Poverty Law Center and other left-wing fringe organizations to shut down my Freedom Center's online fundraising without so much as a warning.
The Southern Poverty Law Center blacklisted my organization as a "hate group" because we dare question the Left's agenda, and now big finance is using this bogus label to come after us.
Shortly after MasterCard launched this crippling attack, Discover Card came after us. And now, I have no choice but to take these credit card processors to court.
Because this isn't about me. This is about you and your free speech. The Left doesn't care if you're a politician, a pundit or a plumber — if you don't embrace their radical agenda, they want to destroy you.
I'll be honest — the legal fees are steep. But a generous donor has pledged to match all donations between now and October 20th. So anything you give today will have double the impact.
Will you follow this link to give $15, $25, $50 or more and take on the Left's corporate cronies trying to silence everyone that dares question them?
You see, I didn't break any of MasterCard's or Discover Card's rules. This was one step in an ongoing campaign to cripple the conservative movement one by one, organization by organization — then person by person.
And they couldn't have picked a better target.
I'm David Horowitz and the Left came after me because I've dedicated the last three decades of my life to fighting their plan to transform America with my Freedom Center's campaigns, literature and research.
But it won't stop with me, and that's why I'm taking MasterCard and Discover Card to court. So you don't have to. Because they won't stop until all conservatives are destroyed or silent.
So I'm counting on you to make an urgent, tax-deductible donation that will be matched dollar for dollar by a generous donor.
Remember — if you give $15, your true impact will be $30. If you give $25, your true impact will be $50. If you give $50, your true impact will be $100.
After we were first shut down, I spent two days in meeting after meeting with our attorneys until MasterCard finally backed down.
Fortunately, the Freedom Center is once again able to accept credit card donations. But this legal battle is just beginning, and it won't be pretty.
I know this won't be their last assault on Free Speech, and now we know that they'll stop at nothing to cripple conservatives like you and me. This lawsuit will set the precedent for decades to come. You and I must stand up to the Left's corporate cronies and let them know we won't be strong armed, silenced, or censored.
But with the legal fees expected to exceed $103,484 — I'm counting on your generous donation of $15, $25, $50 or more that will be matched dollar for dollar by a generous donor.
They don't just want to "censor" conservatives like you and me. They want to wipe us out.
In fact, Discover Card and MasterCard still have bans on Jihad Watch: our dedicated program for exposing the Islamic agenda.
And if we're going to protect Free Speech for all Americans, we can't play on defense. It's time for us to bring the fight to them. We need all hands on deck.
So I'm asking you to make a tax-deductible donation of $15, $25, $50 or more that will be matched dollar for dollar up to $50,000 between now and October 20th.
The Left wants to shut me up because my Freedom Center has exposed millions of Americans to the truths the mainstream media works to suppress. We've proven the dangers of radical Islam, the consequences of open borders, the cost of political correctness.
But they made one mistake — and that was thinking we'd lie there and take it.
The Freedom Center will never stop fighting for you. But as a nonprofit organization, we don't take a penny of government handouts. We rely entirely on patriots like you to sustain this battle.
Please follow this link right away to DOUBLE YOUR IMPACT so we can fight like we've never fought before.
And remember — a generous donor will match your gift, so your contribution will go that much farther.
Thank you in advance for your support.
Sincerely,
David Horowitz
P.S. The Left doesn't just want to silence conservatives like you and me — they want to destroy us. That's why it's so important that we're on a united front against them. Please follow this link to prepare for this gruesome legal battle and protect free speech for ALL Americans.
P.P.S. Don't forget that your urgent donation of $15, $25, $50 or more will be matched dollar for dollar by a generous donation up to $50,000!
DONATE NOW
© David Horowitz Freedom Center
www.horowitzfreedomcenter.org/
Mailing Address
P.O. Box 55089
Sherman Oaks, CA 91499
The David Horowitz Freedom Center is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. All donations are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.
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https://townhall.com/columnists/georgegilder/2018/07/17/exclusive-10-laws-of-the-cryptocosm-n2501167
I see his point, I don't fully see the path there yet.
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https://patriotpost.us/articles/58922-googles-search-for-communist-money?mailing_id=3804&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3804&utm_campaign=digest&utm_content=body
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second post
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bezos-bucks-the-bullies-1539818350
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https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/facebook-blocks-gosnell-ads-labels-film-about-serial-killer-abortionist-pol?fbclid=IwAR2EymP0kPn5th1fe7OzrU-aPqnUfyCEuVdFoSiLSNXUfLZVyBiLtcC8GYM
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Second post
https://clarionproject.org/google-is-teaming-up-with-chinese-authorities/
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https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/facebook-blocks-gosnell-ads-labels-film-about-serial-killer-abortionist-pol?fbclid=IwAR2EymP0kPn5th1fe7OzrU-aPqnUfyCEuVdFoSiLSNXUfLZVyBiLtcC8GYM
Half the country should leave Facebook over this and so many other transgressions. Same for Google, Twitter, NYT, WashPost etc. We need either conservative or unbiased alternatives!
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http://www.jordantimes.com/news/business/apple-chief-pushes-us-privacy-law-stop-%E2%80%98weaponising%E2%80%99-data
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https://www.westernjournal.com/facebook-purge-list-pages-deleted/
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:-o :-o :-o
That they would not give the full list is a very, very bad sign :x :x :x
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https://www.thecreepyline.com/?intro=skip&utm_source=breitbart&utm_medium=email
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https://ijr.com/farrakhan-twitter-termites-dorsey/
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On FB when I post a URL there now appears a script lower case “I” to the side of it. Clicking on the “i” brings up a brief background on the site. I confess my initial reaction is that I like this.
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https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/01/asia/internet-freedom-china-censorship-intl/index.html?fbclid=IwAR2cwA76Bh7BVRu-G5DxgB1Dr-JptqpXe391zAGllRRX_qlhnUaRufzDYhY
The term herein of “cyber sovereignty” really caught my attention. Is this not what many here in America assert vs. Russian and other hostile powers fake news interventions here in the US?
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https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/01/asia/internet-freedom-china-censorship-intl/index.html?fbclid=IwAR2cwA76Bh7BVRu-G5DxgB1Dr-JptqpXe391zAGllRRX_qlhnUaRufzDYhY
The term herein of “cyber sovereignty” really caught my attention. Is this not what many here in America assert vs. Russian and other hostile powers fake news interventions here in the US?
Orwellian. The censorship term only tells only part of the story. Keeping things out of the news is different than telling us things that aren't so. What they do is report falsely and sensor anyone correcting or opposing it. Shameful that American companies like Google are involved.
We use the Pravda analogy here but a Soviet survivor says the US msm is worse. They had one news source and they knew it was false, State propaganda. We have a plethora of sources that act as an echo chamber for fake or biased news, NYT, LAT, CBS, NBC, ABC, Washington Post, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, slate, CNN, MSNBC, Minneapolis Star and Sickle, Scientific American, and on and on. The other day it took 55 Google results from a search to get to a different viewpoint.
There is a difference I suppose between invading our news against our will and being hired by a government to alter it.
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Red is gray and yellow white, but we decide which is right - and which is an illusion.
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https://www.ted.com/talks/yuval_noah_harari_why_fascism_is_so_tempting_and_how_your_data_could_power_it
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https://www.westernjournal.com/facebook-removes-trumps-ad-network-24-hours-midterms/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=AE&utm_campaign=can&utm_content=2018-11-06
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The Lefts answer to the caravan.
No threat to us.
No biggie
Is not even a real issue - is made up - by Trump.
And Notice how the MSM has stopped discussing it much!
If they don't show it other then to turn the reality of the threat around to bash Trump , then it is not a problem.
Only a problem in the minds of the awful people who support Trump.
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https://www.cnet.com/news/how-your-privacy-gets-cooked-by-those-restaurant-waitlist-apps/
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Thugs Disrupt MEF Congressional Event
News from the Middle East Forum
November 15, 2018
https://www.meforum.org/articles/2018/thugs-disrupt-mef-congressional-event
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https://forward.com/fast-forward/409218/facebook-removes-anne-frank-centers-post-promoting-holocaust-education/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sumome_share&fbclid=IwAR2axXcI_o_mWy4JLhBPNW-Z8nyV54LUjhiuIMn9xrfpFcEbPGc83xPfTR0
met with this:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/08/30/facebook-criticised-taking-anne-frank-center-post-promoting/?fbclid=IwAR3YkDuPMBOKwKjEtzV5x-Ft0CPHA00qIc0PIU536xmp7Nit3biNfPOANIE
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to sell to marketers ( 3 posts previously)
reminds of when I want to a place where I used to get my haircut. When they started asking me questions about my email my phone number to enter in to *their* data base
I protested and never went back there again
"For goodness sakes", I exclaimed, "I am just coming in here for a haircut".
do you want my social sec # too ?
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https://www.bizpacreview.com/2018/11/18/democratic-2020-candidate-wants-government-sponsored-social-credit-system-comparable-to-chinas-694640
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work for the government fighting antitrust for the "people" then get bought out by the big money to fight the government and the "people" for Zuck.
I know every in gov does this but just so screwed up:
https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/21/facebook-has-poached-the-dojs-silicon-valley-antitrust-chief/
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The opening entry in the Trump Promises Kept thread references an EO that I remember as prohibiting this sort of thing. Can we find a citation?
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/technology/definers-public-affairs-tim-miller.html?fbclid=IwAR2QxY_Mp5SjYllBxFgayXvJt4k3bAV0H-nuw9nFlmfBVZf6_gDf_5rWcgs
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https://www.wivb.com/news/new-legislation-calls-for-social-media-search-before-pistol-permit-in-ny/1612876779
No guns for badthinkers.
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-21/beijing-to-judge-every-resident-based-on-behavior-by-end-of-2020?fbclid=IwAR0anodbMEwanEG40qXZ7ZnhCtHHIAeUo7EX0QxoOGs8JOXIP47s2_URCsQ
Edited to add:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-social-credit-system-flight-booking-blacklisted-beijing-points-a8646316.html?fbclid=IwAR2CLnBWSiTFKT-oePzZOLgM2twuPV8j1ncac0JuOyoLWexJ5XTmT59dbdk
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-21/beijing-to-judge-every-resident-based-on-behavior-by-end-of-2020?fbclid=IwAR0anodbMEwanEG40qXZ7ZnhCtHHIAeUo7EX0QxoOGs8JOXIP47s2_URCsQ
Already coming into being here.
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https://www.dailywire.com/news/38697/twitter-vs-science-twitter-changes-rules-will-bar-ben-shapiro?utm_source=shapironewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=112718-news&utm_campaign=position2
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqlDtjnwyPA
Just saw it. A very important movie.
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Looks like a good movie
I want to see it.
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Looks like a good movie
I want to see it.
You can watch it on Amazon Prime, who of course tracks and sells the media you watch...
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"You can watch it on Amazon Prime, who of course tracks and sells the media you watch..."
:-o
( could i venture to guess it is censored through Google or FB or listed on the 100th page of a search on their sites.)
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https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/do-you-hear-the-people-tweet/
Big Tech's Authoritarian Practices Are Accelerating. Will You Submit?
BY RICHARD FERNANDEZ NOVEMBER 26, 2018
Glenn Reynolds has deactivated his Twitter account, citing the banning of Jesse Kelly for no apparent reason as the immediate cause of his disillusionment with the platform. Explaining his decision, he wrote:
Why should I provide free content to people I don’t like, who hate me? I’m currently working on a book on social media, and I keep coming back to the point that Twitter is far and away the most socially destructive of the various platforms. So I decided to suspend them, as they are suspending others. At least I’m giving my reasons, which is more than they’ve done usually.
He may have beaten the digital bouncers to the door by only a little. The Thought Police are rushing to ensure that everyone toes the line. The Straits Times reports that "Facebook will allow French regulators to 'embed' inside the company to examine how it combats online hate speech, the first time the wary tech giant has opened its doors in such a way, President Emmanuel Macron said."
The trial project is an example of what Mr Macron has called "smart regulation", something he wants to extend to other tech leaders such as Google, Apple and Amazon.
The move follows a meeting with Facebook's founder, Mr Mark Zuckerberg, in May, when Mr Macron invited the chief executive officers of some of the biggest tech firms to Paris, telling them they should work for the common good.
The officials may be seconded from the telecoms regulator and the interior and justice ministries, a government source said. Facebook said the selection was up to the French presidency.
It is unclear whether the group will have access to highly sensitive material such as Facebook's algorithms or codes to remove hate speech. It could travel to Facebook's European headquarters in Dublin and global base in Menlo Park, California, if necessary, the company said.
This is the same Emmanuel Macron who is worried that protests by the French miserables against his crushing environmental fuel taxes could hurt the government's image:
The French president told ministers at a cabinet meeting on Monday that the government must respond after images were relayed around the world of police firing teargas and water cannon at protesters who set up barricades, lit fires and smashed restaurants and shopfronts on the Champs-Élysées.
It's not just Macron who is leaning on Google. The government of China is also exerting pressure on the tech companies to help them to build a social media surveillance state. Here's Ben Gomes, Google's search engine chief who "joked about the unpredictability of President Donald Trump and groaned about the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China, which has slowed down Google’s negotiations with Communist Party officials in Beijing, whose approval Google requires to launch the censored search engine":
China I think is one of the most interesting markets, arguably the most interesting market in the world today. Just by virtue of being there and paying attention to the Chinese market, we will learn things, because in many ways China was leading the world in some kinds of innovation. We need to understand what is happening there in order to inspire us. It’s not just a one-way street. China will teach us things that we don’t know. And the people, as you work on this, both in the Chinese offices and elsewhere, paying attention to the things that are happening there is incredibly valuable for us as Google, potentially not just in China, but somewhere else entirely.
One of the things China will pioneer, as the New York Times reports, is to use "A.I., shame and lots of cameras" to control its population:
With millions of cameras and billions of lines of code, China is building a high-tech authoritarian future. Beijing is embracing technologies like facial recognition and artificial intelligence to identify and track 1.4 billion people. It wants to assemble a vast and unprecedented national surveillance system, with crucial help from its thriving technology industry ...
China is reversing the commonly held vision of technology as a great democratizer, bringing people more freedom and connecting them to the world. In China, it has brought control.
...
“The goal is algorithmic governance.”
The control system China is implementing creates two classes of citizens: the Woke and the Haters. The former will be rewarded and the latter banned from any responsible role in life:
China’s plan to judge each of its 1.3 billion people based on their social behavior is moving a step closer to reality, with Beijing set to adopt a lifelong points program by 2021 that assigns personalized ratings for each resident ... The Beijing project will improve blacklist systems so that those deemed untrustworthy will be "unable to move even a single step."
As Tyler Grant notes in The Hill, the basic algorithms behind the Chinese social scoring system and Western hate speech systems are essentially the same. "It’s tempting to think this government overreach is purely reserved to China, after all they did just forfeit significant freedom by electing Xi Jinping president for life. This is incorrect thinking. The rest of the world is steps away from trailing the Chinese into a surveillance state":
The U.K. fines and even imprisons people for hate speech or speech deemed abhorrent to the prevailing norms of society. The U.S. is not far behind. Last week, a Manhattan judge ruled a bar can toss Trump supporters for their political viewpoints. A recent proliferation of politically motivated boycotts seeks to punish "bad" viewpoints; protesters are eager to shout down incorrect speech. In this political climate, it’s not difficult to imagine businesses or the government assessing social benefit or worth based upon a variety of factors including political speech.
With incredible data collection, the plumbing is already in place for such a system to take hold. Our tech companies catalogue large quantities of data on everyone. As we saw with Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 election, this data can be used to steer particular viewpoints; it’s not a far cry to imagine information being used to control viewpoints.
There's nothing to lose by quitting if they're coming for you anyway. At least you get a head start.
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https://pjmedia.com/trending/study-finds-googles-incognito-mode-is-a-lie-its-an-illusion/
Google Tracks Users in Incognito Mode, Study Finds
BY TYLER O'NEIL DECEMBER 5, 2018
Google Incognito mode screenshot.
On Tuesday, Google competitor Duck Duck Go released a study showing that Google gives users personalized search results, even when a user goes into "incognito mode." Dr. Robert Epstein, a Ph.D. psychologist who focuses on search engine manipulation, drew the logical conclusion Duck Duck Go refused to state.
"The incognito mode is a lie, that's what they found," Epstein, whose research features prominently in the recent film "The Creepy Line," told PJ Media on Wednesday. "The kind of search results they were getting from people in incognito mode and in normal mode were extremely similar, and of course the results that one person got were extremely different than the results that another person got."
"That's another way of saying that incognito mode is a lie. It's an illusion," the psychologist explained. "They didn't say that, but that's what they found."
While incognito mode "may hide certain kinds of things from certain kinds of websites," letting users get around paywalls of various kinds, it does not hide a user's identity from Google. This means Google still carries out surveillance to know what users want and applies its advertising to leverage the algorithm to their profit, even in "incognito mode."
Epstein admitted that the study had problems. "We have a credibility problem for sure — they didn't tell us how they found their volunteers, for example," he said. He also faulted the study for "just showing you the raw numbers without using statistical methods to see whether these numbers are significant statistically. They didn't do that, for some reason."
However, the psychologist did a deep dive into the results and found them rather credible, so long as the volunteers were truly chosen at random. That said, Epstein did not side with Duck Duck Go over Google.
"I don't recommend Duck Duck Go to people, even though I believe they don't track data and I think that's great," he explained. "I don't recommend it because I don't find the quality of their search results to be very good."
Google may offer a better product, but the company does not deserve users' trust. "I don't think Google is an honest company and I think this study is another indicator of that," Epstein said.
Google Bias Against Conservative News Is 'Much More Dangerous' Than China's Actions, Expert Says
"They routinely favor search results that benefit the company," he explained, noting multiple fines from the European Union, India, and Russia for abusing its dominant position on the Google Play store.
Some people might see the potential for shenanigans in re-ordering the search results, but Epstein warned that manipulation starts even with the underlying algorithm. "It doesn't matter whether someone is deliberately re-ranking. What matters is how they build the algorithm," he explained. "It favors the company's own values, products and services. That's how they build the algorithm."
The psychologist responded to an article by the Guardian's Oscar Schwartz, which re-assures audiences that Google has no biases against conservatives or others, but just gives the user what users want.
"All the article does is toe the line. It just repeats Google's own claims about what it does and it repeats them uncritically," Epstein shot back. He argued that Schwartz "doesn't understand when a search algorithm favors one product, candidate, or cause more than another. To say that it's because of user behavior is to say nothing. That's Google's defense, and it's absurd."
Epstein referenced a very recent example of Google auto-fill bias. He typed in "The republican party is," and the top suggestions included "the single greatest threat," "dead in california," and "about to drown." The top results for "The democratic party is" were "an example of a 527 organization" and "based on the following ideas."
View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter
Dr. Robert Epstein
@DrREpstein
Here's another example of how #GSA (fka #Google) manipulates people's thinking by suppressing negative search suggestions for causes it supports. I captured these images early this morning (Dec 5, 2018). Notice how negatives are suppressed for #Democrats but not for #Republicans:
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1:17 AM - Dec 5, 2018
16 people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy
"If you looked up Google trends and you looked for these phrases, you’d find that virtually no one has ever searched for 'the democratic party is based on the following ideas,'" the psychologist explained. Indeed, I checked Google Trends, and sure enough there was not enough data.
Google Trends screenshot for "The Democratic Party is based on the following ideas."
As Epstein suggested, however, there were a great many results for "The Democratic Party is corrupt."
Google Trends screenshot for "The Democratic Party is corrupt."
If the "corrupt" angle gets far more searches from users than the "ideas" angle, why does the search suggestion favor "ideas" over "corrupt"?
"Why don't we see that? Because we know from research that the simplest way to support any cause or candidate is to suppress negatives," the psychologist explained. "It's a simple manipulation which we know can dramatically shift the opinions and preferences of undecided voters."
Google Exec Boasted About Helping Hillary Clinton by Boosting Latino Turnout in 2016
Epstein also referenced a study he had performed in 2016, showing that Google suppressed negative search results about Hillary Clinton, while Bing and Yahoo did not.
View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter
Dr. Robert Epstein
@DrREpstein
So @toco8a believes that #GSA (formerly #Google) doesn't use search suggestions to manipulate people. See the images below (from Aug. 3, 2016), and see what you think. For further info, see my research summary here: http://aibrt.org/downloads/EPSTEIN_MOHR_&_MARTINEZ_2018-WPA-The_Search_Suggestion_Effect-SSE-WP-17-03.pdf …
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9:00 AM - Nov 25, 2018
21 people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy
The psychologist's research has shown that suppressing negative results can shift a 50-50 split among undecided voters to a 90-10 split. "Negatives draw attention, negatives can draw ten to fifteen times as many clicks," thanks to "negativity bias."
His research also concluded that this kind of manipulation is "subliminal" — people don't notice it.
Ironically, when someone like Epstein calls foul on one-sided results, the behemoth search engine company merely alters the system.
"When they get caught, they usually make a change. It's absurd for them to say that all of this is just occurring because of impartial algorithms. That's just not true," the psychologist said.
Then there are the leaks. Google executives bragged about increasing Latino turnout in 2016, hoping it would help Hillary Clinton. In September, The Wall Street Journal uncovered emails in which Google workers discussed manipulating search results to disfavor President Trump's travel ban. Last week, the Daily Caller unveiled more emails, showing Google executives scheming against conservative media outlets.
Yet journalists like Schwartz can't accept the fact of manipulation. Epstein explained that, too. "People can see the human hand when they're reading an article and on a television or radio show, but when they're dealing with algorithmic output, they don't see the human hand so they trust algorithms more than any other type of media."
Google has three major manipulation strategies. The company "personalizes search suggestions, search results, and answer boxes." The "answer box" effect proves most powerful, the psychologist explained.
"When you query Google either using the search engine's 'I'm feeling lucky' or the home device or Google assistant, they just give you the answer," Epstein said. "When they give you the answer, three things happen: people spend less time searching; they click on fewer search results; and the shift in opinions increases between 10 and 30 percent."
"Giving someone the answer has a more powerful effect than search results that favor one cause or candidate or company," Epstein explained. Google is excellent at personalizing results, and "the better you are at personalizing them, the greater impact you're going to have on people's opinions."
The company also knows how to mask its manipulations, and the psychologist suggested that it may use more obvious manipulations as a red herring, to distract from the more fundamental attempts to shape public opinion. The "fake news" freakout has only made this strategy more effective.
New Movie Claims Google Handed the Popular Vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016
"Google and Facebook have co-operated to combat fake news stories and Russian-placed ads," Epstein noted. "I think these companies are loving that our attention is drawn away from what they themselves are doing."
The psychologist often refers to Google as "GSA." "I call it Google Surveillance and Advertising, L.L.C.," he told PJ Media. "Surveillance is what they do and advertising is how they make their money."
This surveillance and advertising combine to form an effective money-making machine and give the company tremendous power to influence public opinion. Indeed, Epstein's research has found that Google's bias in favor of Hillary Clinton accounts for her margin of victory in the popular vote.
Thanks to Duck Duck Go, Americans know that "incognito mode" cannot hide users from Google's personalized results. If "incognito mode" is a lie, what else is?
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Posting this forward!
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In the movie "Terminator" what was the name of the computer network that came alive?
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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/04/will-2018-be-the-year-of-the-neo-luddite?fbclid=IwAR1rhhtlBYPsz26D4o80Deb3HWKjVM28JxAPrfIOwsBetgaDYi7GrPWdYsQ
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Facebook Censors at Random
The social network’s rules on political advertising burden nonprofits and are impossible to understand.
65 Comments
By Daniel Gallant
Dec. 9, 2018 5:52 p.m. ET
Facebook Censors at Random
Photo: David Gothard
If you used Facebook in late November, you probably saw a stream of fundraising campaigns for charities and cultural organizations. That’s because Facebook offered up to $7 million in matching donations for nonprofits that used its platform to raise funds on Giving Tuesday. But this gesture masks the negative impact Facebook’s newly adopted advertising policies have had on nonprofit organizations that rely on social media.
In response to public scrutiny stemming from the Cambridge Analytica scandal this year, Facebook has implemented enforcement measures aimed at improving election security and discouraging anonymous political messages. These measures have been poorly executed and inconsistently applied. They unfairly burden charitable organizations and small businesses, yet are easy for organized or well-funded actors to circumvent.
Several paid advertising campaigns run by my colleagues and clients have been inexplicably obstructed by Facebook’s policing in the past several months. Facebook refused to allow my New York cultural nonprofit, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, to pay to promote a post encouraging people to vote in the midterms because our page was not “authorized to run ads related to politics.” A campaign promoting a lecture about sculpture at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts was blocked because Facebook’s censors mistakenly believed it was intended to influence an election in Ireland.
Similarly, Arts Japan 2020, an entity that highlights Japan-related cultural programs in the U.S., was unable to promote a post celebrating an award given by the emperor of Japan to an American arts curator. Facebook claimed the topic was of “national importance.” These harmless posts remain on Facebook in unpromoted form, but unpromoted content has a limited reach.
The problem is widespread. The Atlantic reported on Nov. 2 that Facebook’s election-security policies have caused it to block advertising campaigns from organizations including community centers, national parks and charities that serve wounded veterans.
Representatives of charities are often reluctant to register as political advertisers on Facebook because of privacy concerns. Facebook requires users to disclose significant personal information before promoting posts about politics or national issues. To be authorized to run such advertisements on behalf of my nonprofit organization, I would have to send Facebook my residential address, my Social Security number, and a photo of myself holding my passport or driver’s license. I’m loath to entrust any entity with all of that sensitive information—especially Facebook, which could use its facial-recognition software to match my personal information with photos of me that might appear online.
But suppose I did submit those items and was therefore allowed to promote political content. If I subsequently broke the rules, Facebook wouldn’t necessarily hold the nonprofit I represent responsible. Under Facebook’s policies, the person who operates an ad account is accountable for any ads placed by that account.
The only real protection Facebook’s identification requirements might provide is a guarantee that Facebook users can determine the true identity of the marketer responsible for a political advertisement. Or can they? A well-resourced advertiser with nefarious intent could simply hire a patsy (or use fake credentials) to pass Facebook’s screening process and establish a nominal presence at an American address.
As several reporters have recently discovered, Facebook allows many advertisers who pass its invasive screening process to run political ads under any identity they choose. A recent Vice article describes how Facebook approved political ads by reporters who pretended to be 100 different senators. And Business Insider was able to post political Facebook ads that purported to be from Cambridge Analytica.
In the name of election security, Facebook has implemented an opaque and shape-shifting definition of “issues of national importance” and an intrusive vetting process that is poorly enforced. These don’t protect users or the American public. Unless Facebook offers more transparency and accountability, determined marketers will remain able to circumvent the process. And despite benevolent gestures on Giving Tuesday, nonprofits and small businesses will continue to suffer under Facebook’s arbitrary restrictions.
Mr. Gallant, a social-media marketing consultant, is executive director of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe.
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https://bigleaguepolitics.com/google-approves-app-for-muslims-to-report-people-who-commit-blasphemy/
Don't be evil.
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https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/12/10/exclusive-senior-google-employees-target-breitbart-adsense/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=daily&utm_content=links&utm_campaign=20181210
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https://saraacarter.com/gaetz-grills-google-ceo-over-employee-resist-plot/?fbclid=IwAR1Q-SKkrKIUMNnfvJBFeOSfOJPA3QOfCk4AWoanR-vJ6T8wrCY4tighS4U
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what a coincidence that all this stuff is suddenly front and center news only because of Cambridge Analytica
The Left was happy to take money and look the other way when supporting oBama but as soon as the perception that *they* were crossed and suddenly this is a scandal that needs to be addressed.
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what a coincidence that all this stuff is suddenly front and center news only because of Cambridge Analytica
The Left was happy to take money and look the other way when supporting oBama but as soon as the perception that *they* were crossed and suddenly this is a scandal that needs to be addressed.
Just saying how would you like it if it happened to you doesn't substitute for when it really happens to them.
Everyone thought is was hip and cool that Obama people were experts at "data mining". I allege they had nearly complete lists of welfare rolls, because their people work there and why wouldn't they, moral ethics? AFSCME and Club for Growth have no overlap. Now we know 63% of "non-citizen" residents are listed on the welfare rolls, all likely Democrats and great turnout enhancement opportunities if you don't mind a little law breaking. Facebook got Obama's data miners to nearly everyone too and they can target it for left thinking Democrats like a whole foods store. As ccp says, then Trump does it and now they care about data privacy. Belated welcome.
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https://bigleaguepolitics.com/ann-coulter-urges-trump-to-snub-twitter-join-free-speech-supporting-gab/
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https://israelunwired.com/hamas-live-streaming-terror-event-on-youtube/
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http://ace.mu.nu/archives/378734.php
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https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Terra-Incognita-How-totalitarian-regimes-will-take-over-social-media-and-destroy-the-West-574595?fbclid=IwAR0DcnDA5---DzooERL_LoCXu7_DP5Cd9i1fkrWNX9_4-LTxE39pRzou3T8
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"How Totalitarian Regimes will take over social media"
Like the present state and stated goals of the Democratic Party
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/technology/facebook-privacy.html
You are the product.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/technology/facebook-privacy.html
You are the product.
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/378757.php
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I imagine we are all duped into signing off on this data "sharing" during our excursions on the net
you know their shysters with their stock options have it the fine print some where.
I don't use FB and would rather be dead then sign up to that little shits site
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https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/19/18140799/amazon-marketplace-scams-seller-court-appeal-reinstatement
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http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=59592&fbclid=IwAR35SiMuaOPrezlY0ZBthcnMpdedAfOfn19VYgQY3Oc442C56h5lZ2sVGKc
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https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612596/the-man-turning-china-into-a-quantum-superpower/?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits
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"The man turning China into a quantum superpower"
*Jian-Wei Pan, China’s “father of quantum”
I posted once before if I could come back to life again I would want to be a great physicist .
This guy sounds amazing.
"1 and 0 simultaneously" What??????
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/quantum-physics-may-be-even-spookier-than-you-think/
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https://neonnettle.com/news/5930-snopes-paid-to-push-propaganda-by-facebook-former-editor-reveals
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http://www.kurdistan24.net/en/news/e6a0b65e-84fa-447b-9ed4-5df8390961d3?fbclid=IwAR30IC0JMtdHb-BQ1Ti0_vQkCIa0Rg1L-bNbGhj7ix8pLGHQny1pY5FulOY
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Yes and the Turks already to move in where the US troops were in Syria and exactly where Kurdish fighters are.
Sickening how we screwed them over - again .
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http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/how-much-of-the-internet-is-fake.html
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https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/youtube-cowers-liberals-pro-life-videos-top-abortion-search-results/?ff_source=push&ff_medium=westernjournalism&ff_campaign=manualpost&ff_content=2018-12-27
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https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/facebook-suspends-account-calling-alleged-cop-killer-illegal-immigrant/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=westernjournalism&utm_content=2018-12-31&utm_campaign=manualpost&fbclid=IwAR0j6ZhsRyj2OJR2whQ8q-lPfU2vRKqffndWubOEKLrEsJl_0SJiNeEMHpA
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https://www.businessinsider.com/chan-zuckerberg-research-implantable-brain-device-primates-2018-12
Zuck promises it will be for therapeutic use only!
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http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/a-california-court-finds-social-media-posts-arent-a-first-amendment-right/
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https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/how-an-experimental-billion-dollar-lawsuit-could-clobber-facebook-1174468
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https://www.theblaze.com/news/2018/11/25/google-wants-sensors-and-cameras-in-every-room-of-your-home-to-watch-analyze-you-patents-show?utm_content=bufferc42fd&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=theblaze
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They will control all intellectual property
people will be amazed to see their ideas miraculously already being done
by others
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https://clarionproject.org/facebooks-secret-rulebook-against-free-speech/
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http://ace.mu.nu/archives/379267.php
"Soypunk Dystopia:" Is FaceBook's #10YearChallenge Meme Just A Sneaky Way to Get People to Upload Pictures of Themselves So That FaceBook Can Improve Its Facial Recognition and Aging Effects Projection Software?
"Soypunk dystopia" coined by Tim Pool.
So, if you've noticed people posting pictures of themselves in current year along with a picture of themselves from ten years ago, that's because >FaceBook told them it would be a fun, cool, hip, harmless game to do so.
But is it?
If you use social media, you've probably noticed a trend across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter of people posting their then-and-now profile pictures, mostly from 10 years ago and this year.
Instead of joining in, I posted the following semi-sarcastic tweet:
Kate O'Neill
✔
@kateo
Me 10 years ago: probably would have played along with the profile picture aging meme going around on Facebook and Instagram
Me now: ponders how all this data could be mined to train facial recognition algorithms on age progression and age recognition
24.7K
1:25 PM - Jan 12, 2019
Twitter Ads info and privacy
11.6K people are talking about this
My flippant tweet began to pick up traction. My intent wasn't to claim that the meme is inherently dangerous. But I knew the facial recognition scenario was broadly plausible and indicative of a trend that people should be aware of. It’s worth considering the depth and breadth of the personal data we share without reservations.
Of those who were critical of my thesis, many argued that the pictures were already available anyway. The most common rebuttal was: "That data is already available. Facebook's already got all the profile pictures."
Tim Pool (not the author of the piece) says his reaction to that wasn't one of relief, but of alarm: Oh shit, that's right. I've already given them all this personal shit about me without having thought about it at all.
But that's not quite true. I'm guessing that most people who do this "Ten Year Challenge" stage a new photo in which they are angled and posed exactly as they were in their photo from ten years ago, to better show Now Vs. Then.
Which is exactly what you'd want to sharpen a facial-aging-projection program. You wouldn't want to have to compare a three-quarters semi-profile with a straight-on shot. You'd want the faces to be in the same postures and in the same angles, so that the programming as a true apples to older apples database to work with.
This is creepy shit and these people are no one's friends.
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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/20/shoshana-zuboff-age-of-surveillance-capitalism-google-facebook
A rare piece from the RedGuardian worth reading.
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https://boingboing.net/2019/01/29/fiat-lux.html
Anyone think this is a good idea?
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https://medium.com/deep-code/the-weaponization-of-civil-conflict-c3204a912c15
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Google and Facebook Worsen Media Bias
Silicon Valley’s advertising monopoly translates into editorial influence.
23 Comments
By Mark Epstein
Feb. 10, 2019 3:04 p.m. ET
After the news industry laid off some 2,100 workers from Vice, Gannett, McClatchy, BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blamed “tech monopolies” that have no “incentive to disseminate high-quality, true information.” President Trump blames the press itself: “Fake News and bad journalism have caused a big downturn.”
While these diagnoses of journalism’s ills appear contradictory, both stem from the same root. Allowing a few platforms to control financing and distribution exacerbates the groupthink Mr. Trump rails against.
More than two-thirds of Americans get news from social media. Google and Facebook control a large majority of the digital advertising market that used to be a major source of revenue for the news industry. Tech companies have leveraged their control of news distribution to entrench their advertising dominance. Facebook’s Instant Articles publishes the full text of an article in the platform and shares ad revenue with the publisher. Google punishes publications that raise revenue through subscriptions rather than advertising by downgrading search results of paywalled sites that don’t provide free clicks. Google loosened its restrictions after criticism from publishers and threats of European antitrust enforcement, but it also introduced a “Subscribe With Google” service.
Instant Articles and Subscribe With Google may be convenient, but they also give the duopoly more control over the media’s revenue and data, further centralizing news distribution. Google and Facebook have gained editorial influence over the press. They enact content guidelines as a condition for participation in advertising services. Both companies consult with left-wing groups such as Media Matters to determine what sites to exclude.
Now Google and Facebook are offering journalism grants to try to make up for their impact on the news industry. Last March the Google News Initiative pledged $300 million to aid publishers, and Facebook promised a similar amount last month. Charity from Big Tech makes the news industry more dependent.
The flow of funds also reflects the companies’ Democratic tilt. In 2016 Google sponsored the “Electionland” initiatives with ProPublica, the New York Times, USA Today and Univision, among others, for the stated purpose of “ensuring all Americans could freely exercise their right to vote by shining a light on problems that might get in their way.” In practice Electionland’s scores of articles universally criticized then-candidate Donald Trump or reinforced the liberal position on issues like voter ID and voter fraud.
Arthur Schlesinger Jr. observed that power in America is control of the means of communication. Mr. Trump—who has also accused Google, Facebook and Twitter of political bias—should be more concerned about the concentrated power of Big Tech than any news outlet.
While antitrust law focuses on economic effects, the Supreme Court said in Red Lion Broadcasting v. Federal Communications Commission (1969) that it also complements the First Amendment’s “uninhibited marketplace of ideas,” which does not “countenance monopolization of that market.” The antidote to media bias isn’t schadenfreude over a few publications’ travails but antitrust policies to ensure news outlets across the political spectrum can be independent of Silicon Valley.
Mr. Epstein is an antitrust attorney and freelance writer.
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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/feb/14/elon-musk-backed-ai-writes-convincing-news-fiction?fbclid=IwAR0zuK-7FQXyfld2XEVKBCRW0afuXRlMCitVLRUr061kmiJf8u12mLk0Sk0
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https://pjmedia.com/trending/15-devastating-quotes-that-show-you-how-dangerous-social-media-has-become-to-our-society/
Marc: Pasting these here so they don't get vaporized:
Fifteen Devastating Quotes That Show How Dangerous Social Media Has Become to Society
By John Hawkins February 14, 2019
chat 112 comments
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)
Once you get beyond the government, the greatest threats to free speech and free thought in America are the social media companies that have been allowed to become monopolies. If there is such a thing as a public square in the modern world, these companies increasingly control it and decide who gets heard, who doesn’t, and what ideas the public is ALLOWED to see. This is much more dangerous to our republic than most people realize. You'll get a better idea of why that is as you read these quotes.
1. “A handful of people, working at a handful of technology companies, through their choices will steer what a billion people are thinking today. I don’t know a more urgent problem than this. It’s changing our democracy, and it’s changing our ability to have the conversations and relationships that we want with each other.” – Former Google employee Tristan Harris
2. “Randomized, controlled experiments conducted with more than 10,000 people from 39 countries suggest that one company alone — Google LLC, which controls about 90 percent of online search in most countries — has likely been determining the outcomes of upwards of 25 percent of the national elections in the world for several years now, with increasing impact each year as Internet penetration has grown.” – Robert Epstein
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3. "The YouTube algorithm that I helped build in 2011 still recommends the flat earth theory by the *hundreds of millions.* This investigation by @RawStory shows some of the real-life consequences of this badly designed AI.... So basically we have the two best AIs of the world, on Instagram and YouTube, competing to convince people that the earth is flat. Because it yields large amounts of watch time, and watch time yields ads. This is a #raceToTheBottom....Flat Earth is not a ‘small bug.’ It reveals that there is a structural problem in Google's and Facebook's AIs: they exploit weaknesses of the most vulnerable people, to make them believe the darnedest things." -- Former YouTube and Google employee Guillaume Chaslot
4. “The dynamics of the attention economy are structurally set up to undermine the human will. If politics is an expression of our human will, on individual and collective levels, then the attention economy is directly undermining the assumptions that democracy rests on. If Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat are gradually chipping away at our ability to control our own minds, could there come a point, I ask, at which democracy no longer functions?” – Former Google strategist James Williams
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5. "Social networking sites might tap into the basic brain systems for delivering pleasurable experience. However, these experiences are devoid of cohesive narrative and long-term significance. As a consequence, the mid-21st-century mind might almost be infantilised, characterised by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathise and a shaky sense of identity." – Oxford professor Susan Greenfield
6. “Twice as many teenagers now have depression as a generation ago. This high rate of depression has no biological explanation. Instead, it appears to be caused by engagement with social media on smartphones. It’s now clear that there’s a strong association between use of social media and depression in adolescents. The more depressed adolescents are, the more they use social media; the more they use social media, the more depressed they are. Which causes which is unclear, but whatever the cause, it’s a vicious cycle.” -- Dr. Nassir Ghaemi
7. "Just before July fourth, for example, Facebook automatically blocked a post from a Texas newspaper that it claimed contained hate speech. Facebook then asked the paper to 'review the contents of its page and remove anything that does not comply with Facebook’s policies.' The text at issue was the Declaration of Independence." -- Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.)
8. “Core assumption in tech: personalized ads are better for users. Ads exploit your insecurities to manipulate you into buying stuff you don't need. Who wants their personal insecurities amplified?" – Former Google employee James Damore
9. "Shallow emotions. An incapacity to feel genuine love. A need for stimulation. Frequent verbal outbursts. Poor behavioral controls. These are just some of the things that social media are encouraging in all of us. They're also a pretty comprehensive diagnostic checklist for sociopathy — in fact, that's where I got the list." -- Milo Yiannopoulos
10. “Cosmetic surgery procedures have increased 137 percent since 2000, according to a report by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, with young people contributing to the rise significantly. In what scientists have called ‘Snapchat dysmorphia,’ young people are increasingly getting plastic surgery to look like the versions of themselves they see in social media filters. ‘There's less guilt about undergoing procedures,’ says plastic and reconstructive surgeon Dr. Lara Devgan. ‘Five or 10 years ago, people might have brought in pictures of a magazine cover supermodel. Now, they're bringing in pictures of themselves, but just in a slightly optimized way.’ – Broadly
11. "One of the things I've been very interested in is feats of concentration that people used to perform all the time — [such as] writing a book in six weeks or a computer program in a few days. I don’t think that’s impossible now, but I do think it’s become considerably harder in our environment to enter important and deep states of focus and concentration, because we surround ourselves with technology, whose business model is to distract us.
"Our computers are ostensibly productivity-enhancing machines, but they also are loaded with platforms whose business model is to consume as much of your time as possible with ads and noise and distraction.
"There’s nothing wrong with taking a break, but we've engineered our environment for distraction. We bob from one thing to another, perpetually. And I don't know if it's so great for our culture or even ourselves." -- Tim Wu, author of The Attention Merchants.
12. "Facebook and Google assert with merit that they are giving users what they want. The same can be said about tobacco companies and drug dealers. The people who run Facebook and Google are good people, whose well-intentioned strategies have led to horrific unintended consequences. The problem is that there is nothing the companies can do to address the harm unless they abandon their current advertising models.” -- Roger McNamee, a venture capitalist who was an early investor in Google and Facebook
13. “I don't know if I really understood the consequences of what I was saying, because [of] the unintended consequences of a network when it grows to a billion or 2 billion people and... it literally changes your relationship with society, with each other... It probably interferes with productivity in weird ways. God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains. The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them... was all about: 'How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?' And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever. And that's going to get you to contribute more content, and that's going to get you... more likes and comments. It's a social-validation feedback loop... exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you're exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.”-- Facebook's first president, Sean Parker, on social media
14. "[Users of my service], trust me. Dumb f*cks." – Mark Zuckerberg
15. “The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works—no civil discourse, no coöperation, misinformation, mistruth.... I feel tremendous guilt. I think we all knew in the back of our minds, [our children] are not allowed to use this sh*t." -- Chamath Palihapitiya, the former vice president of Facebook user growth
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https://pjmedia.com/trending/censored-facebook-bans-conservative-articles-on-jussie-smollett-hate-hoax/
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https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/02/20/the-nest-secure-has-a-hidden-microphone-and-google-didnt-tell-owners-for-18-months
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It is simply not enough for politicians to speak of regulating this or a corporate fine on a company that has a makert cap of several hundred billion.
executives need to serve time.
But on second thought ,
Of course government lawyers against the army of $1000/ hr attorneys Google can muster , is I guess a mere child's fantasy anyway.
These people are no different the mafia bosses really .
never any real accountability.
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https://medium.com/s/story/when-tech-leaves-no-space-for-humans-89becafa3a20
Nothing you see or hear can be trusted.
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https://nypost.com/2019/01/11/employees-at-amazons-ring-have-been-spying-on-customers/
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https://pjmedia.com/trending/youtube-deplatforms-retired-navy-seal-who-exposed-tribal-elder-nathan-phillips-stolen-valor/
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http://www.jewishworldreview.com/michelle/malkin022719.php3
I've Been Silicon Valley Sharia'd
Michelle Malkin
By Michelle Malkin
Published Feb. 27, 2019
I've Been Silicon Valley Sharia'd
Last week, the little birdies in Twitter's legal department notified me that one of my tweets from 2015 is "in violation of Pakistan law." It seems like ancient history, but Islamic supremacists never forget — or forgive.
My innocuous tweet featured a compilation image of the 12 Muhammad cartoons published by Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005. It also linked to my Jan. 8, 2015, syndicated column on the Charlie Hebdo jihad massacre in Paris. There's no hate, violence, profanity or pornography, just harmless drawings and peacefully expressed opinions about the Western media's futile attempts to appease the unappeasable enforcers of sharia law, which bans all insults of Islam.
The Twitter notice assured me that the company "has not taken any action on the reported content at this time," yet advised me that I should "consult legal counsel about this matter" in response to complaints from unnamed "authorized entities."
Don't worry, lawyer up? Gulp.
I'm used to getting threats directly from bloodthirsty cartoon jihadists. In 2006, I spearheaded a "Mohammed cartoons blogburst" in support of the Danish cartoonists at Jyllands-Posten. After posting all 12 of the drawings to educate the public about the publication's brave stand against sharia-enforced self-censorship in the West, death and rape threats from radical Muslims around the world poured into my email inbox. Vengeful thugs based in Turkey and Germany called me a "whore" and "prostitute," vowing "We will kill you" unless I deleted the pictures from my server. My website was targeted by jihadist hackers who launched a week of denial-of-service attacks.
Thirteen years later, however, who knew that using an American company's microblogging service from my secluded mountaintop in Colorado could get me in hot water with foreign Muslim stone-age goons 8,000 miles away still hung up on the cartoons.
Who knew Twitter would act as dutiful messenger pigeons for the oppressive anti-blasphemy police squad that sentences people to death for disparaging Islam.
Welcome to Silicon Valley sharia.
Over the past few months, several other prominent critics of Islamic extremism have received similar warning letters from Twitter's legal department, including Saudi-Canadian activist Ensaf Haidar, the wife of imprisoned Saudi blogger Raif Badawi; Imam Mohammad Tawhidi, an Iranian-born Muslim scholar and reform advocate from Australia; Jamie Glazov, a Russian-born Canadian columnist who just released a new book called "Jihadist Psychopath"; and Pamela Geller, an anti-jihad blogger and activist.
Jacob Engels, another conservative activist and blogger, was suspended from Twitter this weekend without explanation. His last tweet linked to video of a black Christian street preacher being arrested for "breaching the peace." Engels opined that the scene depicted "America's future thanks to (Rep. Ilhan Omar). Roaming rape gangs ... cops do nothing. Massive terrorist attacks."
There's no violence, hate, profanity or pornography, just an informed opinion about the consequences of open borders and capitulation to Islamic extremism. So why was Engels censored for condemning violent Muslims? Jack Morrissey, the Disney film producer who publicly called for the falsely accused Covington Catholic high school students to be fed into a woodchipper "screaming, hats first," was allowed to retain his verified Twitter status without any punishment for his bloody death wishes.
This is all of a piece. As I reported in December, citizen journalist Laura Loomer was banned from Twitter for stating true facts about radical Muslim Rep. Ilhan Omar's embrace of sharia laws that threaten gays, Jews and women. Loomer has since been deplatformed from PayPal and just learned she can no longer sell T-shirts protesting Twitter's ban with the hashtag #StopTheBias on Teespring.
Paypal's CEO admitted this week that he relied on the Southern Poverty Law Center's powerful smear machine for input on which conservatives to blacklist in order to uphold the company's alleged values of "diversity and inclusion." SPLC's de-Paypal'd victims include Tommy Robinson, an English anti-jihad activist; VDARE, a nationalist immigration news and commentary site that publishes my syndicated column; and Gavin McInnes, a humorist, social critic and media entrepreneur whose fans have raised nearly $140,000 at DefendGavin.com for his powerful defamation lawsuit against the SPLC. McInnes was also de-Twittered and temporarily de-YouTube'd.
Among others targeted by SPLC, which collaborates with credit card companies and banks to silence influential thinkers and activists on the right: David Horowitz, a venerable scholar and investigative author who successfully beat back Mastercard's attempt to drop him over his organization's opposition to Islamic radicalism and illegal immigration, and the Center for Immigration Studies, which is suing the SPLC for labeling its mainstream think tank a "hate group."
Deplatforming dissenting voices is a ruthless, bizarre and unprogressive way to achieve "diversity and inclusion." So is conspiring with repressive regimes that are hell-bent on destroying the West. Twitter has become America's version of Islam's morality police — the dreaded "mutaween."
I will not. As an American citizen who is subject to America's laws — not Pakistan's or Mohammed's — I'll retweet my harmless little Mo cartoons to my 2.1 million followers every day from now on and stand with other targets on the side of free speech and free thought. How about you, Twitter?
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https://www.foxnews.com/tech/facebook-google-in-crosshairs-of-new-ftc-competition-task-force?fbclid=IwAR1SH3iGY76YRPSMFgHG3gdQ6x5GsBVslj2NKLA28JhMv11U-d8oUCXBbxI
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https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/02/27/project_veritas_facebook_insider_explains_deboosting_troll_report_and_political_targeting_of_conservatives.html?fbclid=IwAR2tCyElGObpBhBok_Uqc_3gNAJ_nDyzYLGD0pDVfX041xOVnmfuWt9QEDA
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The world retains its ability to surprise:
https://www.youngresearch.com/researchandanalysis/technology/will-democrats-break-up-big-tech-companies/?awt_l=PWy8k&awt_m=3j8mW0ZDD7zlu1V
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Interesting , , ,
https://www.newyorker.com/news/current/mark-zuckerberg-announces-facebooks-pivot-to-privacy?utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_030719&utm_medium=email&bxid=5be9d3fa3f92a40469e2d85c&user_id=50142053&esrc=&utm_term=TNY_Daily
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Trusting FaceHugger with your privacy is like trusting your children with a Michael Jackson sleepover.
Interesting , , ,
https://www.newyorker.com/news/current/mark-zuckerberg-announces-facebooks-pivot-to-privacy?utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_030719&utm_medium=email&bxid=5be9d3fa3f92a40469e2d85c&user_id=50142053&esrc=&utm_term=TNY_Daily
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"Trusting FaceHugger with your privacy is like trusting your children with a Michael Jackson sleepover."
Good one GM. Even more private than Facebook's new privacy policy is to NOT JOIN FACEBOOK! Don't give your most personal information to someone who is openly selling it to everyone who wants it - and then expect privacy.
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"Trusting FaceHugger with your privacy is like trusting your children with a Michael Jackson sleepover."
Good one GM. Even more private than Facebook's new privacy policy is to NOT JOIN FACEBOOK! Don't give your most personal information to someone who is openly selling it to everyone who wants it - and then expect privacy.
If you have an android phone, even if you have never joined FaceHugger, FaceHugger is tracking you.
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https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-elizabeth-warren-amazon-facebook-google-20190308-story.html?fbclid=IwAR0dMBRNfvjpDdU_YfpDwN6phAOnGB_oFhcPlc8QWNYN84NamIOAjMQgd7c
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https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-elizabeth-warren-amazon-facebook-google-20190308-story.html?fbclid=IwAR0dMBRNfvjpDdU_YfpDwN6phAOnGB_oFhcPlc8QWNYN84NamIOAjMQgd7c
In her case, it's probably a ploy to shake down Zuckerberg for some sweet, sweet campaign cash.
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"Trusting FaceHugger with your privacy is like trusting your children with a Michael Jackson sleepover."
Good one GM. Even more private than Facebook's new privacy policy is to NOT JOIN FACEBOOK! Don't give your most personal information to someone who is openly selling it to everyone who wants it - and then expect privacy.
If you have an android phone, even if you have never joined FaceHugger, FaceHugger is tracking you.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/5/18252397/facebook-android-apps-sending-data-user-privacy-developer-tools-violation
(https://www.indiewire.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/facehugger.jpg)
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https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-elizabeth-warren-amazon-facebook-google-20190308-story.html?fbclid=IwAR0dMBRNfvjpDdU_YfpDwN6phAOnGB_oFhcPlc8QWNYN84NamIOAjMQgd7c
In her case, it's probably a ploy to shake down Zuckerberg for some sweet, sweet campaign cash.
They should be broken up not because of bigness but because of unfair trade practices, and not because of allegations but because of facts.
Our right of privacy is constitutional? Their violations of privacy are unconstitutional? It's not that we should regulate 'these' companies. Laws should be written to be clear to all. Consent to gather, use and sell our information shold be clear.
When I accepted g(google)mail I consented to them reading my emails for their advertising purposes in exchange for a host of free services I received in return. When I use google map directions, did I consent to have my location and all moves tracked and have that sold for the rest of my life?
Long before smartphones were market ready a Gilder tech newsletter predicted these teleputers and plans would be free. A rider on a Tokyo subway could see restaurant advertisements for the next stops and the advertisers would pay the users for the right to track locations. Or (presumably) you could opt out of tracking and pay for your own equipment and service. Instead we pay and they double collect by tracking and selling our data.
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http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=59905
Control speech, control thought.
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https://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-valleys-most-celebrated-ceos-conspired-to-drive-down-100000-tech-engineers-wages/?fbclid=IwAR390ldv7BPG-mKCNAbNtT4BqXQRly4E-wJLtGzVqwyWHI-rMnXQx8G59Z8
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https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/03/facebook-removes-elizabeth-warrens-ads
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Third post
https://www.axios.com/what-google-knows-about-you-3f6c9b20-4406-4bda-8344-d324f1ee0816.html?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits
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The Technology 202: Freshman Sen. Josh Hawley emerges as one of toughest Republican critics of Big Tech
By Cat Zakrzewski
March 13 at 8:35 AM
Ctrl + N
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) speaks during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Capitol Hill. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is still the new guy on Capitol Hill. But the freshman senator is swiftly emerging as one of the Republican Party’s toughest critics of Big Tech.
Hawley’s rigorous grilling of Google executive Will DeVries was the most heated exchange during yesterday’s privacy hearing:
He slammed Google for collecting people's location data on Android phones — even after they try to disable the tracking function. He compared the practice to an Eagles song — saying, “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”
“To see the Google witness push back on me and attempt to say consumers should anticipate this would be the case, are you kidding me?” Hawley told me in an interview after the hearing. “That’s just insane. It’s not just insane, it’s insulting.”
As Democrats such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) come out swinging against Big Tech, Hawley could prove to be an ally across the aisle. While Republicans have historically been wary of government intervention in private industry, Hawley has made it clear it's time for the government to do more to rein in Silicon Valley.
As he uses his new position in Congress to press the Federal Trade Commission to step up its investigations of competition and privacy issues, he is welcoming the stepped-up attention from Democrats campaigning for 2020.
Warren’s proposal to break up Amazon, Google and Facebook will lend a spotlight to these issues, he says. “It’s going to help make sure there’s a conversation on the national level."
Hawley isn't the only Republican complimenting Warren. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), another strong critic of the technology industry in the Republican party, said yesterday:
First time I’ve ever retweeted @ewarren But she’s right—Big Tech has way too much power to silence Free Speech. They shouldn’t be censoring Warren, or anybody else. A serious threat to our democracy.
Elizabeth Warren
✔@ewarren
Curious why I think FB has too much power? Let's start with their ability to shut down a debate over whether FB has too much power. Thanks for restoring my posts. But I want a social media marketplace that isn't dominated by a single censor. #BreakUpBigTech https://twitter.com/viaCristiano/status/1105235358596386821 …
At 39, Hawley brings a fresh perspective to the technology debate in Congress as the country’s youngest senator. While many of his more senior peers have been criticized for their gaffes during technology hearings, Hawley's line of questioning showed that he has a deep understanding of how Google’s products work.
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Hawley wants Google to give consumers a clear way to opt out of invasive location tracking. He says many members of the committee — including Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Caif.) — told him they were not aware that Google tracks people at this level.
Hawley's questions even drew praise from the the Judiciary Committee's top Democrat.
“Senator Hawley, I thought your questions were very well placed and really very good," Feinstein said during the hearing. “For someone — and I'm not all that computer sophisticated — it was revolutionary because I really see the breadth and depth of what we're dealing with, and the unknowns of what the future brings."
Hawley has already shown he’s able to work with the Democrats. His top tech priority right now is passing an amended version of the Children’s Online Privacy and Protection Act that he introduced with Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) yesterday.
“As someone who has two young children at home, this is not a theoretical issue for me,” he said.
The legislation would update a more than 20-year-old children’s privacy law and would require companies to provide parents with an eraser button to delete data that companies collected about their children.
“In order to enact the strong privacy protections that Americans deserve, it is going to take dedication and collaboration from members of Congress from both sides of the aisle,” Markey told me in an email. “Senator Hawley has proven himself to be a tenacious privacy advocate, and it has been a pleasure working with him to update the rules for children’s privacy online.”
Markey has been trying for years to update the children’s privacy law, but his efforts have not gained traction in the Republican-controlled Senate. Hawley said the urgency on privacy issues is accelerating, and he can say for certain that there is broad bipartisan interest. He’s calling on his Republican colleagues to ensure that children’s privacy restructuring passes quickly.
“We know that COPPA worked in the past, and we know it needs to be updated,” Hawley told me. “Let’s proceed with deliberate speed.”
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13864/eu-media-literacy
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WSJ
Facebook, YouTube, Twitter Scramble to Remove Video of New Zealand Mosque Shooting
Social media companies have struggled to block, uncover and remove violent content despite increasing public outcry and political pressure
In front of one of the mosques.
At least 49 people were killed and dozens wounded in shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Above, armed police responded near one of the mosques.
People on their phones after the shooting at one of the mosques in Christchurch on Friday.
Police respond to the shooting at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand on Friday.
A frame from footage showing the attack, which appeared on sites including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. At one point in the 17-minute video, a shooter appears to gun down a man at close range, then reload and continue the rampage. On other occasions, he fires point-blank at people lying on the floor.
Another frame from the video showing a gun covered in writing. An account that Twitter said it suspended in response to the shooting posted a half-dozen photos of rifle magazines with names written on them in the days before the attack, according to a publicly available cached version.
‘This can now only be described as a terrorist attack,’ said Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who called the day one of the darkest in New Zealand's history.
Scenes of the mosque shooting in New Zealand on Friday were streamed live on Facebook and posted on YouTube and Twitter, in a gruesome example of how social media platforms still can be misused to spread terror despite heavy spending by their owners to contain such content.
New Zealand police said the footage—related to the attack on a pair of mosques that left 49 dead Friday—was “extremely distressing” and urged people not to circulate it.
The 17-minute video shows a gunman walking through a mosque and firing at worshipers who slumped to the floor. At one point a man, whose face is visible in parts of the video, appears to gun down a victim at close range before reloading and continuing the rampage.
The video remained on YouTube several hours after the shootings.
A Facebook Inc. FB -2.42% spokeswoman said the company removed the video after New Zealand police flagged it to the social network. Twitter Inc. TWTR +0.72% said it was working to remove the video.
A YouTube spokesman said it has removed thousands of videos related to the incident and that “shocking, violent and graphic content has no place on our platforms.” The spokesman said YouTube, a unit of Alphabet Inc.’s GOOGL +0.04% Google, is working with authorities.
All three platforms have struggled to block, uncover and remove violent content despite an increasing public outcry and political pressure.
Facebook says it has more than 15,000 contractors and employees reviewing content, part of a 30,000 person team working on safety and security issues at the company. The broader team includes engineers who are building technical tools to block graphic content, as well as employees dubbed “graphic violence specialists” who make decisions about whether violent images posted on the site have social or news value or whether, as in the case of beheadings, they are meant to terrorize and have no place on the site, Monika Bickert, head of global policy management at Facebook, said in an interview in February.
But the sheer volume of material posted by the platforms’ billions of users, along with the difficulty of distinguishing the social value of similar types of violent videos, has created a minefield for the companies.
New Zealand Mosque Shootings Called a ‘Terrorist Attack’
New Zealand Mosque Shootings Called a ‘Terrorist Attack’
Dozens of people were killed in shootings at two mosques in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand, which Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said could only be described as "a terrorist attack." Witnesses recount the deadly shooting. Photo: AP
“This latest atrocity only underscores the fact that there is no responsible way to offer a live-streaming social media service,” said Mary Anne Franks, a law professor at the University of Miami and president of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, which advocates for legislation to address online abuse. “By its very nature, live-streamed content cannot be meaningfully moderated, and Facebook must finally be forced to take responsibility for the role it has played in encouraging and amplifying horrific acts of violence.”
Facebook and YouTube say they are each putting a lot of effort into developing artificial intelligence software and machine learning that can automatically remove or flag objectionable material.
AI experts said there is no technology available that would allow for the foolproof detection of violence on streaming platforms. Even teaching machines to recognize a person brandishing a gun is difficult, as there are many different types of guns, and many different stances for holding them. Computers also struggle to distinguish actual acts of violence from violence in fictional films.
“There’s a perception that AI can do everything and detect everything, but it’s a matter of how much room do you leave to produce false alerts,” said Itsik Kattan, the CEO of Agent Video Intelligence, a video analytics company specializing in AI applications for surveillance.
Preventing violent videos from being streamed would require Facebook and other platforms to establish a buffer period where videos could be vetted before being posted to the site, he said.
More
Shootings at New Zealand Mosques Leave 49 People Dead
AI also suffers from the limited amount of available footage of real-life violence available to train the computers, said Yan Shuicheng, a professor specializing in artificial intelligence at the National University of Singapore.
Facebook in particular has faced intense criticism from U.S. lawmakers and others over the past year for the way its platform can be abused by violent actors. United Nations investigators said the platform contributed to the demonization of ethnic Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, in the lead up to a brutal purge of the minority by the country’s military. Facebook promised to take steps to fight the problem, such as hiring more Myanmar-speaking moderators to improve its ability to identify and remove hateful content.
A Cleveland man posted a video of a murder on Facebook in 2017, drawing attention to the company’s inability to reliably catch violent videos before they are published on its platform. At the time, Facebook acknowledged its process for reviewing content contained flaws.
That same month, a Thai man killed his baby daughter in a video posted live to Facebook. A spokeswoman for Facebook condemned the act and said the video would be removed.
Facebook has made inconsistent decisions in the past. The company removed and then reinstated a video in 2016 of a man’s body after police shot him. Facebook added a “graphic content” warning to that video and said it planned to continue to make improvements to live video.
Taking down violent video after the fact may not eliminate the harm. Sidney Jones, director of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict in Jakarta, says that by the time big tech companies remove violent videos, they’ve often been spread via email and messaging applications and remain accessible. She said Islamic State live-streamed terrorist attacks as a way to gain followers and attention, and now other violent actors are using social media in a similar way.
“It’s the classic objective of terror, which is to sow the idea that you will be next,” Ms. Jones said.
Write to Jon Emont at jonathan.emont@wsj.com, Georgia Wells at Georgia.Wells@wsj.com and Mike Cherney at mike.cherney@wsj.com
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https://www.sfgate.com/technology/article/Delete-Facebook-now-What-s-App-co-founder-13691107.php
They should.
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"Acton, who sold his company to Facebook for $19 billion, criticized Mark Zuckerberg of abusing users' privacy by allowing ads on Facebook."
I remember early on Zuck was against this practice too.
But the Wall Street people made him do it. (or convinced him) from what I recall
remember when the stock opened ~ 36 then tanked to 17 then they announced will do ads etc and the price rebounded and never looked back from there.
Those wolves of wall streeter guys/(gals - hey I don't want to be accused of sexism) need to be held accountable too!
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https://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/google-does-evil-to-patrick-moore/
Down the memory hole.
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https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/1107736676602925056
Sean Davis
Verified account
@seanmdav
Follow Follow @seanmdav
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Twitter confirmed to me today via e-mail that it did shadowban one of my tweets about Lisa Page's congressional testimony in order to "keep people safe[.]" Twitter deliberately deleted the tweet/URL, yet kept it visible for me when I was logged in so I'd think it was still up.
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https://www.breitbart.com/radio/2019/03/19/jeff-landry-all-options-are-on-the-table-to-break-big-tech-monopolies/?fbclid=IwAR0TQGRsQxm7tnOc3Og1RiB59tr_8i16oGaEb8mJM3ZaJy7tpIN1i-bAtcM
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By Sam Schechner and
Valentina Pop
Updated March 20, 2019 8:57 a.m. ET
BRUSSELS—Alphabet’s Google was fined €1.49 billion ($1.7 billion) by the European Union for limiting how some websites could display ads sold by its rivals, the tech giant’s third antitrust penalty from the bloc since 2017.
Wednesday’s decision, which is smaller than the total of €6.76 billion ($7.67 billion) levied against Google in two previous decisions, is the last among formal charges the EU’s antitrust regulator has so far filed against the tech giant, drawing to a close at least one part of the nearly decadelong investigation into the company.
The fine deals with abusing the dominance of its search engine to block competitors in the niche market of selling text ads on the search results that appear on third-party websites.
It doesn’t come with a specific order to change Google’s business practices because the commission says Google ended the last type of anticompetitive behavior at issue in the case shortly after charges were filed nearly three years ago.
“Google has cemented its dominance in online search adverts and shielded itself from competitive pressure by imposing anticompetitive contractual restrictions on third-party websites,” said Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s antitrust chief. “This is illegal under EU antitrust rules,” she added.
Even though Google has stopped this behavior in 2016, Ms. Vestager said that “at a minimum our decision requires Google to put a stop to those restrictions or any other restrictions with an equivalent effect and not to reinstate them.”
EU Antitrust Probes Into Google
A scorecard of where each case stands
Google’s senior vice president of global affairs, Kent Walker, said, “We’ve already made a wide range of changes to our products to address the Commission’s concerns. Over the next few months, we’ll be making further updates to give more visibility to rivals in Europe.”
In the past, the company has said that while it believes it behaved legally with the business at issue in Wednesday’s decision, it ended the allegedly anticompetitive behavior to resolve the issue expeditiously.
The latest ruling continues a run of heavy antitrust enforcement from the EU against Google, led by Ms. Vestager. But some antitrust experts and Google rivals say that Wednesday’s relatively narrow decision, along with Google’s continued dominance of areas the European Commission has investigated over the last decade, from mobile phone search to online shopping ads, suggests that current antitrust enforcement is too slow and toothless to deal with fast-moving tech giants—and needs updating.
“I think Google has outmaneuvered the commission in many ways,” said Alec Burnside, a competition lawyer at Dechert LLP who has represented complainants against Google in other cases. “There is great soul searching in the antitrust community about whether the rulebook is adequate for this.”
In the U.S., Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat running for president, called for the breakup of some big tech firms. Ms. Vestager, however, has been reluctant to endorse corporate splits and defended the EU’s more targeted responses.
“We try with the casework, with cease and desist orders, with follow-up, to have a competitive marketplace,” Ms. Vestager said during an appearance at a conference in Texas earlier this month. “I hope we won’t have to turn to this tool of very last resort.”
Google has said that while it believes it behaved legally with the business at issue in Wednesday’s decision, the company ended the allegedly anticompetitive behavior to resolve the issue expeditiously.
Google has said that while it believes it behaved legally with the business at issue in Wednesday’s decision, the company ended the allegedly anticompetitive behavior to resolve the issue expeditiously. Photo: charles platiau/Reuters
Google, to be sure, has had to make significant changes to how it operates in the EU to comply with the bloc’s rulings, and people close to the company say they now must consider these decisions when launching new products. They also say it is too early to judge the effect of the most significant EU finding in July 2018 that Google had abused the dominance of its Android operating system for mobile devices to entrench its search engine and Chrome web browser. Google only began implementing its remedy to comply with that ruling in October.
Google also faces other preliminary investigations into its conduct in the EU, including into its handling of local search results, Ms. Vestager said Wednesday, but it isn’t clear if or when those cases might lead to any formal charges.
Some antitrust experts note as well that enforcement action is designed to remove hindrances to competition, not to push for specific market outcomes. That is why some argue that antitrust investigations and remedies must be implemented more quickly to have an impact before it is too late. A recent report conducted on behalf of the U.K. government also recommended that when evaluating mergers, antitrust officials should assign more weight to the future, not just current, consumer welfare.
The EU has also exerted pressure on Google to improve the remedies it has made in the two previous cases. On Tuesday, Google said it would make additional concessions it has made in an effort to put the complaints against its behavior to rest. Those concessions include plans in coming months to ask all existing Android users in Europe whether they would like to use rival search engines or web browsers on their phones.
“It is welcome that Google is stepping up its efforts with regard to the Google Android decision,” Ms. Vestager said Wednesday, noting the commission will monitor the rollout.
At issue in the latest case is a service called AdSense for Search, in which Google allows website owners to monetize search results that appear on their own websites.
The European Commission found that Google’s contracts with websites at times breached antitrust rules by unfairly restricting how third-party websites could integrate ads sold by Google competitors into the search results on those sites. Google began to change some of those practices—including eliminating an exclusivity clause—in 2009, and made other changes shortly before the EU filed its formal charges in 2016.
Google pulled in $20.98 billion—or about 15% of its overall revenue—in 2018 by selling ads on other companies’ websites. But that percentage is down from 17% of revenue two years earlier. It isn’t clear how much came from the so-called AdSense ads in third-party search results, but the company has previously said AdSense for Search is a “legacy business” that is shrinking.
Ms. Vestager said Wednesday that the smaller fine reflected the fact that brokering search ads on other websites was a smaller business during the period of infringement than those in the EU’s prior decisions.
Write to Sam Schechner at sam.schechner@wsj.com and Valentina Pop at valentina.pop@wsj.com
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second post
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/technology/facebook-data-deals-investigation.html?fbclid=IwAR0B2rwtkefGIZgPUBc3w3WEcB2oHsqsBDYNw4r_qEMCAEOyQLNIT6ziUgw
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https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2019/03/not-about-me-and-google-says-dunford-who-will-meet-execs-next-week/155742/?oref=defenseone_today_nl
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https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2019/03/not-about-me-and-google-says-dunford-who-will-meet-execs-next-week/155742/?oref=defenseone_today_nl
“Typically if a company does business in China, they are automatically going to be required to have a cell of the Communist Party in that company.”
The Chinese are fine with registered democrats. Close enough.
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https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/27/18284174/facebook-ban-white-nationalist-separatist-content?fbclid=IwAR1yPy-3NVpHzxE3X44om8sb2H0FGhLCcbir_gspJ8RdrWOWX8JnEhngHsM
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https://www.theblaze.com/news/twitter-suspends-unplanned-movie?utm_content=buffer7abf1&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=glennbeck&fbclid=IwAR0E7DrQjvgbEufbiNLECGHwOw8AtinJtrMJLo-9Pzo0Cq4ExW8xxFCwixU
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Zuckerberg for Regulation
Beware of tech CEOs bearing gifts from government.
By The Editorial Board
March 31, 2019 3:51 p.m. ET
Sooner or later you knew it would happen: Big tech would invite government regulation to deflect even greater intervention such as an antitrust breakup.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is the latest to welcome governments to play a “more active role” in governing the internet, presumably including his company. In an op-ed Saturday in the Irish Independent and Washington Post, Mr. Zuckerberg invited European-style privacy rules for the U.S. and called on regulators to set clearer rules on “harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability.”
This plea for big government to regulate big business will go down well in liberal precincts, where the tech giants have lost the political immunity they had during the Obama years. Politicians like nothing better than to claim to be taming unpopular businesses, and Mr. Zuckerberg may think he’s buying some protection from calls to break up the company.
The rest of us should be wary of CEOs bearing government gifts. The costs of regulation, such as privacy rules, are easier for bigger businesses to bear and they can create higher barriers to entry for competitors. And forgive us if we’re wary of letting politicians on the right or left dictate content decisions. Before he invites the protection of the political class, Mr. Zuckerberg should have Facebook fix Facebook.
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https://mixmag.net/read/google-burning-man-news?fbclid=IwAR0pWbBpCHAldgwHLrrYMuFK_z0UaanoPrn0v8n5jIM2EDb8FfTEtCIR36w
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haven't been to burning man
can't say I have any desire to go
I am sure the googlelites have their own fancy tents and accommodations
read somewhere recently it has already lost its novelty and has become hokey.
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second post
go Josh:
https://pjmedia.com/trending/gop-senator-puts-twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-on-notice-time-for-a-third-party-audit-of-de-platforming-policies/
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Key point in the article:
"Social media platforms have been given a "sweetheart deal," according to Hawley, which includes "immunity from liability for illegal content posted by third parties." They were given special consideration, he said, because they promised to provide "a forum for a true diversity of political discourse.”"
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https://reason.com/blog/2019/04/05/mark-zuckerberg-calls-for-government-reg
"Zuckerberg is joined not only by progressive Democrats such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) but conservative Republicans such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who are calling for the equivalent of a Fairness Doctrine for Twitter and similar services."
Good God. Where was government when they bought their largest competitor?
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http://ace.mu.nu/archives/380771.php
Read it all.
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Saw Ted Cruz on Laura Ingraham last night. He responded to the argument made by many that FB et al are privately owned by pointing out the difference between platform and publisher and that those who are granted protection from libel suits by being considered platforms should not then be censoring.
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Saw Ted Cruz on Laura Ingraham last night. He responded to the argument made by many that FB et al are privately owned by pointing out the difference between platform and publisher and that those who are granted protection from libel suits by being considered platforms should not then be censoring.
I'm not sure I agree with Ted Cruz on this [nor do I think he can get where he wants to go partnering with Elizabeth Warren].
It is a widely used platform, but Facebook also is a product people can choose to join, avoid, or leave when dissatisfied.
The issue is not which way FB leans which is obvious but what level of involvement government should have.
When the company begs for "regulation", I smell a rat.
Unfair business practices, lack of privacy options and real consent agreements are areas for public policy to address, but let's not allow regulation, which can be government sponsorship, to make permanent a system we already know is incapable of being neutral.
Regulation generally locks in the monopoly status of the most entrenched players, cf oil companies, Wall Street, energy utilities.
I'd rather have Facebook be a bad company that takes our money and privacy than have it be a branch of government.
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I understand Cruz's point to be a REMOVAL of governmental exclusion from libel laws.
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https://www.theblaze.com/news/amazon-admits-listening-in-on-conversations-via-alexa?utm_content=bufferf32c6&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=glennbeck&fbclid=IwAR2BHHGAADWHEh621NlweMeGRXiZvulGvKCUY6SUzZyIDMAxn0kjYiyHu4Q
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I understand Cruz's point to be a REMOVAL of governmental exclusion from libel laws.
In that case, good, I think. At least he is calling them out publicly on their bias which for Google and Facebook should chip away at their monopoly.
More:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/04/10/ted-cruz-threatens-regulate-facebook-twitter-over-alleged-bias/3423095002/
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(http://ace.mu.nu/archives/crazy%20map.jpg)
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https://dailycaller.com/2019/04/15/splc-facebook-conservatives/?utm_medium=email
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response take a $ 3 billion expense, chump change, and then pretend you want some regulation (with eagerness to help write it)
https://pjmedia.com/trending/the-federal-trade-commission-is-coming-after-facebook-to-the-tune-of-3-5-billion/
Look at the chart ; from low right back up in a several months:
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/FB/chart?p=FB#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%3D%3D
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-02/facebook-bans-alex-jones-yiannopoulos-other-far-right-figures?fbclid=IwAR1rL64NBySVzECDUlG0EMxTVNa6XChQVQNjjJexDoEGsgbcx99XLxUoKsA
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Pasting GM's post here as well:
https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinas-big-brother-social-control-goes-to-australia_2898104.html
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second post
https://dailycaller.com/2019/05/09/google-jigsaw-using-splc-data-comment-moderation/?utm_medium=email
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FB bans MM (I recall the day when that stood for Mantle - Maris :-o)
F'er Z'er troops do it again to Conservatives:
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/05/10/michelle-malkin-censored-on-facebook-for-opposing-censorship/
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FB bans MM (I recall the day when that stood for Mantle - Maris :-o)
F'er Z'er troops do it again to Conservatives:
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/05/10/michelle-malkin-censored-on-facebook-for-opposing-censorship/
Of course.
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https://pjmedia.com/trending/expert-psychologist-blocked-on-twitter-for-expressing-clinical-opinion-on-transgenderism/?fbclid=IwAR2W69Fh-hDqU1wK5kFmG6Q-xxErurEoZE56dmmXXsAzoH6L5bKGpxA164o
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https://pjmedia.com/trending/expert-psychologist-blocked-on-twitter-for-expressing-clinical-opinion-on-transgenderism/?fbclid=IwAR2W69Fh-hDqU1wK5kFmG6Q-xxErurEoZE56dmmXXsAzoH6L5bKGpxA164o
I am sure he is now getting the standard progressive death threats.
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https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/david-horowitz-dark-agenda-twitter-suspension-ilhan-omar/2019/05/14/id/915997/
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/technology-48269608?__twitter_impression=true&fbclid=IwAR3MfBPM1XF-KZHQ44H5s-APQ-AqgdvVjrawcYV7KjoCRZtVxYyXcfE-Jyw
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/technology-48269608?__twitter_impression=true&fbclid=IwAR3MfBPM1XF-KZHQ44H5s-APQ-AqgdvVjrawcYV7KjoCRZtVxYyXcfE-Jyw
Good thing that isn't happening here!
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/countering-foreign-disinformation-social-media-russian-campaign/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202019-05-16&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=SYfRMDTo-EA
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https://dailycaller.com/2019/05/20/twitter-al-jazeera-holocaust/?utm_medium=email
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invoking Copyright?
who believes that?
I wouldn't waste my time with twitter
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If I have it right, Crowder is one of the ones sent down the memory hole by FB and Twitter.
To help him stay on the radar screen, here is his website:
https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/
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https://patriotpost.us/articles/63197-google-engineer-slams-companys-outrage-mobs?fbclid=IwAR0YYn59yu_sgVUqxMq_WVgUa-KhDJYI6m5iFss6iiLS3ZdfagNhTjMpg9g
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oh my God:
https://www.newsmax.com/finance/streettalk/facebook-zuckerberg-winklevoss-cryptocurrency/2019/05/24/id/917467/
is there no end.......... :-(
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oh my God:
https://www.newsmax.com/finance/streettalk/facebook-zuckerberg-winklevoss-cryptocurrency/2019/05/24/id/917467/
is there no end.......... :-(
Zuckerbux!
Hooray!
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https://www.tutorialspoint.com/5g/5g_advantages_disadvantages.htm
notice how as an afterthought the most gigantic disadvantage , privacy security and centralized control and certain state private criminal and corporate abuse is on the very last line :
" Security and privacy issue yet to be solved."
Why not just say there will NOT be privacy security and whatever patches will be will be forever too late, too insufficient and too feeble.
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https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/05/05/paul_joseph_watson_virtually_every_prominent_online_personality_who_helped_get_trump_elected_has_been_banned_from_one_or_all_social_media_sites.html?fbclid=IwAR2sPAG4N_H_2mgRmVSU8Hv6rdV_QnSEzEir-NOCan6Ku2bgosZuU1KhAPc
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https://gatesofvienna.net/2019/05/samizdat-in-the-age-of-digital-totalitarianism/
Samizdat in the Age of Digital Totalitarianism
Posted on May 27, 2019 by Baron Bodissey
Samizdat: 'Chronicle of Current Events' #22 Nov 10 1971
A couple of days ago we posted about the blocking of BitChute in Australia via a process known as “DNS poisoning”. It seems that the emergence of BitChute as a source of uncensored videos was enough of a threat for the Powers That Be in Oz to decide that it must be neutralized.
During the same time period the process of de-platforming dissidents has accelerated. Almost anyone who is well-known and has a slightly right-of-center political opinion can expect to have Tweets and Facebook posts deleted, YouTube videos pulled, and — if he is prominent enough to require complete excommunication — the closing of his account. Dissidents with the greatest celebrity status, such as Tommy Robinson and Milo Yiannopoulos, can expect to lose their accounts on multiple platforms simultaneously, as if their suppression were being coordinated by some trans-national censorship board.
Vlad Tepes is on BitChute and BitTube now, which is why the topic of DNS poisoning came up. His videos are now going up and staying up, thanks to BitChute; hence the establishment’s efforts to cut off viewers’ access to BitChute.
As it happens, all of these methods of censorship and repression are being implemented not by the state, but by private corporations. This gives repressive governments cover so that they can deny responsibility: “Facebook [or Twitter, or Instagram, or Google, etc.] is a private company, and may enforce its terms of use without government interference.” The ISPs in Australia that are sabotaging BitChute’s IP on their domain name servers are also private corporations, as far as I know — the Australian government doesn’t have to do the dirty work.
Torquemada: The Spanish Inquisition
This doesn’t mean that governments are not arresting, charging, trying, and convicting citizens for “hate speech”. Britain, Sweden, and Germany seem to be vying with each other to see who can rack up the largest number of state prosecutions for hate speech. The rest of Western Europe, Australia, and Canada are no slouches, either. The USA has the First Amendment, so it’s not so bad here, but we’re only hanging on by the skin of our teeth. If Hillary had been elected in 2016, and had thus been able to appoint two Supreme Court justices, we’d probably be following the Canadian model right now.
Nevertheless, private companies are doing most of the heavy lifting when it comes suppressing free speech. Some of them are probably following the inclinations of their CEOs (think Mark Zuckerberg), but a quiet government word about antitrust action or a tax-evasion investigation must do wonders to convince them to help the state suppress Internet dissent.
A few days ago we posted an interview with a French communist MEP from back in 1992. This was one of Vlad’s videos, so it was uploaded to BitChute. However, I happened to find a mirror of it on a minor YouTube channel, and posted that instead.
Group of radio listeners
How was that channel able to post the video? Even if Vlad still had a YouTube channel, that video would have been immediately deleted by Google, because it said naughty things about the European Union. How come the other channel gets a pass?
The answer is obvious: Vlad’s channel was very popular, and had turned into a major influence in the realm of online videos. The other channel is relatively minor, and evidently doesn’t attract enough viewers to warrant being suppressed.
There’s a lesson for us dissidents in that.
If your opinions are politically incorrect, and you become prominent enough on the internet, you will be suppressed. You will be banished from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and all those other platforms that I can’t remember the names of. If you make public appearances, you will repeatedly find your venues being cancelled at the last minute. Your PayPal account will be closed. And — as part of the latest wave of corporate censorship — credit card companies may refuse your business.
All of this can happen without your being prosecuted. You might not even get milkshaked (milkshaken?) or beaten up by antifas, although both of those are likely to happen, too. But state action and violence are not necessary to incapacitate you. By shutting down all your normal means of electronic communication, private corporations can make you vanish from the public forum. To use an old-fashioned word, you become an unperson. You can still walk and talk and eat and drink and go about your daily routine, but to the larger world you no longer exist.
However, the YouTube video of the French communist provides us with an alternative way of doing things. A small channel without many subscribers can without consequence upload the same video that gets Alex Jones banned. And it may get only a thousand views. However, if 10,000 little YouTube channels do the same thing, it means that TEN MILLION PEOPLE will see that video.
Baran Nets -- Centralized, decentralized, and distributed networks
This is an example of the functioning of a distributed network, in which many thousands of small nodes are laterally connected without having to feed their messages up a hierarchical tree to a central clearinghouse. Information is thus propagated horizontally along multiple pathways, making it very difficult to suppress entirely.
This is a 21st-century digital version of samizdat, the underground communication that thrived in the Soviet Union without having access to the state’s monopoly on publishing and broadcasting. In order for it to work, however, ordinary people are going to have to become part of a process that’s different from what they’re used to. There are three main things you’ll need to do or think about differently:
1. Become a node in the distributed network.
Under the hierarchical model, a passive media consumer receives information from a central provider — a television network, a metropolitan radio station, a major newspaper. The same process has continued into the digital age, so that people can go to Huffington Post, PJMedia, or Rotten Tomatoes to get their news and entertainment. They have thousands more choices, but it’s still a hierarchical system: major providers deliver content to thousands or millions of passive consumers.
In contrast, a distributed network shuttles information from node to node in a lattice where no individual provider has a huge number of recipients. In order for such a system to work, consumers must also be producers — they need to pass along what they receive.
So you need to get yourself a YouTube channel. It’s easy enough; you just set up a Gmail email address, which automatically comes with a Google account and a YouTube channel. Yes, it means you’ll have to give some personal information to Google. But chances are, if you’ve ever used Google, it already knows a lot about you, anyway.
Then, when you see a video you think is important (on YouTube, BitChute, BitTube, or any other platform), you download a copy of the video file and upload it to your own channel. You may eventually acquire a couple of hundred subscribers — who will also be lateral nodes in the network — and thereby become one of the 10,000 providers that help the video propagate. As long as your audience remains relatively small, YouTube will leave you alone and not take your videos down.
If you don’t know how to download a video file, visit Vlad Tepes and look for information there. If you don’t see it, leave a comment asking Vlad about it, and he’ll explain.
The same principle applies to Facebook, Twitter, and any other platform: acquire an account, keep your audience small, and repost anything that seems useful and important. As long as you don’t get too many reposts or retweets, the provider will leave you alone.
2. Stop looking to Big Media as your main source of information.
Get in the habit of acquiring information without visiting Google News, CNN, Huffington Post, or any other major provider. This doesn’t mean you’ll never look at an MSM article, but that you’ll find out about it through the distributed network, rather than from the main aggregation pages of the MSM sites.
Sites such as Conservative Treehouse, Gateway Pundit, and Power Line do a great job of collecting interesting news from the MSM or otherwise. Yes, each uses its own filters, but they’re up front about that. If you check a variety of sites you’ll see everything you might want to know about, without having to visit Google News or any other major provider.
I’ve reached the point where Drudge is the only large site I visit, to make sure that I catch any breaking news about a major catastrophe or terrorist attack. [Drudge seems to have wandered off track nowadays, concentrating mainly on celebrity news and perversion, but that’s a topic for another post.]
I’m also fortunate to have such diligent tipsters for the news feed — they read all the news so I don’t have to.
3. Give up any idea of become rich and/or famous.
A node in the distributed network is by definition not prominent. If you become prominent, and you post something that violates the Narrative, you risk having your virtual head cut off, as has happened, to Tommy, Milo, Lauren Southern, and many others.
A blogger or YouTuber naturally wants to expand his audience, especially if he monetizes his content through advertising. But if he becomes too large, he gets squashed by the Powers That Be, and loses his effectiveness.
Gates of Vienna has a relatively small audience, and I aim to keep it that way. We don’t have ads, anyway; we just raise money once a quarter through fundraisers that tap our readers for individual donations. It provides enough for subsistence, but Dymphna and I are so old now that we don’t need all that much, anyway.
Typists, 1888 (odd jobs)
Unfortunately, there is a time limit on everything I said above: I expect a window of opportunity that will last only two to five years. After that, the combination of 5G wireless technology and the universal use of sophisticated artificial intelligence will allow the major social media companies — not just the government — to observe everything you do and restrict your activities when you attempt to propagate forbidden thoughts.
1984
The connection of virtually all electronic devices to the Internet — commonly known as the “Internet of Things” will mean that everything you do will be known by the government, ISPs, and major corporations. Every phone call you place, every line of text you type, every trip in your car, every visit to a website, every retail purchase you make will become part of the Great Database in the Cloud.
Phone eavesdroppingRight now it still requires humans to examine and make decisions about how to act on all that information. There aren’t enough employees in the Ministry of Information to examine all the data on everybody, so the functionaries charged with suppressing dissent concentrate on the big fish — they spend their time thwarting Tommy Robinson and Alex Jones, and leave the little fish alone.
AI will change all that. With many thousands of artificial brains to monitor for dissent, even the smallest nodes in the net can be suppressed. Your little 100-subscriber YouTube channel could be shut down without the intervention of any flesh-and-blood corporate drone.
After that, dedicated dissidents will have to resort to old-fashioned non-digital forms of communication, such as two-way radio, handwritten messages, and possibly even carrier pigeons. If you want to be well-versed in alternative forms of secure communication, become a regular reader of Western Rifle Shooters.
The dedicated samizdatchik will want to use the next few years wisely. We can accomplish a lot in that time, but we need to remain small, and distributed, and savvy.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/01/business/twitter-china-tiananmen.html
Twitter Takes Down Accounts of China Dissidents Ahead of Tiananmen Anniversary
Chinese tourists at the south gate of the Forbidden City, next to Tiananmen Square, in Beijing.
By Paul Mozur
June 1, 2019
SHANGHAI — Three days before the most sensitive political anniversary on the Chinese calendar, Twitter suspended the accounts of Chinese political commentators in what it said was an accident. The move showed starkly the global political ramifications of Silicon Valley slip-ups.
Twitter’s action, which one human rights worker said affected more than 100 users, came over several hours late Friday and early Saturday. It hit human rights lawyers, activists, college students and nationalists, who use workarounds to get access to Twitter, which is banned in China. Just about every part of the raucous, if small, Chinese language Twitter world was affected.
The accounts began rapidly disappearing just days before the 30th anniversary of the crackdown on a student-led pro-democracy demonstration in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Many online assumed the worst: a coordinated attack by Beijing to project its suffocating internet censorship outside its own digital borders. Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, tweeted about his concern.
Yet the culprit was not Chinese censors but Twitter’s own overactive filters.
In a statement, Twitter said that as a part of its routine efforts to stop spam and inauthentic behavior, it had inadvertently gone after a number of legitimate Chinese-language accounts.
“These accounts were not mass reported by the Chinese authorities — this was routine action on our part,” the company said in a statement on Twitter. “Sometimes our routine actions catch false positives or we make errors. We apologize.”
Online, many users said they did not believe Twitter’s statement told the whole story. One human rights lawyer, whose account had been taken down, said that in protest he tweeted an image of Twitter’s bird mascot colored red with five yellow stars to evoke the Chinese flag.
The routine action set off real fears. In China, the June 4 anniversary of Tiananmen brings an extra dose of censorship to one of the world’s most controlled corners of the internet. Tools that help users jump the Great Firewall to get access to the broader online world often sputter inexplicably.
Within China, Twitter users have faced escalating pressures. At the end of 2018, China’s Ministry of Public Security began to target Chinese Twitter users. Although Twitter is blocked, many use virtual-private network software that enables access.
In a campaign carried out across the country and coordinated by a division known as the internet police, local officers detained Twitter users and forced them to delete their tweets, which often included years of online discussion, and then the accounts themselves. The campaign is continuing, according to human rights groups.
In the past, Twitter has come under fire for its political tone deafness, especially overseas. After the United Nations found that deliberate social media manipulation helped encourage a genocide in Myanmar, Twitter’s founder, Jack Dorsey, chose the country as the destination for a meditation retreat. While there, he declined to meet with organizers who were fighting violent propaganda and dangerous rumors spread on the platform.
Twitter said that all users in China who had their accounts recently suspended should be able to recover them, though a day later, some accounts remained locked, according to Yaxue Cao, editor of ChinaChange.org, a website dedicated to writings on civil society and human rights.
“I do believe Twitter is trying to do good,” Ms. Cao said. “No questions about that. But the results are mixed.”
SIGN UP
Lin Qiqing contributed research.
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https://thefederalistpapers.org/opinion/barr-bringing-anti-trust-lawsuit-google-targeting-conservatives?fbclid=IwAR2vlmQnQIYMWaZM1QLgq1BZgA1VPMitdT9K8Yw0gBGrkYUYPpLnWuduoVw
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https://thefederalistpapers.org/opinion/barr-bringing-anti-trust-lawsuit-google-targeting-conservatives?fbclid=IwAR2vlmQnQIYMWaZM1QLgq1BZgA1VPMitdT9K8Yw0gBGrkYUYPpLnWuduoVw
I sure hope so!
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https://thefederalistpapers.org/opinion/barr-bringing-anti-trust-lawsuit-google-targeting-conservatives?fbclid=IwAR2vlmQnQIYMWaZM1QLgq1BZgA1VPMitdT9K8Yw0gBGrkYUYPpLnWuduoVw
I sure hope so!
Yes, a ray of hope.
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https://thehill.com/policy/technology/446733-house-judiciary-launches-antitrust-investigation-into-tech-giants?userid=188403
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I guess Cambridge Analytica might turn out to be a good thing
or all this would be squashed by Dems and their media friends
That is the only reason they are doing anything.
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Browser: Use Brave
www.Brave.com You can use Startpage as your default search engine in Brave.
Search engines:
www.startpage.com
www.Duckduckgo.com
Dump Goolagmail!
www.Protonmail.com
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Browser: Use Brave
www.Brave.com You can use Startpage as your default search engine in Brave.
Search engines:
www.startpage.com
www.Duckduckgo.com
Dump Goolagmail!
www.Protonmail.com
Thank you G M! I will try these.
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I get duckduckgo on my mac but it is nowhere near as good as a search function as Google search
so I wind up having to go to google anyway :cry:
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I've been using Firefox; why use Brave (of which I have never heard) instead?
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I have heard security is very bad on firefox the worst of any of them
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I get duckduckgo on my mac but it is nowhere near as good as a search function as Google search
so I wind up having to go to google anyway :cry:
https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/List/Index/22/google
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I've been using Firefox; why use Brave (of which I have never heard) instead?
https://thetinhat.com/blog/thoughts/brave-browser.html
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https://easydns.com/blog/2019/06/03/googles-gmail-scans-parses-analyzes-and-catalogs-your-email/
Google’s Gmail scans, parses, analyzes and catalogs your email
June 3, 2019 by Mark E. Jeftovic
Recently I came across this story by Todd Haselton that describes how the author located an obscure “purchases” page in his Google account settings and there found a methodical list of his online purchasing history, from third-party outside vendors, going back to 2o12.
The upshot of the story was that:
Google saves years of information on purchases you’ve made, even outside Google, and pulls this information from Gmail.
It’s complicated to delete this private information, and options to turn it off are hidden in privacy settings.
Google says it doesn’t use this information to sell you ads.
Naturally, I flagged this story for the next edition of our #AxisOfEasy newsletter. Haselton reports that it isn’t easy to locate and delete this information, nor is there a straight-forward path to find it in your privacy settings to disable this behaviour.
This can’t be true (can it?)
The more I thought about this the more I thought “this can’t be true”. I apologize for doubting Haselton, but I thought he had to have it wrong, that maybe he had a stored credit card in his browser that he had forgotten or something, because the ramifications if true, are dire.
First, it means that in order to isolate and parse purchases, Google must then be scanning every email, otherwise, how would they know what’s a purchase and what isn’t?
Further, if they were scanning every email for purchases, what else where they scanning for? Either now, or in the future? The important mechanism, the infrastructure and methodology to scan and parse every inbound email is clearly in place and operational now, adding additional criterion is just a matter of tweaking the parameters.
Then, there is the matter that Google is doing this without informing their users. We can probably wager that there is buried down the rabbit hole of the ToS some clause that alludes to the possibility that Google reserves the right from time to time (including all the time) to do something or another with your email that may or may not involve machine reading it and dissecting it for your behavioural patterns; none of us have ever read it.
More importantly, it didn’t require an explicit opt-in to fire it up.
[ As a belated aside – everybody in tech already knew that the point of Gmail was it was free, and they would scan the contents to target ads. At some point I think they may have announced that they stopped doing that, I can’t remember. But the vast majority of normies (defined as people who don’t dream in XML), don’t realize this, or haven’t given it much thought. However this, parsing out financial transaction data specifically, takes it to a new level.]
I’ve personally verified this is happening
As I said, I initially thought that Haselton had perhaps stored credit cards in his Chrome browser and his purchase history was being populated from that. I still couldn’t believe that Google was in essence reading your email and cataloging your purchases on it’s own.
My Google purchases page existed, but was empty. To test it, I configured my gmail account (which I barely use, for anything other than Google news alerts) to receive any email from my Amazon account. None of my web browsers have any credit cards stored. Then I went and picked up a new audiobook.
Sure enough…within seconds, my heretofore empty purchases page, suddenly had an entry:
Hovering over the “info” icon anticipates the question, how did this get here?
And so we click to find out…
We get it from Google’s mouth:
“This purchase was found in your Gmail” (emphasis added, because properly rendered it should read “We found this financial transaction sifting through your email”).
Why this is problematic
Before this revelation, I was already habitually remarking how it simply astounded me whenever I came across a law firm, or an investment fund, or medical professional, or financial services firm, or any outfit that routinely carries out propriety or confidential communications (you know them by the typical disclaimer they append to every single email they send):
“This email and any accompanying attachments contain confidential information intended only for the individual or entity named above. Any dissemination or action taken in reliance on this email or attachments by anyone other than the intended recipient is strictly prohibited.”
…and find they’re using Gmail? Yikes. Those disclaimers should be modified to read:
This firm’s email and all accompanying attachments and any of your replies to us will be scanned, parsed and analyzed by our email provider. Hope you’re cool with that.”.
Because that’s what’s actually happening. Here’s the shortlist of problems with this:
We don’t know what else they are scanning for, what else they are parsing out, where they are storing it and what they are doing with it.
Google says they are not using this info to target ads, as if that settles matters. Then what are they doing with it or why else would they even bother? Further, Google says a lot of things, some of them turn out to be disingenuous. Google once testified before the US Congress that they don’t manually intervene in search results, it was later revealed that they …manually intervene in search results.
Whatever data mining and collation and cataloging systems and resources are in place could be abused by Google staff. There are ample cases of tech giant employees abusing their positions and their visibility into user data.
These same systems could be abused or exploited by partners, as has been reported in #AxisOfEasy in previous instances.
These systems could be used (or are being used) under a larger umbrella of State surveillance, which we all know is happening – thanks to the likes of Edward Snowden (see his recent talk to Dalhousie University here). Google’s startup financing came in part from the US intelligence apparatus and, as is frequently observed here and elsewhere, now a major contractor to world governments and the US military.
[ Added – later] As pointed out by a reader, it may also violate data privacy laws of various locales, regardless of what’s actually in the ToS.
Objections and Rationalizations
There will no doubt be people who read this and object to this being a problem on three grounds:
“Everybody does it”, in the sense that any email provider who is running virus or spam filters at their edge are in essence scanning every inbound email. This is true, but only in the sense that they are actively seeking to separate noise, which costs everybody, including the recipient, from signal – stuff the recipient wants to receive. They are not parsing non-infected, purportedly non-spam email. Let’s call it “real email”. They aren’t parsing, and cataloging your real email based on its contents.
It’s free so shut up. For most gmail users, this is true. But they should also realize that if they don’t want to shut up about this, then the correct response is to move one’s email away from Gmail and pay a provider you trust not to inspect and datamine your private and business correspondence.Remember the old adage: “If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product”.
If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear. Often quipped by people who have never read a history book. There isn’t much to say about these unfortunates other than, go read a few.
I frequently recommend the biography of Joseph Fouché, the man who ran Napoleon’s secret police, who also cast the deciding vote to behead King Louis XVI. He is credited therein with having invented the modern police state as we know it. If you want to see a long trail of people who had nothing to hide become separated from their wealth, their liberty and their heads… start there.
What to do about it
Maybe you know all this and you really don’t care, and that’s fine. As long as your cultural choices and your political beliefs and your lifestyle match the accepted norms of a rapidly shrinking Overton Window of what constitutes “acceptable”, then you shouldn’t have to worry about anything. Really.
If you’re an easyDNS client and you use Gmail, you should probably be made aware that many of the domain packages here come with email hosting included. If you have lots of historical email at Gmail (or anyplace else) you can use our IMAP migration tool to painlessly copy everything over from Google, except, alas, your purchase history.
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https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/06/05/youtube-steven-crowder-did-not-violate-sites-policies/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=daily&utm_content=links&utm_campaign=20190605
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https://victorygirlsblog.com/congress-to-big-tech-were-investigating-you-wink-wink/
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https://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/chinas-scary-social-credit-system-made-in-usa-by-google-facebook/
Good thing it isn't here!
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https://www.libertynation.com/privacy-report-roomba-vacuums-floor/
Retro-tech is the way of the future.
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https://quillette.com/2019/06/19/what-do-the-oligarchs-have-in-mind-for-us/
------------------------------------
Joel Kotkin makes many valid points here to sound a warning.
My view, don't give these temporary monopolies permanent status by giving them the regulation they seek. Mostly I would block them from unfair trade practices like buying their competitors and let newer, creative destruction be their demise.
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https://www.siliconvalley.com/2019/06/21/google-chrome-has-become-surveillance-software-its-time-to-switch/
Be Brave.
Brave.com
Go to settings and select startpage as your search engine.
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Oh the irony! RT reports
https://www.rt.com/usa/462619-google-removes-veritas-report/?fbclid=IwAR3Rcr2fSr8_AdaTo07kMQIguScM9GHS7MrAORr5wMei4qaXxmnBOHfztu8
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1YENAvOveE&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR3BIwgI2K8rpj07cW46HoNCoz85KUVZS2kIguLPgFbkecjHi1dQRTFdkYY
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https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/techwatch/corinne-weaver/2019/06/17/reddit-suspends-users-who-post-project-veritas-videos?fbclid=IwAR1w-KOHm2hCJGzlfdd35sN_as74l-YnOk_rBIhyujBozEsoob9J_amwm0k
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=bTOIL2PeG6w
Congressman Dan Crenshaw Questions Google For Targeting Conservative Media Platforms
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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2019/06/13/facebook-gets-boot-sp-500-ethical-index/?fbclid=IwAR2LhPIv-rzmSLjE54-Vc5dlT8ozcdTWY53g7Ka38puk_CETAv_E_noxs2k
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https://www.redstate.com/setonmotley/2019/06/27/big-government-big-tech-partnering-track-us-everywhere/
Big Government And Big Tech Are Partnering To Track Us Everywhere
Posted at 9:07 am on June 27, 2019 by Seton Motley
George Orwell was a brilliant individual. A man of incredible insight – and foresight.
In his unfathomably predictive novel 1984, Orwell warns of Big Brother:
“(O)stensibly the leader of Oceania, a totalitarian state wherein the ruling party Ingsoc wields total power ‘for its own sake’ over the inhabitants.
“In the society that Orwell describes, every citizen is under constant surveillance by the authorities, mainly by telescreens.…The people are constantly reminded of this by the slogan ‘Big Brother is watching you’: a maxim that is ubiquitously on display.
“In modern culture, the term ‘Big Brother’ has entered the lexicon as a synonym for abuse of government power, particularly in respect to civil liberties, often specifically related to mass surveillance.”
As brilliant as Orwell was, something continuously struck me as incorrect as I read 1984.
Orwell’s government – was extraordinarily competent in its totalitarian imposition of technological power.
In Reality – no government in the history of man has ever been even remotely close to that competent.
For Orwell’s Big Brother dystopia to become Reality – Big Government would need private sector help.
Enter private sector Big Tech.
Seton Motley | Red State | RedState.com
Big Tech has delivered much of the technology Orwell envisioned. As but one of many examples – Orwell’s telescreens:
“(D)evices that operate as televisions, security cameras, and microphones….(T)elescreens are used by the ruling Party in the totalitarian fictional State of Oceania to keep its subjects under constant surveillance, thus eliminating the chance of secret conspiracies against Oceania.”
We’re already all the way there – via Big Tech.
How Google and Amazon Are ‘Spying’ on You:
“The study found that digital assistants (Google Home and Amazon Echo) can be ‘awake’ even when users think they aren’t listening….
“(T)he devices listen all the time they are turned on – and Amazon has envisioned Alexa using that information to build profiles on anyone in the room….
“Amazon filed a patent application for an algorithm that would let future versions of the device identify statements of interest, such as ‘I love skiing’, enabling the speaker to be monitored based on their interests and targeted for related advertising.
“A Google patent application describes using a future release of it smart Home system to monitor and control everything from screen time and hygiene habits, to meal and travel schedules and other activities.
“The devices are envisioned as part of a surveillance web in the home to chart a families’ patterns….”
Why Google’s Spying on User Data Is Worse than the NSA’s
Is Amazon Spying on Users Through Alexa? Thousands of Employees Listen to Conversations
Amazon-Owned Ring Has Reportedly Been Spying on Customer Camera Feeds
Microsoft Windows 10 Is Spying on Almost Everything You Do
Yes, Webcams Can Spy on You
Eleven Insanely Creepy Ways Facebook Is Spying on You Right Now
This is ALL insanely creepy.
Big Tech is…insanely big.
Microsoft (Market Cap: $1.1 trillion)
Amazon (Market Cap: $942 billion)
Google (Market Cap: $775 billion)
Facebook (Market Cap: $550 billion)
These four spying companies – are currently worth a combined $3.7 trillion. Our nation’s entire economy – is $19.4 trillion.
Which mans these four companies – all by themselves – are worth 19% of the United States.
But it’s Big Tech doing the spying – not Big Government.
Anyone who looks at Big Tech’s all-encompassing spying ability and thinks Big Government is capable of doing anything remotely similar – hasn’t paid attention to the past 10,000 years of human history.
The ONLY way Big Government can impose Big Brother – is to partner with Big Tech.
Uh oh.
The Role of Tech Companies in Government Surveillance
Tech Companies Concede to Surveillance Program
Four High-Tech Ways the Federal Government Is Spying on Private Citizens:
“Right now, the government is tracking the movements of private citizens by GPS, reading private citizens’ emails, and possibly even reading what you’re saying on Facebook.”
Big Tech once offered at least token resistance to Big Government’s demands – at least after being outed for acquiescing to Big Government’s demands.
Facebook, Amazon, Google Call for Government Surveillance Reform:
“It first gained attention after the revelations of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013. Congress is in the process of weighing reforms for the program. It must vote to renew Section 702 before the end of the year, otherwise it will expire.
“The letter, addressed to the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, asks Congress to consider several reforms to the program to ensure greater transparency and privacy protections.”
We can now officially refer to those – as the Good Old Days.
Why would Big Tech fight Big Government – when they can get paid to join them?
And the Big Government-Big Tech surveillance state – is getting closer and closer to home.
In fact – just outside…and inside it.
Amazon’s Helping Police Build a Surveillance Network with Ring Doorbells:
“Police departments across the country, from major cities like Houston to towns with fewer than 30,000 people, have offered free or discounted Ring doorbells to citizens, sometimes using taxpayer funds to pay for Amazon’s products.
“While Ring owners are supposed to have a choice on providing police footage, in some giveaways, police require recipients to turn over footage when requested….
“(T)he sheer number of cameras run by Amazon’s Ring business raises questions about privacy involving both law enforcement and tech giants….(C)ritics have pointed out the retail giant’s (other) ventures with law enforcement, like offering facial recognition tools….
“More than 50 local police departments across the US have partnered with Ring over the last two years, lauding how the Amazon-owned product allows them to access security footage in areas that typically don’t have cameras — on suburban doorsteps….
“‘What we have here is a perfect marriage between law enforcement and one of the world’s biggest companies creating conditions for a society that few people would want to be a part of,’ said Mohammad Tajsar, staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California.”
That’s the outside of your home. Here’s the in….
The Government Just Admitted It Will Use Smart Home Devices for Spying:
“If you want evidence that US intelligence agencies aren’t losing surveillance abilities because of the rising use of encryption by tech companies, look no further than the testimony…by the (then) director of national intelligence, James Clapper….
“Clapper made clear that the internet of things – the many devices like thermostats, cameras and other appliances that are increasingly connected to the internet – are providing ample opportunity for intelligence agencies to spy on targets, and possibly the masses. And it’s a danger that many consumers who buy these products may be wholly unaware of….
“Privacy advocates have known about the potential for government to exploit the internet of things for years. Law enforcement agencies have taken notice too, increasingly serving court orders on companies for data they keep that citizens might not even know they are transmitting. Police have already been asking Google-owned company Dropcam for footage from cameras inside people’s homes meant to keep an eye on their kids.”
Orwell got the tech right – just not Big Government’s ability to create it for totalitarian ends.
Freedom has allowed for the free markets – that allowed the rise of the private sector Big Tech Orwell thought Big Government would produce.
And now Big Tech and Big Government are partnering – to end that freedom.
Well…for we plebeians, anyway.
I’m sure Big Tech and Big Government will be just fine.
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Four companies with market cap equal to 19% of GDP?
FK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
===============================================
Google must be destroyed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeqPqwE3Ar0&fbclid=IwAR1AFmvchfu5ES60gm039L7ZFhB4IouZv_qnOM88CKqdSeZw25tdSfQ5vfQ
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private companies taking over our space programs
military on amazon cloud ? not sure:
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-amazon-tweet-fight-affect-military-deal-2018-3
Not much different than what the Chinese communists are doing to their people
Here we have the tech capitalists controlling US.
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private companies taking over our space programs
military on amazon cloud ? not sure:
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-amazon-tweet-fight-affect-military-deal-2018-3
Not much different than what the Chinese communists are doing to their people
Here we have the tech capitalists controlling US.
The Chinese couldn't do what they do without our tech companies.
We already have a version of China's social credit system in place here, it's just not codified into law. Yet.
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https://pjmedia.com/trending/anti-extremism-expert-loses-jobs-twitter-account-after-antifa-smears/?utm_source=pjmedia&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&newsletterad=&bcid=52f016547a40edbdd6de69b8a7728bbf&recip=18183372
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second post
https://dailycaller.com/2019/07/03/gop-chooses-censors-winred-fundraising/?utm_medium=email
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second post
https://dailycaller.com/2019/07/03/gop-chooses-censors-winred-fundraising/?utm_medium=email
The stupid party goes full retard.
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It never ends , , ,
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https://pjmedia.com/trending/facebook-silent-on-banning-antifa-after-portland-violence-against-andy-ngo/
Facebook Silent on Banning Antifa After Portland Violence Against Andy Ngo
BY TYLER O'NEIL JULY 5, 2019
A flag bearing the logo of the group Antifa is seen at a rally held in solidarity with anti-fascist demonstrators in Berkley. CA.
A flag bearing the logo of the group Antifa is seen at a rally in Berkeley, California. (Photo by Albin Lohr-Jones)(Sipa via AP Images)
On Wednesday, 19 conservative leaders called on Facebook to apply its Community Standards against antifa, deplatforming the group in the wake of the violent assault on Quillette editor Andy Ngo in Portland, Ore. last weekend. PJ Media reached out to Facebook for comment, but Facebook has remained silent on the issue. Facebook has banned Gavin McInnes and the Proud Boys, but it seems unwilling to extend the same ban to violent leftists intent on punching "Nazis."
Various groups on Facebook have named themselves antifa, affiliating with the violent movement. Rose City Antifa, the group responsible for the unlawful assembly leading up to the beating of Andy Ngo (which gave him brain bleed), is indeed one of these groups, although a Facebook search for them will not bring up the group.
The Rose City Antifa Facebook page posted a statement defending the violent attack on Ngo. Conservatives condemned the group's continued presence on Facebook.
"Rose City Antifa uses its Facebook page to foment hate and train their goons on tactics to anonymously harrass, disrupt, and assault anyone who disagrees with their radical agenda," Jim Lakely, interim president of the Heartland Institute, said in a statement. "The latest result is the attack on journalist Andy Ngo – which is not fake news, is not merely words that people claim is hurtful, but is a serious and violent crime."
"Facebook needs to explain why it moves to deplatform and stifle the voices of peaceful conservatives while allowing its platform to be used by radical leftist fascists like Rose City Antifa to organize events that routinely result in violent assaults against innocent bystanders," Lakely declared.
"By continuing to allow Antifa related groups to spew hate on its platform, Facebook executives and its board of directors are now tacitly encouraging violence against conservatives," Justin Danhof, general counsel at the National Center for Public Policy Research, said. Danhof engages with companies by attending shareholder meetings and asking tough questions about liberal bias. He has proposed that Facebook put a balance of liberals and conservatives on its board.
Conservative Journalist Andy Ngo Beaten Up and Hit With Cement by Antifa in Portland, Says Police Did Nothing
"Facebook’s opposition to my proposal seeking ideological balance on the company’s board is proof positive that it has no interest in hearing from conservatives. But this latest instance of Antifa violence against conservative journalist Andy Ngo – and Facebook’s unwillingness to take down Antifa pages – proves that the company needs to hear from conservatives if it’s going to operate as a neutral platform," Danhof concluded.
"The Antifa-led assaults in Portland this past weekend were not the first instance of violence from this militant-leftist group. Antifa’s core principles condone and encourage the harassment and physical assault of those that disagree with their beliefs. The Department of Homeland Security has classified their activities as 'domestic terrorist violence,'" Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center (MRC), wrote in a statement.
He argued that Facebook's "community standards certainly condemn violence and they claim to have 'always banned individuals or organizations that promote or engage in violence and hate, regardless of ideology.' And yet no action has been taken to de-platform this domestic terrorist organization."
"In allowing Antifa to retain its accounts, Facebook is enabling these extremists to commit more violent acts and further spread their hateful message," Bozell charged. "Facebook must enforce its policies equally. This is not a partisan issue. There should be no place for violent extremists of any kind on Facebook. Period."
Jenny Beth Martin, president of Tea Party Patriots, argued that the case of Andy Ngo "clearly demonstrates the lack of appreciation that the left and Antifa thugs have for our constitution and our 1st Amendment rights. ... Americans should wake up to the threat to our 1st Amendment liberties coming from everyone from Facebook de-platforming conservatives to violence against mainstream conservatives."
"Facebook allows AntiFa, the flipside of the same coin as Neo Nazism," Raheem Kassam, editor-in-chief of Human Events, declared. "And yet they routinely ban middle of the road conservatives, including gay, Muslim, black, and other minorities simply because they’re on the political right. If Facebook wants to highlight why they deserve no legislative protections like S230 of the Communications Decency Act, and should be treated as a biased monopoly, they could do no better favor to us than continuing this heinous practise."
Amy Kremer, co-chair of Women for Trump, said Facebook has "blood on their hands."
"Facebook's refusal to remove Antifa and these leftist hate filled groups from their platform, shows their support of these groups and their actions," she declared. "Facebook has blood on their hands and should be held accountable."
Report Shows Online Ties Linking HuffPost, the Guardian, and SPLC to Antifa
Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, shared her personal experiences facing antifa on America's college campuses. "I know what it's like for Antifa protestors to try and stop peaceful, pro-life speech, and have had to arrange for security just to address the human rights issue of our day. For Facebook to block or suppress conservative speech because of a bias against ideas — like helping both mother and preborn baby — while allowing those who advocate for actual violence shows a political bent that ignores common sense and common decency," she said.
"For all the attacks leveled at groups like ours – who just want less government intrusion in our lives, and to be left alone to enjoy our family and friends – the real dangers to freedom are those like Antifa who perpetuate violence against people they disagree with politically, and platforms like Facebook who support them by giving them a semblance of credibility," Tom McCabe, CEO of the Freedom Foundation, said in a statement. "That Facebook bans conservatives because the company doesn’t like their words, but Antifa remains in good standing after many examples of destroying property and causing serious harm to other people, tells us everything we need to know about Facebook’s concern for ‘dialogue’ and ‘inclusion’. The hypocrisy is outrageous."
"Antifa has no business operating and organizing their riots and violence on Facebook and other social media platforms," Brigitte Gabriel, founder and president of ACT for America, declared. "For years now, Antifa has demonstrated to be a radical left-wing terror organization that regularly uses violence and intimidation tactics to silence their political enemies. Is this the type of people Facebook wants to enable? Are these the kind of events Facebook wants to play a role in organizing?"
"Freedom of Speech is vital, and Facebook should never ban organizations and people simply for being controversial. They should ban them for engaging in acts of domestic terror," Gabriel concluded.
While it may be impractical for Facebook to ban every single group that identifies itself as "antifa" in some way, it does not seem unreasonable for Facebook to ban Rose City Antifa after the violence against Andy Ngo.
Facebook's silence on this issue is disgusting.
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Quelle surprise , , ,
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https://gizmodo.com/apple-cofounder-steve-wozniak-says-most-people-should-g-1836178238/amp
Think.
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https://www.newsmax.com/headline/republicans-amazon-pentagon-cloud/2019/07/19/id/925262/
Move along folks , nothing to see here or be worried about.
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https://va.news-republic.com/a/6692010243641065989?app_id=1239&gid=6692010243641065989&impr_id=6712210743515023621&language=en®ion=us&user_id=6712210135688709126&c=fb&fbclid=IwAR34gTNFmXkfUN8hXJttECxo34DYRoJ-zf6Xm126QjaMrPR1jAGExnDKpbQ
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https://www.thepostmillennial.com/breaking-twitter-silences-canadian-free-speech-activist-lindsay-shepherd/?fbclid=IwAR3vj9UZHZudvluqNnukMKY5qk4G452c413gozmDZNU0MgfRg8P_K5nk584
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https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2019/07/24/amazon-removes-danish-filmmakers-islam-documentary/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=daily&utm_campaign=20190724&utm_content=B
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https://va.news-republic.com/a/6692010243641065989?app_id=1239&gid=6692010243641065989&impr_id=6712210743515023621&language=en®ion=us&user_id=6712210135688709126&c=fb&fbclid=IwAR34gTNFmXkfUN8hXJttECxo34DYRoJ-zf6Xm126QjaMrPR1jAGExnDKpbQ
They've gone too far this time.
Nice platform you have there little Zuckie. It would be a shame if something happened to it.
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Facebook Settlement Vindicates Consumer Privacy
The FTC imposes a historic fine and creates a strong protocol to prevent further abuses of data.
By Noah Joshua Phillips
July 24, 2019 6:40 pm ET
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks in San Jose, Calif., May 1, 2018. Photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press
The Federal Trade Commission’s case against Facebook has come to represent a general reckoning for the many ills attributed to the company. So it’s important to understand what the case, which was settled Wednesday, was actually about: the privacy commitments Facebook made to its users and the government.
In its 2012 consent order with the FTC, Facebook promised not to misrepresent how it shared user data with third parties and how users could control that data-sharing. It also promised to maintain a reasonable privacy program. The FTC alleged that Facebook broke those promises.
Facebook’s privacy settings that purportedly allowed a user to limit data sharing just to “friends” did not restrict access by third-party apps used by those friends. Facebook set user controls over this third-party app access apart from its privacy settings, making it more difficult for users to exercise control. And after announcing in 2014 that it was discontinuing the third-party app access, Facebook continued to allow it. (This access was at issue in the Cambridge Analytica matter, a related case we have also resolved.)
Facebook also misrepresented the steps users needed to take to control privacy for facial-recognition technology. The company allowed financial considerations to affect how it enforced violations of its policies against third-party app developers, which isn’t a reasonable way to conduct a privacy program. Finally, Facebook violated the FTC Act by deceiving consumers about its use of phone numbers, which were ostensibly collected for security purposes but in fact also used for advertising.
These are serious violations, and the settlement is a serious response. It forces Facebook to pay a historic fine and change fundamentally its approach to privacy. It’s a watershed moment in data-privacy enforcement and governance that will reverberate across the digital economy.
The $5 billion penalty Facebook must pay to U.S. taxpayers is the largest privacy fine in history. It’s orders of magnitude greater than previous record privacy fines in the U.S. and Europe. The sum is nearly a quarter of Facebook’s 2018 profits—an amount no corporation pays out lightly. For violating its 2012 commitments to the FTC, Facebook will pay an amount on par with some of the steepest civil penalties ever imposed by the U.S. government, such as the one paid by BP for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, an environmental disaster that killed 11 Americans and decimated livelihoods.
Perhaps more significant than the monetary penalty, the settlement also includes an order that forces Facebook to revamp the way it deals with privacy. First, the order requires Mark Zuckerberg and other executives to certify personally, on pain of civil and criminal penalty, Facebook’s compliance with its privacy program—the privacy equivalent of the accounting obligations Congress imposed on CEOs following early-2000s financial frauds like Enron and WorldCom.
Second, Facebook must create a new, independent privacy committee on its board of directors. The members will be selected by an independent nominating committee and protected from removal. (Facebook has not had an independent nominating committee, a best practice in corporate governance. It will now.) This committee will oversee privacy at Facebook and will receive briefings from both management and an independent third-party assessor. For the first time, Facebook must give privacy concerns board-level attention, on par with audit, executive-compensation and governance functions.
Third, the settlement imposes substantial new obligations on Facebook for protecting consumer privacy. It sets new limits on Facebook’s sharing user data with third parties. Facebook must also provide an “opt in” user consent option for changes to its use of facial-recognition data and delete from its servers any data users delete. And Facebook employees must consider and document the privacy implications of new or modified products and services.
Finally, the independent third-party assessor and the FTC will provide external oversight. Each will have extraordinary access to internal documentation. When there is a privacy breach involving 500 or more users, Facebook must inform the assessor and the FTC. The assessor will work for the FTC, not Facebook, and report to us every two years, as well as regularly brief the board’s privacy committee. We must approve the assessor and can terminate him if he fails to live up to the task.
Today’s settlement addresses directly the violations we found, penalizing Facebook in a historic fashion and forcing it to confront privacy in a dramatic new way. Still, not everyone will be satisfied, perhaps because the settlement does not address Facebook’s size, or the role social media plays in American elections, or Mr. Zuckerberg’s role at the company, or Facebook’s business of selling targeted advertising. All those are important issues and matters of substantial national conversation and congressional deliberation.
But the FTC is a law-enforcement agency, not a legislature. This settlement was meant to resolve Facebook’s violation of its 2012 commitments and its deception of consumers. We penalized Facebook for its deceit and imposed far-reaching reforms that make it less likely that such deceit can happen again. In all likelihood, the settlement will accomplish far more, far sooner, than could have been achieved through litigation.
The political debate over “big tech” and social media will continue. In the meantime, the settlement sends a powerful message about the importance of privacy. The cost of privacy violations like Facebook’s just increased dramatically. And if the need for companies to take privacy commitments seriously was not clear before, it is now.
Mr. Phillips is a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=110&v=EUxxLZz_2NU
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As I have posted previously I am not sure if Hawley is on the money or not with "us vs elites" or "us vs tech" etc
One PJ media writer is against it but suggest read comments for other supportive opinions on the matter:
https://pjmedia.com/trending/josh-hawley-wants-to-be-your-social-media-babysitter/
I think big tech IS a problem on multiple fronts but I am not sure how to deal with
it
From making them utilities , to subjecting them to government oversight to Gilder's market approach
I just find it too hard to wrap my brain around it all.
The best ones to know are BIG TECH themselves but of course they ain't talking or going to be truthful.
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http://ace.mu.nu/archives/382734.php
Michael Yon: A Google Insider, Who I'm Calling a "Google Snowden," Is Set to Reveal The Extent of China's Penetration of Google, and Google's Algorithmic Interventions to Convince America That Patriotism Towards The United States is Racist and Evil
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I find myself remembering that the Chinese hacked into the applications for security clearances of some 2.5 million Americans , , ,
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I find myself remembering that the Chinese hacked into the applications for security clearances of some 2.5 million Americans , , ,
Yes, but that happened with his preciousness was president, so no outrage and almost no media coverage of it.
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My point is that I wonder if somehow the Chinese are putting the personal knowledge acquired about serious patriotic Americans to malevolent use.
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My point is that I wonder if somehow the Chinese are putting the personal knowledge acquired about serious patriotic Americans to malevolent use.
In what way exactly?
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I haven't a fg clue.
I don't know what is in Security Clearance applications, but I'm guessing it includes some real personal info that a team of clever Chinese intel folks could come up with some crafty ways to fk with some of them.
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https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/08/what-censorship-twitter-removes-clintonbodycount-with-84000-mentions-from-trending-list-after-epstein-death-replaces-with-trump-barr-hashtags/
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https://saraacarter.com/exclusive-google-insider-turns-over-950-pages-of-docs-and-laptop-to-doj/?fbclid=IwAR1YeRmwbyVwiICL5FVNY_RdSRgs7A1gsi2_KkcVB6xL1xEAVNklz_s-Azc
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https://pjmedia.com/trending/retaliation-google-whistleblower-claims-fbi-swat-bomb-squad-appeared-at-his-home/
but not to Hillary's
or Epstein's (till after he is dead) and plenty of time to bleach bit hard drives
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https://pjmedia.com/trending/retaliation-google-whistleblower-claims-fbi-swat-bomb-squad-appeared-at-his-home/
but not to Hillary's
or Epstein's (till after he is dead) and plenty of time to bleach bit hard drives
Of course, the inner party is exempt from such things.
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https://nypost.com/2019/08/17/how-google-has-destroyed-the-lives-of-revenge-porn-victims/
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https://aibrt.org/downloads/EPSTEIN_&_ROBERTSON_2017-A_Method_for_Detecting_Bias_in_Search_Rankings-AIBRT_WP-17-02_6-1-17.pdf
--------------------------
This understates the problem and Google searches alone are but a small part of the problem. Google searches are working in tandem with the rest of the Leftist media and academic complex.
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https://aibrt.org/downloads/EPSTEIN_&_ROBERTSON_2017-A_Method_for_Detecting_Bias_in_Search_Rankings-AIBRT_WP-17-02_6-1-17.pdf
--------------------------
This understates the problem and Google searches alone are but a small part of the problem. Google searches are working in tandem with the rest of the Leftist media and academic complex.
I can say that some things have been deeply memory holed by the Goolag. They don’t even care about plausible deniability now.
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https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/silicon-valley-copycats-chinas-orwellian-social-credit-scheme/
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Google is allegedly using a network of billions of “secret” webpages to funnel personal data on its users to advertisers and “work around” privacy laws.
The claims have been made in evidence submitted to an investigation by the Irish data watchdog, which regulates the activities of the search and advertising giant in Europe. The pages were discovered by Brave, a browser company, which alleges that Google shares large quantities of sensitive data on its users with other companies to target advertising without adequately safeguarding privacy.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/google-uses-secret-profiles-to-get-round-data-protection-law-9j7kfg80t
Surprise, surprise, surprise.
I switched to Brave for browser and duckduckgo for search on my notebook per G M and I avoid F-book I am still VERY vulnerable to google, email, android, cell use etc.
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Don't forget startpage.com Unless I need google maps for investigative purposes, I use startpage 90% of the time.
What level of privacy are you looking for, Doug?
Google is allegedly using a network of billions of “secret” webpages to funnel personal data on its users to advertisers and “work around” privacy laws.
The claims have been made in evidence submitted to an investigation by the Irish data watchdog, which regulates the activities of the search and advertising giant in Europe. The pages were discovered by Brave, a browser company, which alleges that Google shares large quantities of sensitive data on its users with other companies to target advertising without adequately safeguarding privacy.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/google-uses-secret-profiles-to-get-round-data-protection-law-9j7kfg80t
Surprise, surprise, surprise.
I switched to Brave for browser and duckduckgo for search on my notebook per G M and I avoid F-book I am still VERY vulnerable to google, email, android, cell use etc.
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2019/09/06/exclusive-feds-demand-apple-and-google-hand-over-names-of-10000-users-of-a-gun-scope-app/#2ae5f2672423
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of note his study did NOT find the same as being true on Yahoo Bing or other search engines.
He pointed out he has only found this on Google:
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6084521411001/#sp=show-clips
I am not sure what to do about it . whatever the legislatures do google will find way around and influence them and pay whatever fine they could come up with as though it is a mosquito bite.
It would be nice if we could get funding for Epstein who interestingly voted for Hillary yet when he published his findings that millions of undecided voters were likely influenced to vote for her simply by the algoryhthms Google uses
she true to form attacked him.
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https://bigleaguepolitics.com/exclusive-facebooks-fact-checker-backtracks-following-egregious-errors-regarding-blps-jeffrey-epstein-coverage/
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https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/09/10/leftist-u-s-donors-using-secretive-arabella-advisors-to-push-government-control-of-the-internet/
groups of clinonites want government to control internet
Watching MSLD last night mention something about the 2016 election was what "woke" regulators to the problem with the internet.
ie specifically they meant Cambridge Analytica , though not mentioned.
they of course leave out Obama getting FB data earlier then that.
only when it adversely affected them then suddenly there is a problem
and groups like the above one , will work with the liberal FB GOOG AMZN to fix it in a way that hurts only the Republicans and helps the Democrats and will allow the big techies to get off with a mosquito bite.
I know I am cynical .. Can't imagine why.
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Previously: "I am still VERY vulnerable to google, email, android, cell use etc."
G M: What level of privacy are you looking for, Doug?
--------------------------------------
Good question, struggling with that question myself. I'm not ready to give up a lot of convenience and functionality and Google already has everything they could want on me.
I switched to Brave on my notebook and I like it, thank you! I am also trying duckduckgo and startpage.com.
Gmail: I gave up privacy when I became an early adopter. I understood they would scan my emails and use it to target advertising. I have to admit I receive amazing functionality, being able to store and search all my past emails, pay nothing directly, have spam removed and never have to go back and delete emails to avoid running out of space, so far. It serves as my cloud; I can send documents and photos to myself and search and find them later - very valuable in my business.
I set up a Protonmail address but having all contacts send to there is another matter. It has limits on storage. Is there any point in switching part way over and then having to check both?
Mapquest is owned by Verizon. Should I switch driving direction to them or someone else to get that off google? If so, I am still tracked everywhere I go by Google Android GPS...
Looking at alternatives to Android (and iphone) but it seems to be a dead end right now https://itsfoss.com/open-source-alternatives-android/ If not for the egregious violation of privacy, I have to admit I receive amazing functionality at nearly a zero cost for mobile connectivity. It makes breaking away difficult. Always open to ideas! At some point I will break away.
-----------------------------------
Going through gmail spam recently I noticed the google quite effectively blocks all my political solicitations which happen to be conservative who got my contact info through the non-privacy of some past R. party involvement. Most of those emails are spam but conservative groups have people's info with no way to reach them. I wonder if Google also blocks moveon.org type groups from contacting liberal users.
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Previously: "I am still VERY vulnerable to google, email, android, cell use etc."
G M: What level of privacy are you looking for, Doug?
--------------------------------------
Good question, struggling with that question myself. I'm not ready to give up a lot of convenience and functionality and Google already has everything they could want on me.
Never too late to stop the bleeding. The less you use them, the less money and power they have.
I switched to Brave on my notebook and I like it, thank you! I am also trying duckduckgo and startpage.com.
Gmail: I gave up privacy when I became an early adopter. I understood they would scan my emails and use it to target advertising. I have to admit I receive amazing functionality, being able to store and search all my past emails, pay nothing directly, have spam removed and never have to go back and delete emails to avoid running out of space, so far. It serves as my cloud; I can send documents and photos to myself and search and find them later - very valuable in my business.
I set up a Protonmail address but having all contacts send to there is another matter. It has limits on storage. Is there any point in switching part way over and then having to check both?
Like many things, it depends. I use a privacy scale that roughly goes from -1 (Compulsive Social Media addict that posts where they are and what they are doing constantly) 0 (The average American today has pretty much zero privacy in any meaningful way) Level 1 does basic things to make someone spend at least several hundred dollars for a P.I. to find you. Level 2 has it so your vehicles and electronics are in alternate names, making it expensive to find you. Level 3 has you moving and using various legal structures for your residence, vehicles and other connections, making you Very difficult to find. Level 4 is comparable to the US Marshal's WITSEC program. Not legal unless Uncle Sugar does it.
Mapquest is owned by Verizon. Should I switch driving direction to them or someone else to get that off google? If so, I am still tracked everywhere I go by Google Android GPS...
Looking at alternatives to Android (and iphone) but it seems to be a dead end right now https://itsfoss.com/open-source-alternatives-android/ If not for the egregious violation of privacy, I have to admit I receive amazing functionality at nearly a zero cost for mobile connectivity. It makes breaking away difficult. Always open to ideas! At some point I will break away.
-----------------------------------
Going through gmail spam recently I noticed the google quite effectively blocks all my political solicitations which happen to be conservative who got my contact info through the non-privacy of some past R. party involvement. Most of those emails are spam but conservative groups have people's info with no way to reach them. I wonder if Google also blocks moveon.org type groups from contacting liberal users.
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/googles-china-ties-in-ai-research-eyed_3078658.html?utm_source=Epoch+Times+Newsletters&utm_campaign=741576fa06-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_09_11_09_00&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4fba358ecf-741576fa06-239065853
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https://sovereignnations.com/2019/08/26/enabling-chinas-mass-surveillance-system/?fbclid=IwAR3Z3htq8rqfO6koNX-r3WSW_amVDC__7Jw0XeWgV-ZlGpQP9OBZX6r0L9E
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https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xwewjj/this-interactive-map-tracks-our-growing-surveillance-state?fbclid=IwAR3wpgVhMV6iDxVs6VTTEF7U7E24PiN0-BY6ybAxAh5pzEl1SvdpeHw3FOc
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I would not be surprised if Cambridge Analytica topic was brought up
but would be shocked if the issue of FB left wing bias was:
https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/zuckerberg-capitol-hill-internet-regulation-meetings
as the politicians have a gourmet dinner with Zuckerberglur trying to find a way they can come out with some phoney political victory
while the system gets rigged so you know who can benefit .
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https://israelunwired.com/democratic-presidential-candidate-sues-google-for-abolishing-freedom-of-speech/
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http://michellemalkin.com/2019/09/04/stop-mental-health-data-mining-of-our-kids-and-deplatform-google-from-public-schools/
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https://fortune.com/2019/10/03/facebook-eu-hate-speech-posts/?fbclid=IwAR1fEG08VOcfbSYSA94iIvUt3TWcRCXOJQWV5xDARgWaYGXJojrcM5s5vIc
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https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/youtube2020electionblacklist-alarming-update-on-election-meddling/
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https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/china-the-techno-totalitarian-leviathan/?fbclid=IwAR2Xuxu4Rqf5k6UmKBYloiwvWxwH9icP3I9usM9lkKoJmv7oLJf6OLaErKk
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https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/china-the-techno-totalitarian-leviathan/?fbclid=IwAR2Xuxu4Rqf5k6UmKBYloiwvWxwH9icP3I9usM9lkKoJmv7oLJf6OLaErKk
Scary stuff. I expected the information revolution to open up places like Communist China. Instead it is empowering the state. Instead of them becoming more open, we are becoming more thought controlling.
From the article:
"The book to read right now — the book that every American should read, without delay — is We Have Been Harmonised: Life In China’s Surveillance State, by the German journalist Kai Strittmatter. I finished it this morning, and let me tell you, reading it is something close to a red-pill experience. I thought I had a pretty good handle on how extensive China’s surveillance state was. I was wrong. It’s much more extensive than I realized. And what’s more, reading this book made me realize that the dystopian Western future I’ve been thinking about all year — “soft totalitarianism” is the phrase I use — is not speculative science fiction. It already exists in China. We have the technology to institute it here in America. What we lack — for now — is the will. That could easily change. The system is so entrenched in China that I can’t imagine how anybody could resist it. It is not yet in place here. We can’t even begin to act against it happening here until we understand what is possible."
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https://israelunwired.com/pro-israel-youtube-channel-discovers-youtube-has-been-hiding-its-videos/
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second post
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/hawley-introduces-bipartisan-bill-empowering-users-to-withdraw-their-data-from-social-media-giants/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=18402014
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/apple-ceo-appointed-chair-of-board-at-top-chinese-university-with-close-ties-to-beijing_3123297.html?utm_source=Epoch+Times+Newsletters&utm_campaign=2727543252-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_10_22_09_27&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4fba358ecf-2727543252-239065853
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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-privacy-congress/facebook-confirms-data-sharing-with-chinese-companies-idUSKCN1J11TY?fbclid=IwAR23_qrcE_wJP9GdsRrr5IbP6EMY45ZSd1skcBVYRdtk72zSbPcijntdtxo
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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-privacy-congress/facebook-confirms-data-sharing-with-chinese-companies-idUSKCN1J11TY?fbclid=IwAR23_qrcE_wJP9GdsRrr5IbP6EMY45ZSd1skcBVYRdtk72zSbPcijntdtxo
Huawei=Chinese Ministry for State Security
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https://www.nationalreview.com/news/hawley-introduces-bipartisan-bill-empowering-users-to-withdraw-their-data-from-social-media-giants/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=18402014
Excellent move. .
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https://www.nationalreview.com/news/hawley-introduces-bipartisan-bill-empowering-users-to-withdraw-their-data-from-social-media-giants/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=18402014
Excellent move. .
FB currently moving US servers overseas....
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https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-problem-of-political-advertising-on-social-media?source=EDT_NYR_EDIT_NEWSLETTER_0_imagenewsletter_Daily_ZZ&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_102419&utm_medium=email&bxid=5be9d3fa3f92a40469e2d85c&cndid=50142053&esrc=&mbid=&utm_term=TNY_Daily
This caught my attention:
"Embedded in the First Amendment’s protection of political speech is the assumption that deceptions will be exposed and then rejected in the marketplace of ideas. In Zuckerberg’s view, Facebook, though a private company, is the public square where such ideas can be debated. But when political ads with false claims circulate only among the people who will be most receptive to them, there is little chance that the veracity of those ads will be openly debated."
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second post
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/mark-zuckerberg-doesnt-know-what-the-first-amendment-is-for?source=EDT_NYR_EDIT_NEWSLETTER_0_imagenewsletter_Daily_ZZ&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_092319&utm_medium=email&bxid=5be9d3fa3f92a40469e2d85c&cndid=50142053&esrc=&mbid=&utm_term=TNY_Daily
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https://www.disrn.com/2019/10/23/google-says-it-has-achieved-quantum-supremacy/
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This is scary folks , , ,
https://www.theepochtimes.com/google-carries-chinese-communist-partys-message-about-religion_3129048.html?utm_source=Epoch+Times+Newsletters&utm_campaign=36f3f23532-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_10_27_07_33&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4fba358ecf-36f3f23532-239065853
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Sent to me by Big Dog
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVQltGtMIho
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/legislation-would-require-search-engines-to-disclose-algorithms-11572540266?mod=itp_wsj&mod=&mod=djemITP_h
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The Obama administration in bed with Google Facebook allowed FB to buy Instagram. What say Trump administration about this? Do we want one or two companies to own all industry? Looks to me like a back door deal for government to own and or control everything since Congress is also considering how to takeover these giants.
Google to acquire Fitbit for $2.1 billion in major health tech deal
https://www.statnews.com/2019/11/01/google-to-acquire-fitbit-for-2-1-billion-in-major-health-tech-deal/
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https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolinehaskins1/gaggle-school-surveillance-technology-education
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https://thenextweb.com/google/2019/11/04/google-wants-to-create-the-ultimate-medical-record-search-tool-for-doctors/
It's OK, they totally promise to respect your privacy.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/62/Cthulhu_and_R%27lyeh.jpg/220px-Cthulhu_and_R%27lyeh.jpg)
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:cry: :cry: :cry:
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https://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2019/11/sidewalk-labs-smart-cities-will-create.html
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Gm,
It is time we set up 24/7 surveillance of Tech titans and their teams . Put them in a IT glass cage so to speak and document and sell the data .
We need to watch what they are up to and doing to protect
the rest of us .
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https://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2019/11/sidewalk-labs-smart-cities-will-create.html
George Orwell thought he was writing a warning, not a how-to guide.
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Amazon’s Heavy Recruitment of Chinese Sellers Puts Consumers at Risk
The e-commerce platform has included banned, unsafe, mislabeled products. One reason: It wooed China’s manufacturers to sell directly to the U.S.
By Jon Emont
Nov. 11, 2019 11:17 am ET
It looked like Amazon.com Inc.’s yearslong quest to build a shopping business in China was a bust in July when it folded a big part of its local business.
In fact, Amazon’s China business is bigger than ever. That is because it has aggressively recruited Chinese manufacturers and merchants to sell to consumers outside the country. And these sellers, in turn, represent a high proportion of problem listings found on the site, according to a Wall Street Journal investigation.
The Journal earlier this year uncovered 10,870 items for sale between May and August that have been declared unsafe by federal agencies, are deceptively labeled, lacked federally-required warnings, or are banned by federal regulators. Amazon said it investigated the items, and some listings were taken down after the Journal’s reporting.
Of 1,934 sellers whose addresses could be determined, 54% were based in China, according to a Journal analysis of data from research firm Marketplace Pulse.
Amazon’s China recruiting is one reason why its platform increasingly resembles an unruly online flea market. A new product listing is uploaded to Amazon from China every 1/50th of a second, according to slides its officials showed a December conference in the industrial port city of Ningbo.
Chinese factories are squeezing profit margins for middlemen who sell on Amazon’s third-party platform. Some U.S. sellers fear the next step will be to cut them out entirely.
Tony Sagar began noticing the China effect around 2015. His company, Down Under Bedding in Mississauga, Ontario, had sold goose-down duvets on Amazon since 2014—these days, for $699 for a queen-size version. Then Chinese competitors hit, listing goose-down duvets for sometimes a sixth his price. He bought one and had it tested: Inside was inexpensive duck down.
Tony Sagar says about 80% of his revenue comes from online sales. In recent years, Chinese competitors began listing 100% goose-down duvets for about a sixth of what he charged. Mr. Sagar arranged to have a competitor’s duvet tested: Inside were cheap duck feathers. PHOTOS: LIBBY MARCH FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL(3)
The Journal in October bought a duvet from the same Amazon seller claiming “100% Fill With Goose Down” and had it tested. The result matched Mr. Sagar’s: duck feathers.
“They’re claiming they’re selling a $500-$700 duvet based on false specifications, so people say, ‘$120, it’s a good deal!’ ” Mr. Sagar said. “Amazon is making a direct push for these factories in China.”
AMAZON’S UNRULY MARKETPLACE
Amazon Has Ceded Control of Its Site. The Result: Thousands of Banned, Unsafe or Mislabeled Products
In response to this article, an Amazon spokesman said, “Bad actors make up a tiny fraction of activity in our store and, like honest sellers, can come from every corner of the world. Regardless of where they are based, we work hard to stop bad actors before they can impact the shopping or selling experience in our store.”
Amazon said it took enforcement action on the duvet seller and that its products were no longer for sale on the site. The seller’s listings appeared to be gone from Amazon’s U.S. site as of last week.
Mr. Sagar’s discovery came as Amazon was expanding a campaign it started around 2013 urging Chinese businesses to sell directly to consumers abroad. An Amazon sales director, Alicia Liu, at a 2017 conference told Chinese business people she was leading a team in China, drawing on her previous experience cutting out middlemen in Walmart Inc. ’s supply chain.
On the Market
Amazon doesn’t divulge the percentage of its sellers based in China, but an analysis of the most-reviewedseller accounts over time shows China-based merchants gaining on its Western sites.
Percentage of top Amazon sellers in various countries that are from China
Source: Marketplace Pulse
Note: Data is based on an analysis of top 10,000 most-reviewed sellers in a country. Amazon says the U.S. numbers areinflated and the methodology is flawed. It says more than 75% of top 10,000 sellers in the U.S. are based in the country,while almost 70% of top 10,000 sellers in European stores are based in Europe as of 2018.
%
U.K.
Germany
France
Spain
U.S.
2017
’18
’19
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
“We help factories directly open accounts on Amazon and sell to U.S. consumers directly,” a video shows her telling them. “This is our value.”
A wave of Chinese merchants have joined Amazon’s millions of third-party sellers worldwide, who collectively represent more than half of Amazon’s physical gross merchandise sales. Among the 10,000 most-reviewed accounts on Amazon’s U.S. site whose locations could be determined in October, about 38% were in China, Marketplace Pulse calculates, compared with 25% three years ago.
The Amazon spokesman said 38% “is a significant exaggeration of the real percentage of the top ten thousand’’ and that the methodology is flawed, citing what it said were problems with the way in which the analysis used seller review counts to estimate the percentage. Marketplace Pulse said it stood by its analysis.
Site control
How Amazon exercises control of its site has come under scrutiny from some in Congress, where some lawmakers are calling for more regulation of the company. That is part of a growing backlash in Washington over how tech companies run their platforms.
Amazon’s third-party marketplace, which connects merchants and buyers around the world, is crucial to the company’s growth. At the same time, even though it has become a source of fake or dangerous goods, Amazon has denied it is liable for what’s sold there, saying in court cases that it neither makes nor sells the products in question.
In its annual Securities and Exchange Commission filing this year, Amazon disclosed for the first time that counterfeits and fraudulent products are a risk factor. It said Amazon may be “unable to prevent sellers in our stores or through other stores from selling unlawful, counterfeit, pirated, or stolen goods,” among other issues.
Amazon said it recruits sellers in many countries and that these merchants are central to its goal of offering customers good selection at good prices. Amazon said it requires products to comply with applicable laws and regulations. It said that in 2018 it blocked more than three billion suspect listings for various forms of abuse.
Consumers and businesses with safety and intellectual-property grievances have found it hard to hold Chinese sellers accountable—in part because Amazon doesn’t require its sellers to provide their locations to the public on its U.S. site.
The Journal identified sellers as being in China from their pages on Amazon’s site in Mexico, where regulations require sellers to list their locations on Amazon—a method Marketplace Pulse also uses.
New sellers from China are hurting merchants that have built Amazon businesses offering products they import from Chinese factories, said Amazon seller Bernie Thompson. His Plugable Technologies in Redmond, Wash., lists electronics products made in China. Since about five years ago, Chinese manufacturers selling on Amazon have priced him out of some product categories, he said—some of them his own suppliers and others who game Amazon’s rating system, he said.
“Amazon is trying to disintermediate everyone they can, and get products as directly as possible to consumers,” he said. “In a way, they’re a perfect partner for China Incorporated to engage with to take them around the world.”
The Amazon spokesman said: “Independent retailers in the U.S. are enjoying record sales in our store.” Amazon said more than 75% of the 10,000 top sellers by gross sales in its U.S. store were America-based as of 2018 and that the company spends more recruiting U.S. sellers than sellers from any other location.
Global recruiting
In China over the past six years, Amazon has made its site more accessible to Chinese speakers, created special programs that address Chinese sellers’ logistical needs and sent a stream of employees to recruit suppliers.
Amazon ‘is the most cost-effective way to sell into the United States,’ says businessman Zhao Weiming. A factory in southern China produces his Lagunamoon-branded products. PHOTO: BILLY H.C.KWOK FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
At the 2017 conference, Ms. Liu, who said she had spent over a decade purchasing for Walmart, told Chinese sellers that when she joined the industry in 2004, around 90% of her suppliers were trading companies and that by 2017, around 80% were the factories themselves. Ms. Liu said the same logic applied to Amazon, the video shows.
“Let’s cut out the middleman,” said Geoffrey Stewart, an Amazon employee in Shenzhen, at an April trade event in Hong Kong in a video the Journal viewed. “We think that will enhance margins for our manufacturing partners and it will delight customers.”
Amazon said Ms. Liu’s and Mr. Stewart’s comments didn’t mean Amazon was less committed to helping sellers everywhere. Ms. Liu, who no longer works at Amazon, didn’t respond to LinkedIn messages, and the Journal couldn’t determine where she now works. Amazon said Mr. Stewart wasn’t available for comment. Walmart declined to comment on Ms. Liu’s assertions.
Amazon seller Zhao Weiming said the site “is the most cost-effective way to sell into the United States.” The Guangzhou businessman experimented several years ago listing gadgets on Amazon before settling on cosmetics and essential oils, he said, establishing factories to produce them under the name Lagunamoon. He said his company earns $50 million a year on Amazon.
Listings for some popular Lagunamoon essential oils claimed they were U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved, until the Journal raised the matter with Amazon and Mr. Zhao in early November. An FDA spokesman said essential oils wouldn’t meet the agency’s definition of an approved product, although it was possible some component—a dye, say—might be approved.
Mr. Zhao said FDA requirements are complex and he didn’t want to use tens of thousands of words to explain.
Lagunamoon products, available on Amazon, are manufactured in a southern China factory.
Amazon said it was investigating the case and would take proper action. It said sellers are prohibited from listing products that improperly claim to be FDA cleared or FDA approved, or improperly include the FDA logo. At least one Lagunamoon essential-oil listing that cited FDA approval had that claim removed after inquiries from the Journal.
Concerns at Amazon about Chinese listings arose several years ago in its China team, which noticed that as local sellers flocked to the platform, it saw increasing patterns of fraud, counterfeits and unsafe products, said former Amazon employees in China.
Washington state’s attorney general’s office said Amazon agreed to pay $700,000 as part of a legally binding agreement after an investigation revealed dozens of products marketed toward children had excessive lead and cadmium. The products were made in China, the office said, some sold by China-based third parties. Amazon didn’t admit wrongdoing.
“Customer safety is Amazon’s top priority,” said the Amazon spokesman. “We work closely with our selling partners to verify that the school supplies and children’s jewelry in our store are safe.”
Bogus brushes
Cheap Chinese counterfeits drove Kevin Williams, a Utah seller of water-powered cleaning brushes on Amazon, to lay off six employees this year—most of his U.S. staff, he said. He and his co-founder developed their patented Brush Hero product, made in the U.S. and U.K., in 2015 after finding it difficult to clean their vehicles, selling them on Amazon for $34.99.
Kevin Williams, co-owner of Brush Hero, at his distribution warehouse in Salt Lake City, Utah on November 8, 2019. PHOTO: LINDSAY D'ADDATO FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Poorly made copies began appearing in 2018 on Amazon, eventually listing for as low as $9.99, some claiming to be the Brush Hero brand, he said. Buyers, unaware they were fake, trashed Mr. Williams’s products on his Amazon page, he said. When he complained to Amazon, he said, it told him to order the alleged counterfeits and test them. Amazon removed brushes he proved counterfeit, he said, but it could take weeks for them to arrive for testing, and new counterfeits kept popping up.
He dropped prices to $19.99, which “pulled out the rug from us from a cash-flow perspective” he said. A retailer declined to give him a large contract. “He said, ‘What the heck, your Amazon reviews are terrible,’ ” said Mr. Williams, who calls his company “walking dead.”
Amazon said that it acted on infringement cases where Brush Hero provided adequate information and that it has introduced programs for sellers to fight counterfeits, including one called Project Zero that uses automation to scan Amazon stores and remove suspected counterfeits.
Counterfeits and inauthentic reviews “have all gone through the roof with the rise of Chinese sellers,” said Chris McCabe, an investigator for Amazon until 2012, now a consultant helping Amazon sellers counter illicit competition.
Brush Hero products are manufactured in the United States and sold on Amazon from Salt Lake City, Utah. PHOTOS: LINDSAY D'ADDATO FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL(3)
Inauthentic reviews for listings from China can trick Amazon’s algorithm into boosting products, people outside Amazon familiar with the activities said. A search for “travel pillows” in August presented products with names such as MLVOC offered by sellers whose names matched those of Amazon accounts registered in southern China.
The Journal ordered MLVOC-brand pillows from sellers named Corki and Kingstyle Supplies, and got gift cards offering a free pillow if the buyer emailed an address—the same address for both sellers. A “Gift card team” responded, asking the buyer to give a five-star review for which it promised an Amazon gift card. Of one MLVOC pillow’s roughly 2,000 reviews, about 86% have five stars.
Amazon policy forbids making inducements for positive reviews. Amazon said it investigated and took action, eventually reinstating Kingstyle and Corki. Amazon said in some cases it will reinstate seller accounts after violations if the sellers provide corrective action plans, though the accounts would be blocked after further infractions.
In response to a query sent to the email address given by Corki and Kingstyle, a respondent wrote: “I can’t share the company information.” The sellers didn’t respond to requests for comment sent through Amazon’s platform.
Travel-pillow seller Teri Mittelstadt, co-founder of HiGear Design Inc. in California, said counterfeits and review manipulation from China have hurt sales. Her patented Travelrest pillows, which attach to airline seats to prevent slipping, were among the top-selling travel pillows on Amazon for seven years starting in 2008, she said, but now rank in the 20s or lower.
“The person who gets hurt the most is the consumer who buys the product. They think they are buying a product with all these great reviews,” she said.
Amazon said Travelrest’s sales on Amazon have steadily grown year-to-year since 2015. Ms. Mittelstadt said her sales growth has slowed significantly over the past two years and that this year her sales are down on Amazon’s U.S. site.
Strategy shift
Starting in the mid-2000s, Amazon’s attempt to build an online retail business in China was thwarted by local competitors like Alibaba. Early this decade, it began experimenting with the new strategy, and employees “realized that global selling is much bigger” than selling in China, a former Amazon manager said.
At a Shenzhen trade fair in early 2013, no one had heard of Amazon, said Steven Chen, who says Amazon dispatched him to recruit Chinese sellers. He left Amazon in 2015 and operates an e-commerce consulting business.
Amazon employees distributed Chinese-language tutorials on opening Amazon accounts to prospective new sellers, people familiar with the company’s strategy said. Interns in Beijing phoned vendors on Chinese e-commerce sites to invite them to join Amazon.
Chinese sellers’ products often took weeks to ship across the Pacific and arrive at buyers’ addresses. So Amazon offered a logistics system, “Dragonboat,” which for a fee brought goods made in China and elsewhere to Amazon fulfillment centers in the U.S.
American buyers could receive purchases within 48 hours in Amazon boxes, said a former high-level Amazon China employee and a Chinese seller who used the service.
By 2015, Amazon’s website was functional for sellers in Mandarin. Its team responsible for signing up and assisting Chinese sellers expanded to 120 people in 2016, said the former high-level employee. Other employees built relationships with businesses such as Chinese logistics-services providers and translator services, asking them to encourage clients to establish Amazon accounts.
It is often hard to tell that an Amazon seller is based in China, as is the case with the Amazon page of Lagunamoon, the essential-oil and cosmetics provider. It shows no indication the products are Chinese and gives no store address. Lagunamoon’s Mr. Zhao said that is because the U.S. doesn’t require it.
Amazon seller Molson Hart in Texas is suing 73 sellers, many located in China, in Texas federal court, for trademark infringement on products like his Brain Flakes interlocking plastic disk set. He has been selling the Chinese-made toys on Amazon since 2014, and counterfeits started appearing in 2015, he said.
After he filed suit, he couldn’t hunt down the Chinese companies. “I know who did it,” he said, “but I can’t serve them.”
Amazon said it has worked closely with brands to support criminal referrals against counterfeiters in China and anticipates working with brands to jointly pursue litigation in the U.S. and China.
Amazon buyer Irvin R. Love Jr. of Georgia bought a hoverboard on Amazon in November 2015 that caught fire and burned down his home, according to a suit he filed February 2018 against Amazon, the seller and others, in Georgia federal court. In an amended complaint this year he alleged that Amazon was negligent for not removing the hoverboard from its website before Mr. Love’s purchase. Amazon argued in a legal filing that it doesn’t owe damages because it didn’t design, manufacture or sell the hoverboard.
Mr. Love also sued the seller, Panda Town, which his lawyer, Darren Penn, said appeared to be a Chinese company, based on sales information. Mr. Penn said that he can’t locate the seller and that Amazon declined to provide its location.
Cross-border e-commerce has made it harder to police unsafe products entering the U.S., he said. “When you had the traditional importer and customs and brokers—and all those procedures are followed—you provide a couple of layers of protection that you don’t when you’re talking about an internet market.” The case is in discovery, and Mr. Penn declined to make Mr. Love available for comment.
Amazon said it has provided information about the seller to the plaintiff, consistent with its policy on such matters. Panda Town doesn’t appear to list on Amazon anymore, and the Journal couldn’t locate a company by that name.
‘Not normal’
Product safety on Amazon and other online marketplaces isn’t assured, because Amazon doesn’t require all third-party sellers to test products to prove they are compliant with regulations, said Sebastien Breteau, chief executive of QIMA, an inspection, certification and audit company that is an Amazon vetted service provider.
“It’s not normal that a factory with 200 people manufacturing baby monitors in Dongguan can ship products directly to consumers in Minnesota or in Europe through a marketplace,” he said. “The day the regulator makes them responsible, then we’ll have proper compliance programs.”
Amazon said sellers create their own product listings and are required to comply with all relevant laws and regulations when listing items for sale in Amazon stores.
Mr. Thompson, the electronics seller, said Chinese factories have steadily pushed him out of lower-end goods such as USB cables, pricing at less than he can. The Chinese sellers often boost their product rankings by arranging large purchases of their own products and leaving positive reviews for themselves, he said—a tactic he said he learned about while attending an independent Amazon-seller event featuring a China-based sales consultant in Hong Kong several years ago.
He now counts on selling higher-end products like $199 docking stations for displays and charging electronic devices, he said, but “there really isn’t much upper end left for us.”
Amazon said competition is a part of business and some more-mature product categories can be particularly competitive. The spokesman said its goal is to quickly remove abusive reviews and that over the past month “over 99% of the reviews read by customers were authentic.”
Chinese sellers were seen as too valuable to give up, despite warning signs, a former Seattle-based Amazon employee said. “There were crazy things, hundreds of listings created every hour,” the person said, adding that when U.S. vendors complained, staff told them, “We don’t control third-party selection. It’s not us, it’s an open-end platform.”
Goose-down test
Mr. Sagar, the goose-down-duvet seller, said an employee posing as a customer last year contacted Rosecose, the Chinese seller of the down duvet on Amazon, offering proof its product was deceptively listed. A Rosecose representative apologized and said its suppliers could be to blame, offering to refund the lab-test costs, according to messages the Journal viewed.
The employee last year also sent an email to Amazon with the test results showing the duck down, he said. Rosecose kept listing duvets, Mr. Sagar said.
The Journal bought a duvet on Amazon from Rosecose in October and sent its own test results to Amazon late in the month. Early this month, Rosecose was still selling duvets on Amazon as “100% Fill With Goose Down,” including a king-size option listing for $129.99.
The Rosecose duvet bought by WSJ on Amazon claimed to be 100% goose down but was found by IDFL Laboratory and Institute to contain duck feathers instead. PHOTOS: LINDSAY D’ADDATO FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL(3)
The Wall Street Journal verified Rosecose was based in China by visiting its page on Amazon’s Mexican site, which listed its location. Rosecose didn’t respond to inquiries sent through Amazon and no one picked up calls to a phone number associated with the brand.
Amazon said it took down Rosecose listings Nov. 4. They appeared to be gone from the U.S. site early last week, but some still appeared on Amazon’s Canada site until after the Journal pointed them out to the company.
—Shane Shifflett, Stella Yifan Xie and Lekai Liu contributed to this article.
—Illustration by Jessica Kuronen/WSJ
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second post
Lessons Learned From a Saudi Spy Case at Twitter
Scott Stewart
VP of Tactical Analysis, Stratfor
Nov 12, 2019 | 09:00 GMT
The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington is pictured in Seattle on Nov. 8, 2019. It might be the digital age, but Riyadh's recruitment of spies at Twitter harkens back to the espionage tactics of yesteryear.
HIGHLIGHTS
New charges against two former Twitter employees whom Saudi Arabia recruited for spying purposes demonstrate the need for companies to keep tight control on which employees are able to access what kind of information and more.
In this specific case, Riyadh was not chasing critical business secrets, but user data for a specific group of Twitter accounts.
The case illustrates that the threat of old-fashioned human intelligence remains potent, as Riyadh wished to recruit insiders, rather than hack Twitter.
In an age in which cybersecurity is top-notch, sometimes all it takes for hostile intelligence to gain a treasure trove of information is some old-fashioned espionage tradecraft — like finding an insider. In a criminal complaint filed Nov. 5 in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, the FBI accused two former Twitter employees and a third man of acting as agents of the Saudi government in the United States without declaring themselves. Two of the men, Ali Alzabarah and Ahmed Almutairi, are Saudi citizens, while the other, Ahmad Abouammo, is a U.S. citizen of Saudi descent. The men are charged with helping the Saudi government identify political dissidents and others on the social media platform who were critical of the government and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The Big Picture
Social media companies like Twitter will always be a target for state and non-state spies, yet they can take a number of steps to reduce the threat of malefactors.
I've already written on the case for Stratfor's Threat Lens clients, but there are some important lessons in the affair for a wider audience — like rethinking just what kind of information it's important to protect, being circumspect on just which employees are entrusted with critical data and keeping an eye on who might be snooping around a company's workers.
Recruiting Insiders
According to the criminal complaint, Abouammo — who is in U.S. custody alongside Almutairi — was employed at Twitter as a media partnerships manager from November 2013 to May 2015, when he worked with prominent users in the Middle East and North Africa, such as government officials, companies, journalists and celebrities. He became a focal point of the Saudi government in April 2014, when Twitter assigned him to handle Riyadh's inquiries and requests. The complaint notes that in late 2014, Abouammo met with Almutairi, who was running a social media company connected to the Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Foundation (MiSK), a charity with ties to "Royal Family Member 1" — who appears to be Mohammed bin Salman, the man who would later become Saudi Arabia's crown prince.
In December 2014, Abouammo reportedly met with Bader al-Askar, the charity's director, in London and received an expensive watch from him. (The complaint states that Abouammo attempted to sell the watch, which he valued at $35,000, for $25,000 on Craigslist. He reportedly lied about its value in a subsequent FBI interview.) Reading between the lines of the complaint, the meeting in London was clearly the "pitch" stage of the human intelligence recruitment cycle, and Abouammo appears to have taken the bait — hook, line and sinker. After the meeting, Abouammo made several queries in Twitter's database for information on users of interest to Saudi Arabia. Al-Askar then paid him for the information, depositing the money in an account in Beirut that Abouammo's relative there opened on his behalf. Although Abouammo left his job at Twitter in June 2015 to move to Seattle, he continued to contact former colleagues at the company for information he needed to satisfy al-Askar's requests, receiving money for his services. All told, Abouammo received at least $300,000 in cash from al-Askar, plus the watch.
The meeting in London was clearly the "pitch" stage of the human intelligence recruitment cycle, and Abouammo appears to have taken the bait — hook, line and sinker.
In February 2015, Almutairi called Alzabarah, who worked as a site reliability engineer at Twitter from August 2013 to December 2015 after initially coming to the United States on a Saudi government-funded scholarship to attend university in 2005. According to the complaint, a few days after establishing contact with Alzabarah, Almutairi traveled to San Francisco to have dinner with the engineer. Alzabarah, meanwhile, sent Almutairi a copy of his resume the same day they met for dinner.
In May 2015, Alzabarah traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with al-Askar. By the time of the meeting arranged by Almutairi, al-Askar was a member of the Saudi royal court, serving as the director of the private office of the crown prince. During the visit, it appears that al-Askar pitched and recruited Alzabarah, because within a week after returning from Washington, Alzabarah began conducting bulk searches of the Twitter account information of people of interest to the Saudi government. In total, the complaint alleges that he accessed the account information of over 6,000 users — including 33 accounts about which Saudi law enforcement agencies had demanded information from Twitter as part of "emergency disclosure requests."
On Dec. 3, Alzabarah left his job at Twitter, abruptly returning to Saudi Arabia with his wife. He reportedly sent his resignation message to the company from the plane after he left the United States. Exactly why Alzabarah left the company is not publicly known, as authorities redacted seven paragraphs from the publicly released letter that might have explained the reasons for his sudden resignation. But given Alzabarah's hasty departure and the number of calls he made to Saudi officials during the process, including the consul general in Los Angeles, it is very likely that Twitter security and, possibly, the FBI questioned him about his activities on Dec. 2, 2015.
Within a month of returning home, Alzabarah began working for al-Askar at MiSK as part of the team working on social media issues. From information recovered from Alzabarah's Apple Notes app, it appears that he was motivated by the offer of a lucrative job inside the kingdom, as well as government help in resolving an unidentified issue for his father, instead of bulk cash like Abouammo. Still, he did contact al-Askar to inquire if his efforts might qualify for some of the $1.9 million in reward money the Saudi government was offering for information that helped prevent terrorist attacks, as some of the Twitter users of interest to Riyadh were terrorism suspects.
Maintaining Vigilance
In writing about countering corporate espionage threats, we often outline how important it is to identify what data is truly important to protect; only grant access to such information to certain people; carefully vet such employees; and then control when, where and how they can access it.
But in terms of determining what data to protect, it is important to recognize that different information will be of value to different spies. In this case, the Saudis were not interested in Twitter's algorithm — the secret sauce that makes the app work — the way a competitor would be. Instead, they were eager to glean information on the identities of a very specific set of Twitter users — to the extent that they were willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to obtain it. This means that when deciding what information to protect, corporations should consider the goals and desires of various espionage actors, and not just what they consider to be valuable to their business internally.
In addition to user-provided biographical data, Abouammo and Alzabarah succeeded in accessing information about the devices and browsers the targets used to access Twitter, as well as their IP addresses — the type of technical information that would be very useful to anyone wanting to compromise their devices with tailored malware.
The Saudis were not interested in Twitter's algorithm — the secret sauce that makes the app work — the way a competitor would be. Instead, they were eager to glean information on the identities of a very specific set of Twitter users.
In this case, the criminal complaint noted that neither Abouammo nor Alzabarah had a work-related need to access the confidential user information data that they obtained and passed on to the Saudi government. Twitter has reportedly addressed the problem by limiting access to user data, but given that Riyadh and other governmental and nongovernmental actors are clearly interested in this type of information, countries like Saudi Arabia will continue to woo anyone — not just Saudis — who might be able to provide it with offers of large sums of cash. Because of this, profiling and stereotyping can be counterproductive. Furthermore, the fact that anyone might find themselves the target of a human intelligence recruitment pitch highlights the need to train employees on how to spot and respond to human intelligence approaches, not only so they can recognize when someone has targeted them, but also so they can notice when someone may have recruited their co-workers.
This case also illustrates that — current digital age notwithstanding — the low-tech, old-fashioned human intelligence threat remains extremely relevant. I've often argued that in a case where a company has good cybersecurity, it is often easier and cheaper for malefactors to simply recruit an insider than it is to try to hack their way into the information they desire. The Saudi Twitter affair also shows how insiders who have been recruited as corporate spies can serve as "advanced persistent insider threats" by remaining in place for months or even years as they feed information to a hostile intelligence actor.
It is certainly no surprise that the Saudis would attempt to gather this type of information from Twitter given the global reach that social media has achieved. Twitter is also not the only social media company in the crosshairs; it just happens to be the one we have heard about because of this criminal case. Furthermore, the Saudis are not the only threat in this sphere, as a wide array of state and non-state actors have undoubtedly recruited corporate spies in a large number of companies and are in the process of spotting and recruiting others as I write this. Ultimately, it's a threat that pertains not just to Twitter but every company, especially in the current environment in which the corporate espionage threat is more critical than ever. Companies, however, don't have to fatalistically accept this reality. They can — and indeed must — work to identify and thwart the spies in their midst.
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https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/don-t-buy-online-dna-ancestry-tests-you-are-the-real-product-1.3713619
You really are the product, and all your blood relatives as well.
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https://bigleaguepolitics.com/orwellian-facebook-announces-prohibition-of-naming-alleged-anti-trump-whistleblower-eric-ciaramella/
So of course I posted this this morning :-D
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https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/facebook-app-recording-camera-iphone-ios-news-feed-bug-update-fix-workaround-a9200696.html
They are very, very sorry they got caught.
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My Ciaramella post on FB promptly got deleted. Others are reporting the same thing.
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My Ciaramella post on FB promptly got deleted. Others are reporting the same thing.
I believe the term is "memory-holed".
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My Ciaramella post on FB promptly got deleted. Others are reporting the same thing.
I believe the term is "memory-holed".
Now you've got their attention.
'Orwell's famous book wasn't meant to be a how to guide.'
Looking at alternatives to Facebook, the main problem is that they have roughly zero users. Your friends and family aren't on them. But if FB, twitter etc shut down down enough info, enough posts, enough users, people will eventually seek alternatives.
https://www.ionos.com/digitalguide/online-marketing/social-media/the-best-facebook-alternatives/
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Let's see if they Memory Hole that!
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Speech and Sanctimony at Twitter
Banning ‘political’ ads, Dorsey throws himself into a political thicket.
By The Editorial Board
Nov. 17, 2019 6:39 pm ET
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in 2018. PHOTO: JIM WATSON/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey saw an opportunity last month to please the political left and embarrass a competitor. Now he’s stuck with a jury-rigged ads policy that will damage confidence in his company and do nothing to improve political discourse.
In October Democrats and the press were pummeling Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for refusing to take down a Donald Trump campaign ad against Joe Biden. If Facebook did not fact-check and censor politicians, they said, democracy would be undermined. So Mr. Dorsey tweeted on Oct. 30 that he would “stop all political advertising” on Twitter. “This isn’t about free expression,” he insisted, but about protecting “democratic infrastructure.”
The press feted Mr. Dorsey as a hero compared to the democracy-destroying Mr. Zuckerberg. But once the anti-Trump high had worn off, progressives started to realize that a Twitter political-ad ban could block their speech too. Some climate activists, for example, use Twitter ads to find an audience.
Now Twitter has backtracked from Mr. Dorsey’s promised blanket ban on political ads. The policy Twitter announced Friday allows some political ads but not others. Ads from candidates, parties and PACs are banned, but individuals, corporations and nonprofits may still pay to promote political messages (though their ability to target ads to users will be restricted).
For those that can advertise, Twitter will impose convoluted political controls. Ads can’t mention politicians, elections or legislation and also “should not have the primary goal of driving political, judicial, legislative, or regulatory outcomes.” Sounds comprehensive, right?
But wait. Twitter says it will allow “cause based” ads that “call for people to take action in connection with civic engagement, economic growth, environmental stewardship, or social equity causes.”
Meanwhile Twitter’s “issue ads” policy covers “abortion, civil rights, climate change, guns, healthcare, immigration, national security, social security, taxes, and trade.” Apparently ads can take a position on such issues so long as Twitter’s ad police judge them as not aimed at driving political “outcomes.” What a mess. It’s no wonder Twitter is already saying it expects to “make mistakes” in enforcement.
If the NRA Foundation runs an ad campaign on the right to bear arms, is that an issue ad or is it advocacy for a “judicial outcome” and thus prohibited? What about a Planned Parenthood ad supporting abortion rights—is that impermissible advocacy for legislation or is it an issue ad about health care or “social equity”?
The main effect of the policy is to give Twitter wide discretion to either approve or ban political content. This opens the door to bias. Even if the company tries to be neutral between right and left—and we’re skeptical, given Mr. Dorsey’s political opportunism in ordering the ad ban—it will be accused of bias when it blocks ads on grounds advertisers can’t understand.
Meanwhile, the company’s outright prohibition on candidate ads is a gift to established politicians or those who make outrageous claims. Mr. Dorsey intoned that political messages shouldn’t be “compromised by money” but ads are most valuable for speech that wouldn’t otherwise find an audience.
Conceived in sanctimony about Mr. Trump, Twitter’s policy could end up benefiting incumbents like him even as it pulls Twitter into a political thicket. Better if social-media companies recognize that, whatever their engineering expertise, it doesn’t extend to designing elaborate systems for controlling political speech.
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Swimming in uncharted waters, these giants are caught between an unmoderated forums running wild and becoming the all knowing arbiters of who can say what, when, where, how.
I wish them all the worst. )
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https://bigthink.com/technology-innovation/wt-social?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1
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oogle to Restrict Political Ad Targeting on Its Platforms
Advertisers will no longer be able to target political ads based on users’ interests inferred from browsing or search history
The Google policy changes follow calls for regulation of political advertising online. PHOTO: ALEXANDER POHL/ZUMA PRESS
By Patience Haggin
Updated Nov. 20, 2019 10:42 pm ET
Alphabet Inc.’s Google said Wednesday it plans to stop allowing highly targeted political ads on its platform, further fragmenting the rules being set by Silicon Valley tech giants for guarding against misinformation.
Google will roll out the ban within a week in the U.K., in advance of a Dec. 12 general election. The ban will take effect in the European Union by the end of the year and in the rest of the world on Jan. 6, the company said in a blog post.
Under the new policy, political ads can only be targeted based on users’ age, gender, and location at the postal-code level. Political advertisers will also still be able to display ads based on the content of the page a user is viewing.
Advertisers would no longer be able to target political ads based on users’ interests inferred from browsing or search history.
So-called microtargeting, in which advertisers can limit their messaging to narrow slices of people based on their personal preferences or online behavior, has been criticized as enabling campaigns to single out groups susceptible to misinformation.
Google’s announcement is the latest in a series of new policies from digital-advertising’s giants—with each of the major platforms taking a different approach. Last month Facebook Inc. announced it would no longer fact-check ads from political campaigns. Then Twitter Inc. announced it would no longer accept political ads and would impose targeting restrictions on cause-related advertising.
In its blog post, Google also clarified its policy on politicians making false claims, saying they wouldn’t be allowed on its platforms, consistent with the company’s broader prohibitions against misleading advertising. In doing so, it effectively committed to fact-checking political ads and taking down those that make false claims.
“We expect that the number of political ads on which we take action will be very limited—but we will continue to do so for clear violations,” the company said in the blog post.
Facebook on Wednesday also left the door open to more coming changes.
“For over a year, we’ve provided unprecedented transparency into all U.S. federal and state campaigns—and we prohibit voter suppression in all ads. As we’ve said, we are looking at different ways we might refine our approach to political ads,” a Facebook spokesman said.
The Trump campaign used targeted advertising to great effect in 2016, particularly on Facebook, and candidates from both parties have ramped up spending this year. Digital political ad spending is expected to reach $2.9 billion in 2020, up from $1.4 billion in 2016, according to Borrell Associates Inc., a consulting firm.
Brad Parscale, who is heading President Trump’s reelection effort, criticized Google’s move in a tweet, saying, “Political elites & Big Tech want to rig elections,” noting that it would hurt Mr. Trump as well as leading Democratic candidates.
Watchdogs including lawmakers and advocacy groups have called for greater oversight of political ads following revelations that Russian entities purchased digital ads designed to influence the 2016 vote, many of them spreading misinformation.
Federal Election Commission Chairwoman Ellen Weintraub recently called for a ban on microtargeting.
Google’s new policy will apply to ads on Google Search, Google’s video platform YouTube and third-party sites across the web purchased through Google’s ad-buying software.
Google imposed certain regulations on political advertising for U.S. federal races last year. It will expand those existing regulations to cover U.S. state-level candidates and officeholders, ballot measures and ads that mention federal or state political parties.
YouTube has allowed advertisers to target their ads based on thousands of categories, including a user’s household income, education level, profession, marital or homeownership status or the age of their children. YouTube touted these categories to political ad-buyers in a presentation given within the past year, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The presentation also suggested political ad buyers take advantage of targeting based on so-called affinity audiences, which it tagged with monikers such as “Avid Investors,” “Country Music Fans,” “Green Living” and “Spanish-Language Music.” It also touted the ability to target users based on their searches, providing an example of targeting users who had searched for information about taxes.
YouTube Grapples With Digital Political Ad Dilemma
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Google is discussing changes to its current political ad policy just a few weeks after releasing a new tool on YouTube to streamline its ad booking process. WSJ's Emily Glazer breaks down the state of political advertising on Facebook, Twitter and Google.
In the U.S., Google has also previously allowed political ad buyers to target based on public voter records and general political affiliations, including left leaning, right leaning and independent.
Since May 2018, Google has banned political ads from making false statements and provided fact-checking to enforce the policy.
The company required customers purchasing these ads to register and verify their organization.
It also preserved these ads in a publicly available archive along with estimated data on the amount spent on the ads. These policies initially applied only to federal candidates and officeholders within the U.S. but will expand to state-level politics under the new policy.
The new changes are unlikely to hurt Google’s bottom line, or stem the flow of ad dollars to digital platforms as the 2020 elections approach.
“Advertising dollars follow eyeballs. So while campaigns will have to adjust to these new rules, Google’s platforms are still effective for reaching voters online,” said Reid Vineis, vice president of conservative digital ad-buying firm Majority Strategies. “It is unlikely that this change would hurt Google’s political advertising revenue.”
Mr. Vineis also said the level of targeting allowed by Google “will still allow advertisers to generally reach homogeneous voting blocs.” Advertisers often use ZIP Codes as a proxy for demographics such as race, income and education level.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that Google was considering changing its political ad policy and that employees speculated it could relate to audience targeting.
—Emily Glazer contributed to this article.
Write to Patience Haggin at patience.haggin@wsj.com
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-uses-ai-to-flag-thousands-of-uyghurs-for-detention-report_3156325.html?utm_source=Epoch+Times+Newsletters&utm_campaign=034e79c287-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_11_27_02_15&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4fba358ecf-034e79c287-239065853
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second post
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-tech-companies-prop-up-chinas-vast-surveillance-network-11574786846?mod=djem10point
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second post
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-tech-companies-prop-up-chinas-vast-surveillance-network-11574786846?mod=djem10point
- There used to be a law against that kind of thing, aiding and abetting the enemy.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/30/business/amazon-baltimore.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/07/07/a-reminder-that-fake-news-is-an-information-literacy-problem-not-a-technology-problem/?fbclid=IwAR2M6-f_1FumAQNd13eklN0yEpSdB_hzRU38PTitBHZyPJh6VA-yeVjUqg8#c9d4f1b6a6f2
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y John D. McKinnon and Emily Glazer
Dec. 12, 2019 2:14 pm ET
WASHINGTON—Federal officials are considering seeking a preliminary injunction against Facebook Inc. over antitrust concerns related to how its products interact, according to people familiar with the matter.
If it materializes, the action by the Federal Trade Commission would focus on Facebook’s policies concerning it how it integrates its apps or allows them to work with potential rivals, these people said. Alongside its core social network, Facebook’s key products also include Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp.
The potential FTC action would likely seek to block Facebook from enforcing those policies on grounds that they are anticompetitive, the people said. An injunction could seek to bar Facebook from further integrating apps that federal regulators might look to unwind as part of a potential future breakup of the company, one of the people said.
A majority of the five-member FTC would be needed to seek an injunction, which the commission would need to file suit in federal court to obtain. The FTC declined to comment.
Facebook declined to comment. The social-media giant has worried for months that the FTC would seek an injunction against what are known as its “interoperability” rules, one of the people familiar with the matter said. Interoperability refers to the manner in which digital platforms interact.
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Has Facebook created a monopoly for messaging apps? Why or why not? Join the conversation below.
Concern that Facebook’s interoperability policies curb other services’ ability to compete would underlie a potential FTC action, these people said. Facebook has rejected that recurring complaint about its practices.
FACING PRESSURE
The social-media giant has confronted mounting scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers over its business practices and products. Related reading:
She Argued Facebook Is a Monopoly. To Her Surprise, People Listened. (Dec. 12)
Facebook to Antitrust Regulators: Data Is Complicated (Dec. 2)
Tech Giants Ramp Up Lobbying as Antitrust Scrutiny Grows (Oct. 28)
FTC Antitrust Probe of Facebook Scrutinizes Its Acquisitions (Aug. 1)
Officials also worry that some of Facebook’s plans to further integrate its own major products could make it harder to eventually split up the company in an antitrust case, according to one of the people.
It isn’t known whether the FTC will move forward with an antitrust action against Facebook or seek an injunction over its interoperability policies. If the agency takes either step, its action could occur as soon as next month, according to one person familiar with the matter. It is also possible that the FTC could attempt to block certain Facebook interoperability policies that critics say have disadvantaged social-media rivals in the past.
Facebook said in January that it was considering closer interoperability of messaging across its main platforms. But the company has said its recent plans to increase interoperability are aimed at improving users’ experiences, particularly in light of recent controversies over privacy on Facebook, and not to freeze out competitors or fend off regulatory action.
“There are privacy and security advantages to interoperability,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post in March. “With the ability to message across our services…you’d be able to send an encrypted message to someone’s phone number in WhatsApp from Messenger.”
How the Microsoft Antitrust Case Paved the Way for Big Tech
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How the Microsoft Antitrust Case Paved the Way for Big Tech
How the Microsoft Antitrust Case Paved the Way for Big Tech
The Department of Justice is investigating the U.S.'s largest tech firms for allegedly monopolistic behavior. Roughly 20 years ago, a similar case threatened to destabilize Microsoft. WSJ explains.
Messaging networks are gaining in popularity, particularly among younger users, and becoming more important to Facebook’s business. The company hopes to update its platforms to address that trend.
Columbia University law professor Tim Wu, a former senior adviser for the FTC, said seeking a preliminary injunction could hold strategic benefits for the commission.
“The advantages are that it gets things moving, and sort of forces things to a judicial decision very quickly,” Mr. Wu said, “as opposed to having an antitrust investigation going for five years….The burdens of proof can be higher for the government, but if they’ve got a good case it can be advantageous.”
Mr. Wu is among a group of Facebook critics who see the company’s pursuit of closer integration as concealing anticompetitive motives. They have argued to the FTC that it should seek an injunction blocking the company’s plans for further interoperability.
“One anticipated (and possibly intended) effect of the integration is to make divestiture more difficult,” read a slide in a deck reviewed by The Wall Street Journal that Facebook critics presented to antitrust regulators last summer. “A preliminary injunction may be necessary or desirable to prevent this merger and maintain the status quo.” The slide deck’s authors include Mr. Wu and New York University law professor Scott Hemphill.
Moving swiftly toward litigation over interoperability also could allow the FTC to take enforcement action ahead of the Justice Department. The two agencies share federal antitrust-enforcement authority, and occasionally are rivals. Both agencies are known to be looking into possible antitrust issues involving Facebook.
An FTC antitrust lawsuit against Facebook could become federal enforcers’ opening salvo against big tech companies as they look into similar concerns involving Alphabet Inc. ’s Google unit as well as Amazon.com Inc. State attorneys general also are investigating Facebook and Google.
The FTC has been examining Facebook’s acquisitions as a central part of its antitrust inquiry into the company, seeking to determine whether they were part of a campaign to consume potential rivals and head off competitive threats, the Journal reported in August. Facebook has acquired about 90 companies over the last 15 years, according to data compiled by S&P Global, including Instagram and WhatsApp.
In congressional testimony earlier this year, Matt Perault, then director of public policy at Facebook, told a House antitrust subcommittee that the company’s acquisitions have fueled innovation and brought together firms of complementary strengths
Companies purchased by Facebook “have had more opportunity to innovate as part of Facebook than they would have on their own—enhancing users’ experience and resulting in more choice for more people overall, not less,” Mr. Perault said.
—Deepa Seetharaman contributed to this article.
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https://www.popsci.com/facebook-messages-privacy-encryption/?utm_source=internal&utm_medium=email
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Apparently well at work in China now, even as Goolag refuses to work on contracts for our military , , , :x
https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/17/17344250/google-x-selfish-ledger-video-data-privacy
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https://www.edge.org/conversation/jaron_lanier-digital-maoism-the-hazards-of-the-new-online-collectivism
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First hand account inside Google - China
https://medium.com/@rossformaine/i-was-googles-head-of-international-relations-here-s-why-i-left-49313d23065
"" complicit in human rights violations"
". I then realized that the company had never intended to incorporate human rights principles into its business and product decisions. Just when Google needed to double down on a commitment to human rights, it decided to instead chase bigger profits and an even higher stock price."
" Some will say that Google was always a bad corporate actor, with less than transparent privacy practices. But there is a significant difference between serving ads based on a Google search and working with the Chinese government on artificial intelligence or hosting the applications of the Saudi government, including Absher, an application that allows men to track and control the movement of their female family members."
" what are the implications for all of us when that once-great American company controls so much data about billions of users across the globe?
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https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/your-personal-financial-information-will-be-at-risk-if-google-runs-americas-payments-system/
They totally won't abuse this.
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Clinton Backer at Facebook Debunks Clinton Claims
Plus, Chelsea shows Hunter that you don’t have to fly to Ukraine to get rich.
By James Freeman
Jan. 7, 2020 5:49 pm ET
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Hillary Clinton attends a campaign rally in Pittsburgh, Oct. 22, 2016. PHOTO: CARLOS BARRIA/REUTERS
Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and politicians like Rep. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) may cling to the discredited belief that Donald Trump and Russia used social media to rig the 2016 election. But liberals in a position to know still aren’t buying it.
The New York Times reports that it has obtained a recent internal memorandum from senior Facebook executive Andrew Bosworth. According to the text of the memo published by the Times, Mr. Bosworth throws cold water on a favorite conspiracy theory of the political left:
So was Facebook responsible for Donald Trump getting elected? I think the answer is yes, but not for the reasons anyone thinks. He didn’t get elected because of Russia or misinformation or Cambridge Analytica. He got elected because he ran the single best digital ad campaign I’ve ever seen from any advertiser. Period.
Cambridge Analytica was a political consulting firm and Trump campaign vendor which was accused of using personal data about Facebook users without their knowledge. The Federal Trade Commission recently settled a case with some of those involved, who agreed to destroy the data they collected and be honest with users in the future about data collection. The memo from Facebook’s Mr. Bosworth continues:
To be clear, I’m no fan of Trump. I donated the max to Hillary. After his election I wrote a post about Trump supporters that I’m told caused colleagues who had supported him to feel unsafe around me (I regret that post and deleted shortly after).
But [Trump campaign digital media chief Brad Parscale ] and Trump just did unbelievable work. They weren’t running misinformation or hoaxes. They weren’t microtargeting or saying different things to different people. They just used the tools we had to show the right creative to each person. The use of custom audiences, video, ecommerce, and fresh creative remains the high water mark of digital ad campaigns in my opinion.
“Creative” is a noun in the marketing world, used to describe the particular advertisements designed to deliver messages. Mr. Bosworth fears that Team Trump is still really good at creating them and therefore he fears that Mr. Trump may win again. “As a committed liberal I find myself desperately wanting to pull any lever at my disposal to avoid the same result. So what stays my hand?,” asks Mr. Bosworth. He writes, “I find myself thinking of the Lord of the Rings at this moment. Specifically when Frodo offers the ring to Galadrial and she imagines using the power righteously, at first, but knows it will eventually corrupt her. As tempting as it is to use the tools available to us to change the outcome, I am confident we must never do that or we will become that which we fear.”
This column is skeptical that Facebook decides the outcomes of U.S. elections, but applauds Mr. Bosworth’s effort to encourage his Silicon Valley colleagues to act with integrity. Also encouraging is that he’s just the latest Valley resident to attempt to provide a reality check to anti-Trump partisans.
Readers may recall Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s December, 2018 visit to the House Judiciary committee. That’s when Chairman Jerry Nadler (D., N.Y.) asked if Google knew “the full extent to which its online platforms were exploited by Russian actors in the election two years ago”.
Mr. Pichai reported that after a thorough investigation his company had discovered “two main ad accounts linked to Russia” which had spent on Google advertising a grand total of... $4,700. This amounted to roughly 1/234,000th of what Mrs. Clinton spent on advertising during the 2016 campaign.
Meanwhile over at Facebook, the number seems to have been larger but still tiny in comparison to overall political advertising. Writes Mr. Bosworth:
$100,000 in ads on Facebook can be a powerful tool but it can’t buy you an American election, especially when the candidates themselves are putting up several orders of magnitude more money on the same platform (not to mention other platforms).
Instead, the Russians worked to exploit existing divisions in the American public for example by hosting Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter protest events in the same city on the same day. The people who shows (sic) up to those events were real even if the event coordinator was not. Likewise the groups of Americans being fed partisan content was real even if those feeding them were not. The organic reach they managed sounds very big in absolute terms and unfortunately humans are bad at contextualizing big numbers. Whatever reach they managed represents an infinitesimal fraction of the overall content people saw in the same period of time and certainly over the course of an election across all media.
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Good article. What Google and Facebook do everyday to advance liberalism is more than Russia can do in an election cycle.
Russia was/is more interested in sowing discord than getting one candidate elected.
Most Democrats (msm consumers) believe Russia changed actual votes in 2016 and they didn't.
Funny that Democrats don't suspect Russia of swinging the 2018 election to Democrats. Vote harvesting was a homegrown operation.
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Russians
Republicans
Magas
Nazis
Fascists
Conservatives
White hetero men
= EVIL
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https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmjp53/how-ring-went-from-shark-tank-reject-to-americas-scariest-surveillance-company
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https://io9.gizmodo.com/amazon-secretly-removes-1984-from-the-kindle-5317703
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https://io9.gizmodo.com/amazon-secretly-removes-1984-from-the-kindle-5317703
https://www.libertariancountry.com/products/1984-make-orwell-fiction-again-t-shirt?variant=29047633117207
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https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/22/how-to-block-facebook-and-google-from-identifying-your-face.html
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https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmjp53/how-ring-went-from-shark-tank-reject-to-americas-scariest-surveillance-company
https://www.fastcompany.com/90456776/ring-caught-giving-user-data-to-facebook-whether-they-have-an-account-or-not
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8d5Wr9au9I
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That is a riot
No pun intended for what might be coming....... :wink:
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https://www.thepostmillennial.com/breaking-twitter-suspends-independent-news-outlet-zero-hedge/
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https://www.technologyreview.com/f/613644/youtube-is-deleting-videos-on-nazi-history-as-part-of-its-hate-speech-crackdown/
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https://neonnettle.com/news/6183-facebook-teams-with-george-soros-funded-fact-checker-to-filter-news-feed
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https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-engineer-says-ring-should-be-shut-down-immediately-2020-1
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https://disrn.com/news/james-okeefes-twitter-account-suspended-after-he-reports-on-radical-sanders-staffers
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Tech Platforms Aren’t Bound by First Amendment, Appeals Court Rules
Judges decided against Prager University, which claimed YouTube didn’t have right to flag videos
Google, parent company of YouTube, argued that allowing a conservative nonprofit to pursue a constitutional claim would have ‘disastrous consequences’ for the First Amendment and online discourse.
PHOTO: AMY OSBORNE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
By Jacob Gershman
Feb. 26, 2020 3:29 pm ET
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A federal appeals court in California on Wednesday ruled that privately operated internet platforms are free to censor content they don’t like.
Though not unexpected, the unanimous decision by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco marks the most emphatic rejection of the argument advanced in some conservative circles that YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and other giant tech platforms are bound by the First Amendment.
The case concerned a YouTube channel operated by Prager University, a nonprofit founded by talk-radio host Dennis Prager that produces short explainer videos promoting conservative ideas. In 2017, PragerU sued YouTube and its parent, Alphabet Inc.’s Google, after YouTube flagged dozens of its videos as “inappropriate,” stripping the clips of advertising and making them less accessible to students, library users and children.
PragerU contended there was nothing offensive about the restricted clips—with such titles as “Why Isn’t Communism as Hated as Nazism?,” “Why Did America Fight the Korean War?” and “Are 1 in 5 Women Raped at College?”—and that it was a victim of viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment.
It argued that YouTube has essentially turned itself into the operator of a giant public square, a government-like role it says warrants more legal scrutiny of the platform’s content moderation. PragerU brought a similar lawsuit in California state court.
“Obviously, we are disappointed,” said PragerU attorney Peter Obstler. “We will continue to pursue PragerU’s claims of overt discrimination on YouTube in the state court case under California’s heightened antidiscrimination, free-speech and consumer-contract law.”
Google, echoing the wider tech industry, argued that allowing PragerU to pursue a constitutional claim would have “disastrous consequences” for the First Amendment and online discourse.
The feud is part of a wider debate around speech rights in the digital age, where a few giant tech firms own and police the country’s core mediums of communication.
No court has endorsed PragerU’s legal argument. As a general rule, the First Amendment’s speech protections put constraints on government, not the private sector. Exceptions are rare. In one such case, the Supreme Court in 1946 ruled that a Jehovah’s Witness had the right to hand out pamphlets on a sidewalk that was the property of a shipbuilding firm, in an Alabama suburb.
The Ninth Circuit was emphatic: This case was no exception.
“Despite YouTube’s ubiquity and its role as a public-facing platform, it remains a private forum, not a public forum subject to judicial scrutiny under the First Amendment,” wrote Circuit Judge M. Margaret McKeown for the three-judge panel, affirming an earlier lower-court ruling.
Circuit Judge McKeown also stated that YouTube’s “braggadocio about its commitment to free speech” doesn’t expose it to a federal false-advertising claim.
“Google’s products are not politically biased,” Farshad Shadloo, a YouTube spokesperson, said in a statement Wednesday. “PragerU’s allegations were meritless, both factually and legally, and the court’s ruling vindicates important legal principles that allow us to provide different choices and settings to users.”
Write to Jacob Gershman at jacob.gershman@wsj.com
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second
https://www.theepochtimes.com/how-barrage-of-antitrust-probes-could-impact-big-tech-experts_3250498.html?ref=brief_News&utm_source=Epoch+Times+Newsletters&utm_campaign=eed80ec7a3-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_02_26_06_46&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4fba358ecf-eed80ec7a3-239065853
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-google-interferes-with-its-search-algorithms-and-changes-your-results-11573823753?mod=e2fb
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https://nypost.com/2020/04/17/facebook-fact-checkers-foul-again-after-censoring-post-story/
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https://www.foxnews.com/media/facebook-wont-allow-promotion-protests-that-defy-governments-guidance-on-social-distancing
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/judge-dismisses-twitters-bid-to-reveal-us-government-surveillance-requests_3316639.html?ref=brief_BreakingNews&utm_source=Epoch+Times+Newsletters&utm_campaign=26cd88d414-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_04_19_08_30&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4fba358ecf-26cd88d414-239065853
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https://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2020/04/documents-reveal-feds-are-excited-to.html
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https://www.thefire.org/survey-77-of-colleges-use-secret-social-media-blacklist-to-censor-the-public-in-violation-of-first-amendment/
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https://pjmedia.com/trending/youtube-removes-biotech-companys-video-showing-potential-internal-uva-light-treatment-for-coronavirus/
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https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/04/27/facebook-admits-banning-users-for-saying-they-are-proud-to-be-english/
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https://summit.news/2020/04/28/youtube-censors-viral-video-of-doctors-criticizing-stay-at-home-order/
Memory holed, for your protection.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&v=sPrbGU0Wyh4&feature=emb_logo
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Tucker. - I look forward to his shows :-D
remember when Rachel Madcow used to be his sidekick yrs ago?
I avoid Hannity mostly
Laura for me has lost a bit of luster
Levin always earns "great one " moniker. :-D
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Love Tucker, even when I disagree with him.
Did not know about Rachel.
I think of Hannity as President Trump's press secretary.
Bret Baier Special Report is still very good but the loss of quality reporters such as Katherine Herridge hurts, as does the not-as-stellar-as-they-used-to-be guests on the panel.
Martha M. does good and fair work. Love that she regularly has on Gen. Keane.
Laura-- agreed.
Shannon B.: Easy to overlook because she is so pretty but her self-effacing manner masks some decent lawyerly skills.
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https://www.businessinsider.com/youtube-will-ban-anything-against-who-guidance-2020-4
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YouTube took down a clip of two California doctors in scrubs with over 5M views. I gather that someone somewhere posted it outside of the FB/YT Goolag. Can we find the URL for it?
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Is this it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f0VRtY9oTs&feature=youtu.be
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This appears to be it but it is on FB:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=537566680274166&ref=watch_permalink
Is there a less vulnerable URL for this?
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https://theintercept.com/2020/05/08/andrew-cuomo-eric-schmidt-coronavirus-tech-shock-doctrine/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=The%20Intercept%20Newsletter
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(as a bastion of liberal political agenda)
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/05/14/facebook-nick-clegg-profile-122836
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https://tomluongo.me/2020/05/22/joe-rogan-blew-up-death-star/
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What is Spotify?
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https://reclaimthenet.org/google-drive-takes-down-user-file-plandemic/amp/
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What is Spotify?
https://www.spotify.com/us/premium/
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So, its a music thing, like Pandora?
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So, its a music thing, like Pandora?
Mostly.
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https://pjmedia.com/columns/charlie-martin/2020/05/26/youtube-censorship-and-that-which-may-not-be-said-about-chinese-propaganda-n428472
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https://pjmedia.com/columns/charlie-martin/2020/05/26/youtube-censorship-and-that-which-may-not-be-said-about-chinese-propaganda-n428472
Can't criticize Chinese TP on Amazon.
https://pjmedia.com/culture/jeff-reynolds/2020/05/26/amazon-wont-allow-a-negative-review-of-toilet-paper-from-china-n428965
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJbEvTtpOrI
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/white-house-trump-campaign-respond-to-twitter-labeling_3366858.html?__sta=vhg.qblkmhbwphzxphzemdsbg%7CJIH&__stm_medium=email&__stm_source=smartech
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/white-house-trump-campaign-respond-to-twitter-labeling_3366858.html?__sta=vhg.qblkmhbwphzxphzemdsbg%7CJIH&__stm_medium=email&__stm_source=smartech
Good. Long overdue.
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The Twitter Fairness Doctrine
Trying to enforce online ‘neutrality’ is a fool’s errand. Users can make up their own minds.
By The Editorial Board
May 28, 2020 7:23 pm ET
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President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office before signing an executive order related to regulating social media on May 28, 2020.
PHOTO: POOL/GETTY IMAGES
President Trump, personally piqued by a “fact check” that Twitter added to two of his tweets, now wants to pare back the liability protections that have helped the internet flourish for 24 years. This is a mistake, and it would drag the federal government into regulating online speech, aiming for some nebulous “neutrality.”
Trump Tweets, and Twitter Fact Checks
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The executive order that Mr. Trump signed Thursday is aimed in particular at Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. That 1996 law lets websites moderate posts by users without risking liability for the content. Without this shield, a company like Yelp might be sued by every business that gets a bad review. The Journal might be sued for something in the comments section beneath this article.
Section 230 says internet platforms, acting in good faith, can nix anything they find “obscene,” “harassing,” or “otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.” Mr. Trump’s order calls on regulators to clarify when content moderation might be considered in bad faith, such as if it’s “pretextual,” inconsistent with the terms of service, or performed without giving users “adequate notice, reasoned explanation, or a meaningful opportunity to be heard.”
It’s unlikely that Mr. Trump can take a big bite out of Section 230 on his own, but some in Congress also have the appetite. Senator Josh Hawley, Missouri’s populist in a hurry, wants to force big internet sites to get a certificate from the Federal Trade Commission. To keep Section 230 immunity, they’d have to convince some bureaucrats every two years that they don’t moderate posts “in a manner that is biased against a political party, political candidate, or political viewpoint.”
Do Islamism and white separatism count as “political viewpoints,” in which case muting extremists could be counted as “bias”? Could a site be dinged for booting Louis Farrakhan or Alex Jones, the conspiracist who has called the Sandy Hook shooting a hoax? Maybe the courts would be asked to sort it out. The Constitution protects fringe views, but it doesn’t require Twitter or Facebook to disseminate them.
Section 230 was written to empower moderation, to keep the web from becoming a cesspool. Every minute, 500 hours of video are added to YouTube. Every day, Twitter gets something like 500 million tweets and Facebook one billion posts. In the world’s worst game of Whac-A-Mole, their systems clobber untold quantities of jihadist propaganda, “revenge porn,” snuff videos, attempts to “dox” enemies, and so on.
Adjacent to this flagrant conduct is an expansive area covered by “community standards.” A brouhaha last year involved a political commentator on YouTube with four million followers. A gay journalist complained that the pundit was mocking him as a “lispy sprite” and “angry little queer,” sometimes while wearing a shirt depicting a limp-wristed Che Guevara and the slogan “Socialism Is for F*gs.”
YouTube didn’t ax the videos but said it would suspend “monetization,” cutting off the pundit’s ad revenue. The split decision pleased nobody. One side said YouTube was allowing harassment. The other side said it was squashing speech.
At a tech conference, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said moderators try to weigh the full context: “Was this video dedicated to harassment, or was it a one-hour political video that had, say, a racial slur in it?” She raised the issue of consistency: “You look at rap songs, you look at late-night talk shows, you look at a lot of humor, you can find a lot of racial slurs that are in there, or sexist comments.” In December YouTube updated its policies to bar “content that maliciously insults someone” based on “race, gender expression, or sexual orientation.”
The government has no place second-guessing such decisions. Speech isn’t always either black or white, to say nothing of red or blue. Each platform makes judgment calls, keeping in mind the expectations of its audience. The knitting website Ravelry banned pro-Trump content, so some of its users left. Instagram prohibits most nudity, which has drawn protest from naturists, who would prefer a policy more “neutral” as to underwear.
***
When it comes to mainstream politics, if conservatives think websites like Twitter and Facebook are hopelessly biased, they’re welcome to delete their accounts. We think Facebook is wiser than Twitter in deciding not to fact-check campaign speech. But as Twitter rolls out more fact checking, people can holler if specious claims by Democrats go oddly untouched, and outcry often works.
Twitter briefly locked Senator Mitch McConnell’s account last year after he posted a video of a protester outside his house saying, “just stab the mother— in the heart.” Days later, it reversed itself. In 2017 the company refused an ad from Tennessee’s now-Senator Marsha Blackburn, who boasted of having “fought Planned Parenthood” and “stopped the sale of baby body parts.” Twitter called the ad “inflammatory” but later backed down.
Facebook, YouTube and Twitter aren’t utilities or soapboxes in the park. They’re businesses that earn piles of money by selling ads against your missives. They’re within their rights to set community standards and spike posts they deem a violation. If this feels suffocating, log off. That includes you, @realDonaldTrump.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzokmbSXhhg&feature=share
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https://www.city-journal.org/html/platform-or-publisher-15888.html
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https://humanevents.com/2019/05/29/twitter-bans-analyst-who-revealed-journalists-antifa-connections/
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https://summit.news/2020/06/11/facebook-says-page-celebrating-dead-cops-doesnt-violate-its-community-standards/
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https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/how-check-if-your-iphone-secretly-coronavirus-tracker
Don't worry, they won't abuse this! Promise!
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https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/how-check-if-your-iphone-secretly-coronavirus-tracker
Don't worry, they won't abuse this! Promise!
https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-make-your-own-faraday-cage
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https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/how-check-if-your-iphone-secretly-coronavirus-tracker
Don't worry, they won't abuse this! Promise!
https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-make-your-own-faraday-cage
I'm a little confused on this, maybe missing something. It says put phone in airplane mode before shielding it from signals in the Faraday cage or it will burn the battery looking for a cell signal that isn't there. But if you can't use your phone anyway, can't receive incoming calls or messages and want to save the battery, wouldn't you just turn it off? If it's off they can't track you and you don't need the protective case? But you've given up the functionality of phone, smartphone, text, email connectivity, such as an incoming emergency message from a family member in a crisis, in exchange for the privacy during the time the phone is shielded or off or left at home. That's a very high price to pay. In a real crisis escape, you need to be checking the route for closures as you travel and you need to be in touch with family members.
With the cash based phone not tied to your name, it is still tied to your home by location tracking. They know where you live and where you work and who you visit if they want to. I am owner of public record of the home(s) I go to. You can't take the tax benefit of homestead without holding title in your name. They have me coming and going, it seems.
It keeps coming back to losing functionality, efficiency, connectivity and productivity gains of the smart phone to get privacy restored. I really can't run my business without it. In earlier apartment rentals, I had to be home to get calls but had to be at the property to do showings. Other occupations had the same challenges. Now we are WAY more productive. Most cell phone use is people staying in touch with family members. Who wants to give that up?
- signed, frustrated with lost privacy in Leftist Murderapolis
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https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/how-check-if-your-iphone-secretly-coronavirus-tracker
Don't worry, they won't abuse this! Promise!
https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-make-your-own-faraday-cage
I'm a little confused on this, maybe missing something. It says put phone in airplane mode before shielding it from signals in the Faraday cage or it will burn the battery looking for a cell signal that isn't there. But if you can't use your phone anyway, can't receive incoming calls or messages and want to save the battery, wouldn't you just turn it off? Your phone can be remotely powered up for surveillance purposes.
If it's off they can't track you and you don't need the protective case? An iphone is never truly off.
But you've given up the functionality of phone, smartphone, text, email connectivity, such as an incoming emergency message from a family member in a crisis, in exchange for the privacy during the time the phone is shielded or off or left at home. Privacy is like security, it's never absolute. It exists on a continuum. How much privacy and/or security do you want or need? That's up to you. There is always a trade-off involved. That's a very high price to pay.
In a real crisis escape, you need to be checking the route for closures as you travel and you need to be in touch with family members.
Understand that in a crisis, the grid (including cell sites) may well be down. Your pre-planning should include that variable.
With the cash based phone not tied to your name, it is still tied to your home by location tracking. That depends on the technology and methodology one can use.
They know where you live and where you work and who you visit if they want to. Who is they? You may not be able to shield things from the USG, but from opportunistic/SWJ attorneys, you can indeed do so. I am owner of public record of the home(s) I go to. Why? Each rental should be owned by a stand alone LLC, not you.
You can't take the tax benefit of homestead without holding title in your name. They have me coming and going, it seems.
I recommend doing a cost/benefit analysis of that tax deduction vs. the legal liabilities you face. You had better plan on some of your renters working to become owners via lawfare. Plan accordingly.
It keeps coming back to losing functionality, efficiency, connectivity and productivity gains of the smart phone to get privacy restored. I really can't run my business without it. In earlier apartment rentals, I had to be home to get calls but had to be at the property to do showings. Other occupations had the same challenges. Now we are WAY more productive. Most cell phone use is people staying in touch with family members. Who wants to give that up?
- signed, frustrated with lost privacy in Leftist Murderapolis
You need to "firewall" your business phones and computers from your personal use technology. Understand that you as a Traditional American are a target and you are behind enemy lines. Learn from history. The American Kristillnact just happened. Guess what comes next...
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Thank you for excellent response. Many great insights there. It seems to me getting my privacy back is putting proverbial toothpaste back in a tube. You are right on the money with this process not being perfect and involving tradeoffs.
My rental properties bought in the last 20 years are all in individual LLC or S-corps making the whole portfolio harder to sue for, but my ownership in those is not shielded from public view. [My rental properties bought before that are still in my name.] In writing this, I found a registered agent company in my state to shield that in the future but documents previously filed are already of public record. https://www.minnesotaregisteredagent.com/llc/
LLC alone isn't perfect protection for me because that firewall still has holes.
A larger loss of property privacy for me comes through city rental licensing law. As self managed, I am required to disclose contact info and they seem to give that out freely. I will someday hopefully hire a property manager for that, but owner information disclosure is required in our city down to the birth date: http://www.minneapolismn.gov/www/groups/public/@regservices/documents/webcontent/wcms1p-143382.pdf
They need that to file criminal charges against landlords and to track your other properties for targeting. Yes I should sell all of them, sold two last year, but that is a harder and longer process than one might think. Selling in the City has become a highly regulated, invasive process as well. Plus it is my livelihood. Liquidating in the cash as is, highly discounted market, after decades of my life invested, is a surrender I do not wish for.
One other point on rental property, some of the wiser prospective tenants verify I am the owner before renting. There are many scams going on in that area. My ownership and rental license info is easy to verify. That is good - and that is bad. (
On the phone side... I didn't know that about iphone. With my android, I can easily open and remove the battery if that is the concern, but again, the trade off is not being reachable. Having a separate phone or separate number for business - again, tradeoffs. I have a separate number available through Talkatone, https://www.talkatone.com/. But the choice to use only that for business involves commitment and discipline. My (personal) phone number is already out there. Being easily reachable most of the time is a big deal. Time is the scarce resource and all these efforts require that.
On the homestead tax issue, I just looked at that for a house I am buying with my daughter. We could have 'easily' (with time and effort) put this in an LLC. But the capital gains tax exemption for selling your primary home, up to 250,000 per person per transaction, is not available to her if it is not in her name. That can be a financial game changer.
"[you] are a target and you are behind enemy lines.] A couple of years ago I faced the "lawfare" tenant from hell and had the financial scare of my life. I number of things went right by luck and effort. I dropped everything else to take care of the property and legal issues quickly, hired what turned out to be a great lawyer for the situation, had a number of factual issues turn in my favor, and had the ownership in a Corp. in the first place. In the end, I was only out thousands in legal costs and lost rents, didn't lose everything.
Still frustrated but getting better informed about (partial) solutions along the way.
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Thank you for excellent response. Many great insights there. It seems to me getting my privacy back is putting proverbial toothpaste back in a tube. You are right on the money with this process not being perfect and involving tradeoffs.
My rental properties bought in the last 20 years are all in individual LLC or S-corps making the whole portfolio harder to sue for, but my ownership in those is not shielded from public view. [My rental properties bought before that are still in my name.] In writing this, I found a registered agent company in my state to shield that in the future but documents previously filed are already of public record. https://www.minnesotaregisteredagent.com/llc/
You might want to consider a Wyoming LLC. Contact me directly for details.
LLC alone isn't perfect protection for me because that firewall still has holes.
A larger loss of property privacy for me comes through city rental licensing law. As self managed, I am required to disclose contact info and they seem to give that out freely. I will someday hopefully hire a property manager for that, but owner information disclosure is required in our city down to the birth date: http://www.minneapolismn.gov/www/groups/public/@regservices/documents/webcontent/wcms1p-143382.pdf
They need that to file criminal charges against landlords and to track your other properties for targeting. Yes I should sell all of them, sold two last year, but that is a harder and longer process than one might think. Selling in the City has become a highly regulated, invasive process as well. Plus it is my livelihood. Liquidating in the cash as is, highly discounted market, after decades of my life invested, is a surrender I do not wish for.
What is the probability of the Twin Cities bouncing back vs. plunging deeper into Detroitification?
One other point on rental property, some of the wiser prospective tenants verify I am the owner before renting. There are many scams going on in that area. My ownership and rental license info is easy to verify. That is good - and that is bad. (
On the phone side... I didn't know that about iphone. With my android, I can easily open and remove the battery if that is the concern, but again, the trade off is not being reachable. Having a separate phone or separate number for business - again, tradeoffs. I have a separate number available through Talkatone, https://www.talkatone.com/. But the choice to use only that for business involves commitment and discipline. My (personal) phone number is already out there. Being easily reachable most of the time is a big deal. Time is the scarce resource and all these efforts require that.
On the homestead tax issue, I just looked at that for a house I am buying with my daughter. We could have 'easily' (with time and effort) put this in an LLC. But the capital gains tax exemption for selling your primary home, up to 250,000 per person per transaction, is not available to her if it is not in her name. That can be a financial game changer.
Just keep in mind, if I am looking for someone that is a any kind of tax paying citizen, I check assessor's offices as one of my first moves. I once tracked down a global businessman on behalf of a process server firm that couldn't locate him to serve him. He wasn't a US citizen and the only lead was that he was in a certain state. I was able to link this subject to a female who was a US citizen. I was able to locate multiple properties she owned in that state. Using public records, I was able to locate her residence and he was located and served there. Antifa and affiliated groups are teaching OSINT courses (Doxxing, as they call it). Don't think that they won't target your family with "Direct action" if you can't be located yourself. There are 50 different states with 50 different laws, consult with attorneys and accountants in your jurisdiction. I recommend that houses purchased be in a very generic sounding trust. Keep in mind that housing prices are plunging and the model of "Your home is an investment" may be deader than an Auto Zone in Minneapolis.
"[you] are a target and you are behind enemy lines.] A couple of years ago I faced the "lawfare" tenant from hell and had the financial scare of my life. I number of things went right by luck and effort. I dropped everything else to take care of the property and legal issues quickly, hired what turned out to be a great lawyer for the situation, had a number of factual issues turn in my favor, and had the ownership in a Corp. in the first place. In the end, I was only out thousands in legal costs and lost rents, didn't lose everything.
Still frustrated but getting better informed about (partial) solutions along the way.
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https://patriotpost.us/articles/71598-google-is-evil-2020-06-23?mailing_id=5133&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.5133&utm_campaign=digest&utm_content=body
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https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/apple-can-now-unlock-your-car-and-listen-you-washing-your-hands
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/06/26/warning-apple-suddenly-catches-tiktok-secretly-spying-on-millions-of-iphone-users/
The Chinese Ministry for State Security thanks you for your patronage.
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https://news.gab.com/2020/06/26/social-credit-score-is-in-america-visa-blacklisted-my-business-and-my-family-for-building-gab/
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https://reclaimthenet.org/ugandas-huaweis-safe-cities-surveillance/
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https://www.breitbart.com/radio/2020/06/29/parler-ceo-john-matze-mass-migration-of-almost-a-million-users-in-weeks-due-to-twitters-censorship/
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(https://westernrifleshooters.us/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/2ac991ec49fb0395.jpeg)
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https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/07/02/bokhari-facebook-will-boost-mainstream-news-in-the-algorithm-again/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=daily&utm_campaign=20200702
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https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/v7g7k9/facebook-just-labeled-the-boogaloos-a-dangerous-organization-and-banned-500-groups-and-pages
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https://www.boredpanda.com/tik-tok-reverse-engineered-data-information-collecting/
A Chinese app spying??
NO WAY!
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L3SY9PmAQw
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https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/twitter-iran-leader-tweets-defense
Twitter defends not blocking Iran leader's tweets after blocking Trump's
Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's tweets call for 'elimination' of Israel
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"Twitter defends not blocking Iran leader's tweets after blocking Trump's
Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's tweets call for 'elimination' of Israel"
Trump is the Nazi
not Khamenei
according to Democrats
and anyone who votes(ed) for him is racist supremacist
Khamenei is a BFF of Brock and Kerry
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https://www.westernjournal.com/google-reportedly-diminished-breitbart-search-results-99-7-daily-caller-gets-savaged/
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The news Friday that Microsoft is in talks to buy the U.S. operations of TikTok, the Chinese-owned video app, may be an example of the market increasing business competition and solving a political problem at the same time.
The political issue is the Trump Administration’s looming decision to ban TikTok from the U.S. or force its Chinese owner, ByteDance, to divest the app that is popular with American children. The grounds would be concern about Communist Party collection of data on U.S. users, and it’s not a crazy worry given China’s averred policy of “civil-military fusion.” The Party can demand and get anything it wants from any company.
A Microsoft purchase would let TikTok operate in the U.S., a market it doesn’t want to lose. ByteDance would presumably get some return on the sale, and President Trump wouldn’t have to take the heat for banning an app that millions of Americans use.
Microsoft would get another social-media business, following its purchase of LinkedIn, to compete with the other tech giants. For some reason, Microsoft was spared the hazing that Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google received this week on Capitol Hill. Yet its market capitalization is $1.55 trillion after Friday’s market close, more than Google’s and Facebook’s and barely behind Amazon’s $1.58 trillion.
Microsoft has the resources to invest in TikTok and offer competition to Facebook, Snap and perhaps Google’s YouTube. One reality missed by the calls for breaking up the tech giants is how much competition they face from one another. This could be another example.
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By: Geopolitical Futures
TikTok and the tech war. The White House is expected to ban the popular social media platform TikTok in the coming days on grounds that personal data gleaned by the app’s Chinese parent company, a private behemoth called ByteDance, poses a national security risk. Microsoft said its CEO is in talks with the White House and with TikTok itself to scoop up the company’s U.S. operations on the cheap. The U.S. is following the lead of India here, which banned TikTok following the clash between Chinese and Indian troops in disputed parts of the Himalayas. National security concerns about an app known mostly for viral clips of dancing zoomers may seem silly, but the imbroglio around TikTok speaks to the underlying reality of the U.S.-China “tech war”: Given the blurring lines between commercial and military or intelligence technologies, including apps that collect staggering amounts of personal data, it’s not hard to come up with reasons that just about any emerging Chinese technology could threaten U.S. interests. And the broader geopolitical competition will push the U.S. to err on the side of mitigating worst-case scenarios, however real or imagined.
TikTok won’t be the last Chinese-owned app in the crosshairs. Last year, the U.S. also forced the sale of a Chinese-owned dating app called Grindr. And U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday that the Trump administration would soon announce measures targeting a “broad array” of Chinese-owned software. China, meanwhile, is reportedly targeting perhaps the most American of American exports – fast food – by tightening the regulatory screws on Burger King, McDonald’s and KFC, all of which are depending heavily on the Chinese market for growth.
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I'm beginning to like Cong. Gaetz more and more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=bX4ymRHZwZY&feature=emb_logo
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https://www.chron.com/opinion/article/Data-isn-t-just-being-collected-from-your-phone-15451658.php
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Mark Zuckerberg Continues Facebook’s Turn against China
By JIMMY QUINN
August 3, 2020 4:34 PM
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies via video conference before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law on “Online Platforms and Market Power” in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on July 29, 2020. (Graeme Jennings/Pool/Reuters)
Whether out of opportunism or sincere concern for Internet freedom, the social-media magnate has begun to more forcefully condemn the Chinese government.
‘Facebook is a proudly American company,” Mark Zuckerberg said last week, appearing with the chief executives of Amazon, Apple, and Google before the House of Representatives subcommittee tasked with examining competition policy. The CEOs fielded questions from members of Congress on a range of issues beyond antitrust enforcement. When the discussion turned to China, Zuckerberg was alone among his Big Tech colleagues in speaking up against the Chinese Communist Party’s threat to Internet freedom. During his opening remarks, he positioned his company as a staunch defender of American values against an alternative Chinese model that flagrantly disregards free expression. And later, when each of the four executives was asked if the Chinese government steals technology from firms in the United States, only Zuckerberg said that the phenomenon is “well-documented.” The others deflected.
Zuckerberg’s comments were consistent with an apparent change in his thinking over the past year or so, which has seen Facebook’s previous courtship of the CCP end. In a 2019 speech at Georgetown University, he said that while he wanted to connect China with the rest of the world, the CCP’s refusal to play ball had given Facebook “more freedom to speak out and stand up for the values we believe in and fight for free expression around the world.” But it must be noted that Zuckerberg’s shift in stance has mirrored the recent shift in American public opinion, and it is certainly not lost on him that the CCP has of late become the focus of intense bipartisan scorn. In his remarks, he was reprising a politically convenient position that Facebook seems to have adopted as top Democrats have ramped up their criticism of the company’s content-moderation policies and allegedly anti-competitive practices.
What’s more, the history of Facebook’s relationship with China is more complicated than Zuckerberg’s recent messaging would suggest. The social network was not always blocked in China, and it spent much of the past decade attempting to regain the access to the country that it lost in 2009, following a revolt in the far-Western city of Urumqi. The uprising marked a turning point in Beijing’s campaign of human-rights violations in the Xinjiang region. It also led to a country-wide ban on Facebook, Twitter, and Google products. (Today, the only way to access Facebook in China is through use of a VPN.)
In the years after the ban was enacted, Facebook attempted to place itself in the good graces of Chinese officials and win back access to the market. Zuckerberg surely knew that the CCP would demand control over what users posted in exchange for letting Facebook back in. But at the time, Facebook seemed to prioritize its business interests over such concerns. Zuckerberg joined the board of Beijing’s Tsinghua University, delivering a speech there in 2014. Two months later, Lu Wei, the Chinese official tasked with overseeing Internet censorship, visited Facebook headquarters in Silicon Valley. A photo of Zuckerberg from the meeting showed that on his desk he had a copy of The Governance of China, a collection of speeches by CCP general secretary Xi Jinping. “I’ve also bought copies of this book for my colleagues,” he reportedly said. “I want them to understand socialism with Chinese characteristics.”
American attitudes toward China had not yet reached their nadir at that point. While Xi’s grip on the institutions of party and state power in China had grown tighter in the years since his ascension to power in 2013, Beijing was not at the time recognized as a chief U.S. adversary the way it is today. Still, Zuckerberg was clearly attempting to woo top officials from an authoritarian country already seen as responsible for significant human-rights abuses and curtailments of political freedom.
Of course, there’s no reason to believe that Zuckerberg held any particular ideological sympathies with the CCP. As an American executive pursuing one of the largest markets in the world, it seems that he did what he thought he needed to in order to grow his company. At that point, Hong Kong was more or less autonomous, repression in China’s far West did not rise to the level of today’s mass atrocities, and elite consensus in the United States held that China sought regional, rather than global, dominance. But the signs were already there, for those willing to look: By the time Xi visited the United States in September 2015, Chinese authorities were raiding the offices of prominent NGOs, cracking down on dissidents, and targeting religious minorities with new vigor.
NOW WATCH: 'Taiwan Exercise Simulates Defending Against Invasion by China'
Over the next few years, despite these red flags, Zuckerberg undertook a number of other efforts to get Facebook back into China. In 2016, he posted a picture on his Facebook account from Tiananmen Square, and was roundly criticized for neglecting to mention the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators there. On the same 2016 trip, he met with the CCP’s top propaganda official, and a year later, he and Apple CEO Tim Cook met Xi during a gathering of tech executives. These efforts did yield some fruit, if only temporarily. There was a brief glimmer of hope for Facebook’s prospects in China in 2018, when it announced plans to establish an “innovation hub” in Hangzhou with the stated goal of assisting Chinese startups, only for the initiative to be quickly scrapped by the Chinese government. But for the most part, Facebook was forced to settle for doing business with Chinese companies outside China, which has been plenty lucrative on its own. To this day, Facebook makes billions of dollars in advertising from such companies, and may possibly be sharing user data with them. In 2018, the New York Times reported that Facebook had a data-sharing partnership with Huawei.
7
In light of this complicated history, it’s fair to wonder how one should interpret Zuckerberg’s remarks to Congress. One school of thought holds that he has come around to the view that the CCP poses a unique threat to political expression and now sees the restrictions demanded by Beijing as an unacceptable price of doing business in China. Another holds that Facebook executives see absolutely no path forward into the Chinese market, and think that the smart move is to play to the concerns of America lawmakers, many of whom are already skeptical of Chinese technology.
Which is closer to the truth? In a certain sense, it doesn’t matter. Whether Zuckerberg is merely trying to ingratiate his company with lawmakers or he’s genuinely alarmed by the Chinese threat to free expression, his turn against the CCP can only be a positive development for the tech industry — provided it’s backed up with concrete action.
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Antitrust Can’t Bust a Monopoly of Ideas
Consumer-protection tools won’t be effective against the larger threat to American democracy.
By Vivek Ramaswamy
Aug. 5, 2020 12:06 pm ET
The House Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust Subcommittee grilled the CEOs of Apple, Alphabet, Facebook and Amazon last week about alleged anticompetitive practices and market abuses. Chairman David Cicilline concluded by declaring that “we need to ensure the antitrust laws first written more than a century ago work in the digital age.” The American public is right to question the growing power of large corporations, but Congress misses the point by viewing this problem solely through the lens of antitrust.
Antitrust law was designed to protect consumers from monopolies and cartels that use market power to limit consumer choice and charge higher prices. It may have once been a relevant tool to fight the crude monopolistic pricing practices of tycoons like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. But the most troubling effects of concentrated corporate power are different today.
Companies like Apple, Alphabet, Facebook and Amazon provide consumers with a wider array of goods and services than ever and at remarkably low prices. Facebook’s social networks and Google’s search engines are free to users. Consumers enjoy abundant product offerings on Amazon and musical options on Apple’s iTunes Store.
But there’s a catch: The same companies that have improved consumer access to cheap products are increasingly limiting options in the marketplace of ideas and raising the cost of ideological dissent. This isn’t price fixing; it’s “idea fixing.” And it poses a greater long-term threat to the public than anything dreamed by the robber barons who ran Standard Oil and U.S. Steel.
On the premise of “social responsibility,” Alphabet subsidiary YouTube recently decided to begin removing political videos it deemed untruthful. The site has taken down videos that were critical of Covid-19 lockdown policies in certain states, stifling discourse about the most important scientific and public-policy debate of the year. YouTube’s stated litmus test is the World Health Organization’s assessment of what is and is not truthful. By that standard, YouTube would have removed any video in January claiming the coronavirus could be transmitted person to person, since that ran contrary to WHO’s position at the time.
Facebook’s decision this year to create a corporate politburo of “experts” to determine what types of speech are acceptable on its site is similarly troubling. It’s worth recalling that as recently as March most public-health experts, including the surgeon general and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were advising against wearing face masks. That previous error is not a persuasive argument against wearing masks now, but it is an argument for epistemic humility going forward. For experts and ordinary folks alike, the past teaches us that many of our current beliefs will be proved false, and that determinations of truth are always conditional and probabilistic. Unfettered dialogue isn’t a liberal-arts luxury; it is a necessity for science and democracy.
This problem extends beyond Big Tech. Take Goldman Sachs, a leading member of the small cartel of underwriters that enjoys “tollbooth” status as a gatekeeper for companies seeking to go public, thanks to securities regulations. In January, CEO David Solomon announced at the World Economic Forum that Goldman will refuse to take any company public that doesn’t have at least one “diverse” board member. Here Goldman is the sole arbiter of who counts as diverse.
Reasonable citizens may disagree about whether to rectify historical wrongs against minorities and women through explicit quotas or some other means. Frederick Douglass opposed quotas in the 19th century, as did many black leaders of the 20th century. Yet Goldman Sachs executives favor them today. America’s traditional mechanism for dealing with those disagreements is through open public debate culminating at the ballot box, not by corporate fiat issued from the mountaintops of Davos.
Liberals should be as worried as conservatives about the power of large companies to set the boundaries of acceptable debate. Progressives criticized the Supreme Court for permitting Hobby Lobby to deny insurance coverage for contraception to its female employees. Hobby Lobby is a family-owned arts-and-crafts store. Google, Facebook and Twitter enjoy a de facto oligopoly over the public debate many Americans witness on the internet, a primary source of political information in the digital age.
While Big Tech and Wall Street are currently pushing fashionable progressive ideas on issues from climate change to policing and diversity, that could easily change in the future. Beijing has successfully pressured American businesses to restrict their employees’ speech about China. The National Basketball Association, Disney, Marriott and more have caved in to that pressure.
It is hardly a stretch to worry that companies like Apple, Google and Twitter, which have already sought to collaborate with the Chinese Communist Party on regulation of “acceptable” ideas within China, could take those standards of “acceptability” in the U.S. to appease their CCP-affiliated stakeholders. Twitter suspended accounts of Chinese activists ahead of the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Apple has removed songs from iTunes that refer to Tiananmen Square and has suppressed its Taiwanese flag emoji in Hong Kong and Macau. Will these restraints eventually apply to American users too?
This is the poisoned fruit of “stakeholder capitalism.” If society demands that corporate executives use their platforms to improve society, it entrusts those same executives with deciding what constitutes a better society. Yet in the year of Covid-19 and Black Lives Matter, this new idea—that corporate leaders should use their market power to implement social and political values—has quickly been ordained as the governing philosophy of American corporations.
America has a strong tradition of separating spheres of society to preserve the integrity of each. Separating capitalism from democracy is no less important than separating church from state. By using market power to exercise undue social, cultural and political power, today’s corporate leaders violate this fundamental American principle. It is time to resist this ideological cartel that now represents a more fundamental threat to the American public than any antitrust violation.
Mr. Ramaswamy is founder and CEO of Roivant Sciences.
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"This isn’t price fixing; it’s “idea fixing.”
good point
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And getting that point properly made seems to me to be the heart of finding the solution.
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https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/inside-one-big-brothers-location-harvesting-contractors-tracking-hundreds-millions
Got privacy?
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https://disrn.com/news/photo-surfaces-showing-tiktok-executives-posing-with-communist-flag/amp
By: Geopolitical Futures
TikTok and the tech war. The White House is expected to ban the popular social media platform TikTok in the coming days on grounds that personal data gleaned by the app’s Chinese parent company, a private behemoth called ByteDance, poses a national security risk. Microsoft said its CEO is in talks with the White House and with TikTok itself to scoop up the company’s U.S. operations on the cheap. The U.S. is following the lead of India here, which banned TikTok following the clash between Chinese and Indian troops in disputed parts of the Himalayas. National security concerns about an app known mostly for viral clips of dancing zoomers may seem silly, but the imbroglio around TikTok speaks to the underlying reality of the U.S.-China “tech war”: Given the blurring lines between commercial and military or intelligence technologies, including apps that collect staggering amounts of personal data, it’s not hard to come up with reasons that just about any emerging Chinese technology could threaten U.S. interests. And the broader geopolitical competition will push the U.S. to err on the side of mitigating worst-case scenarios, however real or imagined.
TikTok won’t be the last Chinese-owned app in the crosshairs. Last year, the U.S. also forced the sale of a Chinese-owned dating app called Grindr. And U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday that the Trump administration would soon announce measures targeting a “broad array” of Chinese-owned software. China, meanwhile, is reportedly targeting perhaps the most American of American exports – fast food – by tightening the regulatory screws on Burger King, McDonald’s and KFC, all of which are depending heavily on the Chinese market for growth.
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16330/tiktok-china
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/microsofts-extensive-ties-to-beijing-could-muddy-tiktok-discussions-experts-say-2_3452757.html?ref=brief_News&utm_source=morningbriefnoe&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb
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https://www.cnet.com/news/two-children-sue-google-for-allegedly-collecting-students-biometric-data/
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https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/facebook-could-face-500-billion-171653204.html
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https://www.dailydot.com/debug/facial-recognition-face-masks/
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https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-tech-monsters
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEOtF8ZRkzE
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/09/04/facebook-purges-patriot-prayer-after-member-killed-by-antifa/
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/09/04/twitter-locks-account-of-kyle-rittenhouses-attorney-john-pierce/
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Will Facebook let users share this editorial? We’ll see. The social-media giant seems to have declared Kyle Rittenhouse’s fatal shooting of two people amid riots in Kenosha, Wis., a mass murder. Mr. Rittenhouse’s lawyer says his client was attacked and acted in self-defense, but Facebook has banned any “praise and support” for him on the site, including links to contribute to his legal representation. Searches for his name on the platform also come up empty.
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This is an alarming resort to censorship on an issue of public concern by a company that has advertised its support for First Amendment values. Even more than most political controls on content, this blackout is troubling because it seems targeted at users’ expectation of freedom of speech and Mr. Rittenhouse’s right to due process.
By taking down links to pay Mr. Rittenhouse’s legal fees, the company is interfering with his ability to raise money for his defense in a way other criminal defendants might. The fact that the platform may only be used to declare Mr. Rittenhouse’s guilt, but not his innocence—though lawyers say the self-defense argument is plausible—could prejudice a jury pool in the high-profile case. One of America’s most powerful companies is effectively giving its official imprimatur to Wisconsin prosecutors’ case against a specific defendant.
Defending Mr. Rittenhouse’s right to a fair hearing, and the public’s right to see information about the shooting, is not a defense of the teen’s actions. The untrained minor exercised terrible judgment in leaving his hometown to act as an amateur police officer amid the looting and arson in Kenosha, and he has been charged with illegal possession of a dangerous weapon.
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Yet Facebook is lumping Mr. Rittenhouse with terrorist extremists like the 2016 Orlando or 2019 El Paso mass shooters. Video evidence shows this was a tangled situation. Mr. Rittenhouse is seen fleeing an angry crowd on foot, and someone fired a gunshot in the air before Mr. Rittenhouse turned and opened fire at his closest pursuer. Later on someone appears to try to hit him with a skateboard while he is on the ground, and another man approaches him carrying a pistol. We are still learning details, but these aren’t the usual circumstances for first-degree murder convictions.
Mr. Rittenhouse’s guilt or innocence will be decided in court, but the case is dividing the public and prompting commentary by both presidential candidates. Facebook’s heavy-handed blackout flies in the face of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s commitments last year—which we have defended—that the company would protect free expression and not yield to political demands to suppress speech.
Facebook naturally wants to dissociate itself from street violence, but in this case it has made a mistake. It can continue to block incitements to violence, and shut down groups plotting violence, without throwing itself into a murky and politicized criminal case. Prejudging guilt and moving against a person’s legal defense is a bad look for a company that claims to be committed to civil liberties. Voters, and their representatives, will notice.
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https://dailycaller.com/2020/09/10/amazon-surveillance-nsa-director-keith-alexander-prism-edward-snowden-leaks/
Amazon: We Totally Don’t Want To Spy On You. Also Amazon: We Just Hired The Architect Of The NSA’s Mass Domestic Surveillance Program
NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander Speaks At Cybersecurity Summit
Alex Wong/Getty Images
COMMENTS
VARUN HUKERI
REPORTER
September 10, 2020
3:11 PM ET
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Amazon revealed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Wednesday that former National Security Agency (NSA) director Gen. Keith Alexander had been added to the company’s board of directors.
The investor filing released Wednesday detailed that Alexander was elected a company director and appointed to the board’s audit committee. Alexander is also listed on Amazon’s website as a board member and chief executive of IronNet Cybersecurity, a company he founded in 2014.
Alexander served as NSA director and chief of the agency’s Central Security Service from Aug. 2005 to March 2014. He was also the first commander of the U.S. Cyber Command and served from May 2010 to March 2014.
We’re thrilled to elect a new member to our Board of Directors this month. Welcome, General Keith Alexander! https://t.co/iJDrgUJEjd pic.twitter.com/pZkW2anlJ0
— Amazon News (@amazonnews) September 9, 2020
Amazon told CNBC in a statement that Alexander was selected for his qualifications and public policy experience, adding that his role would not overlap with cloud computing and data projects like Amazon Web Services. He was also awarded 288 shares of Amazon stock which will be acquired in three annual installments beginning Nov. 2021, CNBC reported.
Alexander became the public face of the NSA’s domestic and international surveillance program in 2013 after former CIA sub-contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked thousands of classified documents revealing the agency’s mass surveillance programs, Business Insider reported.
The Snowden leaks also revealed the connection between U.S. intelligence agencies and major technology companies as the PRISM surveillance program allowed the NSA to collect private electronic data belonging to American and international users, according to The Verge.
Snowden responded to Alexander’s appointment, blaming him for the “unlawful mass surveillance programs” in a tweet Wednesday. “It turns out ‘Hey Alexa’ is short for ‘Hey Keith Alexander’,” Snowden tweeted. (RELATED: Amazon Removes Job Postings Seeking Analysts To ‘Monitor Labor Organizing Threats’)
???????? It turns out “Hey Alexa” is short for “Hey Keith Alexander.” Yes, the Keith Alexander personally responsible for the unlawful mass surveillance programs that caused a global scandal. And Amazon Web Services (AWS) host ~6% of all websites. ????????https://t.co/6hkzsHjxh9
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) September 9, 2020
Alexander had accused Snowden of being a Russian operative during a March 2014 interview with Australia-based Financial Review. “I think he is now being manipulated by Russian intelligence,” Alexander said. Snowden’s passport was revoked following the leaks, and he consequently sought asylum in Moscow, The Hill reported.
Alexander once suggested that reporters should not be allowed to access or cover the documents Snowden leaked during an Oct. 2013 interview with the Department of Defense. “I think it’s wrong that newspaper reporters have all these documents, the 50,000-whatever they have and are selling them and giving them out as if these — you know it just doesn’t make sense.” he said.
His appointment to Amazon’s board of directors comes at an important time for the tech giant as it remains locked in a legal battle with Microsoft over a $10 billion cloud computing contract with the Pentagon as part of a deal with the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) program, CNBC reported.
Amazon has also come under fire for its data collection practices despite the company stating that it “never participated” in the NSA’s PRISM program, Forbes reported. (RELATED: Ex-NSA Head Keith Alexander Defends Million-Dollar Cyber-Security Consulting)
A report in 2019 revealed that Amazon Echo products were storing data using voice-recognition software, according to The Washington Post.
‘Alexa, are you controlled by Chinese hackers?’
DefCon hackers discover way to hijack Amazon Echo and spy on unsuspecting users: https://t.co/pOLfDDAs7r pic.twitter.com/O8VoRVbLRJ
— Big Think (@bigthink) August 13, 2018
Amazon said the company was not abusing data collection in an April 2019 statement, the Independent reported. “We have strict technical and operational safeguards, and have a zero tolerance policy for the abuse of our system. Employees do not have direct access to information that can identify the person or account as part of this workflow.”
When asked about data collection practices, a company spokesman told the Independent: “We take the security and privacy of our customers’ personal information seriously.”
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https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/google-geofence-warrant-keeps-locking-innocent-people-who-were-proximity-crime-scene
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https://www.nationalreview.com/news/trump-administration-to-ban-americans-from-downloading-tiktok-wechat/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=21543553
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September 18, 2020 Open as PDF
Daily Memo: TikTok's Time Is Up
By: Geopolitical Futures
Clock ticking for TikTok. The Trump administration announced Friday that it will ban U.S. business transactions with China-owned social apps WeChat and TikTok effective on Sunday. This effectively means people who have already downloaded the wildly popular apps will probably still be able to use them indefinitely. But an accompanying ban on hosting or transferring internet traffic for WeChat could render it unusable immediately, and TikTok will face a similar fate by Nov. 12. At a minimum, though, they will disappear from app stores and not be able to be updated in the U.S. – unless, that is, the White House approves either a sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations to a U.S. firm (which Beijing is blocking) or a “partnership” agreement reached last week between Oracle and ByteDance, TikTok's parent firm.
The issue is important for how it touches on numerous aspects of the burgeoning U.S.-China “tech cold war,” including how concerns about the oceans of personal data people willingly hand over to tech firms could generate national security risks more broadly. Such concerns are theoretically valid (though, if so, singling out specific Chinese apps would be insufficient). But determining exactly how much risk the U.S. faces is extraordinarily difficult, as is evaluating the risks of ultimately doing more harm than good with sweeping moves. Regardless, the U.S. is taking a better-safe-than-sorry approach, choosing to strike first and deal with any potential unintended consequences later. And given the blurring lines between commercial and military or intelligence technologies, it’s not hard to come up with reasons that just about any emerging Chinese technology could threaten U.S. interests.
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https://www.judicialwatch.org/corruption-chronicles/most-of-facebook-censorship-board-has-ties-to-leftwing-billionaire-george-soros/?utm_source=deployer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newslink&utm_term=members&utm_content=20200922151443
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https://www.judicialwatch.org/corruption-chronicles/most-of-facebook-censorship-board-has-ties-to-leftwing-billionaire-george-soros/?utm_source=deployer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newslink&utm_term=members&utm_content=20200922151443
Shocking!
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16537/tiktok-china-algorithm
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https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/09/revealed_the_shocking_full_extent_of_big_tech_censorship_of_conservatives.html
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A message from The Babylon Bee
In case you hadn't heard, Twitter recently suspended our account. In an email to us, they claimed we violated their rules against "platform manipulation and spam." The email included a warning that that if we tried to open another account, that new account would be suspended, too.
We published screenshots of the email and our suspended Twitter page, and called on our followers to make some noise. We started trending almost immediately and Twitter responded by reinstating us, saying we'd been suspended "by mistake." So we're back on Twitter, at least for the time being. But we share the concerns of others who've rightly observed that these "mistakes" tend to work in one direction.
We're grateful to have followers who aren't afraid to speak up and hold these big tech companies accountable. But there are no guarantees. We couldn't be sure they'd reinstate our account. And we can't know if they will the next time they make a "mistake." But we can do our best to prepare for a worst-case scenario. At least we can if we have your help.
When we first launched our subscription service, the primary reason we gave for supporting us was to help us become less dependent on big tech companies. We explained:
We depend on Facebook and Twitter to drive traffic, and Google Ads to monetize it. Without these networks, we'd have no revenue to cover our expenses. And as you're probably aware, none of these companies are friendly to Christians or conservatives. In fact, that's a severe understatement. The control these companies exercise—and the outright hostility they display toward those with more traditional views and values—has us deeply concerned about our future as a publisher of Christian satire. But here's the thing: If just a small fraction of our readers become paid subscribers, we'd have enough funding to survive without running ads, effectively eliminating our dependence on these big tech companies.
The more subscribers we have, the less we have to worry about our dependence on Twitter and the other big tech companies. If you want to see us prevail against Twitter, Snopes, and anyone else who might seek to discredit or deplatform us, please consider becoming a subscriber. Your support will make a difference.
From our whole team, thank you for your consideration and support.
Seth Dillon
CEO
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https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/10/01/facebook-removes-trump-campaign-ad/
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Checking my gmail spam, I am quite impressed how thoroughly Google keeps conservative and Republican groups from reaching ... anyone.
I wonder if they screen 'progressive' groups that efficiently.
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By Sarah E. Needleman
Updated Oct. 6, 2020 7:50 pm ET
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Facebook Inc. said it would step up its crackdown on QAnon, removing more groups and pages devoted to the fast-growing conspiracy-theory movement that has thrived on social media.
The move builds on Facebook’s efforts announced in August to remove QAnon pages and groups that included discussions of potential violence. The company will now ban any pages or groups dedicated to QAnon across Facebook, as well as Instagram accounts focused on QAnon content. The new policy doesn’t ban individuals from posting about the movement.
The company said the new policy was based in part on an increased understanding of how QAnon messaging is evolving. “We aim to combat this more effectively with this update that strengthens and expands our enforcement against the conspiracy theory movement,” the company said. Facebook also said it expects renewed attempts to evade detection and that it could update its content policies as needed.
The QAnon conspiracy theory centers on the idea that a powerful group of child traffickers control the world and are undermining President Trump with the help of other elites and mainstream news outlets. Last year a Federal Bureau of Investigation field office warned that QAnon and other conspiracies could spark violence in the U.S., and QAnon adherents have discussed future plans to round up or kill members of the supposedly evil cabal.
President Trump in August welcomed the support of QAnon followers and said while he knew little about the movement, he suggested those who subscribe to it are “people who love our country.”
Social-media companies have received mixed reactions to their policies around rule violators, with some arguing that the companies are stifling free speech and others wanting them to take a tougher stance.
LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft Corp., has recently taken steps to remove QAnon posts with misleading information in response to more supporters going public on the career-networking platform. Twitter Inc. has also pledged to increase enforcement against QAnon conspiracy followers.
Policing QAnon content is just one of the broad content-moderation issues that the world’s largest social-media companies are facing. Platforms have been grappling with the spread of misinformation related to the coronavirus pandemic as well as groups connected to the boogaloo movement. Its adherents views’ are wide-ranging, with a focus on overturning authority, according to researchers who track extremist organizations.
Facebook and Twitter both moved Tuesday to place limits on posts by President Trump in which he claimed the coronavirus isn’t as deadly as the common flu. The statement is widely considered false by medical professionals. Facebook removed Mr. Trump’s comment, while Twitter appended a notice to his tweet explaining that it violated its rules on spreading harmful information related to the virus. Twitter said it didn’t remove the tweet because it “may be in the public’s interest” to remain accessible.
A report last month from research firm Graphika Inc. draws a connection between QAnon’s online activities and those who strive to play down the importance of health matters such as vaccinations.
“The QAnon worldview has acted as a catalyst for the convergence of online networked conspiracy communities, anti-[vaccination] and anti-tech alike,” Graphika said in its report. “In our Covid-19 maps, the core QAnon community and the Trump support group were both deeply interconnected on a network level and mutually amplifying each other’s content and narratives.”
—Jeff Horwitz
contributed to this article.
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https://patriotpost.us/alexander/73991-social-media-election-riggers-the-demos-bff-2020-10-07?mailing_id=5354&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.5354&utm_campaign=alexander&utm_content=header.default
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https://www.aei.org/technology-and-innovation/house-antitrust-report-on-big-tech-recommends-punishing-business-success/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTXpkbE1tWTJORGswWldFdyIsInQiOiJjdlRGcVIyZm50Vit2N1BXYkJvK0V1cVhhV1ZTVlpIcWdGZlRLVDdyNmtwXC9rcUVETFIxdEJQUGk4eE4xdVk3Y0ZrcDRIXC9EQXV5dW5BckVHXC81d2Ryd1JXM3pUOVpPTyt3ZTVjK0I4cTdpSDZCVFwvYVVjY21TNjkrbXFhd0J3ZjMifQ%3D%3D
So, what to do? Is there no problem at all?
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Facebook Tests Turkey's Resolve by Defying Its New Social Media Law
5 MINS READ
Oct 9, 2020 | 10:00 GMT
Facebook’s decision to defy Turkey’s controversial social media law could result in it being effectively banned from the country, as the Turkish government ramps up pressure on U.S. and European content platforms to comply with its censorship demands. This aggressive approach will further stain Ankara’s standing in the West, forcing it to deepen its ties with Russia and China.
According to reports released on Oct. 6, Facebook has allegedly decided not to comply with the law’s requirement that it appoint a local representative to oversee government requests to take down content deemed as offensive or inappropriate. The new regulations, which went into effect Oct. 1, also require social media companies to store Turkish data locally and respond to court orders to take down content within 24 or 48 hours.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) passed the law in July with an aim to reduce government control and oversight of the social media platforms used in the country.
Critics say that the Turkish government will use the new regulations to stifle political opposition to the AKP and limit public discourse against its policies.
Noncompliant companies could see large fines and their website bandwidth for Turkish traffic slowed by 90 percent.
As part of its internet control and social media strategy, the Turkish government will use the new law to aggressively force Facebook and other platforms to take down a broader range of content, but will refrain from effectively banning popular platforms altogether.
Despite its history of internet regulation and cracking down on social media, Ankara knows these platforms are crucial to not only Turkey’s domestic economy, but its ability to spread propaganda supporting the AKP and its policies. So while the new law enables the government to effectively shut down platforms by throttling their bandwidth, Ankara is unlikely to outright do so. Instead, the Turkish government will likely use the threat and intermittent use of throttling bandwidth to shape social media behavior and fine companies for noncompliance.
Turkey’s attempt to control the domestic internet has increased significantly over the past decade. That process has been further accelerated since a coup attempt in 2016 exposed domestic challenges to Erdogan and the AKP.
Out of 65 countries assessed in Freedom House’s 2019 survey and analysis of internet freedom around the world, Turkey was ranked 46 for online freedom, classifying its internet as “not free.”
Facebook’s noncompliance with Turkey's new social media law could result in it being effectively banned from the country, as Ankara ramps up pressure on U.S. and European platforms to censor their content.
Facebook and most other social media companies will likely focus on complying with less egregious local demands on content censorship in order to maintain flexibility and avoid permanent shutdowns. These companies have so far refrained from complying with Turkish authorities’ demands to block content from outside the country. But under the new law, Facebook, Twitter and other internet companies operating in Turkey will continue to face a high number of legal and government requests to take down content. The Turkish government will likely also unveil even more expansive regulations in the future, further fracturing the country’s internet from the rest of the world.
Turkey has a long history of blocking and unblocking popular social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Ankara’s heated disputes with YouTube, in particular, have resulted in months- and even year-long bans on the popular video-sharing platform.
Turkey is already one of the most active countries requesting social media companies to take down content. As a part of its transparency reports, Twitter reported that in 2019, Turkey accounted for 41 percent of global legal demands to take down content.
By stifling dissent, Turkey’s expansion of internet controls will further damage its relations with the West, driving Ankara to increase cooperation with Russia, China and Iran. Sporadic throttling of Western internet companies’ operations in Turkey will result in diplomatic spats with the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and the European Union. This will, in turn, prompt Ankara to more fervently back Russia, China and Iran’s calls for increased digital sovereignty for international regulations on the internet and in establishing cyber norms – thus accelerating Turkey’s drift away from the West.
Ankara will use the new social media regulations and hardline internet policy to target the operations of non-government and human rights organizations active in the country as well — especially those that work closely with opposition parties, Kurdish groups or any other factions of Turkish society seen as adversaries to the AKP.
Turkey will continue to back the creation and growth of domestic alternatives to international social media platforms, though such Turkish platforms have so far struggled to grow their userbases. Ankara will also try to build out its own capacity in terms of physically controlling the internet via stricter data localization requirements and controlling access points into Turkey, though it’s unlikely to adopt a hardline of a policy to build a domestic internet akin to China’s, given Turkey’s greater dependency on online commercial transactions with the West.
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second
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/10/08/twitter-locks-account-of-ric-grenell-over-voter-fraud-warning/
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https://www.zerohedge.com/political/smoking-gun-emails-show-hunter-biden-introduced-vp-dad-burisma-executive
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https://www.zerohedge.com/political/smoking-gun-emails-show-hunter-biden-introduced-vp-dad-burisma-executive
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/390794.php
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https://www.nationalreview.com/news/twitter-cites-hacked-materials-policy-to-justify-censorship-of-ny-post-hunter-biden-article/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=21790811
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(https://i2.wp.com/wilderwealthywise.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/FACEBOOK.jpg?w=500&ssl=1)
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https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/facebook-twitter-block-the-post-from-posting/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=13652
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https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/facebook-twitter-block-the-post-from-posting/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=13652
We've been asking this question about the networks and the newspapers for decades, now the goolags, how can they be a 100% monopoly and only serve 40% of the market? And they are serving that 50% side of the market badly, not keeping subscribers informed of the top stories of the day.
I'm always amazed at what major stories, facts and analyses my highly informed Leftist friends have never seen. Don't they ever feel betrayed by their screened sources? I want to hear the bad news about my side - if it's out there. I hate being wrong, being last to know and putting foot in mouth. The Left includes the people with the highest degrees. Don't they want to be in the know?
AOL, MySpace, I mean Facebook, Google, Twitter, could never be replaced by a newer entrant to the market that provides a superior product. Or could they?
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Twitter Public Policy Director Carlos Monje left the social media company to join the transition team for Joe Biden. - Source: Linked In, Breitbart
Democrats and media gatekeepers, one and the same.
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/10/15/facebook-and-twitter-censor-biden-bombshells-weeks-after-execs-join-his-transition-team/
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https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/15/11-hacks-leaks-and-hoaxes-that-twitter-and-facebook-didnt-throttle-because-they-hurt-trump/
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Dan Bongino has right idea. - drudge turns benedict arnold
so Dan starts his own site where we can read latest news
from our perspective
Drudge which I rarely go to is nothing more then huff report now looked again briefly this am - astonishing how Drudge has suddenly just turned leftist crap and propaganda
I still wonder if Dem operatives threatened Matt to expose he is gay or something like that - just weird.
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https://monsterhunternation.com/2020/10/15/george-orwell-would-have-thought-this-weeks-plot-is-too-far-fetched/
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https://townhall.com/tipsheet/juliorosas/2020/10/16/dan-bongino-gives-an-critical-update-on-his-medical-diagnosis-n2578261 :-o
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https://spectator.us/behind-social-media-blackout-biden-family-corruption/
If we don't stop this, we are done as a nation.
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Glenn Reynolds, the article USA Today would not publish:
BIG TECH BURNED BY BIDEN BLUNDER
Glenn Harlan Reynolds
In my 2019 book, The Social Media Upheaval, I warned that the Big Tech companies — especially social media giants like Facebook and Twitter — had grown into powerful monopolists, who were using their power over the national conversation to not only sell ads, but also to promote a political agenda. That was pretty obvious last year, but it was even more obvious last week, when Facebook and Twitter tried to black out the New York Post’s blockbuster report about emails found on a laptop abandoned by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son Hunter.
The emails, some of which have been confirmed as genuine with their recipients, show substantial evidence that Hunter Biden used his position as Vice President Joe Biden’s son to extract substantial payments from “clients” in other countries. There are also photos of Hunter with a crack pipe, and engaging in various other unsavory activities. And they demolished the elder Biden’s claim that he never discussed business with his son.
That’s a big election-year news story. Some people doubted its genuineness, and of course it’s always fair to question a big election-year news story, especially one that comes out shortly before the election. (Remember CBS newsman Dan Rather’s promotion of what turned out to be forged memos about George W. Bush’s Air National Guard service?)
But the way you debate whether a story is accurate or not is by debating. (In the case of the Rather memos, it turned out the font was from Microsoft Word, which of course didn’t exist back during the Vietnam War era.) Big Tech could have tried an approach that fostered such a debate. But instead of debate, they went for a blackout: Both services actually blocked links to the New York Post story. That’s right: They blocked readers from discussing a major news story by a major paper, one so old that it was founded by none other than Alexander Hamilton.
I wasn’t advising them — they tend not to ask me for my opinion — but I would have advised against such a blackout. There’s a longstanding Internet term called “the Streisand effect,” going back to when Barbara Streisand demanded that people stop sharing pictures of her beach house. Unsurprisingly, the result was a massive increase in the number of people posting pictures of her beach house. The Big Tech Blackout produced the same result: Now even people who didn’t care so much about Hunter Biden’s racket nonetheless became angry, and started talking about the story.
As lefty journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote in The Intercept, Twitter and Facebook crossed a line far more dangerous than what they censored. Greenwald writes: “Just two hours after the story was online, Facebook intervened. The company dispatched a life-long Democratic Party operative who now works for Facebook — Andy Stone, previously a communications operative for Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, among other D.C. Democratic jobs — to announce that Facebook was ‘reducing [the article’s] distribution on our platform’: in other words, tinkering with its own algorithms to suppress the ability of users to discuss or share the news article. The long-time Democratic Party official did not try to hide his contempt for the article, beginning his censorship announcement by snidely noting: ‘I will intentionally not link to the New York Post.’”
“Twitter’s suppression efforts went far beyond Facebook’s. They banned entirely all users’ ability to share the Post article — not just on their public timeline but even using the platform’s private Direct Messaging feature.”
“Early in the day, users who attempted to link to the New York Post story either publicly or privately received a cryptic message rejecting the attempt as an ‘error.’ Later in the afternoon, Twitter changed the message, advising users that they could not post that link because the company judged its contents to be ‘potentially harmful.’ Even more astonishing still, Twitter locked the account of the New York Post, banning the paper from posting any content all day and, evidently, into Thursday morning.”
This went badly. The heads Facebook and of Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey, are now facing Senate subpoenas, the RNC has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, arguing that Twitter’s action in blacking out a damaging story constituted an illegal in-kind donation to the Biden Campaign, and most significantly, everyone is talking about the story now, with many understandably assuming that if the story were false, it would have been debunked rather than blacked out.
CNN’s Jake Tapper tweeted: ”Congrats to Twitter on its Streisand Effect award!!!” Big Tech shot itself in the foot, and it didn’t stop the signal.
Regardless of who wins in November, it’s likely that there will be substantial efforts to rein in Big Tech. As Greenwald writes, “State censorship is not the only kind of censorship. Private-sector repression of speech and thought, particularly in the internet era, can be as dangerous and consequential. Imagine, for instance, if these two Silicon Valley giants united with Google to declare: henceforth we will ban all content that is critical of President Trump and/or the Republican Party, but will actively promote criticisms of Joe Biden and the Democrats.
“Would anyone encounter difficulty understanding why such a decree would constitute dangerous corporate censorship? Would Democrats respond to such a policy by simply shrugging it off on the radical libertarian ground that private corporations have the right to do whatever they want? To ask that question is to answer it.”
“To begin with, Twitter and particularly Facebook are no ordinary companies. Facebook, as the owner not just of its massive social media platform but also other key communication services it has gobbled up such as Instagram and WhatsApp, is one of the most powerful companies ever to exist, if not the most powerful.”
He’s right. And while this heavyhanded censorship effort failed, there’s no reason to assume that other such efforts won’t work in the future. Not many stories are as hard to squash as a major newspaper’s front page expose during an presidential election.
As I wrote in The Social Media Upheaval, the best solution is probably to apply antitrust law to break up these monopolies: Competing companies would police each other, and if they colluded could be prosecuted under antitrust law. There are also moves to strip them of their immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects them from being sued for things posted or linked on their sites on the theory that they are platforms, not publishers who make publication decisions. And Justice Clarence Thomas has recently called for the Supreme Court to revisit the lower courts’ interpretation of Section 230, which he argues has been overbroad. A decade ago there would have been much more resistance to such proposals, but Big Tech has tarnished its own image since then.
Had Facebook and Twitter approached this story neutrally, as they would have a decade ago, it would probably already be old news to a degree — as Greenwald notes, Hunter’s pay-for-play efforts were already well known, if not in such detail — but instead the story is still hot. More importantly, their heavy handed action has brought home just how much power they wield, and how crudely they’re willing to wield it. They shouldn’t be surprised at the consequences.
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https://nypost.com/2020/10/20/meet-your-chinese-facebook-censors/
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October 22, 2020
View On Website
Open as PDF
Social Media Is Old-Fashioned and Radically Destabilizing
Thoughts in and around geopolitics.
By: George Friedman
The New York Times has reported that the Justice Department is about to bring an antitrust suit against Google specifically targeting Google’s power in online advertising. There are two things to note before the courts issue their ruling. The first is that though Google, Facebook and Twitter all pride themselves on overturning the past – and from a technological point of view they do – their core business model is quite old. Like newspapers and television, they provide readers with free access to content, and in return they are able to advertise to them. By giving readers free content, they can analyze our habits and interests and sell the data to advertisers. Newspapers, radio and television did the same thing.
Second and more important, Google, Facebook and Twitter don’t really create their own content. Newspaper articles, radio programs and TV shows were produced for the readers. Publishers and networks were responsible for what they provided the public, and they had a substantial cost structure that had to generate revenue in a complex, symbiotic relationship. Google, Facebook and Twitter deferred the cost but claimed the responsibility for their content.
Google created a search engine that mapped out the internet, allowing readers to find content they were interested in. Facebook and Twitter simply allowed readers to use their platforms to state their views and read the views of others, and in doing so became the subject of advertising. The key for all three was that at the outset they claimed they were not responsible for their content.
The problem of monopoly in advertising is less critical than the means by which these companies attracted members. The cost for access to their service was zero. Twitter and Facebook were the most radical in this regard. Anyone could create an account without verification of identity. They argued that this was the technological revolution that perfected the first amendment’s right to free speech. Their motive had less to do with the Bill of Rights and more to do with encouraging as many people as possible to express their views, track what they said, and sell access to advertisers based on what they said.
The Bill of Rights does guarantee free speech, but it did not anticipate the notion of total anonymity. Free speech assumes that the speaker is known, that what is said depends on who the speaker is and what the speaker has said in the past – that is, the character of the speaker. All that is impossible through these new media. One person can pretend to be 20 people by opening multiple accounts, and each can have their real identities hidden or claim someone else’s identity. The founders did not expect speech to be divorced from responsibility. Social media specializes in it.
Social media, like TV or newspapers, flourishes on readership. Social media allows its readers to provide the content that attracts readers for free. There is no cost for stating your views, no means to compel the speaker to identify himself and no consequence for slander, lying or mounting campaigns with malicious intent. From their point of view, absent political pressure, the more people that come, the higher the advertising revenue, and the more accounts opened, the greater the claim for membership. The intellectual and moral mayhem that results generates more activity, and that activity is what drives advertising sales.
The key moment in all this was when social media decided to follow a business model from the 1960s. TV was no cost to the viewer, and money was made by the ads that were sold. But with TV, the viewer did not control the content, and we were aware of who produced it. In the social media model, the reader is also the writer, and the cost of entry is zero.
Had a more modern approach been taken, everyone wanting an account would have to pay a fee, however modest, and provide a credit card. To some extent, it could be known who said what, and potential consequences would follow for slander or lies, if not legal then social. But social media’s strategy was so deeply rooted in old media that charging users was verboten. It would cut down on the audience being sold to advertisers.
To me, the fundamental problem of social media is anonymity. It is a place where anyone can say anything and walk away. It was an efficient plan that now meets antitrust laws. But that is not the core issue. The fact that there is both total anonymity and no cost encourages bad-faith actors to use that media and leaves the reader with no way to measure the credibility of the statement or the speaker. It creates equality between dissent and insanity. And there is no one we can shame for what is said unless a speaker volunteers his or her identity. And that segment who wishes to believe what is said can drive the discourse of others in uncontrolled rage.
An antitrust suit is based on the success of a business. The question here is liability, of creating a business that deliberately facilitates the right to speak without being responsible for what you said. Google uses its search engine, and the others use the platform for anonymous claims. The problem is not that they were successful but how they were successful: by selling access to others without being in any way responsible for what they say. That may be changing now, but the real answer is to charge users via a credit card. But that would hurt business.
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2017/01/15/police-spying-on-car-conversations-location-siriusxm-gm-chevrolet-toyota-privacy/
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https://mashable.com/article/jack-dorsey-beard-memes-senate-hearing-twitter/
no matter how much he thinks he is and wants to look like ,
I am sorry he is NOT this guy:
https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/one-oldest-known-paintings-confucius-found-tomb-disgraced-ex-emperor-004586
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(https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Jack-Dorsey-Lied-412x600.png)
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https://www.mintpressnews.com/obama-era-officials-call-for-more-government-control-of-your-facebook-feed/272300/
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/twitter-suspends-acting-cbp-chief-mark-morgan-after-border-wall-tweet_3557670.html?utm_source=morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2020-10-30
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https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/11/tech-tyranny-twitter-censors-tom-fittons-accurate-logical-tweet-voter-fraud-protect-joe-biden/
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https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230
"EFF works to ensure strong legal protections for Internet intermediaries and endeavors to fight threats that would weaken such protections for intermediaries and users. We realize that a combination of technology policy and law protecting intermediaries ultimately helps uphold freedom of speech online."
Just the opposite has occurred:
as the intermediaries abuse this and THEMSELVES CENSOR FREE SPEECH WITHOUT ANY LIABILITY
:-(
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https://reclaimthenet.org/youtube-and-vimeo-censor-new-documentary-antifa/
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https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/11/twitter-bans-retweeting-official-statement-erie-county-election-board-viral-post-man-claiming-poll-worker-throwing-away-trump-ballots/
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuCg3I2V3xc&feature=emb_logo
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unless I put in www.westernjournal.com
in address box
when I search for it under google
it only comes up in "twitter " feed
which it self is leftist censor site
just another example of Democrat partisan propaganda
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https://summit.news/2020/11/13/video-are-phone-networks-now-censoring-links-about-election-fraud/
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https://summit.news/2020/11/13/video-are-phone-networks-now-censoring-links-about-election-fraud/
We are so close to being communist China or worse.
I thought by now the newest movement would be a revolution in privacy.
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I remember being so skeptical at this idea when discussing with a friend in the very early 80s
that this could or would "happen here "
the socialist academics did there job well , while the Elephant slept for decades
some still sleep amazingly
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https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/11/voter-fraud-the-crime-that-must-not-be-mentioned.php
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https://reclaimthenet.org/with-macs-latest-os-apples-exclusion-list-makes-it-possible-for-its-own-apps-to-bypass-vpns-and-firewalls/
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Apple
built in software to allow them to bypass firewalls and VPN
this is beyond outrageous
whey the hell won't legislatures do anything?
woops I forgot . They do nothing while Trump is in office other then get him out .
these tech kings need to be tarred and feathered
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http://ace.mu.nu/archives/391343.php
A cartel.
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https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/mississippi-cops-can-now-use-your-ring-doorbell-camera-live-stream-your-neighborhood
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https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/11/24/youtube-blacklists-one-america-news-over-coronavirus-coverage/
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https://mises.org/power-market/youtube-attempts-silence-mises-institute
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https://www.outkick.com/google-election-trump-biden/
Who knew?
-
who knew?
EVERYONE who keeps up with current events news and politics
who cares ?
only the right.
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8994911/Town-halls-harvest-millions-personal-details-including-youre-unfaithful-debt.html
Good thing that can't happen here!
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8994911/Town-halls-harvest-millions-personal-details-including-youre-unfaithful-debt.html
Good thing that can't happen here!
In case you were wondering when Chinese style Social Credit scores would be combined with "Minority Report" Pre-crime policing in the UK, well here we are!
https://www.cipfa.org/services/data-analytics/covid19-oneview-service
How does the service work?
Stage One: Local authorities provide xantura with an initial set of data extracts from different departments via a secure data transfer process. To lessen the impact on IT, existing, standard data sets are requested and these would typically include:
your Operation Shield local sub-set of the circa 1.5m individuals the government and NHS believe are most at risk
your revenues and benefits data – enabling you to see information across age, employment status and current benefits received
your adult social care data – enabling you to better understand pre-existing support services and medical conditions from both structured data and unstructured case notes
your census data – including education, attendance and exclusion enabling a better understanding of wider vulnerability.
Stage Two: Xantura run this data against an expanding set of pre-defined risk factors related to the virus and associated sanctions and provide you with a report that prioritises all households by number of risk factors and enables you to filter by each individual risk factor.
Stage Three: This report is delivered to you through a secure, online case management system that enables you to easily analyse the output, and support your staff with what further information they should gather when they contact households and individuals.
Stage Four: The case management system also enables your staff to input additional information and select what action they have taken with that household to create a robust audit trail of actions.
Stage Five: In addition to the case management system, xantura will provide you with a full suite of standard reports and dashboards that provide high level summaries by demographic, risk factor and geography.
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https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/10/20/facebook-demonetizes-babylon-bee-saying-acb-monty-python-joke-incites-violence-n1072750?fbclid=IwAR3lswwHGEj3v5If1LeplndNE-ng4yLsIaMq9g6hSEg3FOVsJQAhsBkKp4k
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https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/10/20/facebook-demonetizes-babylon-bee-saying-acb-monty-python-joke-incites-violence-n1072750?fbclid=IwAR3lswwHGEj3v5If1LeplndNE-ng4yLsIaMq9g6hSEg3FOVsJQAhsBkKp4k
This time they've gone too far.
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https://www.nationalreview.com/news/feds-states-sue-to-break-up-facebook/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=22337687
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I search on Google
for "populist.press" and NPR comes up as well as about 13 other sites before this one comes up.
I put in "populist.press.com" and still get some sort of education page
nothing to see here
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Google finds things for us. More importantly, Google hides things from us, as much as they can, for as long as they can get away with it.
During the entire 2016 campaign a search of Hillary emails yielded page after page of everything except her email scandal.
In China they use this power to keep a murderous regime in power.
Other search engines often use Google as the underlying engine.
Youtube, owned by Google, will not play videos of election fraud.
They are the gatekeepers of our minds and communications. It is just the opposite of what we thought the information revolution would bring.
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/facebook-fact-checker-funded-by-chinese-money-through-tiktok_3610009.html?utm_source=morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2020-12-11
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you mean to tell me FB with market cap
of 776 bill
is letting a mortal enemy country control the fact check
how utterly stupid and sick
the Chinese continue to make God Darn fools of us
and the techs and globalists just keep selling us out.
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https://thefederalist.com/2020/12/11/googles-youtube-shuts-down-dilbert-creator-scott-adams/?fbclid=IwAR3UhVdn8zFgff_lrL3pkfWXeZ2PMFRddRATAji7Kd_Q_PYkew-8TovGCFc
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https://thefederalist.com/2020/12/11/googles-youtube-shuts-down-dilbert-creator-scott-adams/?fbclid=IwAR3UhVdn8zFgff_lrL3pkfWXeZ2PMFRddRATAji7Kd_Q_PYkew-8TovGCFc
All badthinkers will be depersoned.
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https://patriotpost.us/articles/76437-youtube-embraces-totalitarianism-2020-12-14
-
https://gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/060/708/351/original/f5869c0458f1f4c7.png
(https://gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/060/708/351/original/f5869c0458f1f4c7.png)
Standards.
-
https://www.wired.com/2010/09/text-message-censorship/
I never knew!
-
https://futurism.com/new-satellite-buildings-day-night
Won't be abused!
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https://dailycaller.com/2020/12/16/texas-states-google-antitrust-lawsuit-big-tech/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=recaps&pnespid=m_g9pPRDDRCNpi_18Al2kPTdk0cHirGwDXeWdnD3
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https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/16/twitter-will-label-remove-misinformation-about-covid-19-vaccines.html?__source=sharebar%7Ctwitter&%3Bpar=sharebar&utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2906&pnespid=hfEz_PtVGleNITg1nDJD5r1b69qWiOhD6qzJkTif
-
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tech-antitrust-google-colorado/google-hit-with-third-lawsuit-as-u-s-states-sue-over-search-monopoly-idUSKBN28R2T0
-
https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-cia-and-nsa-research-grants-for-mass-surveillance/?fbclid=IwAR1ZjtsAP0Ngm58l45ibuhOSyjcEd4I8yUy--Oz2A1bBOxgmhvRu4tW5j6Q
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second
https://bannonswarroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/The-Immaculate-Deception-12.15.20-1.pdf?fbclid=IwAR00RxdzfiU2xTUiz1CZkhnMSbrXOpX2LpnW7tnprAYaR1s8sjCUdObg0zg
-
https://reclaimthenet.org/imf-browsing-history-credit-score/
Plan accordingly.
-
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogdec20/sell-narratives12-20.html
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The EU Seeks to Update Its Regulation of Big Tech
8 MINS READ
Dec 23, 2020 | 15:59 GMT
EU flags fly outside the European Commission building in Brussels on Dec. 7, 2020.
EU flags fly outside the European Commission building in Brussels on Dec. 7, 2020.
(KENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP via Getty Images)
HIGHLIGHTS
Sweeping new EU draft rules will increase the pressure on large tech companies, but debates over their proposed requirements and penalties will likely limit their impact on big tech. The legislation's ultimate fate depends in part on how the European Union frames the proposals to the incoming Biden administration because its receptivity to rules that disproportionately affect U.S. firms could prove decisive to their implementation....
Sweeping new EU draft rules will increase the pressure on large tech companies, but debates over their proposed requirements and penalties will likely limit their impact on big tech. The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, on Dec. 15 unveiled two complementary pieces of draft legislation, the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Broadly, the measures aim to make big tech more accountable and transparent, and to prevent and remediate anti-competitive behaviors. Both proposals establish fines for rule breakers; in the most extreme cases, they threaten temporary operating suspensions and forced divestitures of some of their business lines.
The DSA encompasses all companies that offer a wide range of digital services in the European Union, although the largest tech giants face special rules. Based on their role, size, and importance, companies face a sliding scale of stricter obligations that broadly aim to make them more accountable to users and regulators and more transparent in their activities and use of information.
The DMA applies only to companies deemed digital "gatekeepers" as defined by their entrenched size and control of an important core service like online search engines. These firms — which, though unnamed, presumably include Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google's parent company, Alphabet — face a specific set of requirements and prohibitions on certain practices meant to promote competition and innovation.
A list of Highlights of Draft EU Digital Legislation
The proposals aim to reform an outdated regulatory framework amid growing trans-Atlantic concerns about big tech's influence by trying to increase transparency and prevent anti-competitive behavior. Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic are converging on a consensus on the need to rein in big tech. Existing EU digital rules entered into force when most of today's tech giants either did not exist or were significantly smaller. The European Union hopes the DSA and DMA will provide regulatory and enforcement powers better suited for 21st century concerns, mirroring its similarly ambitious effort to modernize and unify the bloc's personal data policies through the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), though that framework has not dented big tech's influence in the way its advocates had hoped it would.
Both European and U.S. regulators are pursuing lawsuits and investigations against tech giants. In November, the European Commission relied on the bloc's 1958 founding treaty to accuse Amazon of violating general competition rules by exploiting the data it collects from other businesses for its own benefit, a practice the DMA would explicitly forbid.
Similarly, since 2019 the U.S. federal and state governments have sued or launched inquiries into Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Facebook for various alleged antitrust violations. In October, a House Judiciary Committee report found that Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Facebook had abused their market dominance and recommended considering a series of steps similar to those proposed in the DSA and DMA. While House Republican members may not support more radical ideas like forced divestitures, they are onboard with others, such as giving more resources and legal powers to officials charged with enforcing antitrust measures to block competition-reducing acquisitions and bring lawsuits against rule breakers.
Various political and legal challenges and disagreements over certain provisions will limit the legislation's immediate impact and probably restrain some of the more ambitious proposals. Margrethe Vestager, the EU competition chief who helped lead the DSA and DMA rollout, estimated that it would take at least a year and a half for the proposals to become law and another half year for them to become enforceable. The process is likely to be longer judging from the six-year timeline from introduction to enforcement of the GDPR. The DSA and DMA must be reviewed by EU lawmakers and national leaders, all of whom will be intensely lobbied by large technology companies; they will then draft their own versions to be examined and reconciled with the European Commission proposals.
Rules on content moderation in the DSA could become a particular flashpoint. In the current proposal, one EU member can demand a company based in another remove content it considers illegal, which could quickly devolve into disputes over differences in members' laws, particularly regarding more illiberal states like Hungary and Poland. A similar concern held up agreement on the EU's recently adopted legislation on online terrorist content. Another debate is likely to arise on the question of harmful content — or content that is not illegal, but is seen as problematic — such as disinformation or hate speech. The DSA pointedly leaves such content outside its purview, but multiple EU members seek its inclusion, which could lead to significant debates not only over whether and how to include such content, but also over how to reconcile it with free speech protections.
Ireland, which houses the EU headquarters of many big tech firms, and regulators in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden have expressed concerns about the DMA's "ex-ante" antitrust framework, which preemptively requires gatekeepers to take certain steps before there is evidence of actual harm to competition. Ireland is skeptical that gatekeepers require special interventions to boost competition, while the Nordic authorities note that the proposed list of obligations for gatekeepers can have both pro- and anti-competitive effects and are ill-suited to the fast-moving tech market, which could stifle innovation by disincentivizing dynamism rather than enhance it.
The strictest penalties — temporary operating suspensions and forced divestitures — are unlikely to be used. First, the DSA and DMA make clear that these penalties are a last resort and would apply only in the most extraordinary circumstances after repeated and gross noncompliance. European regulators pondering such penalties would likely face pushback from their own citizens, who rely on big tech offerings in their daily lives and have shown little appetite for forgoing them.
Fines are also highly unlikely to be assessed close to their maximum levels, and probably will involve long gaps between the offense and their imposition — particularly given likely legal challenges, thereby limiting their deterrent power. In December, Ireland's GDPR regulator fined Twitter 450,000 euros (about $548,000), a small fraction of the maximum allowable amount, over a data breach nearly two years ago in the first case involving a U.S. tech giant where a national regulator consulted with the European Commission. The case took so long in part because Ireland wanted to impose an even smaller fine, but had to boost the amount after pushback from the commission, demonstrating different European perspectives and challenges on regulating big tech.
The legislation's ultimate fate depends in part on how the European Union frames the proposals to the incoming Biden administration because its receptivity to rules that disproportionately affect U.S. firms could prove decisive to their implementation. If the European Union portrays the drafts as a way to raise standards for all firms and provides assurances that it does not seek to use them to help smaller European companies displace U.S. tech giants, the Biden administration — hardly sympathetic to big tech — is more likely to lend support, even if it advocates for some changes around the edges on behalf firms that comprise an important part of the U.S. economy. By contrast, should EU leaders — perhaps in selling the proposals to domestic audiences — characterize the DSA and DMA as vehicles to benefit European firms and undercut U.S. companies, despite its big tech skepticism, the Biden administration would likely see the legislation as more hostile and object to the EU unfairly scrutinizing and punishing U.S. tech champions. Ironically, while the DSA and DMA offer opportunities for European tech firms to grow and compete, long an EU-wide goal, they also impose potentially substantial risks: EU leaders who present the proposals as a way to develop indigenous tech giants risk not only provoking the Biden administration to see the rules as unilaterally targeting U.S. companies, but also risk overselling the legislation's potential benefits.
The DMA more than the DSA risks stifling smaller European firms' ability to compete rather than enhancing it, as multiple industry groups have noted. Although the digital ecosystems led by gatekeepers give them major power, they also give smaller firms, which rely on them, a common platform to reach large user bases and scale much faster and cheaper than otherwise possible. For example, forcing Apple to allow third-party app stores to compete with its own — something the DMA would do — could fragment the market and make it much harder and more expensive for smaller firms to expand. More broadly, by specifying a list of do's and don'ts the DMA risks creating a blunt instrument ill-suited to dynamic markets that would stifle the innovation and incentive to scale it aims to foster.
Examining the effects so far of the GDPR, a similarly ambitious set of digital rules, also suggests that small firms may struggle with the requirements proposed by the DSA and DMA. At least some initial research indicates that the GDPR has deterred investment in smaller EU firms and imposed compliance costs that raised the barrier to market entry. According to an EU survey in 2019, a year after the GDPR became enforceable about half of small businesses were noncompliant with two of its key requirements, and a large number of executives did not understand many of the legislation’s requirements.
-
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/12/shielding-goliath-from-david-congress-must-give-local-news-publishers-a-fighting-chance/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MJ_20201228&utm_term=Jolt-Smart
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https://gizmodo.com/your-credit-score-should-be-based-on-your-web-history-1845912592
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/facebook-shuts-down-page-for-gop-senate-campaigns-just-before-georgia-runoffs_3640865.html?utm_source=morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-01-03
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/tonyewing/2021/01/03/warning-facebook-and-twitter-are-dangerous-even-if-youve-never-used-them/?sh=c10b0255271e
-
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/singapore-police-force-can-obtain-tracetogether-data-covid-19-13889914
-
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/singapore-police-force-can-obtain-tracetogether-data-covid-19-13889914
This was a part of the danger when they started talking about contact tracing to stop the spread. If not the phone, wait until they offer you the embedded chip. What is good for your dog is good for you, right?
With the Dem takeover of Washington I expect big breakthroughs in the area of protecting the privacy of Americans. (sarcasm alert)
Of course it IS happening here. You are now a "toxic individualist" if you believe the state should not exercise all powers possible to combat the dangers of covid, and every other threat.
With the Left, the limits of government power contained in the constitution change meaning continuously to fit their most current whims.
I'm hoping to release a bumper sticker removal product on Amazon this month to meet the demand of Leftists removing their "resist" bumper sticker.
'Resist' is now treason.
-
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/twitter-permanently-suspends-trump/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=22604206
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https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2021/01/08/apple-to-parler-crack-down-on-free-speech-or-face-ban/
-
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/08/google-removes-parler-app-from-google-play-store.html
-
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2021/01/08/apple-to-parler-crack-down-on-free-speech-or-face-ban/
-
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/08/google-removes-parler-app-from-google-play-store.html
Anti-competitive, monopolistic behavior. Will the Merrick Garland Justice Dept be independent or be run by Obama era henchman?
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https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/08/google-removes-parler-app-from-google-play-store.html
Anti-competitive, monopolistic behavior. Will the Merrick Garland Justice Dept be independent or be run by Obama era henchman?
Heh!
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https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/sean_davis_trump_suspended_from_twitter_01-08-2021.jpg
(https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/sean_davis_trump_suspended_from_twitter_01-08-2021.jpg)
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/twitter-suspends-accounts-of-sidney-powell-michael-flynn_3649578.html?utm_source=morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-01-09
Jim Jordan and Rush too?
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/twitter-suspends-accounts-of-sidney-powell-michael-flynn_3649578.html?utm_source=morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-01-09
Jim Jordan and Rush too?
Rush left I think in protest to the treatment of Trump. I don't think he was active on twitter, hated the medium.
Invite them to the forum.
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https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/01/want-blood-mozilla-argues-must-done-rid-internet-president-trump-bad-actors/
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https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/01/want-blood-mozilla-argues-must-done-rid-internet-president-trump-bad-actors/
It's really smart to keep antagonizing millions of people already white hot with rage.
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This is something I quickly tossed off on FB so it is very rough. I post it here as a form of note taking because I sense there is the seed of a good analysis/argument here.
===========================
The point which your passionate analysis does not include is the oligopolistic/quasi-monopoly power of the companies that comprise the Goolag (Google, FB, Twitter, Youtube, etc)
I used to work for the Anti-Trust Division of the Federal Trade Commission (second summer of law school, so my claim here is rather minimal) and have maintained an interest in anti-trust issues over the years.
In addition to the AT issues present with control over the flow of speech, there are also the AT issues that come with using that monopolistic power, perhaps as an oligopoly acting in conspiracy, to bully competitors .
There is also the strand of free speech jurisprudence concerning the question of when the "town square" is on private property.
Fresh territory is being blazed in this area with what IMHO can properly be described as a conspiracy between the Tech Oligopoly and the State e.g. we will bury the story of your son naming you as being on the payroll of our number one adversary in return for you giviing us what we want (ending tariffs and other things with regard to China, blocking efforts to end Section 230 etc.)
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This is something I quickly tossed off on FB so it is very rough. I post it here as a form of note taking because I sense there is the seed of a good analysis/argument here.
===========================
The point which your passionate analysis does not include is the oligopolistic/quasi-monopoly power of the companies that comprise the Goolag (Google, FB, Twitter, Youtube, etc)
I used to work for the Anti-Trust Division of the Federal Trade Commission (second summer of law school, so my claim here is rather minimal) and have maintained an interest in anti-trust issues over the years.
In addition to the AT issues present with control over the flow of speech, there are also the AT issues that come with using that monopolistic power, perhaps as an oligopoly acting in conspiracy, to bully competitors .
There is also the strand of free speech jurisprudence concerning the question of when the "town square" is on private property.
Fresh territory is being blazed in this area with what IMHO can properly be described as a conspiracy between the Tech Oligopoly and the State e.g. we will bury the story of your son naming you as being on the payroll of our number one adversary in return for you giving us what we want (ending tariffs and other things with regard to China, blocking efforts to end Section 230 etc.)
Yes. But with the state becoming a named co-conspirator, who initiates the anti-trust action?
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9130649/Conservative-social-media-platform-Parler-banned-Apple.html
Parler faces SHUTDOWN: Amazon vows to switch off 'free-speech' site's servers at midnight as Apple follows Google in banning it
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https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/pro-china-authorities-block-hk-protest-website-same-time-us-big-tech-launched-own
Good thing that can't happen...
Oh, it is happening here.
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https://humanevents.com/2019/09/13/the-invisible-shackles-of-americas-social-credit-system/?fbclid=IwAR2iCkokSAsvObnCWZmIfCu0FDcafwKVtd2_t2Js_0dHft2HANlPlm8COGk
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https://humanevents.com/2019/05/03/platform-access-is-a-civil-right/?utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F
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https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2021/01/10/nunes-parler-ban-a-violation-of-antitrust-civil-rights-the-rico-statute-there-should-be-a-racketeering-investigation/
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https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/11/big-corporate-uses-capitol-riots-to-push-communist-style-social-credit-system-on-americans/
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https://gizmodo.com/every-deleted-parler-post-many-with-users-location-dat-1846032466
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Save the Constitution from Big Tech:
By Vivek Ramaswamy and Jed Rubenfeld
WSJ
Facebook and Twitter banned President Trump and numerous supporters after last week’s disgraceful Capitol riot, and Google, Apple and Amazon blocked Twitter alternative Parler—all based on claims of “incitement to violence” and “hate speech.” Silicon Valley titans cite their ever-changing “terms of service,” but their selective enforcement suggests political motives.
Conventional wisdom holds that technology companies are free to regulate content because they are private, and the First Amendment protects only against government censorship. That view is wrong: Google, Facebook and Twitter should be treated as state actors under existing legal doctrines. Using a combination of statutory inducements and regulatory threats, Congress has co-opted Silicon Valley to do through the back door what government cannot directly accomplish under the Constitution.
It is “axiomatic,” the Supreme Court held in Norwood v. Harrison (1973), that the government “may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.” That’s what Congress did by enacting Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which not only permits tech companies to censor constitutionally protected speech but immunizes them from liability if they do so.
The justices have long held that the provision of such immunity can turn private action into state action. In Railway Employees’ Department v. Hanson (1956), they found state action in private union-employer closed-shop agreements—which force all employees to join the union—because Congress had passed a statute immunizing such agreements from liability under state law. In Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives Association(1989), the court again found state action in private-party conduct—drug tests for company employees—because federal regulations immunized railroads from liability if they conducted those tests. In both cases, as with Section 230, the federal government didn’t mandate anything; it merely pre-empted state law, protecting certain private parties from lawsuits if they engaged in the conduct Congress was promoting.
Section 230 is the carrot, and there’s also a stick: Congressional Democrats have repeatedly made explicit threats to social-media giants if they failed to censor speech those lawmakers disfavored. In April 2019, Louisiana Rep. Cedric Richmond warned Facebook and Google that they had “better” restrict what he and his colleagues saw as harmful content or face regulation: “We’re going to make it swift, we’re going to make it strong, and we’re going to hold them very accountable.” New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler added: “Let’s see what happens by just pressuring them.”
Such threats have worked. In September 2019, the day before another congressional grilling was to begin, Facebook announced important new restrictions on “hate speech.” It’s no accident that big tech took its most aggressive steps against Mr. Trump just as Democrats were poised to take control of the White House and Senate. Prominent Democrats promptly voiced approval of big tech’s actions, which Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal expressly attributed to “a shift in the political winds.”
For more than half a century courts have held that governmental threats can turn private conduct into state action. In Bantam Books v. Sullivan (1963), the Supreme Court found a First Amendment violation when a private bookseller stopped selling works state officials deemed “objectionable” after they sent him a veiled threat of prosecution. In Carlin Communications v. Mountain States Telephone & Telegraph Co. (1987), the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found state action when an official induced a telephone company to stop carrying offensive content, again by threat of prosecution.
As the Second Circuit held in Hammerhead Enterprises v. Brezenoff (1983), the test is whether “comments of a government official can reasonably be interpreted as intimating that some form of punishment or adverse regulatory action will follow the failure to accede to the official’s request.” Mr. Richmond’s comments, along with many others, easily meet that test. Notably, the Ninth Circuit held it didn’t matter whether the threats were the “real motivating force” behind the private party’s conduct; state action exists even if he “would have acted as he did independently.”
Either Section 230 or congressional pressure alone might be sufficient to create state action. The combination surely is. Suppose a Republican Congress enacted a statute giving legal immunity to any private party that obstructs access to abortion clinics. Suppose further that Republican congressmen explicitly threatened private companies with punitive laws if they fail to act against abortion clinics. If those companies did as Congress demands, then got an attaboy from lawmakers, progressives would see the constitutional problem.
Republicans including Mr. Trump have called for Section 230’s repeal. That misses the point: The damage has already been done. Facebook and Twitter probably wouldn’t have become behemoths without Section 230, but repealing the statute now may simply further empower those companies, which are better able than smaller competitors to withstand liability. The right answer is for courts to recognize what lawmakers did: suck the air out of the Constitution by dispatching big tech to do what they can’t. Now it’s up to judges to fill the vacuum, with sound legal precedents in hand.
Liberals should worry too. If big tech can shut down the president, what stops them from doing the same to Joe Biden if he backs antitrust suits against social-media companies? Our Framers deeply understood the need for checks and balances in government. They couldn’t anticipate the rise of a new Leviathan with unchecked power to make extraconstitutional political judgments under the mantle of private enterprise.
American democracy is under siege from Silicon Valley’s political plutocracy. Next week Mr. Trump will be a private citizen without a Twitter account. Our new class of corporate monarchs will still control whether and how Americans can hear from the president—or anyone else. We have devolved from a three-branch federal government to one with a branch office in Silicon Valley. But there’s no democratic accountability for Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg.
Hard cases make bad law, and Mr. Trump presented America with a hard case last week. The breach of the Capitol is a stain on American history, and Silicon Valley seized on the attack to do what Congress couldn’t by suppressing the kind of political speech the First Amendment was designed to protect.
There’s more at stake than free speech. Suppression of dissent breeds terror. The answer to last week’s horror should be to open more channels of dialogue, not to close them off. If disaffected Americans no longer have an outlet to be heard, the siege of Capitol Hill will look like a friendly parley compared with what’s to come.
Ordinary Americans understand the First Amendment better than the elites do. Users who say Facebook, Twitter and Google are violating their constitutional rights are right. Aggrieved plaintiffs should sue these companies now to protect the voice of every American—and our constitutional democracy.
Mr. Ramaswamy is founder and CEO of Roivant Sciences and author of the forthcoming book “Woke Inc.” Mr. Rubenfeld, a constitutional scholar, has advised parties who are litigating or may litigate against Google and Facebook.
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https://100percentfedup.com/gab-ceo-pulls-off-the-impossible-for-trump-completely-backed-up-president-trumps-twitter-account-before-deleted-and-recreated-him-on-gab/
What do we know about GAB?
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https://100percentfedup.com/gab-ceo-pulls-off-the-impossible-for-trump-completely-backed-up-president-trumps-twitter-account-before-deleted-and-recreated-him-on-gab/
What do we know about GAB?
Gab.com
They have been attacked since the start by the left. Endless attempts to deplatform them has only made them more bulletproof. They are supposed to have picked up about a million subscribers in the last few days, which is straining their capacity at this time.
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Is it like FB? Like Twitter? (every time I have gone to a Twitter post I have been rather baffled by what I see there)
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Is it like FB? Like Twitter? (every time I have gone to a Twitter post I have been rather baffled by what I see there)
It's like a FaceHugger timeline.
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I exchanged messages with our PP today. They took Sparta Report down on Jan 6.
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Bet against Twitter
https://web.archive.org/web/20210111160453/https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimcollins/2021/01/11/twitter-is-the-worst-company-on-planet-earth--heres-how-to-bet-against-the-stock-and-deactivate-your-account/
Original Forbes page taken down.
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What was Sparta Report?
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What was Sparta Report?
Was "HotGas" as a response to "Hotair.com" going neverTrumper post-Michelle Malkin.
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What was Sparta Report?
Pat was involved with a pro Trump website.
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Not unlike Nancy Pelosi's (set up) and Gavin Newsom's and London Breed's mea culpa, stating that they "have to do better," (Breed), after having been found to have violated their own mandates, Dorsey states that they "have to look at," several areas where they could do better.... Always after the fact.
Rules for thee, but not for me.
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-business-jack-dorsey-843c3e5fb72c0cfb89c1fd1132a525d8
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It would be far better to rightsize thes monsters with market forces than with action from big government, that will a) never happen and b) make it worse, make the monopolies permanent.
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/twitter-facebook-51-billion-combined-market-value-erased-since-trump-ban_3656442.html?utm_source=news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-01-14-2
Twitter, Facebook: $51 Billion Combined Market Value Erased Since Trump Ban
BY ISABEL VAN BRUGEN January 14, 2021 Updated: January 14, 2021biggersmaller Print
Social media giants Facebook and Twitter have collectively seen $51.2 billion in combined market value wiped out over the last two trading sessions since they banned President Donald Trump from their platforms following the U.S. Capitol breach.
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It would be far better to rightsize thes monsters with market forces than with action from big government, that will a) never happen and b) make it worse, make the monopolies permanent.
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/twitter-facebook-51-billion-combined-market-value-erased-since-trump-ban_3656442.html?utm_source=news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-01-14-2
Twitter, Facebook: $51 Billion Combined Market Value Erased Since Trump Ban
BY ISABEL VAN BRUGEN January 14, 2021 Updated: January 14, 2021biggersmaller Print
Social media giants Facebook and Twitter have collectively seen $51.2 billion in combined market value wiped out over the last two trading sessions since they banned President Donald Trump from their platforms following the U.S. Capitol breach.
In the article I read regarding Twitter CEO....purported to be worth 15 billion. I wonder how much of that is in twitter stock.
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9152955/WhatsApp-delays-data-sharing-change-backlash.html
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https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-media-social-media-acc77e2afbad87da884345565385ca1c
BTW I have signed up at MeWe as Marc F. Denny
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https://www.engadget.com/facebook-google-jedi-blue-ad-deal-165604926.html
Facebook and Google allegedly cut a deal that reduced ad competition
It hurts their chances of surviving antitrust cases.
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https://www.engadget.com/facebook-google-jedi-blue-ad-deal-165604926.html
Facebook and Google allegedly cut a deal that reduced ad competition
It hurts their chances of surviving antitrust cases.
Maybe they know that they'll be treated well by the DOJ.
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https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/01/19/hungary-to-oppose-shadowbanning-of-christians-conservatives-online/
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Australia’s Proposed Media Code Turns Up the Heat on Google and Facebook
4 MINS READ
Jan 22, 2021 | 22:03 GMT
Highlights
Australia’s pursuit of a media code that would force Facebook and Google to pay for sharing content from local media companies risks pushing the U.S. tech giants to pull some of their services from the country. During a Jan. 22 Australian Senate hearing, Google’s Managing Director for Australia and New Zealand Mel Silva said that if the country’s News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code is implemented in its current form, Google would have no choice but to remove Google Search from Australia. Later in the day, Facebook representatives echoed these remarks, threatening to pull Facebook News from Australia. In response to Google’s ultimatum, Prime Minister Morrison said that his country does not respond to threats....
Australia’s pursuit of a media code that would force Facebook and Google to pay for sharing content from local media companies risks pushing the U.S. tech giants to pull some of their services from the country. During a Jan. 22 Australian Senate hearing, Google’s Managing Director for Australia and New Zealand Mel Silva said that if the country’s News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code is implemented in its current form, Google would have no choice but to remove Google Search from Australia. Later in the day, Facebook representatives echoed these remarks, threatening to pull Facebook News from Australia. In response to Google’s ultimatum, Prime Minister Morrison said that his country does not respond to threats.
The new media code was formally introduced to parliament in December 2020, where it is now up for debate. The Australian Senate is expected to vote on the code sometime in the first quarter and it could be implemented by mid-2021.
The proposed code would force the two U.S.-based media giants to enter negotiations with Australian publishers over news content, requiring that an arbitrator decide the details of a contract if they cannot come to an agreement. Previously, Australia had argued that these new rules would only impact Google’s news platforms, but uncertainties around implementation raise potential risks for the company’s all-important search function.
Google and Facebook have argued that they are willing to enter agreements with publishers for content, highlighting deals struck in other countries. But both have also said Australia’s rules are far more expansive than other country’s requirements.
Both Google and Facebook have also criticized the proposed Australian code as being biased in publishers’ favor, giving them the upper hand in bargaining. Google has been quite concerned about the code’s requirements for paying for snippets and links, both of which are displayed in Google search results.
Australia’s tussle with Google and Facebook comes as large multinational technology firms face growing global pressure to share revenue with domestic media producers, exacerbated by the economic repercussions of COVID-19. Australia’s disputes with the two companies had been bubbling for some time, but the country’s pandemic-induced economic setbacks over the past year have brought those tensions to a boil.
Previously, Australia had been discussing rules around voluntary agreements. But in April 2020, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said that voluntary agreements were unlikely to be reached.
The ACCC’s determination, along with the financial blow Australia’s media companies have suffered amid the COVID-19 pandemic, ultimately led Prime Minister Scott Morrison to direct the commission to draft a mandatory code, yielding the new rules now at the heart of the Facebook and Google dispute.
Google and Facebook have made good on similar threats elsewhere, and could very well do the same in Australia if Canberra proceeds with the media code as-is.
Google followed through with similar threats to remove Google News from Spain at the start of 2015 after the Spanish government imposed a so-called “snippet tax” for using excerpts of news taken from Spanish media outlets.
Broader EU-level requirements have also led Google to change the way that it displays results and the level of snippets shown for news articles and sites. In 2019, for example, Google removed snippets from French Google News searches unless content producers opted out of the right to receive compensation, which led French media outlets to enter talks over concerns about losing site traffic.
However, compared with other global examples, the removal of Google Search in Australia would have a particularly severe impact on Australian businesses well beyond the media sector. While other search engines are available, the pervasive nature and familiarity with Google Search have led Australian companies to optimize their websites with Google directly in mind. In December 2020, Google Search accounted for 94.4% of the Australian search market share. Many other industries are also directly dependent on Google Search as a tool to carry out daily business operations. Its removal would thus create more economic and social pressures in Australia at a time when the country’s economy is already struggling amid the COVID-19 pandemic. To avoid such a disruptive outcome, Canberra will likely try to ultimately quell some of Google and Facebook’s concerns by modifying either the current rules themselves or the arbitration process. Australian legislators, however, remain unlikely to scrap the new media code entirely.
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/01/21/facebook-gives-fbi-private-messages-of-users-discussing-capitol-hill-riot/?sh=2696aea261ed
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/01/21/facebook-gives-fbi-private-messages-of-users-discussing-capitol-hill-riot/?sh=2696aea261ed
I once obtained a search warrant for a FaceHugger account of a fugitive sex offender. I had to get a court order from the Judge ordering FaceHugger NOT to inform the fugitive that he had a search warrant served on his account, otherwise their practice was to do so.
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https://thelibertarianrepublic.com/sec-230-unlawful-power-big-tech/?fbclid=IwAR3y9vu-l4KBDeXmt2RH2ZjJFE9C2igdk-l3iPVPcAWzhQOT06EiiDcpWtM
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/epoch-times-statement-on-youtube-demonetization_3677553.html?utm_source=morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-01-30
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Looking for help with this. Want additions, comments and corrections.
Google is evil. Facebook, twitter, ditto.
Purely hypothetical, let's say I bump into someone who values my opinion.
They are using ____________ . They should switch to: ____________ .
Gmail, Protonmail
Chrome, Brave
Google search, DuckduckGo
Facebook, MeWe?
Windows, Linux
Microsoft Office, Open Office
Youtube, Vimeo?
Android, _________
Google Maps, Here WeGo?
Twitter, _________
NY Times/Washington Post, _________
What else?
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https://realcenternewss.com/2021/01/29/disgraced-former-fbi-agent-peter-strzoks-wife-melissa-hodgman-named-acting-director-of-the-division-of-enforcement-for-the-sec/
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https://realcenternewss.com/2021/01/29/disgraced-former-fbi-agent-peter-strzoks-wife-melissa-hodgman-named-acting-director-of-the-division-of-enforcement-for-the-sec/
Funny how such a sprawling government has such a small inter-related group at the top of the pyramid.
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/media-company-files-antitrust-lawsuit-against-google-facebook_3678744.html?utm_source=morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-01-31
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/media-company-files-antitrust-lawsuit-against-google-facebook_3678744.html?utm_source=morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-01-31
Break them up. Not for being big but for anti-competitive behavior.
"Google had unlawfully exercised monopoly power of the digital advertising market, which has prevented newspapers from competing in the market and losing their primary source of revenue."
- Yes.
I'm sure the Biden campaign Finance Dept, AG, will be all over this.
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/steven-crowder-announces-hell-file-a-lawsuit-against-facebook_3680544.html?utm_source=morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-02-02
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I know the dirtball is not there anymore
unless I go to yahoo first I cannot get to populist.press main site on Google
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new CEO:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Jassy
Another Jewish guy at the top of the biggest tech firms
Hungarian Jewish - think Soros
Harvard grad - think major liberal / elitist
I could be wrong but I doubt he voted for Trump or any other Republican in his life
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With more time on his hands I expect Bezos to become even more annoying.
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Section 230(b)
(b)Policy It is the policy of the United States—
(1)
to promote the continued development of the Internet and other interactive computer services and other interactive media;
(2)
to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation;
(3)
to encourage the development of technologies which maximize user control over what information is received by individuals, families, and schools who use the Internet and other interactive computer services;
(4)
to remove disincentives for the development and utilization of blocking and filtering technologies that empower parents to restrict their children’s access to objectionable or inappropriate online material; and
(5)
to ensure vigorous enforcement of Federal criminal laws to deter and punish trafficking in obscenity, stalking, and harassment by means of computer.
Section 230 (c) (1)
(1) Treatment of publisher or speaker
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
Section 230 (c) (2)
(2) Civil liability No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—
(A)
any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or
(B)
any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1).[1]
So, then, what is an interactive computer service as defined by the Communications Decency Act?
Section 230 (f) (2)
(2) Interactive computer service The term “interactive computer service” means any information service, system, or access software provider that provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server, including specifically a service or system that provides access to the Internet and such systems operated or services offered by libraries or educational institutions.
Are Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms “interactive computer services” within the meaning of Section 230? I would argue, “No.” Because no social media platform provides access to the Internet. A social media platform is part of the Internet. A user of the social media platform does not need access software provided by the social media platform in order to connect to the Internet.
This law was written 25 years ago to protect AOL, Yahoo!, MSN Network and other aggregators of information into their closed gardens. The AOL business model discouraged users from connecting to the actual Internet. Yahoo! And MSN were copycats.
The disruption of Netscape that led to the browser war between it and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer changed the need for this law because it is the browser that now connects a user to multiple servers. In fact, the very act of opening your email program or the browser of your choice connects you to the multiple servers of your Internet Service Provider which is most often a cable service operator, a wireless communications carrier, or a wired communications carrier.
You can see the intent of this law clearly from the fact that connection services offered by public libraries and other educational institutions are included in the definition of “interactive computer service.” In the good old days of the mid 1990’s, public libraries had established their own network connection services so users could locate books or go out on the Internet and locate other information.
In fact, cloud computing makes inapplicable the definitions and need for Section 230 because the same information is stored on multiple servers. When a user requests information from a cloud service provider, the data is retrieved from multiple servers and aggregated into flows of packets that contain bits and bytes from many different servers. When you make a wireless call or use your wireless device to access information in app, you retrieve the information from multiple servers and through multiple ways – some radio or wireless signal and others through a landline. Yes, the wireless backhaul systems of all nations use landlines to transmit and receive data to and from the cell towers.
The imminent widespread use of 5G communications also obviates the need for this law because 5G uses many short haul millimeter wave transmissions spots to move data more rapidly. And, if virtual radio access networks gain acceptance and popularity, then the network itself will be stored on multiple servers. This especially will become apparent once businesses begin deploying their 5G networks over CBRS spectrum.
Section 230 is so out of date relative to the actual Internet and how people access it and obtain their information. But read the policies in that law that I delineated above and ask yourself if the law was written to enable the censorship of ideas and opinions deemed wrong or offensive by social media platforms that clearly do not meet the definition of an “interactive computer service.”
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It's a great post. Persuasively makes the case to repeal this now flawed and obsolete law or rewrite it to not include and protect companies that censor opposing opinions and give money and support to one side. Let them live under the laws of the rest of us.
Author does not however make the case of how to repeal a law that unfairly favors and finances the people already in power, and keeps them in power. It's not just issues and policies, these gatekeepers prevent people from exposing stolen elections - if that were ever to happen.
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https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/02/how-to-strike-back-against-big-tech-censorship.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+powerlineblog%2Flivefeed+%28Power+Line%29
"prohibits internet service providers and social media companies from restricting users’ content on the basis of race, sex, religion or political orientation. The bill includes statutory damages of $100,000 per violation, along with recovery of attorneys’ fees."
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https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/06/facebook-oversight-board-member-decamps-for-biden-doj-466526
Facebook oversight board member decamps for Biden DOJ
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Play tricks with words all you want, Facebook's "independent oversight board" members are Facebook employees. Right?
Now she can oversee them from the DOJ. Her fellow member board members offered her congratulations.
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Karlan said in a statement that working with the board “to build a fairer and more effective approach to content moderation has been an honor.”
- Build a fairer and more effective approach to Facebook content moderation?? HOW DID THAT GO?
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtHRKk8qYKw
she is massive SJW and liberal socialist
biden stuffing more RADICAL leftists into DOJ
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https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/deepfake-detectors-can-be-defeated-computer-scientists-show-first-time
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https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2019-google-military-contract-dilemma/
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38za1LYj2XQ&feature=emb_logo
You should be concerned.
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Would love to have a summary before investing the time.
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Would love to have a summary before investing the time.
Rob Braxman Tech
232K subscribers
This past week on Feb 2 - Feb 7, 2021 a massive attack was conducted on encrypted services, particular VPN's. VPN traffic was throttled to near unusability.
Basically in 2021, the Great Firewall of the USA was turned on. And then abrubtly turned off.
Purpose of the action was unknown. No party stepped up to acknowledge and aside from me, no one has stepped up to call any Internet Provider of their egregious action against privacy minded people.
Why did this attack happen?
Why did the attack stop?
Which company is responsible?
Is this because of a government mandate?
Why the concerted efforts with cable companies to throttle on the other side?
Was it because they had network congestion and were just trying to deal with that? But why the selective choice of throttling the people interested in privacy?
Since VPN's can cloak themselves, why even bother to do this since at best the effect is temporary?
Let's discuss all this.
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Boomer Tech Troglodyte me is confused. I've been told I should have a VPN. Is that still true. I don't really understand , , ,
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Boomer Tech Troglodyte me is confused. I've been told I should have a VPN. Is that still true. I don't really understand , , ,
A VPN is a good thing. The above information implies that a three letter agency may be testing a China-like control of the American public's internet access.
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Boomer Tech Troglodyte me is confused. I've been told I should have a VPN. Is that still true. I don't really understand , , ,
A VPN is a good thing. The above information implies that a three letter agency may be testing a China-like control of the American public's internet access.
Yes. I watched the video and the speaker has credibility with me. Sounds like someone shut down certain things on the internet, at least where he is, VPNs appeared to be targeted. I don't take from that the privacy and security inside the VPNs was breached, but that service was targeted and interrupted.
A virtual private network [VPN] as I understand it is like an envelope enclosing your data as it runs through the 'public' internet. Looks like it needs to be replaced or supplemented with private, closed networks that do not travel through internet protocol. How to do that? I don't know. Our all-knowing, all-powerful government requires access to our networks.
In Communist China, the filtering and monitoring of every communication is a 24/7/365 operation.
This shutdown, if intentional by an agency or predator, shows us we have the same vulnerabilities and maybe only slightly better governance. Someone can shut down our most private communications.
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https://www.mercatus.org/publications/technology-and-innovation/dynamic-competition-digital-markets-critical-analysis-house
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Doug:
What can you tell us about Mercatus?
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Doug:
What can you tell us about Mercatus?
.
I was looking up economics writer Veronique de Rugy who I think has worked with Cato and Heritage.
"The Mercatus Center at George Mason University is the world's premier university source for market-oriented ideas—bridging the gap between academic research and public policy problems."
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https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/when-corporations-become-more-powerful-government-our-definition-big-brother-needs
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https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/when-corporations-become-more-powerful-government-our-definition-big-brother-needs
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https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/when-corporations-become-more-powerful-government-our-definition-big-brother-needs
Look up.
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What can I say? I have good taste :-D :-D :-D
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9269871/Australia-claims-victory-Google-tech-giant-agrees-generous-deals-media-companies.html
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https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2021/02/19/canada-vows-follow-australias-lead-charge-facebook-news-content/
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/youtube-takes-down-new-trump-interview_3704154.html?utm_source=morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-02-21
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https://thefreethoughtproject.com/censorship-conference-dangers-censored-by-youtube/
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With Democrats in Power, the U.S. Push Against Big Tech Grows
12 MIN READFeb 24, 2021 | 22:33 GMT
A picture taken in London on Dec. 18, 2020, shows the logos of Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft displayed on a mobile phone and laptop screen.
A picture taken in London on Dec. 18, 2020, shows the logos of Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft displayed on a mobile phone and laptop screen.
(JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images)
As momentum builds in the United States for landmark antitrust legislation and lawsuits on Big Tech companies, potential changes to U.S. mergers law and limits on growth avenues for large tech firms like Google could impact U.S. dominance in the global tech space, increasing competition with Chinese and European firms. On Feb. 4, U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, the new chair of the Senate’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, introduced a new bill aimed at updating the United States’ antitrust laws. The so-called Competition and Antitrust Law Enforcement Reform Act (CALERA) proposes giving more resources to antitrust investigators, as well as rewriting the way that mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are reviewed over antitrust concerns. Although it has not yet been presented to U.S. President Joe Biden, the draft bill does give hints about how the new Democratic-led government could treat antitrust law reforms and tackle Big Tech.
CALERA was introduced after U.S. state or federal regulators filed several major suits against Google and Facebook — marking the biggest antitrust salvo against large tech companies since the United States v. Microsoft Corp. case in 2001.
Big Tech’s growing market share, impact on smaller companies, and growing political and social clout have put a bipartisan bullseye on their backs. Google and its parent company Alphabet Inc. have faced the most intense scrutiny due to the fact that it has over 90 percent of the global internet search market, nearly a third of the United States’ online digital advertising market, nearly 70 percent of the internet browser market and nearly 40 percent of the smartphone OS market — making it a monopoly or involved in a duopoly in a number of different areas. Amazon’s dominance in e-commerce and cloud computing has also placed its practices under scrutiny, as has Facebook’s wide-ranging social media presence. Facebook, Amazon and Twitter’s move to ban former U.S. President Donald Trump and/or Parler, a social media site that many of his supporters have flocked to, following the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol siege have since drawn even more attention to the vast power these companies hold.
In 2020, both Republicans and Democrats in the Senate and House called on Big Tech executives to testify at a number of hearings on their companies’ practices.
Former President Trump and the Republican Party have been especially critical of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, citing the leeway it gives internet companies to self-moderate content without legal liability.
Democrats have also been somewhat critical of Section 230, with Biden’s Commerce Secretary nominee, Gina Raimondo, saying she would back some modifications during her confirmation hearing.
Evolving U.S. Attitudes on Antitrust and Big Business
The intense antitrust scrutiny on Big Tech is a sign that the ideological current in the United States towards enforcement of antitrust rules is undergoing a major transition. The introduction and aggressive enforcement of the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act made the United States a global pioneer in modern antitrust laws. But for much of the last 40 years, the rise of the Chicago school of thought has dominated the way that antitrust law enforcement has played out. The Chicago school rejected previously aggressive antitrust enforcement and argued that economic analysis should be the only critical test of whether or not a company harmed consumers, rather than solely possessing significant power through market share. This view has since been backed by numerous Supreme Court rulings and has aided the growth of large U.S. multinational corporations, including those in the tech sector. The European Union’s anti-competition rules, by contrast, focus less on damage to consumers and more on abusing market share to limit the entry of rivals.
The current cases filed against Facebook and Google may not be enough to mollify policymakers’ concerns, as any ruling against the two companies would not rewrite the broader U.S. regulatory environment needed to prevent the rise of other large technology firms. Given the high standard that must be proven in order for antitrust enforcement cases to succeed, most of the cases that have been filed against Facebook and Google have been narrowed to something that might be winnable. And even then, regulators might be fighting an uphill battle. Antitrust cases in the United States have also so far focused purely on Google and Facebook, and on not addressing concerns about other large tech firms such as Apple and Amazon.
In a case filed against Google in October, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is accusing the company of using exclusivity agreements in “unlawfully maintaining monopolies” in the search and advertising search markets. The narrow nature of this case is reminiscent of the 1990s landmark case against Microsoft, in which the DOJ argued that the bundling of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer created an unfair advantage in the web browser market. The ruling did not result in the breakup of Microsoft, but rather a settlement with limited fines and restrictions. The case, in fact, may have helped propel Google and Amazon to become the giants they are today by preventing Microsoft from stopping their rise.
An ongoing Texas antitrust lawsuit against Google has the potential to have a large impact on the company, but the chances of it succeeding are less likely than other antitrust cases. Texas and nine other states are alleging that Google and Facebook unlawfully rigged ad markets and that Google has maintained a monopoly on both sides by operating as a buyer and seller. But the strongest allegations were heavily redacted in their initial filing, leaving the case’s outlook unclear. The case might also be overly politicized, as no Democratic state attorney general joined the case. It also comes as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is under an FBI investigation over abuse of power. Nonetheless, if the case were to succeed, courts across the state would be asked to force Google to sell off some of its businesses. But while this would take a decent hit on Google’s business (as well as potentially Facebook, which was named as a co-conspirator), the ruling would not directly affect other large tech companies.
The changes proposed in the CALERA legislation center on two key pillars: leveling the playing field when it comes to the DOJ and Federal Trade Commission’s ( FTC’s) ability to win cases, and adjusting the United States’ largely archaic antitrust laws to better suit the fast-evolving tech sector. One key shift would be how M&As are reviewed for potential antitrust concerns. A presumption of unlawfulness would be made for any M&As that would increase market concentration above 50 percent, transactions over $5 billion, acquisitions of $50 million or more by companies valued at more than $100 billion, and take over “maverick” companies disrupting an industry. Companies wanting to engage in such M&As would be required to prove that they do not result in increased market concentration and harm competition, shifting the burden away from regulators to the companies themselves.
The legislation would give more resources and oversight power to the DOJ and FTC, which are both severely understaffed and underfunded when it comes to investigations compared with the financial firepower that Alphabet Inc. (Google’s parent company), Amazon and Facebook harness.
The bill also proposes doing away with a standard set in the 1914 Clayton Act, which only prohibits mergers that “substantially” impact competition, and replacing it with a new standard that would prohibit mergers that risk of “materially lessening” competition (with “material” effectively defined as non-trivial). CALERA would also update the Clayton Act by making monopsonies (market dominance by a single buyer) subject to various rules and laws, including M&A oversight.
The Connection Between Monopolies and “Network Goods”
Tech companies frequently deal in what is known as “network goods” — that is, goods that see their value increase the more that they are used by others. Facebook’s value to an individual user, for example, increases as their friends and family also join the network. This dynamic naturally tends to lead to market concentration in a monopolistic fashion. In 2019, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, David Autor, published the first empirical data on the impact of amassing market concentration in this fashion. Autor and his colleagues’ academic research suggests that productivity (i.e. innovation) is increasing faster in industries that are experiencing a higher level of concentration. The same research, however, also suggests that there could be a negative impact on job creation and inequality, suggesting a trade-off between the two.
Any final bill that passes may be watered-down, given U.S. tech companies’ vast lobbying power and the fact that any legislative changes would need limited Republican buy-in. Although there is bipartisan support for targeting large tech companies, Democrats and Republicans differ significantly on what to focus on and how aggressive reforms should be. House Democrats finished an investigation into monopolies in digital markets in October 2020, publishing a list of recommendations — some of which are included in Klobuchar’s bill. In response, a group of House Republicans released their own proposal, which they’ve described as the “Third Way” to enforcement.
The House Democrats’ October recommendations proposed “structural separations” in the sector by barring the practice of large platforms operating in “adjacent lines of business.” Proponents of this measure argue that it would help increase competition by prohibiting tech companies from selling their own products on their platforms (i.e. allowing Amazon from selling AmazonBasics products on its own online marketplace).
The CALERA bill proposed by Klobuchar, a moderate in the Democratic Party, does not include the Democrats’ proposed “structural separations,” which would force the break up of some of the companies and limit vertical and horizontal integration. House Democrats have compared this separation of business lines as a Glass-Steagall Act for the tech industry (the 1932 act, which has since largely been repealed, separated investment banking from commercial banking).
Several House Republicans have heavily criticized the proposal to force the separation of business lines. They’ve also criticized the passing of nondiscrimination rules that would require large companies to offer equal terms for equal services, which would stifle small- and medium-sized businesses. But Republicans have also expressed support for increasing resources for the FTC and DOJ, as well as shifting how the burden of proof operates in mergers, and requiring personal user data to be interoperable and portable. They’ve said that common ground could be found on monopoly reform as well, but have expressed reservations about the exact changes proposed in CALERA.
Any legislation that can pass Congress would likely focus on addressing rules governing M&As and increasing the resources available for antitrust enforcement — neither of which would have an immediate impact on the size and scope of Big Tech companies. Shifts in merger law would only have a long-term impact by limiting future potential acquisitions and not retroactively apply to acquisitions already made. Increased resources for antitrust enforcement would probably lead to more cases being filed against Big Tech, but antitrust cases take years to finalize and the five launched last year are unlikely to be fully resolved for several years. There does not appear to be common ground for a Glass-Steagall-like act for the tech sector, which would have a more significant impact on the companies.
In the short term, the growing legal and legislative antitrust push in the United States will only have a limited impact on U.S. competitiveness in the tech industry vis-a-vis China. But in the long term, moves to separate large companies’ business lines or significantly restrict their ability to grow through M&As could ultimately limit the United States’ ability to dominate the international tech market. This would likely aid the global growth of rival Chinese firms and open the door for more non-U.S. competitors in the future. M&As to acquire startups is one way that a large company can quickly scale up a new technology and integrate it into the emerging platform economy. U.S. tech companies also often use such M&As as so-called “acquihires,” where the acquisition is less about the technology and more about a backdoor on hiring talent. A Glass-Steagall-like rule forcing the breakup of the large companies or restricting their ability to operate in future adjacent business lines would have an even greater impact, even if the likelihood of it being implemented through legislation is less likely. If U.S. tech companies’ market share or scope of standards-essential patents declines, so too will the United States’ influence on setting global standards in future emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence and 6G.
U.S. restrictions on Big Tech would not only aid the European Union’s own crackdowns against the tech sector, but it could also make it easier for European tech companies to emerge and potentially rival the scale and scope of their U.S. counterparts in time. Exacerbated by cultural and language barriers, the fragmented legal and regulatory environment in the European Union has limited the cross-border growth of tech companies in the bloc. The European Union has been trying to remedy this situation through its Digital Single Market policy. Large U.S. companies have the financial power to get around these constraints and have, on a number of occasions, acquired European start-ups. Protecting European tech sovereignty from such acquisitions and stripping down the dominance of U.S. tech companies has become a common refrain in Europe. And any concerted effort by the United States to limit Big Tech’s growth or potential to carry out M&A activity will only aid the European Union.
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17104/big-tech-big-brother
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https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2021/03/04/youtube-blacklists-donald-trumps-cpac-speech-suspends-rsbn-channel/
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https://nationalfile.com/demonic-twitter-bans-lauren-witzke-for-criticizing-trans-woman-who-says-little-girls-are-kinky/
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https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/03/10/zuckerbergs-fwd-us-to-amnesty-advocates-dont-talk-about-jobs-and-wages/
:x
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/free-the-news/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20210313_Weekend_Jolt&utm_term=Jolt-Smart
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/all-red-states-must-join-gov-desantis-to-restrain-big-tech_3732292.html?utm_source=morningbrief&utm_medium=email&email=craftydog@earthlink.net&utm_campaign=mb-2021-03-14
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second
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2021/03/14/former-facebook-insider-explains-zuckerbergs-privacy-war-with-apple/
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(https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/mollie_hemingway_newt_gingrich_locked_out_twitter_03-14-2021.jpg)
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/mollie_hemingway_newt_gingrich_locked_out_twitter_03-14-2021.jpg
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https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7adn9/car-location-data-telematics-us-military-ulysses-group
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https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7adn9/car-location-data-telematics-us-military-ulysses-group
If I'm reading the company document correctly, in 2020, 95% of cars sold in US are "connected", 100% in Europe.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20515641-otonomo-presentation
I was thinking of other issues, but I knew it will eventually be necessary to get set for life with good, older vehicles before they can't be found anymore, and hope to be grandfathered in.
I would like to know exactly what cars are and are not "connected cars". It looks like it started with GM 'On Star' in 1996 and escalated in 2014 with Google, Apple, Nvidia and a lot of auto manufacturers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connected_car
------------------------------------------------
"Imagine your $60,000 car sitting there in the garage, completely useless, while the screen in its console displays instructions for paying $500 in Bitcoins to an unknown hacker in a dark corner of the Internet."
https://askbobrankin.com/should_you_buy_a_connected_car.html
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https://www.yourmechanic.com/article/how-to-disable-onstar-by-elan-mcafee
https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7adn9/car-location-data-telematics-us-military-ulysses-group
If I'm reading the company document correctly, in 2020, 95% of cars sold in US are "connected", 100% in Europe.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20515641-otonomo-presentation
I was thinking of other issues, but I knew it will eventually be necessary to get set for life with good, older vehicles before they can't be found anymore, and hope to be grandfathered in.
I would like to know exactly what cars are and are not "connected cars". It looks like it started with GM 'On Star' in 1996 and escalated in 2014 with Google, Apple, Nvidia and a lot of auto manufacturers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connected_car
------------------------------------------------
"Imagine your $60,000 car sitting there in the garage, completely useless, while the screen in its console displays instructions for paying $500 in Bitcoins to an unknown hacker in a dark corner of the Internet."
https://askbobrankin.com/should_you_buy_a_connected_car.html
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I think that comes to 700 K per head
https://www.newsmax.com/finance/streettalk/google-investment-jobs/2021/03/18/id/1014241/
what they don't say is they are going to pack with migrants and visa holders from Asia etc
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https://reclaimthenet.org/facebook-removes-colorado-shooting-suspects-page/
Protect the narrative.
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https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2021/03/25/dem-rep-schakowsky-were-going-to-regulate-tech-companies-and-there-must-be-limitations-on-user-content/
They are not interested in free speech
they are interested in limiting speech
anything they decide is * false * they want to make big tech liable
we want big tech to stop limiting conservatives the dems are going after them precisely for that reason
to limit us.
I am sure the schakowsky will have no problem taking donations from big tech .
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The way to bring google, facebook, twitter down a notch is competition and innovative disruption.
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https://thefederalist.com/2021/04/05/clarence-thomas-provides-legal-roadmap-to-tearing-down-social-media-censorship/
“It changes nothing that these platforms are not the sole means for distributing speech or information,” Thomas wrote. “But in assessing whether a company exercises substantial market power, what matters is whether the alternatives are comparable. For many of today’s digital platforms, nothing is.”
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9433271/Leaker-says-offering-private-details-500-million-Facebook-users.html
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Scientists From Oxford, Harvard, and Princeton Talked COVID With DeSantis. YouTube Deleted It
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/04/10/youtube-memory-holes-desantis-covid-19-roundtable-with-medical-experts-n1438954
ELIMINATE.YOUTUBE.NOW.
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https://amgreatness.com/2021/04/15/james-okeefe-vows-to-sue-twitter-after-hes-permanently-banned-from-platform/
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/facebook-and-instagram-block-users-from-sharing-ny-post-report-on-blm-co-founders-multi-million-dollar-property-purchases_3778495.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-04-17&mktids=ed5be342b34b9cee1f28142354088cfc&est=cTEGlwLUAgLrpaD68clq783oPcszBvL0k9WyFCjGySSU14O95PraMv1Mclw0KUXO5vva
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To "trust"
or anti - trust:
https://townhall.com/columnists/stephenmoore/2021/04/20/gop-trustbusters-are-embracing-progressives-agenda-n2588180
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To "trust"
of anti - trust:
https://townhall.com/columnists/stephenmoore/2021/04/20/gop-trustbusters-are-embracing-progressives-agenda-n2588180
FaceHugger mouthpiece.
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https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/072/317/870/original/a9bc9a66f11ec179.png
(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/072/317/870/original/a9bc9a66f11ec179.png)
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Can that be real?
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Can that be real?
Ask Lebron.
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9508427/Big-Tech-moguls-donated-millions-groups-tied-BLM-founder-Patrisse-Cullors.html
"And the cozy relationship has even seen Facebook and Twitter censor perceived criticism of Cullors, with Facebook going so far as to block users from sharing a DailyMail.com article detailing a controversy over her expensive real estate holdings."
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It's a book, it's a call for antitrust action, it's a call for the repeal of section 230. Josh Hawley was on the Hugh Hewitt show today.
Hugh included a clip of himself interviewing Mark Zuckerberg regarding this Council one year ago.
But we can't repeal section 230 because big Tech is now an arm of the DNC. This opens IMO the opportunity for Republicans to take the side of free speech and privacy rights and take a strong stand against big Tech.
https://hughhewitt.com/
https://hughhewitt.com/mark-zuckerberg-on-facebook-shops-a-challenge-to-amazon-presidents-xi-and-trump-and-ccp-disinformation-fbs-oversight-board-amd-joe-bidens-dislike-of-him/?highlight=zuckerberg
I don't see the Hawley interview posted yet.
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/biden-supports-big-tech-cracking-down-on-disinformation-white-house-says_3805123.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-05-07&mktids=6a9e235df516cfbc92413d9ea6bb2f08&est=KnNraX8V6i7NJs0sKQS9gCOBvVarYLh9CB7ZARKrz%2F9pSL%2FXHMjwiNA5rP2Gqn3GzKTh
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https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2021/05/07/rebel-news-blacklisted-by-paypal/
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPn2zH_8OmY
He also railed against lockdowns.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPn2zH_8OmY
Brave artist. Can't believe these aren't parodies.
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Haven't read this yet.
Probably lefty.
=============
Everything You’ve Heard About Section 230 Is Wrong
These hallowed 26 words shield internet companies from being held responsible for what people post and share. But the web’s most sacred law is a false idol.
A Sacred Tablet of Section 230
ILLUSTRATION: ZAK TEBBAL
THE LIE WAS sort of funny, until it wasn't. In the weeks after the 2020 election, as Donald Trump’s quest to remain in office met one courtroom defeat after another, his shrinking legal team concocted a baroque conspiracy theory to explain how the presidency had been stolen. At a surreal press conference in late November, Trump’s lawyers, Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani—the latter dripping with mysteriously brown-tinged sweat—explained that Dominion Voting Systems was secretly linked to rival voting machine company Smartmatic, both of which, they said, had been created in Venezuela under the direction of Hugo Chávez for the purpose of systematically rigging elections. George Soros and the Clinton Foundation were possibly in on the scheme as well.
This performance was met with widespread derision; on Twitter, Trump’s own recently fired election security czar, Christopher Krebs, called it “the most dangerous 1hr 45 minutes of television in American history.” But among millions of Trump supporters, the allegations of electoral fraud caught fire. Newsmax, One America News Network, and Fox broadcast the claims to their cable TV audiences, with Lou Dobbs referring to Smartmatic as “a company that was founded in 2005 in Venezuela for the specific purpose of fixing elections.” In no time the conspiracy theory was racing through the right-wing precincts of social media, where it erupted into bizarre memes and frenzied calls to action. The journey from farce to tragedy reached its nadir on January 6, when a mob of Trump supporters, urged by the outgoing president to “stop the steal,” violently stormed the US Capitol.
They say a lie gets halfway around the world while the truth is still tying its shoes. In this case, the lie seemed to have circled the globe, gotten the truth in a headlock, and then plowed it backward across the National Mall.
But then something unexpected happened: The truth got a lawyer. In February, Smartmatic filed a defamation lawsuit for more than $2.7 billion against Fox, Giuliani, and Powell. Dominion filed suits of its own seeking more than $1 billion each from Fox News, Giuliani, Powell, and Trump mega-supporter Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, who had helped spread the vote-fixing claim. Suddenly, with money on the line, the TV networks grew more circumspect. Fox and Newsmax ran awkward disclaimers renouncing their own hosts’ coverage. Fox Business canceled Lou Dobbs Tonight, its highest-rated show, a day after Smartmatic named Dobbs as a defendant. A Newsmax anchor tried to cut off Lindell when the pillow tycoon began veering into Dominion territory during an on-air interview; the host eventually walked off the set in frustration.
America is a liar’s paradise. The First Amendment gives wide berth to hucksters, charlatans, and gaslighters under the wise premise that the government generally shouldn’t get to decide what’s true and what isn’t. But the legal system does impose certain limits on speech. The Smartmatic and Dominion lawsuits showed that there can, in fact, be a significant cost associated with inventing, popularizing, and perhaps profiting off of such a Big Lie.
Not for everyone, though. As some commentators noted, one group was conspicuously absent from the cast of defendants accused of amplifying the voting machine myth: social media companies. Unlike traditional publishers and broadcasters, which can be sued for publishing a defamatory claim, neither Facebook nor YouTube nor Parler nor Gab had to fear any legal jeopardy for their role in helping the lie spread. For that, they have one law to thank: Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
Passed in 1996, Section 230 provides that online platforms—or “interactive computer services,” in the legislative argot of the time—generally can’t be held legally responsible for material posted by users. Among the public, this sweeping indemnification remained a pretty obscure fact of life on the internet for the first two decades of the law’s existence. But in the past few years, amid a general fit of panic over today’s platform giants and their possible incompatibility with civilization, democracy, and human flourishing, Section 230 has fallen under a cloud of scrutiny. Strong opinions about it have multiplied—as have threats to repeal it from both sides of the aisle in Washington.
Democrats argue that Section 230 lets companies get away with doing too little moderation; Republicans tend to say it lets them get away with too much. Still, there may be just enough bipartisan overlap for reform legislation to emerge from the gauntlet of Congress. So far, there is no consensus on what that reform should look like. The resolution of this tangled debate could have massive consequences for the internet, not only in the US, but in every country where online discourse takes place on platforms that are subject to American law.
This reckoning has all the makings of a barbarians-at-the-gate moment for the companies that benefit from Section 230’s protections. But not only for them. Over the years, Section 230 has attracted a small but ardent following of people who view it with the kind of idealistic veneration more often reserved for the First Amendment. According to its admirers, Section 230 is the wellspring from which everything good about the modern internet emerged—a protector of free speech, a boon to innovation, and a cornerstone of the American economy. The oft-quoted title of a book by the lawyer Jeff Kosseff captures this line of thinking well. It refers to the law’s main provision as “the 26 words that created the internet.”
Another article of faith among Section 230’s champions? That people who criticize the law have no clue what they’re talking about. Section 230 recently turned 25 years old, and the occasion was celebrated by a virtual event whose sponsors included Twitter, Amazon, and Yelp. Senator Ron Wyden and former congressman Chris Cox, the authors of the statute, fielded questions from the audience, typed into a chat window. The most upvoted question was, “How best can we get folks to properly understand Sec 230? Particularly when it seems that many are either reluctant to realize they don’t understand or, even worse, they don’t want to understand?”
Exhibit A for these Section 230 advocates is the moment in May 2020 when Trump started publicly attacking the law, thrusting it into the national shouting match. Trump’s preferred platform, Twitter, had recently had the temerity to fact-check one of his tweets. Trump’s response took a cue from some other Republican provocateurs, most notably senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, who have popularized a theory that Section 230 gives social media platforms legal cover to discriminate against conservatives. Heading into the November presidential election, hostility toward the law grew into one of Trump’s favorite talking points. “Big Tech, Section 230, right?” he mused to an Ohio crowd in October. “Big Tech is corrupt.”
Trump’s opponent was not much friendlier to the statute. In January 2020, then candidate Joe Biden, in response to a general question about the power of tech platforms, blurted out that “Section 230 should be revoked, immediately should be revoked.” The comment seemed to stem from Biden’s lingering anger over a misleading attack ad against him that Facebook had refused to block.
Section 230 is not the bogeyman of Trump’s stump speeches, but neither is it the pixie dust making the internet a magical place for free speech and innovation.
Neither man’s beef with the law is terribly coherent. Section 230 shields platforms from legal liability, but there isn’t anything unlawful in the first place about a sharp-elbowed attack ad that bends the truth. Ditto for Trump’s complaints: Even if social media platforms did discriminate against conservative viewpoints, it’s perfectly legal to have a partisan bias, as every waking second of American life makes clear. More generally, politicians and pundits often seem to blame Section 230 for whatever they happen to dislike about the internet, whether or not it really applies—or they lash out at the law simply because they know it’s precious to companies they loathe.
So, yes, a lot of people who complain about Section 230 don’t know what they’re talking about. And yet the story told by the pro-230 camp contains its share of mythology as well. Section 230 is not the bogeyman of Trump’s stump speeches, but neither is it the pixie dust making the internet a magical place for free speech and innovation. To understand the law, you have to know not just what it says but how it came to be and how it has been interpreted—and sometimes misinterpreted—by judges during its 25-year existence. Once you do that, the picture that emerges is very different from the one painted by either side of the kill-it-or-keep-it debate.
In fact, Section 230 may be more like Dumbo’s supposedly magic feather: a talisman the internet has been clutching for dear life for 25 years, terrified of finding out whether online discourse could fly without it.
II
The Moderator’s Dilemma
Section 230 is often described as a law about free speech—a sort of First Amendment for cyberspace. But it’s really about a much less glamorous area of law: torts.
Tort law is how the legal system holds people responsible when they wrong someone else. (Tort is French for “a wrong.”) It is part of the common-law tradition stretching back to medieval England, when judges, weighing in on a single dispute at a time, gradually shaped the law of the land. One area of tort doctrine—defamation—is particularly relevant to Section 230. A defamation case is when you sue someone who told a lie that hurt your reputation. Or, even more relevantly, someone who published that lie. Under the so-called republication rule, if I falsely claim that you committed a crime, and a newspaper prints that claim, you can sue both the newspaper and me. So news organizations have to be very careful about reporting incendiary accusations. (If the accusation concerns a public figure, American publications can be a little less careful. The Supreme Court ruled in the 1960s that public figures can win a defamation suit only if they can prove the lie was made deliberately or recklessly.)
In the early days of the internet, it wasn’t clear how judges would apply the republication rule to online platforms. The first case to test the waters was Cubby v. CompuServe, decided in 1991 in a federal district court. CompuServe was one of the first major US internet service providers, and it hosted a number of news forums. A company called Cubby Inc. complained that someone had posted lies about it on one of those forums. It wanted to hold CompuServe liable under the republication rule, on the theory that hosting a forum was analogous to publishing a newspaper. But the judge disagreed. CompuServe, he observed, didn’t exercise any editorial control over the forum. It was basically a passive host, more like a distributor than a publisher. “CompuServe has no more editorial control over such a publication than does a public library, book store, or newsstand, and it would be no more feasible for CompuServe to examine every publication it carries for potentially defamatory statements than it would be for any other distributor to do so,” he wrote in his opinion.
The Cubby decision was a relief to the nascent internet industry. But if CompuServe avoided liability because it didn’t moderate its forums, did that mean a provider would be held liable if it did moderate its platform?
Four years later, a state judge on Long Island answered that question in the affirmative. This time the defendant was Prodigy, another giant online service provider in the early internet era. An anonymous user on Prodigy’s Money Talk bulletin board had posted that the leaders of an investment banking firm called Stratton Oakmont were a bunch of liars and crooks. Stratton Oakmont sued for $200 million, arguing that Prodigy should be treated as a publisher.
Unlike CompuServe, Prodigy proudly advertised its ability to screen content to preserve a family-friendly environment. Judge Stuart Ain held that fact against the company. He seized on comments in which Prodigy’s head of communications compared the company’s moderation policies to the editorial decisions made by a newspaper. “Prodigy’s conscious choice, to gain the benefits of editorial control, has opened it up to a greater liability than CompuServe and other computer networks that make no such choice,” he wrote in his opinion. The company could be held liable as a publisher.
It was just one case, in one New York state trial court, but it put the fear of God into the tech industry. Ain’s logic set up the ultimate perverse incentive: The more a platform tried to protect its users from things like harassment or obscenity, the greater its risk of losing a lawsuit became. This situation, sometimes referred to as the moderator’s dilemma, threatened to turn the growing internet into either an ugly free-for-all or a zone of utter blandness. Do nothing and filth will overrun your platform; do something and you could be sued for anything you didn’t block.
To counteract Ain’s decision, a pair of congressmen, Republican Chris Cox and Democrat Ron Wyden, teamed up to find a legislative solution to the moderator’s dilemma. At the time, Congress was working on something called the Communications Decency Act, a censorious law that would criminalize spreading “indecent” material online. Cox and Wyden came up with language that was inserted into the bill, and that became Section 230 of the act. Much of the rest of the decency law would be struck down almost immediately by the Supreme Court on constitutional grounds, but Section 230 survived.
It was the ultimate perverse incentive: The more a platform tried to protect its users from things like harassment or obscenity, the greater its risk of losing a lawsuit became.
For such a consequential statute, Section 230 is unusually concise. There are two key provisions. The second, subsection (c)(2), says, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.”
Translation: Forget the Stratton Oakmont case. A platform can protect its users without putting itself in legal jeopardy.
But it’s the first part of the law, subsection (c)(1), that has proven more consequential. Cox and Wyden understood that the potential volume of content on interactive platforms was so immense that internet companies could never exercise the same level of control as traditional media. Treating internet providers as publishers could make them too cautious, stifling the potential of the internet as a medium for free expression. And so Cox and Wyden decided to establish a baseline degree of legal immunity for platforms, regardless of whether they engaged in content moderation. They did this in the famous 26 words: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”
One part of Section 230 got rid of the moderator’s dilemma. The other, however, would end up creating dilemmas of its own.
III
Full Immunity
On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh detonated a bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people in the deadliest single act of domestic terrorism in US history. Six days later, some very strange posts began appearing on an AOL bulletin board, advertising “Naughty Oklahoma T-Shirts” that featured phrases mocking the victims of the bombing. The ads, posted by a user with the handle KEN ZZ03, listed a phone number to call to order the shirts.
That phone number belonged to Kenneth Zeran, a Seattle-based TV producer and artist. Zeran did not post the ads and had no idea who had. (To this day, the identity of the poster remains a mystery.) Before long he was inundated with threatening phone calls from people understandably outraged by the tastelessness of T-shirts with slogans like “Visit Oklahoma … It’s a blast!!!” Things got even worse when a radio host encouraged his listeners to call Zeran and give him a piece of their minds. According to Zeran, AOL didn’t do nearly enough to deal with the problem, despite his repeated requests for help. Eventually, he got a lawyer, and in April 1996—two months after the passage of Section 230—he sued AOL in federal court.
Prodigy and CompuServe had taken their turns on the witness stand. Now the last of the old Big Three online service providers would get its moment, and this time the outcome would cement the future of internet law.
AOL raised the brand-new statute in its defense, arguing that it couldn’t be held responsible for posts by its users. Zeran’s lawyers countered that their case didn’t actually rely on the republication rule. They sued AOL for negligence, and as a distributor, not a publisher. Once AOL was put on notice, they argued, it had a duty to try to block the posts.
Zeran’s case was the first crucial test of how Section 230 would be interpreted by judges. The text said that an interactive computer service couldn’t be treated as the publisher of information provided by someone else. But did that mean it couldn’t be held responsible at all? Or were other forms of liability, like negligent distribution, still on the table?
They were not. In an opinion for the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a prominent conservative, ruled in favor of AOL. Section 230, he noted, was designed for exactly this type of situation. It might make sense to hold a traditional distributor liable for defamatory material once it’s put on notice, Wilkinson reasoned, but “the sheer number of postings on interactive computer services would create an impossible burden.” The ruling went further than protecting platforms from defamation suits. Section 230, Wilkinson held, “plainly immunizes computer service providers like AOL from liability for information that originates with third parties.” What kind of liability? What kind of information? Any kind, apparently.
The law was supposed to encourage online service providers to police their platforms without fear. Yet it removed a major legal incentive for them to police their platforms at all.
Wilkinson’s use of the word “immunity,” which isn’t in the statute itself, was key. A legal immunity allows a defendant to swat away a lawsuit with a minimum of time and money—even if every fact the plaintiff alleges is true.
Because it was the only case interpreting this brand-new law about this brand-new domain called the internet, Wilkinson’s decision assumed the status of a quasi–Supreme Court precedent. Courts around the country immediately began citing Wilkinson’s “immunity” line to dismiss cases brought against internet companies at the earliest stage of litigation. They often did this grudgingly, essentially concluding that the law forced their hand. “While Congress could have made a different policy choice, it opted not to hold interactive computer services liable,” noted one early decision citing Zeran.
Wilkinson’s ruling revealed a paradox at the heart of Section 230. The law was supposed to encourage online service providers to police their platforms without fear. It was, after all, part of a statute called the Communications Decency Act. And yet the first part of the law, the part Wilkinson now interpreted as an immunity, removed a major legal incentive for them to police their platforms at all. With a few exceptions (most notably copyright infringement and child pornography), providers would never be held responsible for material posted by users, no matter how clearly false or harmful. Even if they were put on notice, could easily fix the problem, and simply chose not to.
It must have been hard to see at the time how consequential that position would become. Zeran was decided in 1997. Just 2 percent of the world’s population was online. Over the subsequent decades, the internet would spread into more and more aspects of daily life. Section 230 and its peculiar set of incentives would spread with it.
IV
Bad Samaritans
If there was one moment when Section 230 started revealing its potential to make things really weird, it was in 2003, in a case called Batzel v. Smith. Ellen Batzel was a successful lawyer. Robert Smith was a handyman she’d hired to do some work on her house. They seem to have had some kind of falling out. In 1999, possibly to get revenge, Smith sent an email to Ton Cremers, the Dutch publisher of a listserv called Museum Security Network, claiming that Batzel’s house was full of art that had been stolen from Jews during World War II. He also wrote that Batzel had bragged about being Heinrich Himmler’s granddaughter. Cremers’ interest was piqued. He forwarded Smith’s email to his listserv audience and posted it on the MSN website.
Batzel, understandably, was not amused. The allegations, she said, were a pack of lies. She sued Smith for writing the email, arguing that it had ruined her professional reputation. But she also sued Cremers for publishing it to his audience.
At first glance, these facts don’t look like a Section 230 situation. Recall the law’s underlying theory: The scale of the internet prevents online platforms from moderating every word or image uploaded by users. Cremers, however, wasn’t a tech company sitting atop a tsunami of user-generated content. He was a guy who forwarded and published an email. Batzel wasn’t suing him for failing to take something down; she was suing him for choosing to put something up.
And yet Cremers’ lawyers raised the statute in his defense. They argued that because the email from Smith was technically “information provided by another information content provider,” Cremers couldn’t be sued for spreading it online. The case went up to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. In 2003 the court sided with Cremers. “Because Cremers did no more than select and make minor alterations to Smith’s e-mail, Cremers cannot be considered the content provider of Smith’s email for purposes of §230,” wrote judge Marsha Berzon, a prominent liberal, for the majority.
How did the court come to that decision? Simple. The judges did what US judges often do: They read the statute extremely literally. Section 230, remember, says that “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” And it defines an “information content provider” as “any person or entity that is responsible, in whole or in part, for the creation or development of information provided through the Internet or any other interactive computer service.” Put those pieces together and it does kind of sound like you can’t get in trouble for publishing something someone else emailed you.
This outcome, however, seems so far from the law’s original intent that even Section 230 coauthor Chris Cox believes Batzel was wrongly decided. Cox says that Section 230 was never supposed to let people on the internet get away with the exact same behavior that would land them in trouble offline. But if Cremers had done what he did using a bunch of envelopes and stamps, instead of email, he wouldn’t have been able to hide behind the statute. As the torts scholar Benjamin Zipursky has observed, in an article criticizing the logic of Batzel, “Anyone wishing to hurt another person by damaging her or his reputation is free to do so without accountability by finding a defamatory statement that someone else has made and broadcasting it to the world over the Internet.”
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ILLUSTRATION: ZAK TEBBAL
Nevertheless, the decision in Batzel v. Smith has been cited and followed by courts around the country, perhaps because it seems to follow the straightforward text of Section 230. One particularly galling example involves a website called The Dirty. The Dirty is a gossip site in the style of TMZ—except its subjects are ordinary people, not celebrities. A typical post involves a picture of a woman, often scantily clad, along with her full name and detailed allegations that she’s a cheater, a gold digger, or worse. In 2009, the victim of several such posts, a schoolteacher and Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader, brought a lawsuit against the website’s parent company and founder after posts appeared on The Dirty accusing her of sleeping with the entire football team and spreading sexually transmitted diseases—rumors that she said went viral at the high school where she taught.
The case made it all the way to the federal Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which held in 2014 that Section 230 protected The Dirty because the posts were submitted by users. The logic is a direct descendant of Batzel; indeed, the ruling cited Batzel eight times. As the opinion itself laid out, The Dirty wasn’t a message board or a social network where users could upload whatever they wanted. It received thousands of submissions each day, and founder Nik Richie or his staff would read them and select 150 to 200 to publish, often with some added commentary. It was, obviously, a publication that relied on outside submissions. And yet, following the literal logic of Batzel, the court held that Section 230 shielded it from liability.
Section 230 was supposed to protect websites that wanted to do the right thing. The very heading of the statute reads, “Protection for ‘Good Samaritan’ blocking and screening of offensive material.” (This is an echo of a common concept in tort law. All 50 states have some kind of Good Samaritan law that protects people who help in an emergency from being sued if things go wrong.) But cases like the lawsuit against The Dirty show how easy it is for the statute’s immunity provision to accomplish precisely the opposite result. As the legal scholars Danielle Citron and Ben Wittes put it, Section 230 has become a law that ensconces protections for “bad Samaritans.”
At least one company relies so heavily on Section 230 that its website has an entire section dedicated to explaining the law. RipoffReport.com is a repository of horror stories about businesses and individuals, like a Yelp that specializes in one-star reviews. It has a policy of never taking a post down, which it says is to preserve its credibility. But the site also encourages businesses marred by bad reports to pay several thousand dollars for its Corporate Advocacy Program. That fee buys those businesses a new, positive post if they pledge to make things right, which the site promises will appear more prominently in Google results than the original review. Though Ripoff Report disputes the characterization, its business model appears to be: Nice reputation you’ve got there; shame if anything were to happen to it. (A recent investigation by The New York Times found a whole ecosystem of websites whose owners profit by selling “removal” services to the people being maligned on them.) Ripoff Report has been sued repeatedly for defamation. But because it doesn’t create the content of the posts itself, courts have consistently held that Section 230 protects it.
The same theory protects the Craigslist of guns. In October 2012, a Wisconsin man who was barred from owning a gun (because his estranged wife had taken out a restraining order on him) found an easy workaround. He went to an online marketplace, Armslist.com, found a private seller, and bought a semiautomatic handgun from a guy in a McDonald’s parking lot. The next day, he went to the salon where his wife worked and shot her to death, along with two of her coworkers, before turning the gun on himself. The wife’s daughter sued Armslist for negligence and wrongful death, among other claims. Her lawyers argued that the company had essentially set itself up to facilitate illegal gun sales. It allowed users to filter their searches to show only private sellers, who don’t have to run background checks. And it allowed anyone to buy or sell guns, taking no steps to screen out people barred from owning one.
None of that mattered to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Even if the claims in the lawsuit were true—that is, even if it could be proven that Armslist intentionally facilitated illegal gun sales—Section 230 immunity applied. As long as Armslist didn’t help create posts itself, it was in the clear. That doesn’t mean the company would necessarily have lost the case otherwise, or that it will never have to worry about federal criminal prosecution. But it does mean, at a minimum, that thanks to Section 230, the families of people murdered with guns bought on Armslist can’t even force the site’s owners to defend their business practices in court.
The Armslist case is also telling for another reason: It was about commerce, not self-expression. In this respect, it is part of a robust line of Section 230 decisions that invoke the law to protect platforms devoted to business transactions. Free trade, not just free speech. Craigslist has used the law to ward off liability for hosting racially discriminatory housing ads. Companies like StubHub, eBay, Amazon, and Airbnb regularly invoke the statute as a defense against lawsuits and to avoid complying with regulations. They all describe themselves as platforms that host content—ticket offerings, apartment listings, products—created by third parties. These arguments don’t always succeed, but sometimes they do. One court recently ruled that Section 230 protects Amazon from liability for false advertising. Airbnb’s and HomeAway’s efforts to use Section 230 to stop municipalities from regulating them failed in San Francisco, but they worked in Anaheim. “After considering federal communications law, we won’t be enforcing parts of Anaheim’s short-term rental rules,” a city spokesperson said.
V
“Better Than the First Amendment”
You might think, given the facts of some of these Section 230 cases, that the law would have become rather controversial. In fact, within the world of internet lawyers and academics that would usually debate such things, and certainly within the tech industry, Section 230 was for years considered “a kind of sacred cow—an untouchable protection of near-constitutional status,” writes Danielle Citron, a law professor at the University of Virginia.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, for example, calls Section 230 “the most important law protecting internet speech.” So does Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
Citron, who won a MacArthur Fellowship in 2019, recalls giving a talk at a 2008 conference in which she proposed amending Section 230. She was just starting her career as an academic, and a well-known older professor approached her afterward. “Danielle, really happy to meet you, but you basically want to jail communists,” she recalls him saying. “Your challenging Section 230 is like stabbing the First Amendment in the heart.”
Discussions about Section 230 began to creep beyond the esoteric boundaries of internet-law conferences in late 2017, as Congress debated amending the law to carve out an exception for lawsuits based on sex-trafficking allegations. This was also around the time when Ted Cruz, crusading against the alleged scourge of anti-conservative bias in Silicon Valley, started insisting falsely that Section 230 required social media platforms to maintain a “neutral public forum.” The law had entered the zeitgeist, or at least a small corner of it. But as journalists started writing about Section 230, we tended to describe it in the same reverent tones that Citron encountered at the 2008 conference. “Lawmakers Don’t Grasp the Sacred Tech Law They Want to Gut,” read a WIRED headline in 2018.
“Danielle, really happy to meet you, but you basically want to jail communists,” he said. “Your challenging Section 230 is like stabbing the First Amendment in the heart.”
One man who has had an outsize effect on the way Section 230 is treated in public discussion is Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, where he codirects the High Tech Law Institute. He is also a prolific blogger, keeping seemingly exhaustive tabs on the latest developments in internet law, including rulings involving Section 230. Goldman has been writing about this area for so long that the Stratton Oakmont ruling, which Section 230 was created to overturn, cites a paper he published in 1993 while still in law school.
“He’s had extraordinary influence,” says Mary Anne Franks, a law professor at the University of Miami and the president of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative (where Citron is vice president). “In part because he’s a very smart person and he’s a scholar. It’s one thing when you’ve got people who are quite obviously tech lobbyists or part of the industry—that will only carry you so far. It really does mean something when you convince people in the scholarly community.” Goldman’s impact has been even greater in the media. He has for years been journalists’ go-to source on all things Section 230. He’s a reporter’s dream: encyclopedically knowledgeable, articulate, personable, and easy to get on the phone.
But Goldman is not only Section 230’s most up-to-speed observer; he may also be its biggest fan. When reporters call him for an expert quote, they get a very particular perspective—one capably summarized in the title of his 2019 paper, “Why Section 230 Is Better Than the First Amendment.” In Goldman’s view, the rise of platforms featuring user-generated content has been an incredible boon both to free speech and to America’s economic prosperity. The #MeToo movement; the more than $2 trillion combined market cap of Facebook and Alphabet; blogs, customer reviews, online marketplaces: We enjoy all of this thanks to Section 230, Goldman argues, and any reduction in the immunity the law provides could cause the entire fortress to crumble. No domain of user-generated content would be safe. If the law were repealed, he recently told the Committee to Protect Journalists, “comments sections for newspapers would easily go.”
Other guardians of 230 sound even more apocalyptic notes when the law comes up for debate. After a group of Democratic senators proposed a bill to limit the law’s protections in early February, Mike Masnick, founder of the venerable policy blog TechDirt, wrote that the changes could force him to shut down not just the comments section but his entire website. Section 230 coauthor Ron Wyden, now a US senator, said the bill would “devastate every part of the open internet.”
The stakes for online discourse, these arguments suggest, simply couldn’t be higher. You may be horrified by situations like the Armslist case or The Dirty, or any number of cases we don’t have room to talk about in which victims of harassment, bullying, and revenge porn have been unable to force internet platforms to take action. But would you be willing to trade everything you love about the online world to try to address those problems by reforming Section 230?
These apocalyptic arguments are only powerful, however, if they’re true. So let’s ask the question: What would the world look like if Section 230 had never been passed?
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VI
Alternate History
One thing's for sure: Today’s social media giants could not exist under the version of libel law applied in the Stratton Oakmont case. That decision, remember, said that a platform assumes the same liability as a publisher if it engages in any moderation whatsoever. But it’s almost unimaginable that one New York trial judge’s ruling, which sparked an immediate backlash, would have become the law of the land. Recall that defamation falls under common law, which is developed by judges over time as they apply precedents to new situations. For torts involving user-generated content, Section 230 aborted that process before it could begin. If the law hadn’t passed, judges in other jurisdictions would have gotten the opportunity to craft more reasonable applications of tort law to the new digital world.
In fact, another New York case against Prodigy that was initiated before Section 230 was passed offers an example of what this judicial path might have looked like. In Lunney v. Prodigy Services Co., a father sued Prodigy after someone opened up fake accounts impersonating his teenage son, then used those accounts to post vulgar comments on a bulletin board and send a threatening email in the son’s name. Prodigy had already deactivated the accounts, but the family wanted monetary damages. Midway through the case, Congress passed Section 230, and Prodigy asked for the new law to be applied retroactively. But the Court of Appeals of New York, the state’s highest court, said this was unnecessary. It had no problem applying common law principles to find that Prodigy wasn’t liable. The court ruled that Prodigy was analogous to a telecom company: Just as you can’t sue AT&T when someone impersonates you over the phone, the teenager’s parents couldn’t hold Prodigy liable for someone spoofing their son over email.
It didn’t rule that a company like Prodigy could never be held liable for something involving user-generated content. But, the court said, “if circumstances could be imagined in which an ISP would be liable for consequences that flow from the opening of false accounts, they do not present themselves here.”
The Lunney ruling is like a peek into an alternate timeline in which courts did what courts are expected to do: apply familiar principles of the law to new situations and changing circumstances. This process would not have been perfect; we’ve already seen how judges can screw things up. But in the long run, there’s no reason to think the legal system couldn’t have adapted tort law to the digital world.
Companies that perform infrastructure-like functions, like today’s Cloudflare or Amazon Web Services, or that provide neutral communication technology, like email, almost certainly wouldn’t have had to worry about what kind of behavior their clients allowed. As in Lunney, traditional standards of liability and causation would have protected them. (You can’t sue Xerox for selling a copier to someone who sends you a blackmail letter; you can’t sue Comcast for providing Wi-Fi to the hacker who drained your bank account.) Meanwhile, the courts gradually would have developed a more richly textured body of law around the legal responsibilities of the platforms that directly host user-generated content.
Maybe, as Lunney suggests, the common law would have developed something similar to the immunity provided by Section 230. But courts also could have come up with rules to take into account the troubling scenarios: bad Samaritan websites that intentionally, rather than passively, host illegal or defamatory content; platforms that refuse to take down libel, threats, or revenge porn, even after being notified. They might have realized that the publisher-distributor binary doesn’t capture social media platforms and might have crafted new standards to fit the new medium. Section 230, with its broad, absolute language, prevented this timeline from unfolding.
This hypothetical scenario isn’t even all that hypothetical. The United States is the only country with a Section 230, but it’s not the only country with both a common law tradition and the internet. Canada, for example, has nothing analogous to Section 230. Its libel law, meanwhile, is more pro-plaintiff, because it doesn’t have the strong protections of the First Amendment. Despite all that, user-generated content is alive and well north of the border. News sites have comments sections; ecommerce sites display user reviews. Neutral providers of hosting or cloud storage are not hauled into court for selling their services to bad guys.
It’s too late to scrap Section 230 completely. The question is how to change the law to address its worst side effects without placing internet companies under impossible legal burdens.
Yes, websites with user-generated content do have to be more careful. Jeff Elgie, the founder of Village Media, a network of local news sites in Canada, told me that the possibility of getting sued was one thing the company had to take into account when building its comments system, which combines AI with human moderation. But it’s hardly the extinction-level threat that Section 230 diehards warn about. (Elgie said that, overall, only around 5 to 10 percent of comments get blocked on Village Media sites, and only a small subset of those are for legal reasons.) It is simply not true that “the internet” relies on Section 230 for its continued existence.
In response to this observation, staunch supporters of Section 230 generally pivot. They concede that other countries have blogs and comments sections but point out that these countries haven’t produced user-generated content juggernauts like Facebook and YouTube. (Set aside China, which has a totally different legal system, a closed internet, and private companies that are more obedient to the state.) Section 230 might not be responsible for the internet’s literal existence, they say, but it is necessary for the internet as we know it.
There are a few ways to respond to this. One is that it’s hard to prove Section 230 is the reason for the success of American social media giants. The internet was invented in the US, which gave its tech sector an enormous head start. America’s biggest tech successes include corporate titans whose core businesses don’t depend on user-generated content: Microsoft, Apple, Amazon. Tesla didn’t become the world’s most valuable car company because of Section 230.
Another response is that even if Facebook does owe its wild success to Section 230, perhaps that’s not a reason to pop champagne. The reason we’re talking about reforming tech laws in the first place is that “the internet as we know it” often seems optimized less for users than for the shareholders of the largest corporations. Section 230’s defenders may be right that without it, Facebook and Google would not be the world-devouring behemoths they are today. If the law had developed slowly, if they faced potential liability for user behavior, the impossibility of careful moderation at scale might have kept them from growing as quickly as they did and spreading as far. What would we have gotten in their place? Perhaps smaller, more differentiated platforms, an ecosystem in which more conversations took place within intentional communities rather than in a public square full of billions of people, many of them behaving like lunatics.
VII
“Reasonable Steps”
As I said, that's an alternate timeline. From the vantage point of 2021, it’s probably too late to ditch Section 230 and let the courts figure it all out from scratch. Only Congress can scrape away the decades of judicial interpretations that have attached like barnacles to the original legislation. The question is how to change the law to address its worst side effects without placing internet companies under impossible legal burdens.
There are a number of ideas on the table, ranging in concreteness from op-eds to white papers to proposed, sometimes even bipartisan, legislation. And they vary according to what problem the authors are most interested in solving.
The most sweeping piece of legislation introduced to date, a bill called the Safe Tech Act, reads like a point-by-point rebuttal to some of the most controversial judicial applications of Section 230. It would remove protections from specific categories of civil claims, including wrongful death (like in the Armslist case), cyberstalking and harassment (as in an infamous New York stalking case involving the gay dating app Grindr), and civil rights law violations (as when Craigslist was sued unsuccessfully for hosting discriminatory housing ads). The bill, proposed by Democratic senators Mark Warner, Mazie Hirono, and Amy Klobuchar, also swaps the word “speech” in for “information,” to try to refocus the law’s protection on self-expression rather than commercial transactions. When I asked Warner if all the carve-outs are a roundabout way to limit Section 230 immunity to defamation cases, he laughed and said, “Let the record reflect that Senator Warner made no comment in response.” (This proposed bill, incidentally, is the one that Wyden said would “devastate every part of the open internet.”)
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Another school of thought holds that the solution is to apply Section 230’s protections only to hands-off conduits for communication—things like newsletter distribution services and blogging platforms, or nonprofit-owned sites like Wikipedia or the Internet Archive that provide a neutral architecture for users to develop content. Once a platform starts to curate, amplify, or monetize user-generated content, however, some form of liability would kick in.
One of the more aggressive suggestions along these lines comes from the American Economic Liberties Project, an anti-monopoly think tank. In a statement to the Federal Communications Commission, the organization has proposed limiting Section 230’s protections to companies that make their money by literally “selling access to the internet or a computer server.”
“Airbnb is a travel company. Google is an advertising company,” says Matt Stoller, the organization’s director of research. “You should be regulated not based on whether you have a website but based on how you make money. If you make your money on travel, you should be regulated like a travel company. If you make your money from advertising, you should be regulated like a publisher.”
This proposal would pull mega-platforms like Facebook and Google out from under Section 230’s shield almost entirely, on the theory that companies that profit by selling ads against user content should have to bear the full cost of policing that content, or else change their business model. This change, the report argues, “would also help restore a level playing field for publishers, who are legally responsible for the content they publish.”
If the big platforms had to worry about defamation suits, they would finally have a strong incentive to act on some of the most extreme cases of disinformation before they become national scandals.
A more modest approach would be to grant immunity only to those companies that can show they’re not abusing it. Danielle Citron has proposed amending Section 230 to make its protections from liability conditional on whether a platform “takes reasonable steps to address unlawful uses of its service that clearly create serious harm to others.” This would elegantly solve the bad Samaritan problem: A site that actively encourages people to humiliate women with revenge porn, smear enemies, or make illegal business transactions would not be able to satisfy the test.
Citron’s proposal would also open a window for the common law to step back in, striking a middle ground between full repeal and the automatic immunity companies currently enjoy. To qualify for safe harbor, a defendant would have to convince a judge that it has a reasonable approach to dealing with a given category of harm—even if it has screwed up in a particular instance. (That’s important, because as Section 230’s supporters rightly point out, no system of online content moderation at scale will ever be perfect.) Each defendant, each category of harm, would be judged on its own terms.
“A reasonable approach to sexual-privacy invasions would be different from a reasonable approach to spam or fraud,” Citron and Franks have written. “A blog with a few postings a day and a handful of commenters is in a different position than a social network with millions of postings a day.” Instead of Congress trying to enumerate every situation in which Section 230 should and shouldn’t apply, judges would have flexibility to develop different standards for different contexts—including technologies and harms that don’t even exist yet.
The dominant platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, already have relatively robust policies and procedures for dealing with some types of illegal material. But a “reasonable steps” requirement would finally force them to take seriously some categories of harm that they currently get a free pass on, most notably defamation. Under the law now, platforms have no incentive to do anything about defamatory posts—and so they generally don’t. Facebook’s voluminous, searchable community standards never mention the words defamation or libel. Twitter’s do, but only to absolve itself of liability. (YouTube at least has a mechanism for reporting defamatory videos, to its credit.) This poses a particularly acute problem if the defamer is anonymous and can’t be tracked down: The victim can’t hold anyone responsible. If Section 230 were revised to impose a standard of care, these companies would have to build in some kind of process to deal with defamatory posts or else risk being sued themselves.
Now, a reality check: This would not magically fix social media. Fake news, bigotry, and your cousin Steve’s idiotic Facebook memes will generally continue to be protected by the First Amendment, as they should be. And the big platforms deserve credit for making some progress on content moderation after years of withering criticism. If they had to worry about defamation suits, however, they would finally have a strong incentive to act on at least the most extreme cases of disinformation before they become national scandals. A lot of the wildest conspiracy theories that infect American politics are straightforwardly defamatory. QAnon posts have accused specific individuals of killing and abusing children, for example. The Stop the Steal movement that ultimately led to violence at the US Capitol on January 6 was, you’ll recall, built on specific lies about Dominion and Smartmatic, ones that have landed a few cable networks in court. But because of Section 230, these individuals and companies can’t sue Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube for allowing, and perhaps helping, the bullshit to spread.
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VIII
Change Is Good
Reforming Section 230 faces all the familiar obstacles to getting anything done in Congress: partisanship, bureaucratic inertia, and, of course, ferocious lobbying from an industry that is quite happy with the status quo, thank you very much.
The biggest barrier, however, may be the philosophical resistance to change—any change—among Section 230’s intellectual and legal defenders, a group that cuts across party lines and can’t be written off as industry shills.
You might think, for example, that something like Citron’s proposed “reasonableness” standard would be widely seen as a commonsense, compromise reform. In fact, even this suggestion draws fierce opposition. Eric Goldman, the influential law professor, told me it would be tantamount to repealing the entire law.
“A key part of 230’s secret sauce comes in its procedural advantages,” he said. Today, the law doesn’t just help companies defeat lawsuits; it helps them win fast, at the earliest possible step, without having to rack up legal bills on discovery, depositions, and pretrial filings. Forcing defendants to prove that they meet some standard of care would make litigation more complicated. The company would have to submit and gather evidence. That would require more attention and, most importantly, money.
Perhaps the biggest companies could handle this, Goldman said, but the burden would crush smaller upstarts. Tweaking Section 230 this way, in other words, would actually benefit monopolies while stifling competition and innovation. Faced with a deluge of defamation lawsuits, the large platforms would err on the side of caution and become horribly censorious. Smaller platforms or would-be challengers would meanwhile be obliterated by expensive legal assaults. As Ron Wyden, Section 230’s coauthor, puts it, Citron’s proposal, though “thoughtful,” would “inevitably benefit Facebook, Google and Amazon, which have the size and legal muscle to ride out any lawsuits.”
Imagine: Companies could get rich by making the internet less toxic.
The thing about this argument is that a version of it gets trotted out to oppose absolutely any form of proposed corporate regulation. It was made against the post-recession Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, which the conservative Heritage Foundation declares “did far more to protect billionaires and entrenched incumbent firms than it did to protect the little guy.” Federal food safety rules, fuel economy standards, campaign spending limits: Pick a regulation and a free-market advocate can explain why it kills competition and protects the already powerful.
In fact, a lot of the most passionate pro-230 discourse makes more sense when you recognize it as a species of garden-variety libertarianism—a worldview that, to caricature it only slightly, sees any government regulation as a presumptive assault on both economic efficiency and individual freedom, which in this account are pretty much the same thing to begin with. That spirit animated Section 230 when it was written, and it animates defenses of the law today. So you have Cathy Gellis, a lawyer who blogs ardently for TechDirt in support of Section 230’s immunity, filing an amicus brief in the Armslist case insisting that a post listing a gun for sale is speech that must be protected. And Goldman in The Wall Street Journal last year arguing that Amazon should not be held liable for dangerous products sold by vendors on its platform. It should “probably” try harder to protect customers, he wrote, but “any steps the company takes should be voluntary.”
In this version of laissez-faire capitalism, the best regulation is self-regulation. But today, that idea no longer receives as much automatic deference as it did in the ’90s. It is, in fact, the precise idea the techlash is lashing against.
Government intervention can and does go wrong, of course. Big corporations do indeed try to hijack the legislative process and capture regulators. In March, for example, Mark Zuckerberg publicly declared his support for reforming Section 230—with a set of proposed changes that, while vague, seem designed to allow Facebook to leave its existing policies more or less untouched.
So no, it’s not surprising that an $800 billion company facing potential new regulations would try to turn them to its advantage. But to acknowledge that fact is not to make an argument for inaction. If anything, it suggests that the danger lies in doing too little, not too much. Because for all the hypothetical little guys who might get harmed according to some economic theory, there are plenty of real, known little guys who are being abused by the status quo. That includes not just individuals like Kenneth Zeran and Ellen Batzel but whole segments of society. Discrimination in housing and job ads denies opportunities to Black people. Cyberstalking and harassment disproportionately drive women and members of other vulnerable groups off of social media. This is why supporters of the Safe Tech Act include organizations like the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Muslim Advocates, Color of Change, and the National Hispanic Media Coalition.
OK, but what about the economic little guy? Here, too, the case for doom and gloom is thin. The George Mason economist Alex Tabarrok, himself a prominent libertarian, has found, to his surprise, that federal regulation cannot be blamed for reduced startup growth or job creation. One reason could be that while regulations and liability rules impose costs on some parts of the economy, they also open opportunities and spur innovation elsewhere. Magic happens when money’s on the line.
There is already a small market for third-party moderation software: In Ireland, a startup called CaliberAI, founded by a father-son pair of former journalists, has developed an AI system for flagging potentially defamatory comments. (The posts apparently tend to have certain linguistic hallmarks.) In the US, companies like Sentropy and Sendbird offer moderation tools for site administrators. If Section 230 were rolled back, you can bet that venture capital would rush into that sector. That would, in turn, help social media startups scale up without having to invent their own systems for dealing with illegal user content from scratch. Sid Suri, Sendbird’s head of marketing, predicts that companies like his would shift engineers to spend more time on moderation products—because that’s where more of the money would be. “An ecosystem will always develop around the need,” he says. Imagine: companies getting rich by making the internet less toxic.
It’s important to keep in mind that, even without Section 230’s blanket immunity, companies would not be forced to go to trial every time someone gets Mad On the Internet. It’s already incredibly difficult to sue corporations in America. It’s really hard to win a defamation action. Companies have many ways to toss out weak cases besides Section 230. Remember the Stratton Oakmont case? The one where Prodigy was being sued for $200 million for hosting a message that called an investment firm’s leaders a bunch of liars and crooks? In the end, Prodigy never paid Stratton Oakmont a cent. After losing the preliminary ruling, Prodigy announced that it would raise a truth defense. (It ain’t defamation if it’s true.) A few months later, Stratton Oakmont agreed to drop the case in exchange for an apology. In hindsight, this is anything but shocking: Stratton Oakmont is the company featured in The Wolf of Wall Street. Its founders, Jordan Belfort and Daniel Porush, were sent to prison in 1999 for securities fraud and money laundering. They really were liars and crooks.
Sometimes companies make money by doing bad things. Other times, companies merely allow bad things to happen, because it’s cheaper than preventing them. Either way, the basic premise of tort law is that when someone is responsible for a bad thing, they should have to pay, or at least make it stop. You can think of this as a form of justice: forcing wrongdoers to make their victims whole. Or you can think of it as a form of deterrence, in which the point is to prevent bad behavior. But civil liability, especially corporate liability, can also be understood in economic terms: a question of who should have to pay the costs that certain activities impose on everyone else.
The reality of Section 230 is that it has allowed digital platforms to externalize some of the costs of their business models. Other industries generally don’t get to do this. Chemical companies can be sued if they poison the local water supply. Retailers can be sued for putting defective items on their shelves. Working to prevent these outcomes costs corporations money. But it doesn’t stop them from making Teflon pans or stocking Tostitos. Once the creation myths and apocalyptic talk are set aside, it’s clear that the online world needn’t be so completely different—and that an intelligent reform of Section 230 won’t stop digital platforms from creating the internet.
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Facebook’s Book-Banning Blueprint
The company throttles a Journal review on climate science.
By The Editorial Board
May 7, 2021 6:20 pm ET
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Steven Koonin in 2011.
PHOTO: F. CARTER SMITH/BLOOMBERG
Amazon this year started its foray into politicized book-banning, pulling a three-year-old book on transgender policy by a conservative think-tanker from its web store. Facebook doesn’t sell books, but it can suppress their distribution when they conflict with a political agenda. The social-media giant now appears to be throttling a Wall Street Journal review of a book on climate science by physicist Steven Koonin, the former top scientist at the Obama Energy Department and provost of the California Institute of Technology.
Facebook uses so-called fact-checkers to tell it which news articles to suppress. The project has gone far beyond curbing viral hoaxes or dangerous misinformation and aims to limit scientific debate. In March Facebook flagged a Journal op-ed by Johns Hopkins surgeon Marty Makary on the pace at which Americans would develop herd immunity to Covid-19.
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The company now targets the Journal’s book review based on a gazillion-word post on a site called Climate Feedback with the headline, “Wall Street Journal article repeats multiple incorrect and misleading claims made in Steven Koonin’s new book ‘Unsettled.’”
Mr. Koonin, whose careful book draws extensively on existing scholarship, may respond on the merits in a different forum. Suffice it to say here that many of the “fact check” claims relied on by Facebook don’t contradict the underlying material, but instead argue with its perceived implications.
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The fact-check attacks Mr. Koonin’s book for saying the “net economic impact of human-induced climate change will be minimal through at least the end of this century.” Minimal is in the eyes of the beholder, but the U.S. National Climate Assessment predicted America’s climate costs in 2090 at about $500 billion per year—a fraction of the recent Covid stimulus in an economy that could be four times as large.
The fact-check on the statement that “global crop yields are rising, not falling” retorts that “while global crop yields are rising, this does not constitute evidence that climate change is not adversely affecting agriculture.” OK, but that’s an argument, not a fact-check. By the way, would articles that imply declining crop yields be slapped with warning labels? We doubt it. The censorship only goes in one direction.
Climate Feedback’s comment on a line from the review about “the number and severity of droughts” does not identify any falsehood, but instead claims, “it doesn’t really make sense to make blanket statements regarding overall global drought trends.” Maybe it doesn’t make sense for Facebook to restrict the reach of legitimate scientific argument and competing interpretations of data.
Democrats such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren and left-wing interests have been pressing Facebook to implement more censorship of climate-related discussion, which can help soften opposition to the Democratic majority’s Green New Deal priorities. The damages of such tech abuses to democracy are far-reaching.
If reviewers can’t engage thoughtful if provocative books even by leading scientists without their pieces being throttled on social media, then those books won’t sell. Facebook is demonstrating a new blueprint to force inconvenient books out of the marketplace. If this continues, the marketplace, and perhaps the courts and political system, will have to find a way to respond.
-
Facebook’s Book-Banning Blueprint
The company throttles a Journal review on climate science.
By The Editorial Board
May 7, 2021 6:20 pm ET
Amazon this year started its foray into politicized book-banning, pulling a three-year-old book on transgender policy by a conservative think-tanker from its web store. Facebook doesn’t sell books, but it can suppress their distribution when they conflict with a political agenda. The social-media giant now appears to be throttling a Wall Street Journal review of a book on climate science by physicist Steven Koonin, the former top scientist at the Obama Energy Department and provost of the California Institute of Technology.
Facebook uses so-called fact-checkers to tell it which news articles to suppress. The project has gone far beyond curbing viral hoaxes or dangerous misinformation and aims to limit scientific debate. In March Facebook flagged a Journal op-ed by Johns Hopkins surgeon Marty Makary on the pace at which Americans would develop herd immunity to Covid-19.
The company now targets the Journal’s book review based on a gazillion-word post on a site called Climate Feedback with the headline, “Wall Street Journal article repeats multiple incorrect and misleading claims made in Steven Koonin’s new book ‘Unsettled.’”
Mr. Koonin, whose careful book draws extensively on existing scholarship, may respond on the merits in a different forum. Suffice it to say here that many of the “fact check” claims relied on by Facebook don’t contradict the underlying material, but instead argue with its perceived implications.
The fact-check attacks Mr. Koonin’s book for saying the “net economic impact of human-induced climate change will be minimal through at least the end of this century.” Minimal is in the eyes of the beholder, but the U.S. National Climate Assessment predicted America’s climate costs in 2090 at about $500 billion per year—a fraction of the recent Covid stimulus in an economy that could be four times as large.
The fact-check on the statement that “global crop yields are rising, not falling” retorts that “while global crop yields are rising, this does not constitute evidence that climate change is not adversely affecting agriculture.” OK, but that’s an argument, not a fact-check. By the way, would articles that imply declining crop yields be slapped with warning labels? We doubt it. The censorship only goes in one direction.
Climate Feedback’s comment on a line from the review about “the number and severity of droughts” does not identify any falsehood, but instead claims, “it doesn’t really make sense to make blanket statements regarding overall global drought trends.” Maybe it doesn’t make sense for Facebook to restrict the reach of legitimate scientific argument and competing interpretations of data.
Democrats such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren and left-wing interests have been pressing Facebook to implement more censorship of climate-related discussion, which can help soften opposition to the Democratic majority’s Green New Deal priorities. The damages of such tech abuses to democracy are far-reaching.
If reviewers can’t engage thoughtful if provocative books even by leading scientists without their pieces being throttled on social media, then those books won’t sell. Facebook is demonstrating a new blueprint to force inconvenient books out of the marketplace. If this continues, the marketplace, and perhaps the courts and political system, will have to find a way to respond.
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I don't know whether Bill Gates is a Hound or whether the New York Times is a gossip rag or both. Strange that they know all this (while he supported liberal causes) and say nothing and now tell all.
—--------------
Long Before Divorce, Bill Gates Had Reputation for Questionable Behavior
Melinda French Gates voiced concerns about her husband’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and a harassment claim against his money manager. He also had an affair with an employee.
A spokeswoman for Bill Gates said claims that he mistreated employees were false.
A spokeswoman for Bill Gates said claims that he mistreated employees were false.Credit...
By Emily Flitter and Matthew Goldstein
May 16, 2021
By the time Melinda French Gates decided to end her 27-year marriage, her husband was known globally as a software pioneer, a billionaire and a leading philanthropist.
But in some circles, Bill Gates had also developed a reputation for questionable conduct in work-related settings. That is attracting new scrutiny amid the breakup of one of the world’s richest, most powerful couples.
In 2018, Ms. French Gates wasn’t satisfied with her husband’s handling of a previously undisclosed sexual harassment claim against his longtime money manager, according to two people familiar with the matter. After Mr. Gates moved to settle the matter confidentially, Ms. French Gates insisted on an outside investigation. The money manager, Michael Larson, remains in his job.
On at least a few occasions, Mr. Gates pursued women who worked for him at Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, according to people with direct knowledge of his overtures.
In 2019, Microsoft’s board of directors, on which Mr. Gates sat, opened an investigation into one of those cases after being notified that he had “sought to initiate an intimate relationship with a company employee in the year 2000,” Frank X. Shaw, a Microsoft spokesman, said on Sunday. The board hired a law firm to investigate. The following year, Mr. Gates stepped down from Microsoft’s board. The Wall Street Journal reported the 2000 incident and the board’s investigation.
“There was an affair almost 20 years ago which ended amicably,” said Bridgitt Arnold, a spokeswoman for Mr. Gates. “Gates’s decision to transition off the board was in no way related to this matter.”
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And then there was Jeffrey Epstein, whom Mr. Gates got to know beginning in 2011, three years after Mr. Epstein, who faced accusations of sex trafficking of girls, pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor. Ms. French Gates had expressed discomfort with her husband spending time with the sex offender, but Mr. Gates continued doing so, according to people who were at or briefed on gatherings with the two men.
So, in October 2019, when the relationship between Mr. Gates and Mr. Epstein burst into public view, Ms. French Gates was unhappy. She hired divorce lawyers, setting in motion a process that culminated this month with the announcement that their marriage was ending.
Mr. Gates and Melinda French Gates in 2015. Current and former employees said he had a pattern of courting women in the workplace.
Mr. Gates and Melinda French Gates in 2015. Current and former employees said he had a pattern of courting women in the workplace.Credit...Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
It is not clear how much Ms. French Gates knew about her husband’s behavior or to what degree it contributed to their split.
The announcement of their divorce has brought attention to a marriage whose dissolution has large social and financial implications. Multiple people said that during their marriage, Mr. Gates engaged in work-related behavior that they said was inappropriate for a person at the helm of a major publicly traded company and one of the world’s most influential philanthropies.
Ms. Arnold disputed the characterization of his conduct and the couple’s divorce.
“It is extremely disappointing that there have been so many untruths published about the cause, the circumstances and the timeline of Bill Gates’s divorce,” Ms. Arnold said.
“Your characterization of his meetings with Epstein and others about philanthropy is inaccurate, including who participated,” she continued. “Similarly, any claim that Gates spoke of his marriage or Melinda in a disparaging manner is false. The claim of mistreatment of employees is also false. The rumors and speculation surrounding Gates’s divorce are becoming increasingly absurd, and it’s unfortunate that people who have little to no knowledge of the situation are being characterized as ‘sources.’”
Mr. Gates and Ms. French Gates met at work. He was technically her boss. He ran Microsoft, and she began working there in 1987 as a product manager the year after she graduated from college.
Throughout their relationship, the two have played up the cute aspects of their office romance. He flirted with her when they sat together at a conference, then asked her out when they ran into each other in a company parking lot, according to Ms. French Gates, who described their relationship’s beginnings during a public appearance in 2016.
Long after they married in 1994, Mr. Gates would on occasion pursue women in the office.
In 2006, for example, he attended a presentation by a female Microsoft employee. Mr. Gates, who at the time was the company’s chairman, left the meeting and immediately emailed the woman to ask her out to dinner, according to two people familiar with the exchange.
“If this makes you uncomfortable, pretend it never happened,” Mr. Gates wrote in an email, according to a person who read it to The New York Times.
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The woman was indeed uncomfortable, the two people said. She decided to pretend it had never happened.
A year or two later, Mr. Gates was on a trip to New York on behalf of the Gates Foundation. He was traveling with a woman who worked for the foundation. Standing with her at a cocktail party, Mr. Gates lowered his voice and said: “I want to see you. Will you have dinner with me?” according to the woman.
The woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she did not want the public attention associated with describing an unwanted advance, said she felt uncomfortable but laughed to avoid responding.
Six current and former employees of Microsoft, the foundation and the firm that manages the Gates’s fortune said those incidents, and others more recently, at times created an uncomfortable workplace environment. Mr. Gates was known for making clumsy approaches to women in and out of the office. His behavior fueled widespread chatter among employees about his personal life.
Some of the employees said that while they disapproved of Mr. Gates’s behavior, they did not perceive it to be predatory. They said he did not pressure the women to submit to his advances for the sake of their careers, and he seemed to feel that he was giving the women the space to refuse his advances.
Even so, Mr. Gates’s actions ran counter to the agenda of female empowerment that Ms. French Gates was promoting on a global stage. On Oct. 2, 2019, for example, she said she would spend $1 billion promoting “women’s power and influence in the United States.”
Mr. Gates in 2007, four years before he would meet Jeffrey Epstein. “His lifestyle is very different and kind of intriguing although it would not work for me,” Mr. Gates told colleagues.
Mr. Gates in 2007, four years before he would meet Jeffrey Epstein. “His lifestyle is very different and kind of intriguing although it would not work for me,” Mr. Gates told colleagues.Credit...Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
“Even though most women now work full-time (or more), we still shoulder the majority of caregiving responsibilities; we face pervasive sexual harassment and discrimination; we are surrounded by biased and stereotypical representations that perpetuate harmful gender norms,” she wrote in a column in Time magazine announcing the pledge.
In meetings at the foundation, Mr. Gates made sure his voice was dominant and could be dismissive toward Ms. French Gates, causing some foundation employees to cringe, according to people who attended foundation meetings with the Gateses.
In 2017, the couple confronted a sexual harassment allegation against a close associate.
For nearly 30 years, Mr. Larson had served as Mr. Gates’s money manager, earning solid returns on the Gateses’ and the foundation’s combined $174 billion investment portfolio through a secretive operation called Cascade Investment. Cascade owned assets like stocks, bonds, hotels and vast tracts of farmland, and it also put the Gateses’ money in other investment vehicles. One was a venture capital firm called Rally Capital, which is in the same building that Cascade occupies in Kirkland, Wash.
Rally Capital had an ownership stake in a nearby bicycle shop. In 2017, the woman who managed the bike shop hired a lawyer, who wrote a letter to Mr. Gates and Ms. French Gates.
The letter said that Mr. Larson had been sexually harassing the manager of the bike shop, according to three people familiar with the claim. The letter said the woman had tried to handle the situation on her own, without success, and she asked the Gateses for help. If they didn’t resolve the situation, the letter said, she might pursue legal action.
The woman reached a settlement in 2018 in which she signed a nondisclosure agreement in exchange for a payment, the three people said.
While Mr. Gates thought that brought the matter to an end, Ms. French Gates was not satisfied with the outcome, two of the people said. She called for a law firm to conduct an independent review of the woman’s allegations, and of Cascade’s culture. Mr. Larson was put on leave while the investigation was underway, but he was eventually reinstated. (It is unclear whether the investigation exonerated Mr. Larson.) He remains in charge of Cascade.
A spokesman for Mr. Larson had no comment.
About a year after the settlement — and less than two weeks after Ms. French Gates’s column in Time — The Times published an article detailing Mr. Gates’s relationship with Mr. Epstein. The article reported that the two men had spent time together on multiple occasions, flying on Mr. Epstein’s private jet and attending a late-night gathering at his Manhattan townhouse. “His lifestyle is very different and kind of intriguing although it would not work for me,” Mr. Gates emailed colleagues in 2011, after he first met Mr. Epstein.
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(Ms. Arnold, the spokeswoman for Mr. Gates, said at the time that he regretted the relationship with Mr. Epstein. She said that Mr. Gates had been unaware that the plane belonged to Mr. Epstein and that Mr. Gates had been referring to the unique décor of Mr. Epstein’s home.)
The Times article included details about Mr. Gates’s interactions with Mr. Epstein that Ms. French Gates had not previously known, according to people familiar with the matter. Soon after its publication she began consulting with divorce lawyers and other advisers who would help the couple divide their assets, one of the people said. The Wall Street Journal previously reported the timing of her lawyers’ hiring.
The revelations in The Times were especially upsetting to Ms. French Gates because she had previously voiced her discomfort with her husband associating with Mr. Epstein, who died by suicide in federal custody in 2019, shortly after being charged with sex trafficking of girls. Ms. French Gates expressed her unease in the fall of 2013 after she and Mr. Gates had dinner with Mr. Epstein at his townhouse, according to people briefed on the dinner and its aftermath. (The incident was reported earlier by The Daily Beast.)
For years, Mr. Gates continued to go to dinners and meetings at Mr. Epstein’s home, where Mr. Epstein usually surrounded himself with young and attractive women, said two people who were there and two others who were told about the gatherings.
Ms. Arnold said Mr. Gates never socialized or attended parties with Mr. Epstein, and she denied that young and attractive women participated at their meetings. “Bill only met with Epstein to discuss philanthropy,” Ms. Arnold said.
On at least one occasion, Mr. Gates remarked in Mr. Epstein’s presence that he was unhappy in his marriage, according to people who heard the comments.
Mr. Epstein pitched his tax-advisory and fund-raising services to Mr. Gates, although there is no indication that Mr. Gates did business with him, according to people familiar with Mr. Epstein’s pitch and finances.
Sometime after 2013, Mr. Epstein brought Mr. Gates to meet Leon Black, the head of Apollo Investments who had a multifaceted business and personal relationship with Mr. Epstein, according to two people familiar with the meeting. The meeting was held at Apollo’s New York offices.
It is unclear whether Ms. French Gates was aware of the latest meetings with Mr. Epstein. A person who recently spoke to her said that “she decided that it was best for her to leave her marriage as she moved into the next phase of her life.”
Steve Eder and Jodi Kantor contributed reporting.
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There is a lot to admire about Apple, but my company, Spotify, has seen another, brutish side. Apple designs, develops and sells some of the world’s most desirable hardware products. And for many, Steve Jobs remains a figure of reverence, giving the business he created an enduring glow. My business is one of the few insisting that underneath that exterior is a ruthless bully that uses its dominance to hobble competitors. But over the past couple of years regulators around the world have finally begun examining Apple’s conduct. Many don’t like what they’re seeing.
Last month the European Commission announced its Statement of Objections, an important formal step in antitrust investigations, in response to a complaint Spotify filed two years ago about Apple’s behavior. The commission is concerned about two aspects of the company’s app-store policies. First, Apple forces app developers to use its payment system and to hand over 30% of all new subscription fees for the privilege.
Second, Apple’s antisteering provisions, contained in the rules it imposes on app developers, bar companies from providing customers a direct path to a paid subscription and from communicating with customers about ways to access deals or promotions. Apple puts none of these limits on Apple Music, its service that competes with Spotify. So if a customer is on the free Spotify iPhone app, he can’t subscribe to Spotify Premium without paying Apple a royalty, and Spotify can’t tell him to go to his desktop for a better deal on the subscription. After a year, Apple takes only a 15% chunk of a subscription, but this benefit is meaningless for my company because Spotify will have been 30% more expensive than Apple Music at the crucial moment when a user chooses between them.
“This significant market power cannot go unchecked,” the European Commission’s executive vice president, Margrethe Vestager, said last month. I agree. The European Union will now give Apple an opportunity to examine the documents in the commission’s investigation file, reply in writing, and request an oral hearing to present the company’s comments. At the end of that process will come the commission’s final decision.
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Apple will tell you that this is overwrought, that Spotify is seeking special treatment. To do so, it has to rewrite history. When the app store launched in 2008, there was no Apple tax for digital subscriptions, and developers were free to use all payment methods and communicate directly with their customers. Apple itself has said that 85% of apps on its store don’t pay the 30% tax. Spotify isn’t looking for special treatment, but my company does want fair treatment.
Only later in 2011 did Apple change its rules to force the use of its payment system, to the detriment of developers and consumers. The company has also argued that Spotify pays 15% of its revenue on only 0.5% of its subscriptions. But that’s because Apple’s exorbitant 30% tax on new subscriptions forced us to turn off in-app purchases in 2016. It made more business sense to cut iPhone and iPad users off from a path to subscriptions than to absorb the 30% cut for new ones.
Questions about Apple’s conduct are also being asked in the U.S. In April the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee held a hearing focused on app-store competition. I testified before the committee alongside my peers from Tile and Match Group. Each of us said that if Apple’s anticompetitive use of its app store wasn’t addressed, the tech giant and a few other platforms would rule the internet, limiting innovation, squashing small businesses, and all but eliminating customer choice.
I was struck by how many people remarked after my testimony that I was criticizing Apple while wearing an Apple Watch. But you can love a company and its products and still call out its bad behavior. That’s what members of Congress, along with regulators in Europe, Russia, Australia, South Korea and other countries, are recognizing.
I am heartened by the growing global consensus, but time is on Apple’s side. While Spotify has been successful despite Apple’s behavior, for many app developers the threat of irreparable harm is immediate. The process for putting together regulatory changes is long and laborious.
This gives Apple the ability to wait it out and continue stifling innovators, many of whom will fail before they even have a chance to compete. That is why Spotify is asking Congress to pursue urgent, narrowly tailored updates to American antitrust law to end such egregious abuses. It is also why my company has supported the proposed Digital Markets Act in Europe, a legislative proposal that seeks to address unfair and anticompetitive practices of powerful digital platforms.
Apple’s ability to strangle its competitors is unprecedented. Even Microsoft in the heyday of the Windows operating system didn’t demand a 30% cut of new subscription revenues from competing browsers or media players. And it didn’t dictate how or when Microsoft’s competitors could communicate with customers. What’s more, unless legislative and enforcement action is taken, other platforms will follow Apple’s example. The result? Further concentration of power in the hands of a small number of unaccountable digital sovereigns who create and enforce rules that favor their services.
The good news is that Spotify is no longer alone in saying this. At long last, those in a position to do something have seen past Apple’s facade and are beginning to act in the interests of innovators and consumers around the world.
Mr. Gutierrez is head of global affairs and chief legal officer at Spotify.
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https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2021/05/07/rebel-news-blacklisted-by-paypal/
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https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/26/washington-d-c-files-antitrust-lawsuit-against-amazon/
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https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/05/26/how_zuckerberg_millions_paid_for_progressives_to_work_with_2020_vote_officials_nationwide_778300.html
In the months leading up to November’s election, voting officials in major cities and counties worked with a progressive group funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and its allies to create ballots, strategically target voters and develop “cure” letters in situations where mail-in ballots were in danger of being tossed out.
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If not evil and traitorous, can we agree these people and these companies are severely partisan against us?
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https://notthebee.com/article/watch-reporter-tries-to-dunk-on-desantis-he-wrecks-her-and-gets-a-standing-ovation
De-platform the President of the United States but not the Ayatollah?
We should de-platform these platforms.
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9623419/Facebook-lifts-ban-user-comments-COVID-19-man-made.html
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https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/amazon-buys-mgm-studio-behind-james-bond-for-8-45-billion-1234980526/?sub_action=logged_in
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https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/amazon-devices-will-soon-automatically-share-your-internet-with-neighbors/
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/ted-cruz-facebook-could-be-held-liable-for-actions-and-correspondence-with-dr-fauci_3848083.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-06-08&mktids=29447cd0d129990641a23091bca96e03&est=j8TRxIY1IaPI5LTM9BvwM8KJ%2BkBLPkrtazjyaPAUn3YJc%2BtbeZNx6vgaJWZnPJ4Jwbrl
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Google’s Antitrust Settlement
Yesterday, Google agreed to pay a $270 million fine to French regulators for alleged abuse of its power in the online-advertising market. While the fine itself is nominal, it marks the first major regulatory action targeting Google’s opaque ad marketplace, in which Google plays the role of both broker and seller.
The case surrounds the tech giant’s two-sided ad exchange, which connects buyers and sellers of digital ads. Google Ad Manager connects online publishers selling ad space with brands buying it. The problem: Google itself is one of the largest sellers of ad space on its search engine and YouTube, among other properties. The French Competitive Authority charged Google with manipulating its control over the ad exchange to give preferential treatment to its ad supply over that of competitors.
Regulators argue that the opaque exchange mechanism, in which ads are traded programmatically, allows Google to route ad bids to its own platforms, driving its dominance of the digital-advertising market. Critics draw a contrast between ad exchanges and others, such as those for financial assets, which are heavily regulated and carry significant disclosure requirements on the part of brokers, buyers, and sellers.
In a statement announcing the settlement, the regulatory authority said that Google had “proposed commitments . . . which will change the way its advertising service” and sales platform operate. Although the specifics around those changes remain unclear, the fine could catalyze a broader shift in the structure of the digital-advertising market, especially because the U.S. and U.K. are both conducting ongoing investigations into Google’s ad marketplace.
The fee comes in the aftermath of a complaint put forward by NewsCorp and two French media companies. The Wall Street Journal reports:
To settle the French charges, Google has offered to improve the interoperability of AdX with advertising servers run by other companies, as well as to remove some other obstacles faced by competitors, some of the people said.
As part of the settlement, Google would neither accept nor deny culpability, the people said. Its proposed changes would be binding only in France, but could be adopted more broadly by the company, some of the people familiar with the matter said. Publishers and ad-tech companies elsewhere in the world, including the U.S., have raised similar concerns about the workings of Google’s products.
In the meantime, Google has found one way to assuage publishers: licensing their content. Le Figaro withdrew from the complaint after negotiating a partnership in which Google would pay the media company to publish its content on Google platforms. Although News Corp entered into a similar agreement, the company declined to withdraw its complaint through the French regulatory body.
In the long run, it seems likely that lawmakers will require increased transparency from ad exchanges. The rapid growth of the industry has left regulators flat-footed, but even those opposed to antitrust regulation can acknowledge that this opaque market is open to abuse.
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https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/ohio-attorney-general-google-lawsuit/2021/06/09/id/1024502/
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https://www.nationalreview.com/news/youtube-suspends-ron-johnson-for-one-week/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=native-latest&utm_term=fourth
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https://wallstreetonparade.com/2021/06/bezos-has-dumped-over-16-6-billion-of-amazon-stock-over-the-last-17-months-thats-more-than-he-sold-over-the-prior-decade-should-shareholders-worry/
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Biden’s Big Tech Hawks
Elsewhere in the policy world, the Biden administration has finalized it staffing of the Federal Trade Commission with the appointment of 32-year-old law professor Lina Khan as FTC chair. The Financial Times observes:
Biden’s decision to appoint Khan to chair the FTC — making her one of the youngest-ever heads of a federal agency — sends a signal of his administration’s intent to take a more aggressive stance towards Big Tech.
“This is the equivalent of an activist outsider suddenly becoming chairman of the board. And none of them saw it coming. None of them,” Kovacic added. “Their life just got much more difficult, and much more precarious.”
Khan rose to prominence after authoring a 2017 note in the Yale Law Journal titled “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox.” In the essay, then–law-student Khan argues against an antitrust jurisprudence that pegs “competition to ‘consumer welfare,’ defined as short-term price effects” (emphasis mine). The premise of the paper is that while Amazon’s low prices may benefit consumers in the short run, in the long run, they give the company problematic power.
Rather than focus on consumer welfare, Khan argues that antitrust regulators should look to “market structure,” by which she seems to mean market concentration. Despite demonstrably improving consumer welfare, Amazon’s dominance of e-commerce poses a threat, argues Khan, because “monopolistic and oligopolistic firms have greater bargaining power against consumers, suppliers, and workers, which enables them to hike prices and degrade service and quality while maintaining profits.”
The essay merits a more-thorough evaluation than I can fit in this newsletter, but I will note that nearly 30 years after its founding, Amazon’s “bargaining power” against consumers has yet to lead to price increases, nor does its firmwide minimum wage of $15 an hour suggest monopoly abuse of workers. Indeed, Amazon ranks among the most voracious hirers in the country, adding 500,000 workers in 2020 alone.
Anti-Amazon
Meanwhile, a cottage industry of Amazon competitors has cropped up in the past few years. A story in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal highlights the growing number of businesses “positioning themselves as anti-Amazons”:
ShopIN.nyc pools inventories from local businesses to create a local version of the “everything store” that Amazon is known for, thanks to the vast selection and lightning-speed delivery that founder Jeff Bezos made central pillars of the Seattle company’s strategy. ShopIN.nyc’s marketing is unsubtle: social-media campaigns carry slogans such as “Shop Boroughs, Not Bezo$” and “An ‘everything store’ that delivers faster than Amazon.”
Shopify, which helps smaller brands and retailers — including ShopIN.nyc — set up online, is something of a standard-bearer for the retail uprising. Chief Executive Tobias Lütke once quipped that “Amazon is trying to build an empire, and Shopify is trying to arm the rebels.” Its revenue doubled in the year through March, to $3.4 billion.
Elsewhere, start-up Instacart has stalled Amazon’s push into grocery deliveries, and legacy retailers are catching up to Amazon in the lucrative advertising business. A May report from the Boston Consulting Group highlighted the growing field of Retail Media, in which vendors such as Kroger and Target sell ad space on their websites. This shift in the ad industry is driven in part by companies’ explicitly attempting to reduce Amazon’s growing market share:
If the prospect of a new high-margin revenue stream (as much as 80%, compared with the typical in-store margin of 10% to 20%) is not a sufficient incentive, some retailers will also want to think about the need to protect existing trade and co-op dollars. In recent years, as brands have benefited from the relative transparency of digital marketing, the trade and co-op category has been facing pushback. Retail media is a way for retailers to hold on to this spending and tighten relationships with the companies whose brands they sell.
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second
https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/17/big-tech-only-has-itself-to-blame-for-republican-rethinking-of-antitrust/
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second
https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/17/big-tech-only-has-itself-to-blame-for-republican-rethinking-of-antitrust/
I was just reading Stephen Moore oppose anti Trust breakups of Big Tech. https://committeetounleashprosperity.com/
https://committeetounleashprosperity.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/CTUP_TheNewTrustBusters.pdf
Keeping the playing field level is the cornerstone of what a government role in a free market economy should be. Anti-trust actions should be taken against anti-competitive behavior, not based on size or market share alone. Facebook buying Instagram was anti-competitive, even if a corrupt Obama Biden administration approved it.
If Biden "regulates" social media etc. or takes government ownership of them, it is not for the purpose or outcome of addressing what we think is wrong. It will be to make what is wrong with them permanent. Be careful what we wish for.
Public utility regulation is driving up electric costs for the consumer, way up. Wouldn't you think it would be the opposite?
https://www.americanexperiment.org/center-of-the-american-experiment-testifies-on-the-minnesota-senates-clean-energy-first-bill-in-rochester/
With today's big tech, instead of direct consumer cost, we have exploitation.
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The Phone Company does not get to control what I say on my phone call.
The Goolag controls the public square AND controls what I say and what I see on it.
Sometimes this is done at the behest of the government (e.g. as we saw in Fauci's emails).
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The Phone Company does not get to control what I say on my phone call.
The Goolag controls the public square AND controls what I say and what I see on it.
Sometimes this is done at the behest of the government (e.g. as we saw in Fauci's emails).
Right! It is not anti-conservative to break up that control and to break up any cronyism between government and so-called industry.
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https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/18/conservative-sues-twitter-california-officials-and-biden-campaign-consultants-for-colluding-to-deplatform-him/
https://americanmind.org/memo/americas-last-chance-against-big-tech-values/
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-18/microsoft-plans-massive-china-expansion-in-asia-wide-cloud-push?srnd=technology-vp&sref=nXmOg68r
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If it is "internet services" they are providing, someone see if our US China thread comes up there. If it is regime control services they are providing, time to cancel them here.
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Maybe Msft providing information to US intelligence ?
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"If it is "internet services" they are providing, someone see if our US China thread comes up there. If it is regime control services they are providing, time to cancel them here."
Flesh this out please.
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"If it is "internet services" they are providing, someone see if our US China thread comes up there. If it is regime control services they are providing, time to cancel them here."
Flesh this out please.
a. China allows only censored internet, no exceptions.
b. Microsoft provides internet services in China with 10 major sites, including four new ones, in full compliance with the regime.
From Wikipedia with sources, Internet Censorship in China:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_China
Foreign content providers must abide by Chinese government wishes, including having internal content monitors, to be able to operate within mainland China. Also, per mainland Chinese laws, Microsoft began to censor the content of its blog service Windows Live Spaces, arguing that continuing to provide Internet services is more beneficial to the Chinese.[162] Chinese journalist Michael Anti's blog on Windows Live Spaces was censored by Microsoft. In an April 2006 e-mail panel discussion Rebecca MacKinnon, who reported from China for nine years as a Beijing bureau chief for CNN, said: "... many bloggers said he [Anti] was a necessary sacrifice so that the majority of Chinese can continue to have an online space to express themselves as they choose. So the point is, compromises are being made at every level of society because nobody expects political freedom anyway."[163]
[162] "Congressional Testimony: "The Internet in China: A Tool for Freedom or Suppression?"". Microsoft.com. Archived from the original on 28 November 2006. Retrieved 30 August 2006.
https://web.archive.org/web/20061128145545/http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/krumholtz/02-15WrittenTestimony.mspx
[163] "Roundtable: The Struggle to Control Information". Frontline (PBS.org). 11 April 2005. Archived from the original on 3 June 2011. Retrieved 1 September 2017.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/internet/
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[I didn't know Microsoft owns LinkedIn. Add them to the list of social media giants collecting all our information.]
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/technology/china-linkedin-censorship.html
Mar 18, 2021LinkedIn has been the lone major American social network allowed to operate in China. To do so, the Microsoft-owned service for professionals censors the posts made by its millions of Chinese..
[I can't bring up the rest of the article, but 3 months later Microsoft is announcing MAJOR expansion in China meaning they operate in full compliance with the regime.]
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Microsoft’s Bing search engine is back online in China [2019]
https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/23/18195200/microsoft-bing-search-engine-blocked-in-china-internet-censorship
Microsoft still won’t disclose the cause of the outage, but says the search engine is back up and running. “We can confirm that Bing was inaccessible in China, but service is now restored,” a Microsoft spokesperson told The Verge.
It’s wouldn’t have been particularly unusual to see a Western website blocked from China’s increasingly restrictive internet... Microsoft’s Bing is one of the few services developed by a US company to remain available in the country, despite competing with local government-connected services. Of course, Bing’s survival is largely due to Microsoft’s willingness to comply with the Chinese government’s censorship policies, but now even that has proved not enough for China. Under President Xi Jinping, who has solidified his power by abolishing term limits last year, China has grown more stringent with its control over the internet.
[Microsoft resolved its differences with the totalitarian censorship regime. More stringent means Xi Jinping did not back down or compromise over censorship.]
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Recall from these pages the Google executive who resigned when Google policy switched from 'do no evil' to do evil for money (in China and elsewhere) if the market is big enough.
https://firehydrantoffreedom.com/index.php?topic=2685.msg122110#msg122110
https://medium.com/@rossformaine/i-was-googles-head-of-international-relations-here-s-why-i-left-49313d23065
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You don't negotiate what is right with the regime of China. You comply, leave the market, or disappear.
Voluntarily complicit in evil is evil.
The universally accepted exception to free trade, at least when I was in the export business, is that you don't get to empower America's enemies and adversaries, no matter the profit.
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Very good post, thank you.
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https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/youtube-censorship-media-government/2021/06/19/id/1025695/
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https://www.foxnews.com/media/google-ties-to-wuhan-lab-coronavirus-daszak?fbclid=IwAR0eeeByBxc1bBBr2y1oK5xKWkzG5hkrdu2pNd4mW3XhElXukz0gWNPVVag
https://www.foxnews.com/media/daszak-fact-checks-coronavirus-wuhan-lab
Also, it appears that FB has cancelled Tucker. The clips of his show used to be at the top of my feed. Now the most recent entry is June 17.
Edited to add: Tucker reappeared today.
https://bombthrower.com/articles/late-stage-globalism-when-anything-that-is-not-censored-is-a-lie/
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/google-responds-to-claims-it-secretly-installed-covid-19-tracking-app-on-users-phones_3869343.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-06-23&mktids=e83bb27a92229a47a727a02164e96fbf&est=3viAgC0YD6gCJMMQqmdvybgqlps9L4dxFa71GUzxhUEmmVG7hpj4Wg7mphZFthAKcXjO
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9734599/Judge-dismisses-FTC-antitrust-lawsuits-against-Facebook.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_E._Boasberg
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NR PLUS MEMBER FULL VIEW
Facebook Lands a Major Court Victory
Welcome to the Capital Note, a newsletter about business, finance, and economics. On the menu today: Facebook beats regulators in court, House Republicans release a tech-regulation framework, commodities traders cash out, and Ben Thompson explains the difficult of defining markets. To sign up for the Capital Note, follow this link.
Facebook’s Antitrust Victory
Facebook landed a major victory in federal court yesterday when a judge dismissed antitrust suits filed by the Federal Trade Commission along with 46 state attorneys general. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg granted Facebook’s motion to dismiss, ruling that the FTC had not provided enough evidence of monopoly power on the part of the social-media giant:
The FTC has failed to plead enough facts to plausibly establish a necessary element of all of its Section 2 claims — namely, that Facebook has monopoly power in the market for Personal Social Networking (PSN) Services. The Complaint contains nothing on that score save the naked allegation that the company has had and still has a “dominant share of th[at] market (in excess of 60%).”
In other words, a large market share is not evidence of monopoly power. Boasberg also noted that the FTC failed to provide a methodology for its 60 percent figure:
In this unusual context, the FTC’s inability to offer any indication of the metric(s) or method(s) it used to calculate Facebook’s market share renders its vague “60%-plus” assertion too speculative and conclusory to go forward. Because this defect could conceivably be overcome by re-pleading, however, the Court will dismiss only the Complaint, not the case, and will do so without prejudice to allow Plaintiff to file an amended Complaint.
In the next month, the FTC will get a second chance to provide evidence for its market-share assertion. However, even if it convinces the court, “its challenge to Facebook’s policy of refusing interoperability permissions with competing apps fails to state a claim for injunctive relief,” because “there is nothing unlawful about having such a policy in general.”
A House GOP Antitrust Framework
The day before the Facebook ruling, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy sent a letter to House Republicans outlining a framework for tech regulation. It focuses on three pillars:
Accountability: Our framework would rein in Big Tech and end their abusive practices, including by changing the law so that Americans can challenge Big Tech directly for their infringement of public speech rights. This effort starts by taking away the liability shield Big Tech has hidden behind for far too long. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act would be changed to limit liability protections for moderation of speech that is not protected by the First Amendment and would preclude Big Tech from discriminating against Americans based on their political affiliation. We would also require regular reauthorization of Section 230 so Congress may update regulations of the constantly-evolving internet landscape.
Transparency: Our framework would empower Americans by ending Big Tech’s ability to hide behind vague terms of service that have not constrained their conduct in any meaningful way. We will do so by mandating that any Big Tech content moderation decisions or censorship must be listed, with specificity, on a publicly available website. In addition, by requiring Big Tech to implement and maintain a reasonable user-friendly appeals process, our plan will empower conservatives and others whose speech rights have been infringed to challenge Big Tech’s attacks.
Strengthening Anti-Trust Review: Our framework also recognizes that the status quo and bureaucratic delays are not acceptable when it comes to bringing long-overdue antitrust scrutiny to Big Tech. We will provide an expedited court process with direct appeal to the Supreme Court and empower state attorneys general to help lead the charge against the tech giants to break them up. We will also reform the administrative state and remove impediments that delay taking action on Big Tech power.
McCarthy’s letter indicates that the House GOP will focus more on content-moderation issues than on market competition, likely cutting into Republican support for the ambitious antitrust measures introduced by the House Judiciary Committee earlier this month.
But the framework also makes it all but inevitable that some form antitrust legislation will come out of the House before the midterm elections.
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Random Walk
Late last year, tech blogger Ben Thompson explained the challenge the FTC faced in the Facebook case. His points proved prescient:
The complaint goes to great pains to narrowly define the relevant market as “Personal Social Networking in the United States”; personal social networking is further defined as:
Being “built on a social graph that maps the connections between users and their friends, family, and other personal connections”.
Including “features that many users regularly employ to interact with personal connections and share their personal experiences in a shared social space, including in a one-to-many “broadcast” format”.
Including “features that allow users to find and connect with other users.”
The complaint further clarifies that this definition does not include “specialized social networking services” like LinkedIn or Strava, online video or audio services like YouTube or Spotify, or mobile messaging services. This last one is particularly strange because it seems to exonerate the WhatsApp acquisition: it seems like a stretch to complain that Facebook acted anticompetitively to acquire a service that was explicitly not in the market they monopolized because it might one day enter that market.
The reality, of course, is that this definition is ridiculously narrow; I can imagine an argument that says that Facebook competes in a different market than, say, Google search, even though both offer digital advertising. I have a much more difficult time buying the argument that Facebook is in a different market than LinkedIn, much less YouTube or Snapchat or TikTok, all of whom monetize via targeted display advertising.
Thompson argues that the FTC’s definition of Facebook’s market is arbitrarily narrow:
The FTC, in my estimation, is making the same mistake of so narrowly defining Facebook’s market that they are ignoring what is arguably Facebook’s most dangerous long-term competitor; TikTok wasn’t even mentioned once in the entire complaint.
In short, the FTC has to successfully argue that Facebook competes in a market that is limited to products that look and work like Facebook, unless a company outside of that definition (WhatsApp) was acquired by Facebook, in which case it can be assumed that that company would have become like Facebook absent acquisition, while no other company would have. It’s not going to be easy, no matter how many anti-competitive emails are unearthed.
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Yes, there are defects in the way the complaint is written. But to question their monopoly power? Maybe the case needs to be made against all big tech simultaneously.
If you want to connect with friends on social media, you go to Facebook.
If you want an alternative way, go to Instagram, owned by Facebook.
Or use WhatsApp, owned by Facebook.
For professional connections, go to LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft.
Connect directly over the internet, use Skype, owned by Microsoft.
Share videos or search for videos, go to Youtube, owned by Google, the giant of search.
Want to not connect, just track your own health, use Fitbit, owned by Google.
Don't want food shipped, want to buy locally. go to Whole Foods, owned by Amazon.
Want to read an independent report, go to Washington Post, owned by Jeff Bezos.
None of these mentioned were developed by the genius of the giant involved. They own them because they bought them for more than others would pay, and they paid more because their market clout brings them more value. Anti-competitive, prima facia.
I prefer to right-size these giants by way of consumers making different choices rather than by government action. But those choices disappear as soon as they emerge by way of acquisition or other anti-competitive practice.
The case should focus on anti-competitive behavior, not mere size. Buying up your competitors is anti-competitive behavior by all definitions. Yet the Obama administration approved the Facebook purchase of Instagram and others. In that case, buying up the Obama and Biden administrations is anti-competitive behavior as well.
Likewise for Amazon and the Washington Post. What could go wrong with the world's richest man buying up one of the most influential editorial and opinion centers of the nation while continuing to control Amazon? The independent free press has special liberties carved out in our constitution, yet there is no firewall between that and a huge company that may from time to time need journalistic scrutiny. That connection was not lost on Jeff Bezos; he didn't buy the WashPost for control of the crossword puzzles. Seems to me that a company of monopoly size and power should be allowed to invest in their business, their workers, or pay the income earned back to their shareholders - where it can be taxed and spent or re-invested. The primary owner of Amazon should be required to divest of conflicting interests if he wants control of constitutionally protected newspaper content. Doing both creates unavoidable conflict of the anti-trust variety, IMHO.
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/graisondangor/2021/06/25/ruling-against-facebook-in-sex-trafficking-case-threatens-key-legal-shield-for-social-media-platforms/?fbclid=IwAR1-IxL21o04iYBoCtRc-YJmsp0RAxeo1T2y--jKgzXJYyC8ewtkf7SEOuc&sh=bba3b213accd
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/graisondangor/2021/06/25/ruling-against-facebook-in-sex-trafficking-case-threatens-key-legal-shield-for-social-media-platforms/?fbclid=IwAR1-IxL21o04iYBoCtRc-YJmsp0RAxeo1T2y--jKgzXJYyC8ewtkf7SEOuc&sh=bba3b213accd
Interesting. It's a Texas court ruling but there are so many unanswered legal questions relating to social media providers. If they are choosing to actively censor and limit free speech based on a set of rules and making money hand over fist while doing so, shouldn't there be substantial monetary damages awarded when they screw up? When they take down free speech that has nothing wrong with it, when they mark things false that in fact are true, shouldn't there be a consequence for them? They are the ones who define it as the public square. Do people have rights there? If they are responsible for taking down illegal content, are they responsible when they negligently fail to do so?
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".Do people have rights there? If they are responsible for taking down illegal content, are they responsible when they negligently fail to do so? "
sure they can opt not to use FB
but the questions then begs
is FB a monopoly?
or do they function as a monopoly by buying out all the competition etc?
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".Do people have rights there? If they are responsible for taking down illegal content, are they responsible when they negligently fail to do so? "
sure they can opt not to use FB
but the questions then begs
is FB a monopoly?
or do they function as a monopoly by buying out all the competition etc?
Great unanswered questions. I opt out of FB, but the product they sell includes a monopoly of my friends and family. I miss out on a big waste of time and the mind manipulation they add to the feed, but I also miss out on using the internet of our time to connect with the people of my life.
I opted in for Google at the beginning of gmail. Sold my soul on false pretenses. I plan to end that, but what they 'give me' for 'free stuff' is pretty tempting to a cheapskate.
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https://www.christianpost.com/news/mrna-vaccines-inventor-kicked-off-linkedin-for-covid-19-shot-warning.html
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Most of this already covered here on the forum:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/04/how_to_starve_big_tech.html
We need to stop supporting their business.
Asking government to fix it will make everything worse. Right?
Linux, Brave, Duckduckgo, Protonmail, MeWe and Sling are mentioned as Big Tech alternatives.
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https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/meet-jigsaw-googles-intelligence-agency
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https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/meet-jigsaw-googles-intelligence-agency
Links within this post lead to full information on how to de-Google my phone. This will take guts to let go but someday soon I hope to do that and never look back.
-
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/jul/11/youtube-deletes-trump-video-freezes-cpac-account/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=subscriber&utm_campaign=newsalert&utm_content=newsalert&utm_term=newsalert&bt_ee=pCAmRl97jNNzsEp2rKeL51GYDSGfNlqW6XbXZ7Veb3dr3wJnppUZR3H8SumPN1ck&bt_ts=1626057217064
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https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/07/12/major-escalation-biden-allies-and-dnc-instructing-cell-phone-carriers-to-filter-and-censor-text-message-content/
Here we are!
-
Was this already covered? They are doing it again / still.
Google's method of shadow banning is to answer a search they don't like with only links to articles critical of what is searched.
---------------------------------------
Emails Surface Revealing Biden Campaign Pressured Facebook To Censor Trump Before 2020 Election
https://en-volve.com/2021/06/27/breaking-emails-surface-revealing-biden-campaign-pressured-facebook-to-censor-trump-before-2020-election/
---------------------------------------
Obviously Big Tech is not separate from government monitoring and censoring our communications. They are hugely influential in choosing our government and then deeply in bed with them when they get there.
Does this break no law?
https://www.theconstitutionalconservatives.com/editorials/defund-the-thought-police-psaki-admits-facebook-twitter-are-state?xg_source=twitter
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Sent to me by a left of center friend.
What do we think of the Section 230 argument?
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/07/right-or-left-you-should-be-worried-about-big-tech-censorship
-
https://news.gab.com/2020/10/16/an-open-letter-to-president-trump-on-section-230/#more-2029
Sent to me by a left of center friend.
What do we think of the Section 230 argument?
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/07/right-or-left-you-should-be-worried-about-big-tech-censorship
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From pandemic topic:
G M: Get the experimental gene therapy or else!
At the end, this is pasted on:
"This tweet is misleading. Learn more about how vaccines work."
People should post pre-warnings about Big Tech warnings:
"Twitter is part of a Big Tech propaganda mission to quash opinions not in line with their own. See twitter warning that follows.
Click here to see our content expressed freely without bullsh*t warnings from Orwellian censors like Twitter."
-
Sent to me by a left of center friend.
What do we think of the Section 230 argument?
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/07/right-or-left-you-should-be-worried-about-big-tech-censorship
Quote G M:
https://news.gab.com/2020/10/16/an-open-letter-to-president-trump-on-section-230/#more-2029
Which I think is a view supporting 230 from an alternative provider to 'Big Tech'.
I was fully in support of repeal when it was on the table:
https://conservativechange.com/petition/repeal-section-230/
https://www.msn.com/en-us?refurl=%2fen-us%2fnews%2fpolitics%2fmcconnell-ties-full-repeal-of-section-230-to-push-for-2000-stimulus-checks%2far-BB1ckfim
I'm happy to review that position in light of other information and perspectives:
https://nypost.com/2020/12/27/beware-section-230-repeal-and-other-commentary/
I don't think Big Tech can sit out there with all this power over who gets to say what and not face a potential consequence for their decisions and actions.
-
Taking a stab at reasoning out the 230 issue:
230 is necessary for a PLATFORM
230 protection should not extend to a PUBLISHER.
-
Taking a stab at reasoning out the 230 issue:
230 is necessary for a PLATFORM
230 protection should not extend to a PUBLISHER.
[I wonder what Rick N thinks about the section 230 question.]
What would a jury do with a lawsuit against a town square trying to hold them accountable for what someone said there, without section 230 protection?
These platforms, Facebook, Twitter, et al, CHOOSE to take responsibility for what is said there, e.g. removing conservative thought, anyone who questions election integrity, vaccine hazards, etc. In that case and in my opinion, then good, they can take responsibility for their role in the consequences of all the decisions they make.
Of course Crafty is in the precarious situation of hosting a moderated platform of controversial content.
One key distinction is that Google, facebook, twitter derive massive economic benefit from what is posted and read, unlike a town square or this forum. Economic damages should have some tie to economic benefit?
Maybe what we need is litigation reform for all instead of letting the big and powerful off the hook in a screwed up system.
-
Not following your point about the Town Square in the context of my effort at analysis.
My understanding is that the Town Square is an argument to apply First Amendment rules to purported private sector control of the town square.
Whereas the Section 230 argument extends platform protections to publishers.
-
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/07/censorship-is-here-what-to-do-about-it.php
-
https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/facebook-whistleblower-big-tech-breakups-section-230-fight-against-bots?fbclid=IwAR1XWeQ9d8WNle-5iOw-6F0hZOJDYGqogc1niY7ZWODiug1UsZze0xU0eLI
-
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/565860-coming-soon-americas-own-social-credit-system
-
if they have not already done so
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/apples-plan-think-different-about-encryption-opens-backdoor-your-private-life
there is always some excuse that is used to encroach on the rights of everyone
else
now we must protect "the children"
no one is against that are they? sarcasm ! :wink:
-
https://dailycaller.com/2021/08/10/rand-paul-suspended-youtube-covid-19-misinformation/
-
probably business decision to get Blacks to
use their card:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2021/08/12/capitalist-giant-american-express-capitalism-is-racist-n1469050
still totally weird and insulting to all
what the heck does CRT have to do with a god darn credit card?
I have never seen any Blacks on Warren's team
though I don't follow him or his team much so maybe there are.........
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I'm happy to cancel my account whenever the timing is right to make the most impact.
-
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/08/12/youtube-censors-video-posted-by-rep-nicole-malliotakis/
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"I'm happy to cancel my account whenever the timing is right to make the most impact."
FWIW
I really like Discover
virtually all merchants accepts it
the service is great - I can always get someone on the phone !
and I get 2% cash back
and no annual fee which i believe AMEX has
for what I am not sure.........
plus I have an extra lawyer of security though I think (I forgot honestly ) they do charge a nominal fee.
-
https://www.ft.com/content/40ca92da-d3ef-47bb-b421-7d446d67bc52
On average, top 10 companies slip over the next decade by around 60 places in the rankings.
-
https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/965523/keeping-comms-up
-
https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/965523/keeping-comms-up
We know that the PRC will hit our grid when things get spicy in the S. China Sea.
Plan accordingly.
-
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2021/08/19/facebook-caves-bans-accounts-identified-by-white-house/
-
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2021/08/19/facebook-caves-bans-accounts-identified-by-white-house/
Anyone still think we are voting our way out of this?
-
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/twitter-permanently-bans-alex-berenson-after-viral-tweets?utm_campaign=&utm_content=Zerohedge%3A+The+Durden+Dispatch&utm_medium=email&utm_source=zh_newsletter
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https://gab.com/SharylAttkisson/posts/106848532288833489
-
https://gab.com/SharylAttkisson/posts/106848532288833489
But it’s to protect you!
-
https://gab.com/SharylAttkisson/posts/106848532288833489
But it’s to protect you!
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/08/regime-will-not-allow-dissent-instagram-takes-gold-star-mothers-account-attacks-pos-biden-part-partner-status-program-democrats/
Or protect someone…
-
https://freebeacon.com/national-security/microsoft-exec-sounds-alarm-about-chinese-tech-abuses-as-company-collaborates-with-china/
Microsoft Exec Sounds Alarm About Chinese Tech Abuses as Company Collaborates With China
Company's top scientist says China's use of AI is 'chilling'
Microsoft's top scientist is warning Congress about the dangers of Chinese artificial intelligence even as his company deepens its collaboration with China.
Dr. Eric Horvitz this year reported to Congress that "China's domestic use of AI is a chilling precedent for anyone around the world who cherishes individual liberty." The report was the result of Horvitz's work on a panel tasked with advising Congress on artificial intelligence. The report comes as Microsoft CEO Brad Smith is meeting with top Chinese officials to discuss deepening ties in digital technology and Microsoft's work in China.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
In other news, [Jan 2020] Google knows, Google collaborates.
https://firehydrantoffreedom.com/index.php?topic=2685.msg122110#msg122110
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http://ace.mu.nu/archives/395542.php
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/abbott-signs-social-media-censorship-bill-into-law/ar-AAOiJKV?ocid=winp1taskbar
-
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9986225/Facebook-exempts-secret-whitelisted-elite-rules-allows-post-banned-content.html
-
https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/09/17/apple-google-drop-russian-opposition-app-ahead-of-election
What part of EVIL don't we understand?
-
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-20/real-estate-mogul-frank-mccourt-has-a-100-million-plan-to-replace-facebook
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/firing-line/video/frank-mccourt-mluzez/
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https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1421861721585639425
-
ebay is overloaded with fraud as well:
https://acefonline.org/anatomy-of-fraudulent-facebook-pop-up-ads/
Beth Deisher :
Counterfeit coins exploding into an industrial scale:
Most made in foreign countries and with US criminals here sold
here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chPk22Wvleg
Anyone care to guess where the bulk of the fraudulent coins flooding the market and growing leaps and bounds are coming from ?
Country begins with letter C and not it ain't Canada
Those f...ks over there, screwing us in every imaginable way.
and bribing Americans to play along here.
-
https://humanevents.com/2021/10/05/human-events-exclusive-fmr-facebook-official-frances-haugen-plans-to-testify-to-eu-called-her-friend-conspiracy-theorist-after-becoming-a-mens-rights-advocate-red-pill-supporter/
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I also picked up the whistle sucker
Haugen
makes it one of her big points claiming the 1/6/21 Capital trespassing crowd was egged on by social media
which is
A THREAT TO OUR DEMOCRACY
no leftist angle there :roll:
she is not our ally
-
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/10/the-common-carrier-solution-to-googles-market-dominance/#slide-1
-
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/10/twitter-censors-user-saying-regrets-taking-vaccine-becoming/
-
this whole treatise could not have been written any more obviously by Democrat operative lawyers in ways to increase their power
I find amusing the trial lawyers are comparing FB to Big Tobacco
How convenient.
sorry I don't agree.....
https://www.yahoo.com/news/is-facebook-facing-a-big-tobacco-moment-150659514.html
-
https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/1187999/facebook-authoritarianism-sam-faddis-gets-body-blocked-for-publishing-about-border
-
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/10/joe-rogan-google-curating-search-engine-results-hide-info-vaccine-related-injuries/
-
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/pope-demands-silicon-valley-name-god-censor-hate-speech-conspiracy-theories
-
part of the REST of the story :
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/20/tech-billionaire-aiding-facebook-whistleblower-516358
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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/oct/23/rep-jim-banks-suspended-twitter-calling-rachel-lev/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=subscriber&utm_campaign=newsalert&utm_content=newsalert&utm_term=newsalert&bt_ee=P7DilYPYh9JBWt%2BlGBI35XbBaVz0Sws%2FjEnvBdIQVD6WNaZkjQwhmMnsHqAy7xlH&bt_ts=1635020810898
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With social media business under siege, Facebook maps out ‘metaverse’ empire
BY RYAN LOVELACE THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Facebook is not happy with this world and believes it can build a new reality.
Amid a crush of bad publicity, governmental scrutiny and growing competition for its social media business, the company is hiring workers and making products to create the “metaverse.”
On the company’s blog, Facebook Vice Presidents Nick Clegg and Javier Olivan describe the metaverse as a new computing platform and “a new phase of interconnected virtual experiences using technologies like virtual and augmented reality.”
The expansion would position the social media giant to compete with Google and Apple, which host Facebook apps.
Facebook’s new products are designed to remove barriers between the physical and digital worlds. Facebook said in March that it was building a neural wristband to allow people to type without using a keyboard. The company insisted the product would not involve “mind reading.”
Last month, Facebook debuted Ray-Ban Stories. These glasses allow wearers to take pictures, watch videos, listen to music and make phone calls.
Facebook intends to hire 10,000 more workers in Europe over the next five years to build its augmented reality business. It has started rolling out products and acquiring companies to make it happen.
The shift is dramatic for the massive social media company, which said in July that it averaged 2.9 billion monthly active users. Business and marketing analysts say the changes at Facebook are necessary because shareholders and potential investors feel threats of government regulation and pressure from public criticism after former employees accused the company of knowingly harming children and fomenting political manipulation.
Instead of letting U.S. lawmakers amplify claims that the tech giant has affected elections, has increased childhood suicides and is tantamount to Big Tobacco, Facebook aims “to rewrite history,” said University of Louisville marketing assistant professor Aaron Barnes.
“They’re not playing the 12month game,” Mr. Barnes said. “A smaller company can change their name at the drop of a hat. … They’re hoping to affect how they’re remembered decades from now.”
Facebook has acquired companies and recruited teams of workers to expand its metaverse business despite antitrust scrutiny worldwide from its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.
Facebook recently acquired AI.Reverie, which built virtual worlds and environments for people to train artificial intelligence products. Some of the company’s early funding came from U.S. taxpayers through the Air Force innovation arm AFWERX and In-Q-Tel , the strategic investor for the intelligence community.
Asked about the Facebook acquisition, AI.Reverie co-founder Paul Walborsky declined to answer questions and referred The Washington Times to Facebook.
Facebook confirmed that it had acquired AI.Reverie, but it gave no details about what the acquisition would provide. A Facebook spokesperson said the AI.Reverie team would “accelerate our synthetic data capabilities” and “unlock improved user experiences in a range of use cases,” including in the metaverse.
Downpour Interactive and BigBox VR are among the other companies Facebook has bought this year. Oculus, Facebook’s virtual reality hardware company, announced the additions. Downpour Interactive and BigBox VR are responsible for virtual reality games.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told The Verge in July that his company would “effectively transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company.”
Rumors are spreading that Facebook is considering a new name to oversee its various products. Business and technology analysts pointed to Alphabet, the parent company of Google and the companies it acquired, such as YouTube, as a potential road map for Facebook.
Facebook declined to comment on the speculated “rebrand,” which The Verge said could involve the name “Horizon,” given the word’s usage in various Facebook projects.
Facebook is holding a conference Thursday about its augmented and virtual reality business, and the rumored name change promises to attract more attention to the company’s new direction.
Tim Derdenger, Carnegie Mellon University associate professor of marketing and strategy, said Facebook is attempting to distance itself from the negative perception of social media companies because of the pressure on shareholders.
He said the company also appears to be considering how new entrants will compete in the social media industry with different approaches to content moderation. An example is former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social app, which is scheduled to launch next year.
“It’s a delicate space if that’s the space they’re going to want to go down,” Mr. Derdenger said. He said one misstep could unravel Facebook’s work if it damages the cycle of people using its platform and connecting with others.
Facebook still faces federal antitrust action, but its new business model could change the perception of the company on Capitol Hill and head off a crackdown, said Neil Chilson, a former acting chief technologist at the Federal Trade Commission.
Mr. Chilson, the author of a new book on leadership, “Getting Out of Control,” said Facebook’s ability to create a metaverse is far from guaranteed.
Unlike interaction through webpages and social profiles, Mr. Chilson said, the metaverse may allow users to take their profiles with them in the physical world all the time, everywhere they go.
“We’re talking about establishing physics, essentially, of a new world and in a current environment where consensus is hard to get,” Mr. Chilson said.
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suggest listeners ignore the usual leftist BS about manipulating elections (always with the inference it comes from the Right ) he cannot help himself from ranting about at first:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/02/former-google-ceo-eric-schmidt-skeptical-facebook-will-build-metaverse.html
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https://dailycaller.com/2021/11/02/yahoo-china-xi-jinping-business/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2360&tpcc%3D=newsletter&pnespid=uaJlFSNaaKdKgfrQ9j25Dc_A5UisBJhxMO_t3rFhrhhmVvQD1UyPAR8P5wj2SADSWlxGE_Xa
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Bipartisan legislation seeks algorithm options for users
Bill to force tech companies to show ‘unmanipulated content’
BY RYAN LOVELACE THE WASHINGTON TIMES
A bipartisan group of House lawmakers wants to force tech companies to give users options for algorithms — the formulas that determine what information reaches users and the order in which data such as Google search results are presented.
Legislation introduced Tuesday would make the tech companies offer alternative algorithms or ranking systems that the government deems to be transparent, though the companies could still offer not-government-approved algorithms. It would be up to users to decide which to deploy.
Tech platforms, such as Facebook and Google, use algorithms to determine things such as which search results appear in response to a query.
“Consumers should have the option to engage with internet platforms without being manipulated by secret algorithms driven by user-specific data,” said Rep. Ken Buck, a Colorado Republican and one of the bill’s authors.
He introduced the legislation alongside Reps. David Cicilline, Rhode Island Democrat, Burgess Owens, Utah Republican, and Lori Trahan, Massachusetts Democrat.
The Filter Bubble Transparency Act would create a requirement that forces companies to show people “unmanipulated content” that is not determined by data collected from users, according to draft legislation shared with The Washington Times.
The Federal Trade Commission would be responsible for enforcing the law and for imposing civil penalties for noncompliance.
The algorithms rely on many factors, like chronology or user behavior, and critics have assailed tech companies’ ranking formulas for spreading misinformation and censoring speakers that the companies dislike.
Some prominent social media platforms already provide differing options for people who do not want tech companies to refer content to people based on inferences that the companies make about people’s behavior. For example, Twitter gives its users the option to sort information by chronology, “latest Tweets,” or by an algorithm making recommendations, “Home Tweets.”
The new bipartisan proposal focuses on a company’s “opaque algorithm,” which the proposal says means a ranking system for information that uses data from people when those people did not expressly provide the data for the ranking system.
One year after the proposal becomes law, platforms using their algorithms must explain that they are operating an opaque algorithm and must include a version of the platform that uses an “input-transparent algorithm,” meaning a ranking system that does not rely on user data.
The bill’s intended targets are large technology companies, which Mr. Buck’s office indicated are those that collect data from more than 1 million users and have $50 million or more in gross annual revenue. The legislation also exempts companies meeting certain criteria, such as having fewer than 500 employees or for researchers that are not seeking a profit.
“Facebook and other dominant platforms manipulate their users through opaque algorithms that prioritize growth and profit over everything else,” said Mr. Cicilline in a statement. “And due to these platforms’ monopoly power and dominance, users are stuck with few alternatives to this exploitative business model, whether it is in their social media feed, on paid advertisements, or in their search results.”
Large and prominent tech platforms are likely to oppose the legislation, as their algorithms are a crucial part of what differentiates them from their competitors. Chamber of Progress CEO Adam Kovacevich, whose liberal advocacy group has partnered with large tech companies like Amazon and Google, said the legislation is unconstitutional.
Mr. Kovacevich said the requirement for unmanipulated content might prevent Google from filtering out scams and pornography in search results.
-
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/11/name-shall-not-spoken-facebook-blocks-search-items-news-articles-kyle-rittenhouse/
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https://theweek.com/us/1007037/the-perils-of-the-risk-averse-society
every time I drive and I touch the line on the side of the lane
I get a vibration and visual warning
EVERY time
I don't need this shit.
It 'might ' prevent the once in a lifetime accident but that means the other million times I have to hear a buzz and have bit warning flashed in my face
and let's not even talk about the brake warning if I don't break just quite fast enough
there is no end.....
everything is freakin data
-
https://www.popsci.com/technology/youtube-video-dislike-private/?utm_source=Camden+Contacts&utm_campaign=f09893a585-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2021_11_15_01_15&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_387276506e-f09893a585-515834222#affinity=Education
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https://www.ammoland.com/2021/11/nbc-news-supplies-youtube-list-videos-delete-channels-demonetize/#axzz7Cwp4kVoK
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https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/facebooks-dangerous-experiment-teen-girls/620767/
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https://dailycaller.com/2021/12/01/facebook-kyle-rittenhouse-meta-kenosha-shooting/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2360&tpcc%3D=newsletter&pnespid=vLlgE3ofbqdA2qHRtDGpApGCohG.BMMuduqyz_Rr.0Zmhb1XOHyBT0HeRfzqbl2UqiLd_RfL
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/judge-blocks-texas-law-aimed-at-preventing-social-media-censorship_4135836.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-12-03&mktids=84b38f09c23bc8ab1db62497fa4b93f8&est=2F73bVzNXJDehLO4uZT70c%2B1%2BSjGl83D7rUif4uUkCQIi%2Bnj6B4yPgmShAWtQDeS3EpT
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Rumble to Combine with NASDAQ listed CFVI
December 2nd, 2021
A Personal Note from the CEO of Rumble, Chris Pavlovski
Dear Rumble & Locals communities,
I am proud to announce that Rumble has entered into a business combination agreement with CF Acquisition Corp. VI (NASDAQ: CFVI), providing for a combination of Rumble and CFVI. Initially the shares will trade under the ‘CFVI’ symbol.
Rumble is creating the rails to a new infrastructure that will not be bullied by cancel culture.
We are a movement that does not stifle, censor, or punish creativity and freedom of expression. We believe everyone benefits when they have access to more ideas and diverse opinions.
Being a public company will allow the people that believe in our mission to invest and join us as we seek to restore a free and open internet. Importantly, I am going to retain voting control of the combined company to facilitate the execution of Rumble’s mission on behalf of all stakeholders.
This is a very ambitious undertaking as we take on the largest companies in the world, but none of it is possible without the support of the Rumble & Locals communities. We thank you for helping us get to this point, and we look forward to the next stage of our journey together.
Thank you for being a part of this great mission and helping make the internet free and open once again.
Thanks you,
Chris Pavlovski
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https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/an-fda-official-demanded-google-censor/comments?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo1ODg4MTI0MCwicG9zdF9pZCI6NDQ5NjgzMDYsIl8iOiJKK1dFNCIsImlhdCI6MTYzODYzNDgyNCwiZXhwIjoxNjM4NjM4NDI0LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMzYzMDgwIiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.Ww33buZFGPoluy77jGzFob5raNL9YRXCxNAFIZz8yrg
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/twitter-slaps-unsafe-label-american-heart-association-mrna-vaccine-warning?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=320
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/meta-attorneys-facebook-fact-check-labels-are-opinion_4150624.html?utm_source=newsnoe&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-12-10-4&mktids=5bbbadbd9ffcb0abc7aea394d7b82142&est=DO4%2FFYyYVHKS8jRHjlfGwgyrOVd0uQb1Fgm2WDmFziomXyIuCRFZzk3z7CGHlPnyZ6iy
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Shouldn't it be all of us?
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/12/20/ken-buck-congressman-google-525282
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Amen.
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https://www.zerohedge.com/political/twitter-suspends-mrna-inventor-dr-robert-malone?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=381
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https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-joe-rogan-joins-gettr-as-twitter-censorship-intensifies
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Paul ditches YouTube in departure from Big Tech platforms
BY RYAN LOVELACE THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Sen. Rand Paul said Monday he will stop using Big Tech platforms and is ditching Googleowned YouTube first over concerns about censorship of speech online.
“Today, I begin my exodus from Big Tech, starting with the worst censor of all, YouTube,” the Kentucky Republican said in a statement. “As a libertarian-leaning senator, I think private companies have the right to ban me if they want to, however, those of us who believe that truth comes from disputation and that the marketplace of ideas is a prerequisite for innovation should shun the close-minded censors and take our ideas elsewhere, which is exactly what I’m doing.”
Mr. Paul’s office said he would make exceptions only for publishing videos to YouTube in order to criticize the video-based platform or to direct people to Rumble, a competitor of YouTube.
Tech platforms’ rules and enforcement practices have ensnared several prominent politicians and conservative firebrands. In recent days, Twitter banned a personal account for Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Republican, and Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said he suffered a similar ban at the hands of TikTok, the popular video-based platform with a China-based owner.
Ms. Greene announced Monday that Facebook had also suspended her and published an image to Gettr showing that Facebook was preventing her from posting or commenting for 24 hours. Facebook said it was not eliminating her account.
Politicians and public figures are not the only ones in the companies’ crosshairs. For example, YouTube previously has suspended the conservative One America News Network over allegations that it violated the platform’s COVID-19 misinformation policy.
Tech companies have a wide variety of tools to censor and shape content on their platforms. These include such things as banning people, removing content and making individuals’ posts and videos reach far smaller audiences than they otherwise would.
Aggressive crackdowns against public figures have created a flashpoint on the political right that gained momentum when several platforms booted former President Donald Trump in 2021 while he was in office.
YouTube barred Mr. Paul from posting videos for a week in August because the company said the senator violated its misinformation policies regarding the effectiveness of masks in stopping COVID-19. Mr. Paul responded by calling the YouTube ban a “badge of honor” on Twitter and sharing the banned video on Rumble.
Mr. Paul’s scrap with YouTube led to his decision to publicize his split with the video platform on Monday.
“Over the last year, YouTube has continued to wage its dangerous, anti-progress of science war against free speech, choosing to act in lockstep with government and ban videos posted by Dr. Paul that dared to contradict the government’s position,” the senator’s said office in a statement. “These videos included conversations with journalists where he discussed the efficacy of masks, particularly cloth masks, and a video explaining the science behind why cloth masks don’t work.”
YouTube did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Paul also announced he was creating a news aggregation website called libertytree.com, where he published a post saying his goal is to “eventually quit Big Tech entirely.”
Mr. Paul is not alone among politicians looking to create new venues to share information. Mr. Trump has announced that he is developing a new social platform, TRUTH Social, under the auspices of the Trump Media & Technology Group. Rep. Devin Nunes, California Republican, is set to take charge of the platform as CEO this year
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https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2022/01/03/facebook-blacklists-reps-marjorie-taylor-greene-following-twitter-ban/
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https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/facebook-permanently-locks-conservative-childrens-book-publisher-heroes-liberty?fbclid=IwAR3xZsY9_HHzkd5ovVFmWfqP-uZlHWkNVDoqEHMOG24AEfRJ-F5_pMPloQI
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https://www.yahoo.com/autos/law-install-kill-switches-cars-170000930.html
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https://www.yahoo.com/autos/law-install-kill-switches-cars-170000930.html
Good thing we know they’d never abuse that!
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https://www.yahoo.com/autos/law-install-kill-switches-cars-170000930.html
Good thing we know they’d never abuse that!
The power of the Feds to place and operate a kill switch in your car was clearly envisioned by the Founders as a proper role of central government and specifically authorized in Article ... , um wait, stop, I can't find that power in the constitution!
I'm afraid that part of prepping will be to always have a car built before a certain year that they can't hack, track or control.
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" good point"
another unsaid purpose of kill switch
is to be able turn off all REPUBLICAN vehicles.
[on election day]
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" good point"
another unsaid purpose of kill switch
is to be able turn off all REPUBLICAN vehicles.
[on election day]
Social Credit Score.
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https://patriotpost.us/articles/85362-leaving-censorship-for-other-platforms-2022-01-07?mailing_id=6405&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.6405&utm_campaign=digest&utm_content=body
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http://www.drroyspencer.com/
"Unreliable and harmful claims, th8is website has been demonetized by Google"
I'm reading that on a Brave browser with a duckduckgo search engine.
Read the qualifications and awards won by Dr Roy Spencer, Climatologist, University of Alabama Huntsville. He publishes actual temperature data. He is considered a 'luke warmer' for his belief in warming but not in the crazy, inaccurate models. He argues with warmers deniers everyday on his site.
This is the year I will complete my own deGoogle process.
I don't have any business to take away from Facebook, but wouldn't it be smart for people to boycott them every election year until they turn neutral?
Enough! Stop funding the enemy.
--------------------------------------
“Unreliable and harmful claims”: This website has been demonetized by Google
January 7th, 2022
DrRoySpencer.com has been demonetized by Google for “unreliable and harmful claims”. This means I can no longer generate revenue to support the website using the Google Adsense program.
From a monetary standpoint, it’s not a big deal because what I make off of Google ads is in the noise level of my family’s monthly budget. It barely made more than I pay in hosting fees and an (increasingly expensive) comment spam screener.
I’ve been getting Google warnings for a couple months now about “policy violations”, but nowhere was it listed what pages were in violation, and what those violations were. There are Adsense rules about ad placement on the page (e.g. a drop-down menu cannot overlay an ad), so I was assuming it was something like that, but I had no idea where to start looking with hundreds of web pages to sift through. It wasn’t until the ads were demonetized that Google offered links to the pages in question and what the reason was.
Of course, I should have figured out it was related to Google’s new policy about misleading content; a few months ago Google announced they would be demonetizing climate skeptic websites. I was kind of hoping my content was mainstream enough to avoid being banned since:
I believe the climate system has warmed
I believe most of this warming is probably due to greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning
Many of you know that I defend much of mainstream climate science, including climate modeling as an enterprise. Where I depart of the “mainstream” is how much warming has occurred, how much future warming can be expected, and what should be done about it from an energy policy perspective.
From the information provided by Google about my violations, in terms of the number of ads served, by far the most frequented web pages here at drroyspencer.com with “unreliable and harmful claims” are our (UAH) monthly global temperature update pages. This is obviously because some activists employed by Google (who are probably weren’t even born when John Christy and I received both NASA and American Meteorological Society awards for our work) don’t like the answer our 43-year long satellite dataset gives. Nevermind that our dataset remains one of the central global temperature datasets used by mainstream climate researchers in their work.
For now I don’t plan on appealing the decision, because it’s not worth the aggravation. If you are considered a “climate skeptic” (whatever that means) Google has already said you are targeted for termination from their Adsense program. I can’t expect their liberal arts-educated “fact checkers” to understand the nuances of the global warming debate.
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Big Tech Forcing MPs to Self-Censor in Australian Parliament: Craig Kelly MP
By Daniel Y. Teng January 19, 2022 Updated: January 19, 2022biggersmaller Print
Australian members of Parliament are curating their speeches to avoid triggering censorship from Big Tech platforms like YouTube and Facebook, according to United Australia Party (UAP) leader Craig Kelly MP.
In a wide-ranging interview with Emeritus Law Professor David Flint, Kelly, who last year resigned from the Liberal Party to join the UAP, said Big Tech companies had become the “de facto Hansard” in reference to the official transcript of Parliamentary debates used across Commonwealth countries.
“On the floor of Parliament, I have to think, ‘If I say these words, will YouTube delete this?’” he told Flint in an episode of Australia Calling, which can be viewed on The Epoch Times website, as well as Rumble and YouTube.
“I think we need to enshrine ‘freedom of speech,’ especially in the age of these large tech giants who have so much control of what goes into the media,” he said. “People talk about the Murdoch media having so much control, they have nothing on the control that Facebook and YouTube do.”
“It’s also controlling other groups like Sky News Australia and other independent media commentators who use YouTube and Facebook to post their interviews and content,” he added. “They know in certain areas if they talk about something which is contrary to the economic interests of those (Big Tech) companies, they will have their platforms taken down.”
Epoch Times Photo
Leader of the Opposition Anthony Albanese and Prime Minister Scott Morrison during Question Time in the House of Representatives at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia on May 13, 2021. (Sam Mooy/Getty Images)
Kelly called on the platforms to be recognised as publishers saying they could not have it “both ways.”
“Facebook and YouTube today have taken the role of the ‘Old Town Square.’ They’ve got the right to say who goes into the Town Square, who’s allowed to stand up on the soapbox, and who’s allowed to speak and who is not allowed to speak,” he said.
Big Tech’s moderation of content has become an increasingly contentious issue with concerns platforms are not doing enough to curb online bullying, while at the same time, warnings or suspensions have been handed out in response to discussion on politics or COVID-19.
For example, Prof. Nikolai Petrovsky, lead researcher at Vaxine which is behind Spikogen (or COVAX-19)—now being rolled out in Iran—had his LinkedIn account restricted over “multiple violations” of the user agreement.
According to an email from LinkedIn posted online by Petrovsky, the social media company took action against the researcher when he wrote comments questioning the efficacy of vaccines, the use of mandates, and the manufacturing safeguards behind the drugs.
“Which media channels to trust and have integrity? Does anyone find these comments offensive?” the professor wrote.
Part 3 of the interview with Craig Kelly MP coming Thursday, Jan. 27.
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https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/google-pulls-ads-fox-news-host-dan-bonginos-website-rcna13986?fbclid=IwAR01A_9bfrgFMZ0l_JxgRs2J4axUoxAtbWpt2kW_Az86i0ujno5F1YYxK94
So how do I sign up for his newsletter?
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https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2022/02/01/white-house-recommends-spotify-do-more-to-censor-joe-rogan/
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https://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/advchart/frames/frames.asp?show=&insttype=&symb=fb&x=0&y=0&time=8&startdate=1%2F4%2F1999&enddate=2%2F21%2F2012&freq=2&compidx=aaaaa%3A0&comptemptext=&comp=none&ma=0&maval=9&uf=0&lf=1&lf2=0&lf3=0&type=4&style=320&size=2&ti
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I would never own FB outright
but come to think of it I might have some in one retirement fund
:-o
other then shareholders or Zuck
no one is crying
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https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/098/349/098/original/1e49d7818d8cb980.png
(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/098/349/098/original/1e49d7818d8cb980.png)
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/twitter-suspends-popular-account-that-highlighted-liberal-hypocrisy?utm_campaign=article_rail&utm_source=internal&utm_medium=article_rail
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/twitter-suspends-popular-account-that-highlighted-liberal-hypocrisy?utm_campaign=article_rail&utm_source=internal&utm_medium=article_rail
Only the left gets to be violent, only the left has freedom of speech. On the right? We censor ourselves. Can't upset our facebook friends!
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https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/098/799/768/original/737c6ccd0200065b.png
(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/098/799/768/original/737c6ccd0200065b.png)
Plan accordingly.
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https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/098/799/768/original/737c6ccd0200065b.png
(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/098/799/768/original/737c6ccd0200065b.png)
Plan accordingly.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/us-trending-toward-chinas-social-credit-system-enabled-big-tech-former-facebook-analyst
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The key phrase therein:
"“It’s that integration of the government and big tech companies to police speech that I think is troubling and very evocative of the coming totalitarianism,” Frederick said on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program. She calls it a “symbiosis between the government and tech companies.”"
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"It’s that integration of the government and big tech companies to police speech that I think is troubling and very evocative of the coming totalitarianism,”
We are giving away everything to the 'tech companies' right while advocating that they essentially merge with government.
What.could.go.wrong.
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https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/1732375/mailchimp-is-an-organ-of-the-beast
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http://ace.mu.nu/archives/397879.php
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https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/twitter-suffers-a-devastating-9th/comments?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo1ODg4MTI0MCwicG9zdF9pZCI6NDk3NTAyNzEsIl8iOiI5UmZmVCIsImlhdCI6MTY0NjQzMTg5NywiZXhwIjoxNjQ2NDM1NDk3LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMzYzMDgwIiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9._VwRhdqq5_p4UYFtWvjpht14WuDp1cF9E7V2B4ECEiQ&s=r
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second
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/kremlin-blocks-access-to-facebook-citing-discrimination-against-russian-media/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=26916189
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https://twitter.com/HansMahncke/status/1501036174860853249
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https://twitchy.com/samj-3930/2022/03/10/not-the-way-to-go-bro-duck-duck-go-ceo-blasted-for-bragging-about-how-theyre-now-manipulating-search-results/?bcid=153d44ed73be9b41740d4ea4ef6b0e524f2e2942d66fc8a2b0d8f8922416875d&utm_campaign=nl&utm_medium=email&utm_source=twtydaily
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Way to damage a brand!
https://twitchy.com/samj-3930/2022/03/10/not-the-way-to-go-bro-duck-duck-go-ceo-blasted-for-bragging-about-how-theyre-now-manipulating-search-results/?bcid=153d44ed73be9b41740d4ea4ef6b0e524f2e2942d66fc8a2b0d8f8922416875d&utm_campaign=nl&utm_medium=email&utm_source=twtydaily
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Way to damage a brand!
https://twitchy.com/samj-3930/2022/03/10/not-the-way-to-go-bro-duck-duck-go-ceo-blasted-for-bragging-about-how-theyre-now-manipulating-search-results/?bcid=153d44ed73be9b41740d4ea4ef6b0e524f2e2942d66fc8a2b0d8f8922416875d&utm_campaign=nl&utm_medium=email&utm_source=twtydaily
Very disappointing. I noticed the were sponsoring on liberal radio and thought this is great; it is not only conservatives who should value privacy.
But I've also noticed that their search results look to me to have liberal bias, just like Google. For example, I look up some kind of basic conservative principle x and instead the first three results are myth of x. I couldn't tell if they manipulate results themselves or just copy results from someone like Google who does that. Either way, I'm very often not impressed.
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Alternative?
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Alternative?
https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/boon-big-tech-alternatives-google-challenger-duckduckgo
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Hunter Biden’s Laptop and America’s Crisis of Accountability
The New York Times now admits the story was real. News and social-media companies will pay no price for suppressing vital information in 2020.
By Gerard Baker
Follow
March 21, 2022 1:40 pm ET
In close elections, a fraction of the total vote distributed in the right places can swing an outcome, and we can never be sure what effect late news stories can have.
If it hadn’t been for a suspiciously well-timed report of a decades-old driving-under-the-influence arrest in the final days of the 2000 presidential campaign, George W. Bush might not have needed 35 days and the judgment of the Supreme Court to deliver him the White House.
Harold Wilson, the British Labour prime minister in 1970, is said to have claimed for years afterward that England’s shock defeat by West Germany in the soccer World Cup quarterfinal that year so depressed the national mood—and turnout—that it produced his surprise ejection from 10 Downing Street in the general election days later.
We’ll never know what effect the “October Surprise” of 2020, the New York Post’s reporting of the discovery of a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden containing all sorts of embarrassing emails, might have had on the election that year if it had received wider circulation. Perhaps in a campaign dominated by Covid and characterized by chaos, it would have been another snowflake in the blizzard of news voters were being hit with.
But the allegations in the reporting—that the son of the man favored to become the next president had been selling his high-level family political connections to foreigners, including suggestions of a possible cut for his father—were worth pursuing. But enough influential people in and out of government—in the foreign-policy-intelligence complex, in the media, and in the big tech firms—were so alarmed that it would affect the outcome that they pulled off one of the greatest disappearing tricks since Harry Houdini made that elephant vanish from a New York stage.
It took its time, but last week the New York Times slipped the acknowledgment of the story’s accuracy deep in a report about Hunter Biden’s mounting legal problems. The Times, along with most other mass-circulation news organizations, had essentially ignored the story in the days when it might have made a difference, but it now says it has “authenticated” the laptop’s contents.
The concession from the paper, which serves as a sort of unofficial licensing authority for reporting by most of the rest of the media, prompted a predictable rush to self-vindication by those who had also trashed the story at the time. The Washington Post insisted its original decision not to touch it was justified because of uncertainty about its provenance.
Normally, when there is doubt about the provenance of an explosive story, news organizations consider it their job to ascertain the truth. Normally, it takes them less than 17 months to do so. But normally they don’t have the cover provided by technology companies that prevented people from reading the original story.
The media and tech companies that colluded in concealing this potentially critical information didn’t need any excuse to do so. But it surely helped that they were given validation for their actions by an august-sounding committee of concerned letter-writers who moved quickly to discredit the story.
In that famous letter, more than 50 former national-security and intelligence officials polished their gleaming credentials and alleged that the New York Post was guilty of peddling a story that had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
The principal rationale for this, the letter laid out, was that the story might be helpful to Donald Trump. Russia wanted Mr. Trump to win. The story helped Mr. Trump. Ergo, it was the work of Russia.
That’s quite a syllogism. Using that same logic, you might conclude that Russia was also responsible for any unexpectedly good economic data that helped the incumbent, or that Vladimir Putin was behind the crime wave that had gripped Democrat-run cities.
Now we can guess why so much U.S. intelligence has been so faulty all these years. Either these 50 or so grandmasters of international espionage are completely unable to distinguish Russian disinformation from real information, or they prostituted their credentials in a naked act of political hackery. I don’t have their experience or deductive skills, but I’m ready to go with the latter.
The deeper shame here is the lack of accountability across American institutions. No one who colluded in this conspiracy against truth has even been inconvenienced by it.
Contacted by the Post last week, not one of the letter’s signatories expressed regret or contrition. The reporters and editors at news organizations and the employees and executives of tech companies who participated in the suppression continue to be lionized for their work.
This is what is so corrosive of trust and, in the end, of the system itself. The one way in which real accountability is supposed to work in a democracy is at the ballot box. But how can that even work when the people we want to hold accountable decide what information the voters are allowed to see?
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https://dailycaller.com/2022/03/23/twitter-censors-tucker-carlson/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2680&pnespid=prltFi9fOLhD0aTeoiioGZuQuR7zDYkudOHgyPk2sxtm50fIorXKIbKL4JFSPNEjmj1RZZop
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https://dailycaller.com/2022/03/23/twitter-censors-tucker-carlson/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2680&pnespid=prltFi9fOLhD0aTeoiioGZuQuR7zDYkudOHgyPk2sxtm50fIorXKIbKL4JFSPNEjmj1RZZop
Time to replace twitter but it should be with one that is 'inclusive', not just more dividing where we get the news and commentary.
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https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/102/570/559/original/098b853cba5070d1.png
(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/102/570/559/original/098b853cba5070d1.png)
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https://www.axios.com/eric-schmidt-china-alarm-tech-competition-f74f896c-9024-4463-b912-5d316022dd1b.html
it has been thanks to him and others in big that have helped put is in this situation
plus they had no problem making billions with ties to China
helped the Dem Party
and NOW he talks about the China threat
now he is trying to stay relevant
how infuriating
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https://www.reuters.com/technology/musk-discloses-92-stake-twitter-2022-04-04/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=daily-briefing
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second
Hunter Laptop Story Confirms: Rein in Big Tech or Cease to Be a Free People
Josh Hammer
Josh Hammer
April 3, 2022 Updated: April 3, 2022biggersmaller Print
Commentary
On the precipice of the regime-defining 2020 presidential election, Facebook and Twitter committed their “Pearl Harbor attack” against the incumbent president, Donald Trump, and in dutiful favor of the regnant regime’s favored candidate, Joe Biden.
In an October move that would presage the collapse of the “public”-”private” distinction during the Biden presidency—as seen in press secretary Jen Psaki’s open bragging last summer of collusion with Mark Zuckerberg to censor COVID “misinformation,” and Eric Schmidt’s recently revealed role helping shape administration science policy—Big Tech oligarchs dropped the hammer on the New York Post, a high-circulation newspaper, for its reporting on Hunter Biden’s now-infamous “laptop from hell.” The laptop’s files demonstrated the notoriously troubled Hunter’s venality, abuses of power, and general sketchiness of his foreign dealings. He and some of his cronies remain under federal investigation for possible tax and money laundering violations.
In response to the Post’s reportage, Twitter locked the paper out of its own account for over two weeks. Both Facebook and Twitter, moreover, heavily limited or outright-blocked disseminating the Post’s URL for the laptop story. Crucially, the entirety of this sordid affair transpired less than a month away from a momentous Election Day. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) correctly demanded that the Federal Election Commission investigate whether Facebook and Twitter illegally issued in-kind contributions to the Biden campaign; he was rebuffed.
There are myriad problems with this picture. Most notable, perhaps, was the undoubted nature of the laptop’s authenticity; no one, not even anyone in the Biden clan, denied at the time that Hunter’s computer was genuine. One might normally deem such a detail important. But the Big Tech powers, uninterested in something as mundane as “truth,” immediately grasped the greater imperative—to discredit the story in, and even to memory-hole it from, the collective public conscience.
The entire saga was eye-opening. Purportedly “private” companies worked hand in hand with their favored presidential candidate, evincing the lie of the “public”-”private” distinction and exposing the sprawling, pan-institutional nature of America’s Ruling Class. The Ruling Class’ ends sought were clear: Elect Joe Biden to be president of the United States. The means were then retrofitted after the ends were established.
Big Tech knew its role, and it executed its role flawlessly. Never mind that, if such shenanigans were to recur in 2024, with Biden as sitting president, such collusion would run afoul of the Supreme Court’s 1973 admonition in Norwood v. Harrison that the government “may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.”
Over the past few weeks, both The New York Times and The Washington Post, America’s two leading amplifiers of homogenous Ruling Class thought, corroborated and acknowledged the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop. “A day late and a dollar short” doesn’t quite cut it here; “a year and a half late and trillions of dollars (in national indebtedness) short” is more like it. Given the exceedingly close nature of the 2020 presidential election, Big Tech’s protection of the Biden family likely cost Trump a second term. (Which also means Big Tech cost Ukraine a Russian invasion; no sane person thinks Vladimir Putin would have invaded under Trump’s watch.)
Uh, can we “deplorables” get a redo?
A look back at L’Affaire Hunter, with the clarity of both hindsight and the Times’ and Washington Post’s recent self-serving admissions, ought to provide a clarion wake-up call. There are few more pressing imperatives in American political life in the year 2022 than to rein in the Big Tech oligarchs and to reclaim “We the People”-rooted democracy from Silicon Valley technocracy. The Big Tech debate is often aired in the rhetoric and phraseology of “censorship” and “speech,” but the better way to view the debate is through the lens of sovereignty and republican self-governance. When it comes to the Big Tech wars, the most fundamental question is a version of “who decides?”: Who, that is, will watch the watchmen?
The collapse of the “public”-”private” distinction, at least in the context of the Big Tech robber barons, resolves the question. We the People must decide; We the People must watch the watchmen. The rules by which the 21st-century public square operates cannot be written in private by shadowy Birkenstock-wearing computer science Ph.D. dweebs. The underlying issues here are far too fundamental to our republic and our way of life. We must write the rules; we must reclaim our sovereignty from the woke titans of industry champing at the bit to impose an American social credit system.
If Big Tech can sway an election and ban a president of the United States, there is nothing it cannot do. All policy options must remain on the table to put Big Tech in its place once and for all.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
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This could be a super BFD!
-
This could be a super BFD!
Yes.
I don't know if he is conservative but he sure doesn't buy the whole woke agenda.
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https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/free-speech/catherine-salgado/2022/03/29/big-tech-let-seven-dictators-post-including-vladimir
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/05/child-sexual-abuse-images-online-social-media
They have priorities.
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/free-speech/catherine-salgado/2022/03/29/big-tech-let-seven-dictators-post-including-vladimir
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https://patriotpost.us/articles/87444-the-specter-of-shadowbanning-explained-2022-04-06?mailing_id=6583&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.6583&utm_campaign=digest&utm_content=body
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https://www.nationalreview.com/news/elon-musk-rejects-offer-to-join-twitter-board-fueling-hostile-takeover-speculation/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=27326322
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https://www.waff.com/2022/04/14/elon-musk-offers-buy-twitter/?fbclid=IwAR0Xd_-FF20RKF3vtb-qWaiQLkX5_rsAvhIqu3M48Gp9hl-1sulrBixdvxU
-
https://www.engadget.com/elon-musk-class-action-lawsuit-twitter-013007195.html?src=rss&fbclid=IwAR10WeUno7S55CLHfC6AigIOHBmrW0rFpbcA_E28OtrnXcEg6u0MKGgc9QU
also see
https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/elon-musk-twitter-saudi?utm_source=lwc-trending&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=LWC-Trending%202022-04-14
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https://www.waff.com/2022/04/14/elon-musk-offers-buy-twitter/?fbclid=IwAR0Xd_-FF20RKF3vtb-qWaiQLkX5_rsAvhIqu3M48Gp9hl-1sulrBixdvxU
Musk under DOJ SEC investigations.
https://video.foxbusiness.com/v/6303844565001#sp=show-clips
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"Musk under DOJ SEC investigations."
lawyerlisters immediately pounce back.....
:wink:
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https://qz.com/2155546/twitter-founder-jack-dorsey-tweet-about-elon-musks-takeover-bid/?utm_source=YPL
Gut who pain $ 2.9 million
for Jack Dorsey's first tweet
puts it up for sale as an NFT
and expected $50,000,000 (yes 7 zeroes)
the highest offer is ~ $ 6,800
[updated]
https://www.cnet.com/personal-finance/crypto/jack-dorseys-2-9m-nft-tweet-auctioned-the-top-bid-280/#:~:text=Exhibit%20A%3A%20Last%20year%20crypto,%2450%20million%20sale%20to%20charity.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-nMlMU48wI
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https://twitter.com/ShimshockAndAwe/status/1516859398282526720
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984
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https://twitter.com/ShimshockAndAwe/status/1516859398282526720
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984
Sounds like nonsense - until you watch them do it.
-
https://twitter.com/ShimshockAndAwe/status/1516859398282526720
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984
Sounds like nonsense - until you watch them do it.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/magnet-conspiracy-theories-wikipedia-kills-entry-hunter-bidens-investment-company
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https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/04/italy-announces-rollout-dystopian-social-credit-system-conserve-resources-first-kind-eu-compliant-citizens-will-rewarded-good-behavior/
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https://ace.mu.nu/archives/398844.php
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/dhs-sets-up-disinformation-governance-board-to-fight-misinformation_4432889.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-04-28-1&utm_medium=email&est=WtQeeGIdq7n5zjrv%2F0jZqgJ6z0xfcLgTECAYol9RfI2VyHnAZyxbhCPNtKoemJwwCm0Y
https://www.theepochtimes.com/musks-mention-highlights-twitter-counsel-bakers-russiagate-past-at-fbi_4431891.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-04-28-1&utm_medium=email&est=G8Y3x%2BWfuMuVtBemKGft0a8%2FcdpW8lcC9BhkQGsyORQnBpz6Al4tBAluG6W11cwb5ekg
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/dhs-sets-up-disinformation-governance-board-to-fight-misinformation_4432889.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-04-28-1&utm_medium=email&est=WtQeeGIdq7n5zjrv%2F0jZqgJ6z0xfcLgTECAYol9RfI2VyHnAZyxbhCPNtKoemJwwCm0Y
https://www.theepochtimes.com/musks-mention-highlights-twitter-counsel-bakers-russiagate-past-at-fbi_4431891.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-04-28-1&utm_medium=email&est=G8Y3x%2BWfuMuVtBemKGft0a8%2FcdpW8lcC9BhkQGsyORQnBpz6Al4tBAluG6W11cwb5ekg
Beware of everything they call public private partnerships. they violate the constitutional principal of equal protection and equal treatment under the law.
The firewall between Google, with all our data, and their partner, the Federal Government, is made of kindling.
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SOCIAL MEDIA
‘Libs of TikTok’ account’s popularity soars after expose
Disclosure of anonymous creator’s identity spurs media ethics debate
BY VALERIE RICHARDSON THE WASHINGTON TIMES
A popular conservative Twitter account has gained even more influence since being targeted in a Washington Post tell-all.
Libs of TikTok became a cause celebre after Post reporter Taylor Lorenz disclosed the name, employer and religion of the anonymous creator in an April 19 expose, warning readers that the account was “secretly fueling the right’s outrage machine” and become “a powerful force on the Internet.”
While Ms. Lorenz has since been excoriated on the right and accused of doxing the account’s owner, the result was the kind of publicity money can’t buy.
Libs of TikTok hit 1 million followers on Tuesday, a one-week increase of more than 50%. The creator also launched a Substack newsletter that now boasts thousands of followers.
The woman behind Libs of TikTok showed her appreciation with a little tongue-in-cheek trolling this week.
“So grateful to @TaylorLorenz and WaPo for helping me achieve this huge milestone! Is there an address I can send a thank you card?” she tweeted.
The surge in followers came at a cost. After the Post article appeared last week, Libs of Tik-Tok’s creator said she went into hiding, telling Fox News’ Tucker Carlson in an audio interview that “I had to make some travel plans really fast.”
“I’m now in a place where I don’t think anyone would find me, not any of the locations that Taylor Lorenz leaked or that anyone can find,” she said in the segment. “It’s been a little bit tough but I’m not going to let this get me down.”
Mr. Carlson accused the Post of “an intimidation campaign designed to shut down a highly effective Twitter feed.”
The episode triggered a battle between Team Libs and Team Lorenz as the upstart conservative media takes on the liberal legacy establishment over journalism ethics, internet privacy and double standards.
Two Libs of TikTok supporters, podcaster Tim Pool and Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing, fueled the uproar Tuesday by sponsoring a digital billboard in New York City’s Times Square criticizing Ms. Lorenz.
“Hey, Wapo, democracy dies in darkness. That’s why we’re shining a light on you. Taylor Lorenz Doxxed @LibsofTikTok,” the billboard said.
Ms. Lorenz swung back by charging her critics with endangering her friends and family.
“My family and friends are not happy. They have been subject to a non stop stream of hateful attacks, doxxing, and violent attacks driven by this baseless campaign,” she tweeted.
Conservatives accused her of hypocrisy, given her Libs of TikTok expose and that just last month, Ms. Lorenz complained in an emotional interview on MSNBC about online harassment.
In Ms. Lorenz’s corner was Kara Alaimo, Hofstra University associate professor, who said in an NBC News op-ed that the Post article engaged in “accountability” not “doxing.”
The Post article and subsequent reports in other media outlets have identified Libs of Tik-Tok’s creator as Chaya Raichik, which she has not disputed.
“There’s no justifiable reason to protect the identity of someone like Raichik on social media so she can spread this kind of intolerance with impunity,” said Ms. Alaimo in the April 21 op-ed.
Libs of TikTok made its name by reposting videos, typically without her commentary, of lefttilting individuals espousing their views, often on the TikTok app, and quickly became a favorite on the right while drawing the ire of the left.
The leftist group Media Matters for America took up the anti-Libs mantle earlier this month, blasting the account in six press releases from April 1-18, starting with “Fox News is using the ‘Libs of TikTok’ Twitter account like a wire service for anti-LGBTQ attacks.”
Ms. Lorenz called the account a “political force,” adding that “for all we knew, this could have been a foreign actor, right, or someone — we just didn’t know.”
“This is an influential media force. The idea this woman is not newsworthy is quite nonsense, you know what I mean?” Ms. Lorenz said Sunday on CNN’s “Reliable Sources.”
“I cover influencers for a living and I’m telling you, this woman is more influential than a lot of people that I cover,” she said.
She also denied doxing her, saying that “doxing means revealing highly, highly personal, nonpublic information with the goal of harassment or sort of destroying someone’s life.
“We absolutely did not reveal any personal information about this woman at all, remotely,” said Ms. Lorenz. “I know that sometimes reporting practices can seem foreign to people that aren’t familiar with journalism, but this was very by-the-book and very benign.”
Cameron Barr, Post senior managing editor, defended the story by saying that Libs of Tik-Tok “has had significant impact on public discourse and her identity had become public knowledge on social media. We did not publish or link to any details about her personal life.”
Critics are calling the Post claim deceptive.
They point out that the original Post story included a link to the woman’s Realtor profile, which included her real-estate license number, her employer, and the employer’s address. The link was later removed without explanation.
“LIES. They included a link with personal information which they later removed because they knew what they were doing was abhorrent,” tweeted Libs of TikTok.
After the billboard went up, Ms. Lorenz called it “idiotic,” but added that “these campaigns have a much darker and more violent side.”
“I’m grateful to be at a newsroom that recognizes these bad faith, politically motivated attacks and has a strong security team,” she said.
She also accused the billboard sponsors of trying to “discredit my reporting on Libs of TikTok,” which Mr. Pool disputed, saying he was “not discrediting your reporting.”
“I’m calling you out for lying when you and WaPo denied linking to private details/You published Libs’ private address/just own it,” he tweeted.
The Post article also said the woman on a previous socialmedia account “claimed to be proudly Orthodox Jewish.”
That detail drew pushback from Jewish News Syndicate editor- in-chief Jonathan Tobin, who said highlighting the woman’s faith “carries with it a touch of anti-Semitic incitement.
-
https://ace.mu.nu/archives/398901.php
Every Pedo-groomer has a name and an address.
SOCIAL MEDIA
‘Libs of TikTok’ account’s popularity soars after expose
Disclosure of anonymous creator’s identity spurs media ethics debate
BY VALERIE RICHARDSON THE WASHINGTON TIMES
A popular conservative Twitter account has gained even more influence since being targeted in a Washington Post tell-all.
Libs of TikTok became a cause celebre after Post reporter Taylor Lorenz disclosed the name, employer and religion of the anonymous creator in an April 19 expose, warning readers that the account was “secretly fueling the right’s outrage machine” and become “a powerful force on the Internet.”
While Ms. Lorenz has since been excoriated on the right and accused of doxing the account’s owner, the result was the kind of publicity money can’t buy.
Libs of TikTok hit 1 million followers on Tuesday, a one-week increase of more than 50%. The creator also launched a Substack newsletter that now boasts thousands of followers.
The woman behind Libs of TikTok showed her appreciation with a little tongue-in-cheek trolling this week.
“So grateful to @TaylorLorenz and WaPo for helping me achieve this huge milestone! Is there an address I can send a thank you card?” she tweeted.
The surge in followers came at a cost. After the Post article appeared last week, Libs of Tik-Tok’s creator said she went into hiding, telling Fox News’ Tucker Carlson in an audio interview that “I had to make some travel plans really fast.”
“I’m now in a place where I don’t think anyone would find me, not any of the locations that Taylor Lorenz leaked or that anyone can find,” she said in the segment. “It’s been a little bit tough but I’m not going to let this get me down.”
Mr. Carlson accused the Post of “an intimidation campaign designed to shut down a highly effective Twitter feed.”
The episode triggered a battle between Team Libs and Team Lorenz as the upstart conservative media takes on the liberal legacy establishment over journalism ethics, internet privacy and double standards.
Two Libs of TikTok supporters, podcaster Tim Pool and Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing, fueled the uproar Tuesday by sponsoring a digital billboard in New York City’s Times Square criticizing Ms. Lorenz.
“Hey, Wapo, democracy dies in darkness. That’s why we’re shining a light on you. Taylor Lorenz Doxxed @LibsofTikTok,” the billboard said.
Ms. Lorenz swung back by charging her critics with endangering her friends and family.
“My family and friends are not happy. They have been subject to a non stop stream of hateful attacks, doxxing, and violent attacks driven by this baseless campaign,” she tweeted.
Conservatives accused her of hypocrisy, given her Libs of TikTok expose and that just last month, Ms. Lorenz complained in an emotional interview on MSNBC about online harassment.
In Ms. Lorenz’s corner was Kara Alaimo, Hofstra University associate professor, who said in an NBC News op-ed that the Post article engaged in “accountability” not “doxing.”
The Post article and subsequent reports in other media outlets have identified Libs of Tik-Tok’s creator as Chaya Raichik, which she has not disputed.
“There’s no justifiable reason to protect the identity of someone like Raichik on social media so she can spread this kind of intolerance with impunity,” said Ms. Alaimo in the April 21 op-ed.
Libs of TikTok made its name by reposting videos, typically without her commentary, of lefttilting individuals espousing their views, often on the TikTok app, and quickly became a favorite on the right while drawing the ire of the left.
The leftist group Media Matters for America took up the anti-Libs mantle earlier this month, blasting the account in six press releases from April 1-18, starting with “Fox News is using the ‘Libs of TikTok’ Twitter account like a wire service for anti-LGBTQ attacks.”
Ms. Lorenz called the account a “political force,” adding that “for all we knew, this could have been a foreign actor, right, or someone — we just didn’t know.”
“This is an influential media force. The idea this woman is not newsworthy is quite nonsense, you know what I mean?” Ms. Lorenz said Sunday on CNN’s “Reliable Sources.”
“I cover influencers for a living and I’m telling you, this woman is more influential than a lot of people that I cover,” she said.
She also denied doxing her, saying that “doxing means revealing highly, highly personal, nonpublic information with the goal of harassment or sort of destroying someone’s life.
“We absolutely did not reveal any personal information about this woman at all, remotely,” said Ms. Lorenz. “I know that sometimes reporting practices can seem foreign to people that aren’t familiar with journalism, but this was very by-the-book and very benign.”
Cameron Barr, Post senior managing editor, defended the story by saying that Libs of Tik-Tok “has had significant impact on public discourse and her identity had become public knowledge on social media. We did not publish or link to any details about her personal life.”
Critics are calling the Post claim deceptive.
They point out that the original Post story included a link to the woman’s Realtor profile, which included her real-estate license number, her employer, and the employer’s address. The link was later removed without explanation.
“LIES. They included a link with personal information which they later removed because they knew what they were doing was abhorrent,” tweeted Libs of TikTok.
After the billboard went up, Ms. Lorenz called it “idiotic,” but added that “these campaigns have a much darker and more violent side.”
“I’m grateful to be at a newsroom that recognizes these bad faith, politically motivated attacks and has a strong security team,” she said.
She also accused the billboard sponsors of trying to “discredit my reporting on Libs of TikTok,” which Mr. Pool disputed, saying he was “not discrediting your reporting.”
“I’m calling you out for lying when you and WaPo denied linking to private details/You published Libs’ private address/just own it,” he tweeted.
The Post article also said the woman on a previous socialmedia account “claimed to be proudly Orthodox Jewish.”
That detail drew pushback from Jewish News Syndicate editor- in-chief Jonathan Tobin, who said highlighting the woman’s faith “carries with it a touch of anti-Semitic incitement.
-
they were all agreeing
twitter is not a "threat to democracy"
need to control "hate speech" and "conspiracy theories"
so the answer for them of course is DNC - lawyer run around Twitter executive control by transferring control to the government control
(like marxist EU countries).
this way DNC can still control albeit less directly
via 9% of revenue fines of what ever THEY deem is hate speech conspiracy theories or of course a "threat to democracy" .
and of course I am watching them say FREE SPEECH IS A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY!
wow
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https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/13/tech/texas-hb20-social-media-law/index.html?fbclid=IwAR0b5r6FrmCEb3XMPLVqqvYP48DKhdgMdF6DompZl4NExrBmeewPbQtkDNI
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Social Media Giants Stifle Iranian Protesters
by Potkin Azarmehr
IPT News
May 19, 2022
https://www.investigativeproject.org/9174/social-media-giants-stifle-iranian-protesters
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States bypass stalled Congress, take legal action to limit Big Tech powers
BY RYAN LOVELACE THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Democratic and Republican attorneys general are targeting large tech companies in court, seeking to curb their power through the judicial system as an alternative to legislation that has stalled in Congress.
D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine is suing Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg over claims of consumer protection violations. He said he must hold big corporate CEOs accountable for their actions.
Mr. Racine said he has evidence to show that Mr. Zuckerberg was personally involved in the data leak that allowed political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica to target Facebook users during the 2016 presidential race.
“This lawsuit is not only warranted but necessary and sends a message that corporate leaders, including CEOs, will be held accountable for their actions,” Mr. Racine said in a statement Monday.
Mr. Racine’s lawsuit said Cambridge Analytica exfiltrated personal data on 70 million Facebook users in the U.S., including 340,000 people in the District, to influence the 2016 presidential election. Facebook, which rebranded as Meta, did not respond to a request for comment.
The D.C. attorney general has repeatedly struck out against Facebook.
Last year, a federal judge tossed an antitrust lawsuit brought by several dozen state attorneys general, including Mr. Racine.
Mr. Racine first sued Facebook in 2018 over accusations that the platform failed to protect people’s data and later sought to add Mr. Zuckerberg to the lawsuit. The Superior Court of the District of Columbia blocked Mr. Racine’s effort in a March hearing, according to The New York Times, and now Mr. Racine is pursuing Mr. Zuckerberg individually.
Texas, which participated in the failed
antitrust lawsuit, has taken aim at other platforms: Twitter and Google.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican facing a primary challenger in a runoff election Tuesday, has vigorously positioned himself as a fighter against Big Tech. His office said last week that he has filed five lawsuits against Google.
Mr. Paxton sought to investigate Twitter’s censorship practices after the platform banned former President Donald Trump, and he fended off a challenge to his investigation from Twitter this year. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed Twitter’s lawsuit against Mr. Paxton, which accused him of retaliation for banning Mr. Trump.
More recently, Mr. Paxton has defended Texas’ new social media law in litigation before the Supreme Court. The law seeks to stop censorship by directing social media platforms with more than 50 million active users to not discriminate against Texans’ viewpoints.
Last week, Mr. Paxton urged the Supreme Court to allow enforcement of its law over the objections of tech industry trade groups. The Computer & Communications Industry Association and NetChoice asked the high court to reverse a federal appeals court’s lifting of a blockade of the law.
“Applicants — whose members, as relevant here, include Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter (the platforms) — assert a First Amendment right to refuse service to their customers based on the viewpoints those customers profess,” Mr. Paxton wrote. “This court has never recognized such a right, and it should not do so now to vacate a stay.”
The Supreme Court has not resolved the dispute between Texas and the tech groups.
State prosecutors’ efforts to fight the companies in the courts have won praise from the vocal critics of the tech giants.
Mike Davis, the founder of the conservative Internet Accountability Project, is cheering attorneys generals’ efforts to crack down.
“Holding Big Tech accountable is a priority for the American public, and we’re glad attorneys general around the country are responding to their constituents,” Mr. Davis said.
Although legislation aiming to restrict large tech companies’ operations has stalled in Congress, that may soon change. Antitrust legislation awaiting final consideration by the full Senate could receive a review this summer, Axios said.
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer reportedly met with fellow Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Richard J. Durbin of Illinois last week to discuss putting up a revised version of antitrust legislation for a vote.
The liberal American Economic Liberties Project’s Matt Stoller called Monday for Mr. Schumer to put antitrust proposals forward for a vote. Mr. Stoller said in a Twitter message that Mr. Schumer needs to hold the vote and criticized the New York Democrat as a “consistent booster of monopoly power.”
ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTOGRAPHS
D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine says he has evidence that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg (right) was personally involved in a data leak that allowed a political consulting firm to target users of his Facebook social media platform during the 2016 presidential campaign.
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/beijing-remarkably-effective-at-exploiting-search-engine-results-report_4501074.html?utm_source=China&utm_campaign=uschina-2022-06-01&utm_medium=email&est=ANZDMhkF%2B4wrV1U%2B9dyQeQeYcoeQUDau80qz57psikD537IJ5g9jSYgPqmt%2FuBMRZkq9
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https://www.protocol.com/policy/senate-antitrust-bill-bipartisan-schumer
-
https://www.theepochtimes.com/twitter-censors-all-content-from-the-epoch-times_4631372.html?utm_source=Goodevening&utm_campaign=gv-2022-07-29&utm_medium=email&est=gmHG6ACAcvpWziVUkfZFz7LE7vZB6nC%2FVBt6BzapzPb7dXl5LrLCgoZZ7j62LRbD9Ts5
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/twitter-stops-censoring-epoch-times-content-after-outcry_4632452.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_campaign=mb-2022-07-31&utm_medium=email&est=iRvHcOk2l%2Fq31tNKz8crDId0MZY%2BqUd9cly66Dse0gY7NwMFAr8rBDG%2FlitdLB9h6L6l
-
https://www.mediaite.com/news/steven-crowder-rages-at-youtube-for-suspending-him-over-kari-lakes-stolen-election-claims-lets-all-be-extremists-on-rumble/
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A year ago yesterday
The fight isn't over, it's just begun
Alex Berenson
Aug 29
SAVE
That hot August night 12 months ago, it felt like someone had duct-taped my mouth shut.
Yes, I’d feared Twitter might ban me permanently if I kept telling the truth about the Covid vaccines. How could I not? On July 30, 2021, Twitter had locked my account after I did nothing more than report the results of Pfizer’s own vaccine clinical trial.
That “strike” was my fourth. One more and I’d be gone for good.
--
But the actual reality of August 28 – the moment I could no longer communicate with the hundreds of thousands of people who followed me or the millions reading my tweets - came as a shock.
Anyone who says being publicly “canceled” isn’t painful hasn’t had it happen.
The act is not merely meant to silence. It is meant to shame; you are so dangerous we aren’t even going to allow you to speak. And it is meant to be permanent. It is a show trial that ends in a life sentence, no appeal possible.
It is meant to be painful.
(Guess again, little bird)
That “Thanks, Twitter” is a particularly nice touch!
—
(FIGHT CENSORSHIP)
Upgrade to paid
—
After that fourth strike, I tried to protect myself – highlighting the risk of the censorship I feared – even as I reported accurately.
I suppose some part of me hoped that as long as I stuck to the data and avoided conspiracy theories, Twitter would keep the promises it had made to me.
(Unicorns all the way down)
I was wrong.
In an instant, I lost what was by far my most powerful platform for journalism, one that offered free access to people around the world. Twitter gave me the chance to speak out in real time about the unprecedented medical experiment we’d conducted on a billion people, an experiment that continues to this day.
That megaphone, mine no more.
Which is why they did it, of course.
They.
I still don’t know who they really are, though I am on the path to finding out. At the time, I knew Twitter’s attitude towards me had changed dramatically six weeks before, after President Biden said social media companies were “killing people” by allowing questions about the Covid vaccines. And I suspected the Biden Administration and others had pressured Twitter privately, but back then I didn’t have proof.
Now I do. I know that in April 2021, three months before my deplatforming started, the administration summoned Twitter employees to the White House for a meeting in which my name featured prominently.
But in April 2021, Twitter didn’t think it could do anything about me. Twitter employees told each other that they had looked at my account and I was playing by its rules.
It wasn’t even clear Twitter wanted to do anything about me. Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, was following me. And a Twitter executive had told me repeatedly that the company believed in free debate around Covid and the vaccines and that I was not violating its policies.
For a couple of months after that meeting Twitter continued to protect me - and its commitment to free speech.
But then, in July, the Biden administration raised the stakes. In under a week, the White House devoted most of a press conference to pressuring social media companies to ban vaccine skeptics; the President made his infamous “killing people” comment; and a Biden spokesperson said the administration might try to repeal the legal protection that prevents social media companies from being sued for posts they carry or their decisions to ban users.
—
Repealing Section 230 would cut to the heart of Twitter’s business model.
And the little bird could not tolerate the heat.
In just over a month I was gone.
—
The irony is that Twitter deplatformed me just as my skepticism about the vaccines was being proven right.
Maybe irony is the wrong word. Maybe the sequence makes perfect sense. A contrarian who’s wrong is merely a crank. A contrarian who’s right is dangerous. Especially if he has a megaphone.
And did I ever have a megaphone.
Well, now I’ve got it back, bigger than ever. The 345,000 Twitter followers I had last August are now over 400,000. The 100,000 Substack subscribers are now close to a quarter-million. (Most of you don’t pay, and that’s fine, but if you do - THANK YOU.)
I have two platforms now, and two missions (if not more) - to fight for free speech (and chase down the people who helped coerce Twitter to ban me last year); and to investigate the long-term impact of the mRNA shots.
That the vaccines are useless to stop coronavirus infection or transmission - my last tweet last year, the tweet that got me banned - is now beyond question. What we need to know now is what they’re doing to the billion-plus people who took them.
Neither fight will be easy. But I’m not fighting alone.
Keep spreading the word. Keep spreading the truth.
Onward.
You’re a free subscriber to Unreported Truths. For the full experience, become a paid subscriber.
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https://nypost.com/2022/09/14/facebook-spied-on-private-messages-of-americans-who-questioned-2020-election/
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Ummm , , , isn't this something we said we were for? , , ,
https://www.theepochtimes.com/biden-asks-congress-to-end-social-media-immunity-denounces-white-supremacy-at-wh-summit-on-hate-fueled-violence_4734570.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-09-16-2&utm_medium=email&est=xsZJiGNrHmqhRHKN1%2FdrmiONlCVo3d0tku4P3wqCVjdo4jPDXoWx8xIqxZZs7ayA6ZVC
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Ummm , , , isn't this something we said we were for? , , ,
https://www.theepochtimes.com/biden-asks-congress-to-end-social-media-immunity-denounces-white-supremacy-at-wh-summit-on-hate-fueled-violence_4734570.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-09-16-2&utm_medium=email&est=xsZJiGNrHmqhRHKN1%2FdrmiONlCVo3d0tku4P3wqCVjdo4jPDXoWx8xIqxZZs7ayA6ZVC
“Republicans and Democrats both want to repeal Section 230, but they want to replace it in diametrically opposed ways,” said Mark Lemley, a Stanford Law School professor. “Democrats want more content moderation targeting hate speech and misinformation. Republicans want to apply the First Amendment to social media sites even if they are private actors.”
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/01/21/section-230-internet-social-media/
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We need to see the whole thing, but this could be quite significant:
https://reason.com/volokh/2022/09/16/fifth-circuit-rejects-facial-challenge-to-texas-social-media-common-carrier-law/?fbclid=IwAR1dRYlQDxzJPeEd7vVcsn0PckyxdOJE7YBh2gakX3PXsbbgpKmPCgBPWQ0
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https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/21/21-51178-CV1.pdf
From the decision:
"In urging such sweeping relief, the platforms offer a rather odd inversion of the First Amendment. That Amendment, of course, protects every person’s right to “the freedom of speech.” But the platforms argue that buried somewhere in the person’s enumerated right to free speech lies a corporation’s unenumerated right to muzzle speech. The implications of the (Internet's) platforms’ argument are staggering. On the platforms’ view, email providers, mobile phone companies, and banks could cancel the accounts of anyone who sends an email, makes a phone call, or spends money in support of a disfavored political party, candidate, or business."
"Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say. Because the district court held otherwise, we reverse its injunction and remand for further proceedings."
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GOOD NEWS!!!
================
Big Tech Has No Constitutional Right to Censor
That’s the upshot of recent court cases in Texas and Florida, testing state bills that curb such activity.
By Allysia Finley
WSJ
Sept. 25, 2022 3:58 pm ET
Social-media stocks have taken a beating this year, but it’s nothing compared with the smack-down their companies have recently received in court. “We reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say,” the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared in its Sept. 16 decision upholding Texas’s anticensorship law.
The legal fight over whether states can restrict such behavior could soon be headed to the Supreme Court, as Florida last week appealed an 11th Circuit ruling that struck down its anticensorship law.
Social-media companies are also asking the justices to provide desperately needed constitutional clarity. They argue, in short, that removing user content from their platforms is an exercise of editorial judgment and expression protected by the First Amendment. Ergo, states can’t tell them they can’t censor.
Not so fast, writes the Fifth Circuit’s Judge Andrew Oldham for a divided three-judge panel in an excoriating 90-page opinion. Texas’ law prohibits large social-media platforms from blocking speech based on viewpoint. So users couldn’t be deplatformed by Twitter for professing skepticism of vaccines or climate change. Nor could YouTube demonetize such videos.
The law, however, excludes speech that isn’t protected by the First Amendment, such as incitement, as well as speech that is covered by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act—i.e., speech considered to be “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.”
Users who believe they were illegally discriminated against could sue the companies. While they wouldn’t be eligible to receive damages, they could be reinstated if they prevail. Many users would nonetheless lose if a court determines their expression is “objectionable” under Section 230’s catchall. But social-media companies wouldn’t be the final arbiters of what is objectionable.
Judge Oldham stresses that Texas’ law seeks to regulates business conduct—not speech—under the “common-carrier doctrine,” which holds that government can impose nondiscrimination obligations on businesses “affected with the public interest.” During the 19th century, states imposed common-carrier obligations on telegraph companies. “Western Union, the largest telegraph company, sometimes refused to carry messages from journalists that competed with its ally, the Associated Press—or charged them exorbitant rates,” Judge Oldham notes.
States, and later Congress, intervened to prohibit telegraph companies from discriminating against dispatches. The Supreme Court in 1896 rejected a constitutional challenge to a state common-carrier law.
Justice Clarence Thomas last year wrote that “the long history in this country and in England of restricting the exclusion right of common carriers and places of public accommodation may save similar regulations today from triggering heightened scrutiny” under the First Amendment, “especially where a restriction would not prohibit the company from speaking or force the company to endorse the speech.” Texas’ law does neither.
The Fifth Circuit cites two high-courts precedents that support the constitutionality of Texas’s law. In PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins (1980) a mall challenged a California law that required privately owned shopping centers to permit the distribution of pamphlets on their premises. The mall argued that a “private property owner has a First Amendment right not to be forced by the State to use his property as a forum for the speech of others.” The court disagreed.
More recently, law schools in Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (2006) challenged a federal law that denied funding to schools that didn’t give military recruiters “access to students that is at least equal in quality and scope to the access provided other potential employers.” The court unanimously held the law didn’t violate the schools’ speech rights.
Social-media companies cite Miami Herald v. Tornillo (1974), which struck down a Florida law requiring newspapers to print candidates’ rejoinders to critical editorials. But in asserting a right to editorial control, they’re trying to have it both ways. As Judge Oldham notes, “they’ve told courts—over and over again—that they simply ‘serv[e] as conduits for other parties’ speech.’ ”
Newspapers and broadcasters exercise strict control over the content they promulgate and are legally liable for defamation. Social-media platforms don’t and aren’t. Section 230, in protecting platforms’ right to block and screen objectionable material, specifies that they shall not “be treated as the publisher or speaker” of content generated by users.
Social-media companies want to be able to censor speech they don’t like without bearing legal risks and responsibilities attendant to being a publisher. But why should courts let them?
Judge Oldman points out that Texas’ law differs from Florida’s in a few key respects that may make the latter more legally vulnerable. For one, Florida’s law specifically prohibits platforms from censoring candidates for public office or content about them as well as “journalistic enterprises.” This content-based regulation could trigger heightened First Amendment scrutiny.
Both Texas and Florida laws are innovative solutions to tech censorship, and they may not get it entirely right. But state laboratories of democracy are meant for experimentation.
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https://wgme.com/news/nation-world/supreme-courts-decision-on-section-230-case-could-alter-internet-social-media-twitter-facebook-google-youtube-tiktok-bereal-free-speech-content-moderation-publisher-liability#
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https://wgme.com/news/beyond-the-podium/facebook-uncovers-dozens-of-fake-chinese-accounts-trying-to-influence-november-midterms-election-united-states-social-media-cybersecurity-big-tech-meta-americans-politics-abortion-gun-rights-china#
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https://wgme.com/news/beyond-the-podium/facebook-uncovers-dozens-of-fake-chinese-accounts-trying-to-influence-november-midterms-election-united-states-social-media-cybersecurity-big-tech-meta-americans-politics-abortion-gun-rights-china#
FaceHugger is evil.
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https://www.nationalreview.com/news/new-paypal-policy-permits-company-to-fine-users-2500-for-misinformation/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=29311198
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https://issuesinsights.com/2022/10/07/google-targets-2-time-pulitzer-prize-winning-cartoonist-calls-our-poll-dangerous-and-more/
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just notified this week our company has been chosen by Google to offer telehealth to their 100,000 employees
:-o :-o :-o :-o :-o
I guess I have to go in silence mode from now on ....... on this topic
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https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/16/the-tentacles-of-the-social-media-octopus/
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If You Liked Big Brother, Meet Google's Big MUM
by Daniel Greenfield
October 25, 2022 at 4:00 am
Send
Print
Google first unleashed MUM to fight what it considered COVID "misinformation" by making sure that everyone saw "high quality and timely information from trusted health authorities like the World Health Organization". By reducing the number of sources to only those that agree with its agenda, Google is able to deliver fast results while getting rid of different points of view.
Google long ago ceased being a way to find different answers and its search results are deliberately repetitive. Search is an illusion. The user thinks that he's browsing the internet when he's actually spinning his wheels in Google's walled garden.
Or as Pandu Nayak, VP of search at Google, wrote in a recent post, "By using our latest AI model, Multitask Unified Model (MUM), our systems can now understand the notion of consensus, which is when multiple high-quality sources on the web all agree on the same fact."
Google disagrees with many of its users about what "reliable sources" or "high-quality sources" entail.
In 2022, Google's search is hopelessly broken because the company no longer has any interest in providing the search service that made it a monopoly, giving a ranked list of diverse results, but wants everyone to speak into their phones and receive a single answer. The consensus.
If you own an advanced Android phone, you may find that Google Assistant will interrupt conversations to offer its own "insights". Google is also pursuing "prebunking" of what it considers "misinformation" with preemptive propaganda campaigns.
Jigsaw, the company's most explicitly political arm, is researching what it calls "prebunking" or attacking views it opposes before they can even gain traction. Prebunking is currently being experimentally tested by Google's Jigsaw to fight "misinformation" in Poland and other Eastern European countries....
Google's YouTube already has a broad set of bans covering everything from questioning global warming, contradicting medical experts, and debating 2020 election results. These are a window into the company's political agendas and how it seeks to enforce political conformity.
While it seeks to narrow the sphere of acceptable information in its platforms, Google is working with the leftist Poynter Institute, one of the most notoriously biased fact check spammers.... The company claims to have spent $75 million on efforts to fight "misinformation." And who determines what misinformation is? He who controls the algorithms.
As the midterm elections approach, YouTube spokeswoman, Ivy Choi, promised that the video site's recommendations are "continuously and prominently surfacing midterms-related content from authoritative news sources and limiting the spread of harmful midterms-related misinformation." The technical term for this is mass propaganda. That's what Big Tech does.
The internet was revolutionary because it upended the central systems of mass propaganda which allowed a government and a handful of men to enforce their consensus on a helpless public.....
Conservatives are one of the cultural barriers because their existence is a marked reminder that Big Tech does not control everything..... [Big Tech] manage systems that extend around the country and the world. When they encounter different points of view, they seek to wipe them out.
MUM is yet another tool for enforcing a totalitarian conformity on the diversity of the internet.
Google doesn't want you to think differently or to think for yourself. What it wants users to do is to shut up and listen to Big MUM.
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https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meta-thid-quarter-earnings-130316557.html
:-D :-D :-D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXI6CdTVJ-0
better then seeing Zuck tap out during his MMA sparring!
:-D
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JC ->>f :cry:
knocks out FB after FB catches him with a spinning back kick to the jaw ;
as well as Morgan Stanley!
hope no one here owned the stock
although I may have some in my mutual funds :-o :-o :-o
https://nypost.com/2022/10/27/jim-cramer-chokes-up-as-he-apologizes-for-pushing-meta-stock/
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https://dailycaller.com/2022/10/31/dhs-portal-flag-disinformation-censor-facebook/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking&pnespid=raR3CDVLb6dFxvPEoSq5C5mL4gCwUJ5uJOq_3.Jj8gRmj4q2GR6hOQ4B.OqWd6FpdAKZB5O5
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https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/02/hey-elon-let-me-help-you-speed-run-the-content-moderation-learning-curve/
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(https://i0.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2022/11/IMG_0025.jpeg?w=843&ssl=1)
https://i0.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2022/11/IMG_0025.jpeg?w=843&ssl=1
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Late last month, Elon Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter and immediately fired four of the company’s most senior executives.
In their place, he’s installed a small council of lieutenants to assess the company and begin implementing his vision. The group includes Musk’s personal lawyer, his chief of staff, a couple investor friends and a former Twitter executive who left the company years ago.
The new regime has already started mass layoffs, discussed the company’s content moderation plans and sent out orders to employees to begin working on a paid verification feature. They also met with advertisers who provide Twitter with most of its revenue and have shown concern over how Musk might run the company.
It’s not clear long this group will be running Twitter, but for now, they’re tasked with keeping the company going and ramping up its revenue. Here’s a run-down of who they are.
The world’s richest man with a net worth around $200 billion according to Bloomberg News, has long been a power user of the social network. As owner, he refers to himself as “Chief Twit” and on Monday a financial filing from the company confirmed he was the official chief executive. Musk already helms several other companies, including Tesla and SpaceX. As Twitter’s new owner, he wields tremendous power to steer the company, from changing the site’s approach to content moderation to enacting dramatic cuts to Twitter’s workforce, to pushing users to pay for using the site.
Musk has a hands-on management style, and has spoken in the past about sleeping in the Tesla factory to make sure work was on schedule. He’s taking a similar approach to Twitter already, with one employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity saying that Musk was micromanaging individual projects. On Twitter, he’s been busy replying to suggestions from individuals about how to change the company, as well as responding to complaints about accounts being unfairly locked.
A tech investor, podcast host and longtime Musk associate, Calacanis’ texts with Musk were among those that appeared in court documents released as part of Twitter’s lawsuit to force Musk to buy the company. Calacanis pitched Musk ideas on how to change Twitter before the acquisition. And now that Musk is formally the owner, Calacanis has been on Twitter soliciting feedback from users on what kind of features they want to see.
In his private texts to Musk, Calacanis suggested that Twitter require employees return to the office for at least two days a week, which he said would reduce the workforce by 20 percent, through “voluntary departures.” He also criticized Twitter’s premium features and proposed expanding verified badges to more users, the messages show. In private texts, he told Musk that becoming the new chief executive of Twitter is his “dream job.” He’s not CEO, but Musk has kept Calacanis around as part of the transition and his title is listed internally as a software engineer. On Monday, Calacanis tweeted that he was in New York to meet with advertisers on behalf of Twitter.
Birchall is one of Musk’s closest advisers and manages the billionaire’s personal fortune as head of his family office since 2016. He’s a former Morgan Stanley wealth manager and helped set up the financing for Musk’s Twitter buyout.
Birchall also serves as chief executive of Neuralink, Musk’s brain interface tech start-up and as a director of his tunneling company, Boring Co., though it’s unclear if he actually wields power there or is simply in charge on paper. Birchall is Musk’s fixer, helping arrange the purchase and sale of his houses and the hiring of security guards, according to Bloomberg. Over the last few days, Birchall has been one of the people strategizing inside Twitter.
A lawyer at New York law firm Quinn Emanuel, Spiro has become a bigger and bigger figure in Musk’s orbit over the past few years. He helped Musk win a defamation lawsuit for his comments insulting a cave diver he got into a Twitter fight with over the rescue of a Thai boys soccer team several years ago. Spiro has also represented a roster of famous athletes and musicians, including Aaron Hernandez in his 2016 murder trial and Jay-Z in a business dispute over a perfume endorsement deal. When Twitter sued Musk for backing out of his deal to buy the company earlier this year, Spiro helped lead the billionaire’s defense. Musk gave up on getting out of buying Twitter, but he’s kept Spiro on.
The lawyer is now managing the legal, government relations, policy and marketing teams at Twitter, according to four people familiar with internal discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity. He was also involved in the layoff plan that went into effect in recent days.
Sacks has worked with Musk since the two were part of PayPal’s team in the early 2000s. They both made fortunes when the company sold, and Sacks has invested in a string of successful start-ups since then, including Airbnb, Facebook and Uber. He’s also become a conservative media figure and a major Republican donor who helped fund the successful recall of San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin earlier this year. In September, he wrote an article advocating for a referendum in Russia-occupied eastern Ukraine asking residents if they wanted to secede from Ukraine and join Russia, an idea Musk later tweeted himself.
Sacks recently appeared in a Twitter company directory with an official Twitter email and the title “staff software engineer,” according to photos obtained by The Post.
m Krishnan. (San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
Krishnan helps lead cryptocurrency investments at Silicon Valley venture capital heavyweight Andreessen Horowitz, which invested $400 million in Musk’s Twitter acquisition. He’s also worked in product development positions at Facebook, Snapchat and, from 2017 till 2019 at Twitter. On Monday he said he was helping Musk out at Twitter “temporarily.” It’s unclear exactly what Krishnan is doing, but he’s the only one in Musk’s team that has actually worked at Twitter before.
Elizabeth Dwoskin and Faiz Siddiqui contributed to this report.
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shysters lead by Larry the Lib are hard at work figuring how to combat Twitter under Musk
already the fired employees class action suits
OTOH perhaps musk did not give them proper notice under federal law .
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https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/rumble-crowder-livestream?utm_source=lwc-trending&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Afternoon%20Trending%20Curated%20Test%202022-11-10
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https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/twitter-trust-safety-head-who-resigned-post-election-played-role-censoring-hunter-biden-laptop-story?fbclid=IwAR1kpLnV4szqd0ul2_hUrlSNs6RhAY4ciLDU4hOOs5O1G2BFmfIwUaVViI8
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https://patriotpost.us/articles/92986-facebook-oops-sorry-patriot-post-our-mistake-2022-11-18?mailing_id=7097&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.7097&utm_campaign=digest&utm_content=body
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Twitter’s owner Elon Musk announced Saturday night that former President Donald Trump will be reinstated on the social media platform as per the results of a Twitter-wide poll of public preference on the matter.
“The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” Musk said in a post linking to the polling decision, using a Latin phrase meaning “the voice of the people, the voice of God.”
The poll was open for 24 hours.
With 15.08 million votes tallied, the poll showed that 51.8 percent of users who engaged wanted Trump to be allowed to post on Twitter, while a minority 48.2 percent wanted the former president to remain banned from the platform.
Read More
Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Says He ‘Owns Responsibility’ for Company’s Mass Layoffs
It is not clear if Trump will return to Twitter. While past public statements indicate the former president has no plans to return to Twitter, preferring his own social media platform Truth Social, some actions have implied a potential return.
Lawyers for the former president on Nov. 14 had asked the appeals court to revive a lawsuit against Twitter challenging Trump’s permanent suspension.
In the lawsuit (pdf), the lawyers allege that government officials have used social media platforms as “cat’s paws” to suppress opinions “that turn out to be correct or at least debatable,” citing Hunter Biden’s laptop, the COVID-19 pandemic, and 2020 election integrity.
The action will no longer be needed.
Meanwhile, Trump encouraged users on Truth Social to engage with the Twitter poll regarding his reinstatement, teasing a potential return on the platform. But he offered reassurances to users of his platform that a Twitter reinstatement wouldn’t mean an end of Truth Social.
“Vote now with positivity, but don’t worry, we aren’t going anywhere. Truth Social is special!
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https://babylonbee.com/news/babylon-bee-writers-struggling-to-think-of-joke-worth-44-billion
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https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/new-twitter-sign-ups-hit-all-time-record-despite-cancel-campaign
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"In early November, 9to5Mac reported that the upgrade to the iPhone’s operating system had a strange quirk – it restricted how people in China, and only those in China, could use its AirDrop feature, which lets iPhone users communicate directly with other iPhone users without relying on the Internet.
Why? Because “protesters in the country had been using the feature to spread posters opposing Xi Jinping and the Chinese government.” The protests, keep in mind, were sparked by China’s endless “zero-COVID” lockdowns, which most recently resulted in several people being burned to death because they were trapped inside a building that caught fire.
Just as did their brothers in Tiananmen Square in 1989, today’s protesters want freedom. And China’s response to such requests hasn’t changed. On Wednesday, reports said that China’s police called for a “crackdown” against “hostile forces and infiltrative activities.”
Yet, despite the fact that Apple has stuck its nose in political issues for years, it has been studiously silent on the China protests – even after some of its own workers were beaten by the police when they started protesting low pay and unsafe working conditions."
...
"So, ask yourself:
What sort of company sides with those who want to silence conservatives in the United States while working with the CCP to thwart freedom protests?
What sort of company gladly employs slave labor to make its products, which it then sells at a huge markup? (Apple’s net earnings are consistently above 20%.)
What kind of company loudly complains about a religious liberty law enacted in one state that gays didn’t like, but turns a blind eye to China’s genocide against its own minority Uyghur population?
Then ask yourself, whose side is Apple on these days? The forces of good, or the forces of evil?"
https://issuesinsights.com/2022/12/01/apples-logo-finally-makes-sense/
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Who holds these evil tech giants accountable? The Left sure doesn't.
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https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/3150944/you-want-the-truth
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Second
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/biden-campaign-requested-twitter-scrub-scandalous-hunter-biden-content-days-before-2020-election/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=29876293
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Why isn't this criminal, and a violation of civil rights too?
https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/3760753-censorship-by-surrogate-why-musks-document-dump-could-be-a-game-changer/
Big story, but no shame or outrage from any Dems.
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"Why isn't this criminal, and a violation of civil rights too?"
Democrat's response:
the big middle finger:
"Musk is a white supremacist threat to democracy!"
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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/dec/9/twitter-files-part-3-elon-musk-sheds-light-donald-/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=subscriber&utm_campaign=newsalert&utm_content=newsalert&utm_term=newsalert&bt_ee=yhPnpCIAZ5581kxeg6KDNPmGBaPS%2BDheE2lYC82PtONi0u2Dc51KGtPx29iwS4TT&bt_ts=1670642901757
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what about a certain search engine most likely being involved in this too?
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https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1601720455005511680
https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601008766861815808?s=20&t=4MeDsAmayJsD8Z6_v3Tc3w
Where's the outrage?
https://amgreatness.com/2022/12/10/wheres-the-outrage/
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https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/12/elon-is-winning.php
Hinderaker quotes Rasmussen poll:
Seventy-two percent (72%) think censorship by social media companies is a serious problem, including 49% who say it’s a Very Serious problem. Twenty percent (20%) don’t think it’s a serious problem.
Understandably, then, 66% of voters approve of GOP plans to investigate social media censorship, while only 26% disapprove.
The same survey shows that Republicans think censorship is a bigger problem than “misinformation,” while Democrats think “misinformation” is a bigger problem than censorship.
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https://www.thefp.com/p/what-the-hell-happened-to-paypal
Daniel Schulman
the woke CEO :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Schulman
sounds like a virulent Jewish Democrat
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https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/2022/12/15/two-antithetical-billionaires-n1653771
VDH must read the forum
wasn't "pravda" a CDog phrase for the NYT?
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Tail wags for the props 8-)
To be precise, I use "Pravda" thus
a) "the Pravdas"-- the whole lot of them-- print and media
b) Pravda on the Hudson/Potomac/Beach for the NYT, WaPo, and the LA Times.
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https://dailycaller.com/2022/12/15/ex-twitter-manager-3-year-prison-sentence/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking&pnespid=vaF7UytbJLtDi.yYtyqpTYudoRTzCIotIfS3zeV6oxpmJ5yFiLdi5IR0Uc.qfbk9p9UnC_zI
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third
https://www.theepochtimes.com/documents-uncover-secret-twitter-portal-us-government-used-to-censor-covid-19-content_4924270.html?utm_source=Goodevening&src_src=Goodevening&utm_campaign=gv-2022-12-15&src_cmp=gv-2022-12-15&utm_medium=email&est=UT3y%2B%2BOPmxRRshXxf6NQKO5%2B2TXU1qb1BudBoDwTa%2FxJdPT05mLuxpvroqrxSZNRdgO8
Documents Uncover Secret Twitter Portal US Government Used to Censor COVID-19 Content
Elon Musk calls it 'extremely concerning'
By Patricia Tolson December 15, 2022 Updated: December 15, 2022biggersmaller Print
New documents reveal how the United States government used a secret Twitter portal to censor COVID-19 content that contradicted the government’s narrative.
In its ongoing probe into Twitter’s censorship practices, America First Legal has obtained a fourth set of documents (pdf) exposing a secret Twitter portal, which U.S. government officials used to censor dissenting COVID-19 views in violation of the First Amendment. It’s a revelation Elon Musk described as “extremely concerning.”
The documents reveal that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was collaborating with UNICEF, the World Health Organization, and Mafindo to mitigate “disinformation.” Mafindo is a Facebook third-party fact-checking partner based in Indonesia that is funded by Google, known to have censored searches for keywords like Coronavirus, and COVID-19 as well as blocking information regarding adverse reactions and deaths caused by COVID-19 vaccines. Facebook started its third-party fact-checking program in 2016, working with fact-checkers from around the world who are certified by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at Poynter to rate and review the accuracy of the content on their platform. According to the IFCN website, they believe “nonpartisan and transparent fact-checking can be a powerful instrument of accountability journalism.” However, among their advisory board, U.S.-based representatives appear to be from liberal-leaning outlets such as the Washington Post and PolitiFact, which is owned by Poynter.
The Twitter Portal
On March 10, 2021 email from a US Public Policy employee at Facebook to several CDC employees spoke of the social media giant’s “weekly sync with CDC” and how the CDC was “to invite other agencies as needed.”
A March 24, 2021 email from the same Facebook employees to CDC employees said “this is my regular FB meeting and they would like to discuss 2 misinformation topics” and “misinformation that was removed.”
On May 10, 2021, a Twitter employee recommended to a CDC official to enroll in Twitter’s Partner Support Portal, which he described as “the best way to get a spreadsheet like this reviewed.”
On May 11, 2021, the CDC official enrolled her personal Twitter account into Twitter’s Partner Support Portal, which allowed “a special, expedited reporting flow in the Twitter Help Center.”
A May 19, 2021 Facebook Community Standards manual reveals how the company works with lawmakers and legal council as well as human rights activists in developing policies in their goals of “bringing 50 million people a step closer to vaccinations” while “combatting COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation” and “overcoming global challenges in vaccination.” Methods used to accomplish this included removing “false information that has been debunked by public health experts” and rejecting ads that violate their policies, “including those that discourage vaccination.” They also reduced the distribution of “misleading claims rated by independent fact-checkers.”
Removed Content
Posts that Facebook would delete—which the CDC or any other public health authority deemed as “false and likely to contribute to imminent violence of physical harm”—included:
Claims that COVID-19 is no more dangerous than the common flu or cold.
Claims that COVID-19 cannot be transmitted in certain climates, weather conditions, or locations.
Claims that for the average person, something can guarantee prevention from getting COVID-19 or can guarantee recovery from COVID-19 before such a cure or prevention has been approved.
Claims that COVID-19 tests cause cancer.
Claims about the availability or existence of COVID-19 vaccines.
Claims about the safety or serious side effects of COVID-19 vaccines.
Claims about the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines.
Claims about how the COVID-19 vaccine was developed or its ingredients.
Claims involving conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines or vaccine programs.
Content deemed to have been “debunked” included among other things, “vaccines cause the disease against which they meant to protect, or cause the person to be more likely to get the disease,” that “natural immunity is safer than vaccine acquired immunity,” and “vaccines are not effective to prevent the disease against what they purport to protect.”
Repeat offenders would face restrictions “including (but not limited to) reduced distribution, removal from recommendations” or removal from the site.
These punishments were conducted despite evidence that the vaccines do not prevent transmission, that vaccines cause adverse effects and even death, and that more vaccinated people are now dying than unvaccinated. Even the CDC admitted in June that vaccinated people could contract the disease again.
‘The Coolest Misinformation Fighting Speakeasy’
In August 2021, the head of Google’s News Lab for the Asia Pacific region (APAC), emailed a CDC Vaccine Confidence Strategist to invite her to the APAC’s “Trusted Media Summit.” The CDC’s vaccine confidence strategist then emailed the event planner for Google’s APAC Trusted Media Summit, noting her excitement over being invited to what she referred to as “the coolest misinformation fighting speakeasy.”
The same CDC employee was then invited to the summit to give a keynote addressing how the CDC was working with WHO and other international organizations to address a so-called “infodemic” and using “social inoculation” to mitigate it.
An Oct. 28 email from a CDC to the Twitter team was regarding preliminary discussions on the CDC plans for communicating guidance regarding “pediatric vaccines.”
A Nov. 2, 2021 email from a Facebook employee to multiple CDC employees was related to “vaccine misinformation” relative to the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). The Facebook employee informed the CDC employees that they had “launched a new feature in Instagram, where accounts that repeatedly post content that violates our policies on COVID-19 or vaccine misinformation may now lose the ability to be tagged or mentioned or may see pop-ups asking if they’d like to delete certain posts that may violate our policies.”
Finally, Facebook boasts of removing over 16 million posts on Facebook and Instagram, including over 2 million between February and May 2021.
AFL’s first release of documents revealed the explicit collusion between the CDC and Big Tech to censor what the Biden administration deemed “misinformation” and push covert COVID-19 propaganda. AFL’s second release built the evidentiary record showing that CDC specifically sent Facebook and Twitter-specific posts to take down, throttle, censor, or flag. AFL’s third release revealed that the CDC’s mask guidance policies for school children were driven by political polling by liberal dark money group The Kaiser Family Foundation.
The Epoch Times reached out to Facebook for comment.
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FBI Was in Constant Contact with Twitter ‘Trust and Safety’ Team, Documents Show
By CAROLINE DOWNEY
December 16, 2022 5:31 PM
The FBI frequently communicated with Twitter’s Trust and Safety team before Elon Musk acquired the company, the sixth installment of the “Twitter Files” exposé series reveals.
Between January 2020 and November 2022, over 150 emails were exchanged between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety head Yoel Roth, journalist Matt Taibbi reported. Roth, who resigned shortly after Musk’s takeover, led the team responsible for suppressing the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop bombshell story on the platform.
Some of those virtual conversations involved the FBI asking for information about Twitter users that related to active investigations. But in a significant number of instances, the agency allegedly demanded Twitter crack down on election ‘misinformation,’ Taibbi noted.
The FBI’s social media-specializing task force born after the 2016 election expanded to 80 agents and collaborated with Twitter to find foreign election meddling.
The latest batch of documents indicates a pattern, Taibbi said, of a government body aggressively exerting pressure on Twitter to moderate certain content. As late as November 2022, the FBI’s San Francisco branch reached out in an email, addressed “Hello Twitter Contacts,” to flag accounts that could violate internal terms of service.
However, Taibbi notes that the FBI’s scrutiny sometimes applied to left-leaning accounts too. Media personality Dr. Claire Foster, who runs somewhat of a parody account, also caught the branch private sector engagement squad’s attention in November for joking about manipulating ballots on behalf of Democrats.
“Anyone who cannot discern obvious satire from reality has no place making decisions for others or working for the feds,” Foster told Taibbi when she learned her account was flagged.
Four out of six accounts the FBI flagged with Twitter were ultimately suspended.
The greatest FBI interference came on November 5 of this year, however, when the agency’s National Election Command Post sent the San Francisco field office a list of 25 accounts that it believed “may warrant additional action.” NECP expressed concerns that the accounts were engaging in misinformation about the upcoming midterm election on November 8.
Twitter largely obliged the warnings, taking various disciplinary steps against the over a dozen figures. Seven accounts were permanently deplatformed, one account was temporarily locked out for spam behaviors, and nine accounts had tweets bounced for “civic misinformation policy violations,” according to Taibbi’s files.
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The Best Hope for a Better Twitter
Ellon Musk speaks before the start of the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition in Hawthorne, Los Angeles, Calif., January 29, 2017. (Monica Almeida/Reuters)
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By CHARLES C. W. COOKE
December 16, 2022 2:12 PM
Now as ever, market forces beat government intervention as an answer to the social-media platform’s problems.
Ihave maintained the same of view of Twitter, and of social media in general, for the last decade. That view is:
That Section 230 and the First Amendment are good laws, and ought to be respected;
That our social-media companies are standard-issue private corporations, and are thereby able to moderate themselves as they see fit;
That, as a consumer, I would like to see them prioritize free expression, but;
They don’t have to.
This was my view five years ago, and it was my view five minutes ago. It was my view before Elon Musk bought Twitter, and it remained my view after Elon Musk bought Twitter. It was my view when conservative accounts were being suspended for stupid reasons, and it is my view now that progressive accounts are being suspended for stupid reasons. Twitter’s decisions are not mine to make.
But, of course, not everyone agrees with this view. Some people believe that the First Amendment does not apply to Twitter, or hope to gut or outright repeal Section 230. Some believe that Twitter isn’t, in any meaningful sense, a “private company.” Some do not want Twitter to prioritize free expression; they want it to moderate its users heavily in the name of “safety” or fighting “misinformation” or stamping out “hate.”
Given the events of last night, I have a question for all these people: Now what?
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Yesterday, Elon Musk suspended a bunch of journalists from Twitter because they were pointing users toward the location of his private plane. Almost to a man, those journalists were outraged by this move. So were their friends. But why? Almost none of them want Twitter to be a place that prioritizes free expression, and almost none of them made a fuss when their ideological opponents were being kicked off the platform under the most frivolous of pretexts. On what neutral principle could their case for a personal exemption possibly rest?
A few years ago, Twitter nixed a bunch of accounts for tweeting the words “learn to code” at members of the press, and when this happened, the people who are now complaining about Twitter’s capricious moderation policies said . . . absolutely nothing. I agree with Phil Klein that Musk is a hypocrite on free speech. But I also think that this hypocrisy can only matter to the people who care about free speech themselves. Most of the journalists in question do not care about free speech — indeed, if anything, their complaints about Musk have been that he is not going to moderate his platform enough. Well, here he is, heavily moderating Twitter in the ostensible name of “safety.” What’s the problem, guys? What happened to “build your own Twitter” and “the gates of hell” and democracy needing referees? You didn’t think you’d always be in charge of defining the limits of acceptable discourse, did you?
I might ask a similar question of those who ranted wildly about the supposed perniciousness of Section 230 right up until the exact moment that Elon Musk took over Twitter. For years, a bunch of absolute nonsense was spewed about Section 230 — nonsense that, in most cases, served as a cowardly stand-in for the griper’s real objection, which is to the First Amendment. Of these people, I must now ask: Do you still believe all that stuff about “publishers” and “platforms” and the “public square”? Do you still want federal oversight of Twitter? Do you still think that there exists some nebulous right to post? Because, if you do, you realize what would be happening now had you gotten your way over the last few years, right? In response to last night’s suspensions, Joe Biden would have been pushed by figures such as Taylor Lorenz and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Aaron Rupar to use the powers he had been given by Congress to investigate Elon Musk’s decision to suspend their accounts, and, if necessary, to change the moderation criteria in their favor.
The result of this would not have been a Twitter that was neutral, or a Twitter that was friendly to conservatives, but a Twitter that exhibited precisely the same penchant for Calvinball as it did before Musk took over. This week, President Biden made it clear that he considers even thoughtful opposition to the policies he prefers to represent “hate.” In the House of Representatives on Wednesday, a host of America’s worst would-be censors gave a masterclass in explaining why speech they personally dislike is dangerous but speech they favor is not. A federalized Twitter would be a Twitter in which those people decided who gets an account and who does not. Why has all the talk of federal superintendence suddenly gone suspiciously quiet on the right? That’s why.
Now, as ever, the best hope for social media lies in the market. If Twitter is to work properly, it will need to adopt a set of precise rules and stick closely to them. It will also need two prerequisites to obtain: First, people of all ideological persuasions will have to grasp that a capricious system that can be used to destroy their enemies is a capricious system that can be used to destroy them, too. Second, the rulemaking process will have to be kept as far away as possible from the perverse incentives that are created by our fractious, pendulous politics. Though at first glance, last night’s fracas might look like an unfortunate mess, a step in the wrong direction, on closer inspection it represented yet another step toward such a voluntary equilibrium, one that will accommodate — and benefit — partisans on both sides.
It’ll take a while, but we’ll get there eventually.
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https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1603857534737072128.html?fbclid=IwAR3z8QFV5Q8obiAXRB5wwakgEpJY-dXqNKD7Cf1xAZ-fw3k7OLwOYm5Ua74
ET on the same:
https://www.theepochtimes.com/newly-released-emails-show-fbi-flagging-accounts-for-twitter-to-punish_4929385.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&src_src=Morningbrief&utm_campaign=mb-2022-12-17&src_cmp=mb-2022-12-17&utm_medium=email&est=mojJ4xMSIYu%2BaWdU5%2BBRRgAwvGm53NHz%2BBVkj0My51PZ1H8iwFPKGzurnzX8yfzqO4Su
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https://thereload.com/emails-cdc-removed-defensive-gun-use-stats-after-gun-control-advocates-pressured-officials-in-private-meeting/?fbclid=IwAR1si_TMDFZBHWXJO9-xHYY3bhaXDuAQWyYQi5G1_Mobfgs6tF9CZKoF1ac
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https://nypost.com/2022/12/17/twitter-leadership-full-of-former-fbi-agents-linkedin-records-show/?fbclid=IwAR2OVIgIgTqtZKm8I22VnzuPKERHHjhS4-TYp_xH6IOTSkMt1N87LttkB_U
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sounds like DNC operatives have bribed FBI and others in government intelligence
with promises of nice "bonuses/salaries" [me -> bribes] after they retire or otherwise
Trump's idea of making sure these people cannot simply go out and work in such big tech jobs
for 7 yrs
seems sound here.
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https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fbi-whistleblower-slams-ted-lieu-says-he-was-moved-child-porn-cases-focus-j6?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1138
When I was in CA, Lieu was my Congressman. What a smarmy little cunt he was and is! Good to see Taibbi double down in the interaction!
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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/dec/19/twitter-files-show-fbi-offered-executives-top-secr/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=subscriber&utm_campaign=evening&utm_term=evening&utm_content=evening&bt_ee=9JFbZeCuGdHuxeJE%2FiwhXIw4rRpHG3RzXn9v0HQhYHtIuKgBqMo3%2FItbJ9sZARnl&bt_ts=1671497425458
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/twitter-files-show-company-directly-assisted-in-us-military-psychological-operations_4935884.html?utm_source=Goodevening&src_src=Goodevening&utm_campaign=gv-2022-12-20&src_cmp=gv-2022-12-20&utm_medium=email&est=DRntKdK8Sm4pyoDvu%2BOBiqSqI0WPLNtRANimI%2FomuUdbGSUHr9J1p7KQHiQf3iU%2FzmM%2B
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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/dec/24/latest-twitter-files-point-cia-involvement-fbi-pre/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=subscriber&utm_campaign=newsalert&utm_content=newsalert&utm_term=newsalert&bt_ee=ElN2W6djkqEpLZ2ONoujoxdw%2FxnrXD7YVAsgPZtCYedPWdT3hbFhgEa%2BatjfUydY&bt_ts=1671916979235
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/mysterious-government-agencies-participated-in-suppressing-twitter-content-twitter-files_4944499.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&src_src=Morningbrief&utm_campaign=mb-2022-12-25&src_cmp=mb-2022-12-25&utm_medium=email&est=EMZWV%2F9uYWhV%2FCocTtljiCEqgigyPYriTNO6P%2FezLctjaE2Gsek%2FujtfJVSoXSgmmKI2
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https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/google-execs-declare-code-red-over-revolutionary-new-chat-bot?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1148
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Note From San Francisco
On the way home after the holidays, notes on "cherry-picking" and a few other odds and ends
MATT TAIBBI
DEC 30
Having seen the redwoods with the boys by day, sampled dim sum last evening, and overdosed nights on San Francisco movies (Bullitt, Vertigo, the underrated Zodiac), I’m headed home tonight. A terrific trip, which I won’t forget.
In the coming days you’ll find a new thread on Twitter, along with a two-part article here at TK explaining the latest #TwitterFiles findings. Even as someone in the middle of it, naturally jazzed by everything I’m reading, I feel the necessity of explaining why it’s important to keep hammering at this.
Any lawyer who’s ever sifted though a large discovery file will report the task is like archaeology. You dig a little, find a bit of a claw, dust some more and find a tooth, then hours later it’s the outline of a pelvis bone, and so on. After a while you think you’re looking at something that was alive once, but what?
Who knows? At the moment, all we can do is show a few pieces of what we think might be a larger story. I believe the broader picture will eventually describe a company that was directly or indirectly blamed for allowing Donald Trump to get elected, and whose subjugation and takeover by a furious combination of politicians, enforcement officials, and media then became a priority as soon as Trump took office.
These next few pieces are the result of looking at two discrete data sets, one ranging from mid-2017 to early 2018, and the other spanning from roughly March 2020 through the present. In the first piece focused on that late 2017 period, you see how Washington politicians learned that Twitter could be trained quickly to cooperate and cede control over its moderation process through a combination of threatened legislation and bad press.
In the second, you see how the cycle of threats and bad media that first emerged in 2017 became institutionalized, to the point where a long list of government enforcement agencies essentially got to operate Twitter as an involuntary contractor, heading into the 2020 election. Requests for moderation were funneled mainly through the FBI, the self-described “belly button” of the federal government (not a joke, an agent really calls it that).
The company leadership knew as far back as 2017 that giving in to even one request to suspend this or that set of accused “hostile foreign accounts” would lead to an endless cycle of such demands. “Will work to contain that,” offered one comms official, without much enthusiasm, after the company caved for the first time that year. By 2020, Twitter was living the hell its leaders created for themselves.
What does it all mean? I haven’t really had time to think it over. Surely, though, it means something. I’ve been amused by the accusation that these stories are “cherry-picked.” As opposed to what, the perfectly representative sample of the human experience you normally read in news? Former baseball analytics whiz Nate Silver chimed in on this front:
Twitter avatar for @NateSilver538
Nate Silver
@NateSilver538
People don't distinguish enough between:
1) A ~random cross-section of communications from person/organization X
2) A cherry-picked set of favorable examples from a ~comprehensive set of communications from X
The threshold to move your priors should be **MUCH** higher under 2.
3:29 PM ∙ Dec 26, 2022
What does he mean by “favorable examples”? Take a quote like this, from FBI agent Elvis Chan telling Yoel Roth at Twitter “possible violative activity” reports from the intelligence community will come via the Bureau, while a DHS agency will handle the home front.
“We can give you everything we're seeing from the FBI and USIC agencies,” he wrote. “CISA will know what is going on in each state.”
Who wouldn’t pick that cherry? Also, is the implication that another email exists somewhere telling Roth he won’t be getting requests from the “USIC” by way of the FBI? Come on now. This is just silly. It may be early to say exactly what these passages mean, but the emails say what they say, not something else. Let’s at least try to stop lying for a while, see what happens. How bad can it be?
Alright, signing out from the Bay. Thanks, everyone, and see you again from back home.
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https://www.ft.com/content/228af985-7bf2-4efd-ad73-ae11d1623a58?segmentId=b385c2ad-87ed-d8ff-aaec-0f8435cd42d9
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working ok for me in NJ
maybe some squad members banned it in Minn.?
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/google-has-programmed-woke-ai-to-censor-the-internet-whistleblower_4961896.html?&utm_medium=Crossroads&utm_source=SocialM&utm_campaign=GooglesWokeAI&utm_content=01-05-2023&fbclid=IwAR1UazWJh7OyHI4D40scEXt4hiac88dqKGG9HCrfiXabIlN-3tfTIuP25Rk
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Google Says Supreme Court Ruling Could Potentially Upend the Internet
Tech giant files brief in YouTube case brought by family of woman killed in Paris terrorist attacks
Google says YouTube ‘abhors terrorism and over the years has taken increasingly effective actions to remove terrorist and other potentially harmful content.’
PHOTO: DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG NEWS
By John D. McKinnonFollow
Updated Jan. 12, 2023 3:48 pm ET
WASHINGTON—A case before the Supreme Court challenging the liability shield protecting websites such as YouTube and Facebook could “upend the internet,” resulting in both widespread censorship and a proliferation of offensive content, Google said in a court filing Thursday.
In a new brief filed with the high court, Google said that scaling back liability protections could lead internet giants to block more potentially offensive content—including controversial political speech—while also leading smaller websites to drop their filters to avoid liability that can arise from efforts to screen content.
“This Court should decline to adopt novel and untested theories that risk transforming today’s internet into a forced choice between overly curated mainstream sites or fringe sites flooded with objectionable content,” Google said in its brief.
Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., GOOG -0.38%decrease; red down pointing triangle owns YouTube—which is at the center of the case set for oral arguments before the Supreme Court Feb. 21.
The case was brought by the family of Nohemi Gonzalez, who was killed in the 2015 Islamic State terrorist attack in Paris. The plaintiffs claim that YouTube, a unit of Google, aided ISIS by recommending the terrorist group’s videos to users.
The Gonzalez family contends that the liability shield—enacted by Congress as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996—has been stretched to cover actions and circumstances never envisioned by lawmakers. The plaintiffs say certain actions by platforms, such as recommending harmful content, shouldn’t be protected.
The immunity law “is not available for material that the website itself created,” the petitioners wrote in their brief filed in November. “If YouTube were to write on its home page, or on the home page of a user, ‘YouTube strongly recommends that you watch this video,’ that obviously would not be ‘information provided by another information content provider.’ ”
Section 230 generally protects internet platforms such as YouTube, Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook and Yelp Inc. from being sued for harmful content posted by third parties on their sites. It also gives them broad ability to police their sites without incurring liability.
The Supreme Court agreed last year to hear the lawsuit, in which the plaintiffs have contended Section 230 shouldn’t protect platforms when they recommend harmful content, such as terrorist videos, even if the shield law protects the platforms in publishing the harmful content.
Google contends that Section 230 protects it from any liability for content posted by users on its site. It also argues that there is no way to draw a meaningful distinction between recommendation algorithms and the related algorithms that allow search engines and numerous other crucial ranking systems to work online, and says Section 230 should protect them all.
“Section 230 is fundamentally the economic backbone of the internet,” said Halimah DeLaine Prado, Google’s general counsel. “A ruling that undermines Section 230 would have significant unintended and harmful consequences.”
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In the plaintiffs’ lawsuit, they asserted that YouTube had knowingly permitted ISIS to post hundreds of radicalizing videos. They also alleged that YouTube affirmatively recommended ISIS videos to users.
In its latest filing, Google said YouTube “abhors terrorism and over the years has taken increasingly effective actions to remove terrorist and other potentially harmful content.” Google has questioned the plaintiffs’ factual evidence of YouTube recommendations of terrorist videos.
Google also contested the case on legal grounds, saying that Section 230 barred the Gonzalez family’s claims.
A trial judge and the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals agreed with Google. The Supreme Court agreed to review the question of whether Section 230 covers a platform’s recommendations.
The court also has agreed to hear a similar case involving Twitter Inc. as well as Google and Facebook, although that case isn’t expected to focus on Section 230.
Lawmakers and President Biden have long called for modifying Section 230 to address what they say are flaws in the law, but legislation to do so has repeatedly fizzled amid partisan differences.
Meanwhile, Texas and Florida laws targeting alleged online censorship by Big Tech platforms are under separate legal challenges pending before the high court. The industry contends those laws, which seek to tightly regulate the platforms as common carriers, violate the platforms’ First Amendment free-speech rights by curbing their ability to take down or otherwise restrict content.
Write to John D. McKinnon at John.McKinnon@wsj.com
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https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/01/12/not-just-misinformation-emails-white-house-facebook-admits-suppressing-often-true-content-covid-19-vaccines/
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Seven year cooling off period for (wrongfully) censoring free speech
Credit where credit is due (Trump), this is actually a pretty good idea.
Like the penalty box in hockey or a time-out for children, you wronged someone, you can sit out for a bit. Go do something else for a while. Maybe shut a university down if they stifle free speech on campus. But especially Google, Twitter, etc.
https://www.rsbnetwork.com/news/trump-hits-back-at-big-tech-calls-for-seven-year-cooling-off-period-for-employees-caught-censoring-free-speech/
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ongress Must Halt Big Tech’s Power Grab
Lawmakers don’t have to rewrite the antitrust laws; instead, these three steps could make a difference.
By William P. Barr
Jan. 22, 2023 3:27 pm ET
Big Tech has far too much power. Lawmakers from both parties agree, but for years Congress has been all talk and no action. Meanwhile, tech giants are threatening to use their control over digital platforms to gain unfair advantage in other markets where competing products depend on access to those platforms.
Over the past 20 years, the scope of commercial and personal activities relying on access to digital platforms has mushroomed. A few giant companies—Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook—have achieved monopoly or near-monopoly control over key platforms, among them online search and advertising, mobile operating systems, online marketplaces, maps and social media.
All these dominant platforms, though distinctive, pose the same threefold danger. First, they have a chokehold over essential channels of communication and commerce, allowing them to be gatekeepers to the digital world. Second, they vacuum up a trove of personal information about users—what they see, hear, read, think and buy. This raises profound privacy concerns and permits these companies to manipulate users’ beliefs and behavior. Third, they distort the “marketplace of ideas.” The gatekeepers can shape the flow of information to advance their own economic and political agendas.
Case-by-case antitrust litigation alone won’t rein in Big Tech. Unlike regulatory power, which entails actively supervising an overall market and setting uniform rules for it, antitrust litigation is slow. It can target only discrete transactions or instances of wrongdoing by individual companies. That approach can’t produce a coherent response to the multifaceted problems caused by Big Tech’s dominance.
A lot of energy has been misspent arguing whether Big Tech dominance arises from misconduct. That is beside the point. When serious anticompetitive conditions arise in markets providing critical services to the public, regulatory intervention may be needed whether or not those conditions involve misconduct. The U.S. often has regulated markets involving competing networks, such as transportation, media, broadcast, cable and telephone. As in Big Tech, the largest player’s power tends, absent intervention, to snowball quickly into a monopoly.
I argue in my recent book that Congress should adopt a limited regulatory framework opening the markets dominated by Big Tech to more competition. But as Congress has dawdled, another pressing danger has emerged. The tech giants are moving into new markets in which products and services depend on access to their digital platforms. Since their competitors’ products must have access to those platforms—for example, smart home devices need access to Apple and Android mobile platforms—the tech giants can seize an unfair advantage by giving their own products access of better quality or on better terms.
As more products and services depend on digital platforms, the number of markets vulnerable to these tactics rises. Big Tech has made inroads into “smart” homes, automobiles, payment systems and healthcare. The mind boggles at the prospect of the digital aspects of these markets, including mountains of private customer information, being absorbed into the Apple or Google ecosystem.
Congress must act quickly to prohibit the tech giants from unfairly leveraging their dominance into more markets. This doesn’t mean rewriting the antitrust laws but rather taking these three steps:
First, prohibit dominant platforms from giving their own products an unfair advantage by reserving for themselves higher-quality access than they grant competitors. Amazon was charged by the European Union for excluding rival merchants’ products from the “Buy Box”—a valuable space on its website that helps generate sales. Amazon settled the case, agreeing to give competitors’ products the same placement as its own. EU regulators were right and Congress should prohibit a dominant platform from giving preferential platform access to its own products.
This same rule should apply when the platform provides a function through hardware rather than software. Apple has installed a “near field communication” chip in its phones to complete secure short-distance mobile payments with its Apple Pay service, but it excludes other mobile wallet payment services from access to the chip. This discriminatory access relegates competing payment services to lower-quality connectivity. The EU has said it has an eye on the matter.
Second, prohibit Big Tech from using dominant platforms to extract competitors’ business data and exploiting that data in developing competing products. Last month, Amazon settled EU charges that it gleaned nonpublic information from independent merchants using its platform to inform Amazon’s own competing product offerings.
Apple and Google are entering the car-manufacturing business, and that market illustrates why Big Tech’s ability to extract data from competitors should be limited. Drivers should be able to use their cellphones easily in and outside their cars. Car makers can facilitate this by supporting interoperability between the phone and the car. But Apple and Google shouldn’t be allowed to abuse this capacity to gain access to user and vehicle data.
Third, protect consumer privacy. Congress has yet to address the massive amount of personal information these companies already collect. But the scope and scale of these data are about to explode as Big Tech hoovers up information from our homes, cars, financial transactions, healthcare and other markets. This will be augmented, before long, by a 24/7 flow of video, audio and electronic signals collected by their fleets of autonomous vehicles zipping about our streets. Add to this the capacity to sift data with artificial-intelligence tools, and things start resembling the dystopian surveillance societies portrayed in sci-fi movies.
It is past time for Congress to add real bite to its bark and address the harmful effects of Big Tech’s power. This should be at the top of lawmakers’ priorities for 2023.
Mr. Barr is author of the memoir “One Damn Thing After Another.” He served as U.S. attorney general, 1991-93 and 2019-20.
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https://twitchy.com/samj-3930/2023/01/31/whoa-googleleaks-tells-twitterfiles-to-hold-its-beer-with-bombshell-filled-thread/?bcid=61909435a7a16c252223eaf2898f913e13368d0df63d9443cc0feea9f049401e&utm_campaign=nl&utm_medium=email&utm_source=twtydaily
Let's keep an eye on this.
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ET
By Jack Phillips
February 2, 2023Updated: February 2, 2023
biggersmaller Print
Members of Congress are demanding the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) investigate tax preparation software companies for allegedly sharing taxpayer information with Facebook.
Several news outlets, including The Markup, reported in November 2022 that several services, including H&R Block, TaxAct, and TaxSlayer, sent personal and financial information to Facebook after users filed their taxes. That included filers’ return amounts and information on their dependents, and it was gathered via Facebook parent company Meta.
Specifically, that financial information was transferred to Meta via a widely used code called Meta Pixel, which includes a piece of code that allows users to track visitor activity on a website.
On Thursday, three Democrat lawmakers on the House Ways and Means Committee sent a letter to the IRS to investigate the alleged data-sharing activities between tax filing websites and Facebook.
“The Meta Pixel, operated by Facebook’s parent company, collected taxpayers’ personal information through various tax e-filing websites, including taxpayers’ names, usernames, email addresses, home addresses, income, filing status, refund status, dependents, health savings accounts, college tuition grants, and college scholarship amounts of their dependents,” the Democrats wrote in a news release from Rep. Adam Schiff’s (D-Calif.) office. Reps. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) joined Schiff in issuing the demand.
They now want the IRS to provide answers on if it is aware of the number of taxpayers whose data may have been shared with Meta and Facebook, if the data can be recovered from the companies, and if there is a violation of relevant tax laws.
Epoch Times Photo
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) delivers remarks during a hearing by the House Select Committee on the Jan. 6 Capitol breach in the Cannon House Office Building in Washington on Oct. 13, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
“The IRS directs taxpayers attempting to file for free to some of the companies reporting found using the pixel via Free File. The IRS also directs taxpayers to Tax Slayer through Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) sites,” Schiff’s release said. “Free File and VITA are directed toward low income, elderly, and disabled taxpayers. Can you confirm whether Tax Slayer was one of the software packages embedding the pixel?”
It comes months after Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sent out a similar letter to the tax filing companies, Meta, and Google about whether taxpayers’ data was improperly shared.
“If The Markup’s reporting is accurate, taxpayers deserve justice for this abuse of their private tax information, and we hope that the IRS and if merited, the Department of Justice, will act to impose appropriate penalties on companies,” her letter stated.
The IRS has not yet issued a public comment on the reports. A previous Epoch Times request for comment from the IRS was not returned.
Response
In response to the reports, TaxAct said that the data that was sent to Meta is “at an aggregate level” and not at “the individual level.”
“The privacy of our customers is very important to all of us at TaxAct, and we continue to comply with all laws and IRS regulations,” a TaxAct spokesperson told CNBC last year. “Data provided to Facebook is used at an aggregate level, not the individual level, by TaxAct to analyze our advertising effectiveness. TaxAct is not using the information provided by its customers and referenced in the report issued by The Markup to target advertising with Facebook.”
At the time, an H&R Block spokesperson told the outlet that the firm takes “protecting our clients’ privacy very seriously, and we are taking steps to mitigate the sharing of client information via pixels.” It also said it “removed the pixels from its DIY online product to stop any client tax information from being collected,” without elaborating.
A TaxSlayer spokesperson, Molly Richardson, told The Markup that the firm is reevaluating using Meta Pixel.
“Our customers’ privacy is of utmost importance, and we take concerns about our customers’ information very seriously,” Richardson said
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:-o
what are they going to do with this personal private material?
for the first possibly ever I agree with Adam Schiff !!! :-o
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It looks to me like the top two implementers of AI, Open AI and Google, will be of extreme leftward bias, while conservatives sit on their 20th century laurels.
---------------
Hat tip John Ellis News Items
Sundar Pichai (CEO Google):
AI is the most profound technology we are working on today. Whether it’s helping doctors detect diseases earlier or enabling people to access information in their own language, AI helps people, businesses and communities unlock their potential. And it opens up new opportunities that could significantly improve billions of lives. That’s why we re-oriented the company around AI six years ago — and why we see it as the most important way we can deliver on our mission: to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
Since then we’ve continued to make investments in AI across the board, and Google AI and DeepMind are advancing the state of the art. Today, the scale of the largest AI computations is doubling every six months, far outpacing Moore’s Law. At the same time, advanced generative AI and large language models are capturing the imaginations of people around the world. In fact, our Transformer research project and our field-defining paper in 2017, as well as our important advances in diffusion models, are now the basis of many of the generative AI applications you're starting to see today. (Mr. Pichai is the CEO of Alphabet, the parent company of Google. Source: blog.google)...
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https://dailycaller.com/2023/02/13/state-department-think-tank-disinformation/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking&pnespid=ubQ3Dn5LbvwIhfmfty3qC5mDuwK8D8Jxc7Cm2rEzoxpmh1WVZDlKipTOW_FstqQSaNAWLhJa
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https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2023/02/27/the_separation_of_tech_and_state_takes_its_legislative_form_883955.html
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I really like that phrase-- it pithily captures a message that should resonate across the American spectrum. I think I will be using it from here forward.
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https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/3615211/twitter-blocked-eva
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https://thepostmillennial.com/kindle-forced-censored-updates-of-previously-purchased-books-on-readers
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https://thepostmillennial.com/kindle-forced-censored-updates-of-previously-purchased-books-on-readers
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
― George Orwell, 1984
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“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
― George Orwell, 1984
I don't think I ever read this one though was forced to read Animal Farm
and did not like it.
Now I am older and understand how the world works and see Orwell as a modern Nostradamus .
Odd, though how Russians lived through this from Lenin on and many still admire Stalin, so I read.
A few Russian born doctors who I spoke to when I ask about this seem to say it is the same here.
It certainly is becoming more and more obvious every day .
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Watch the movie, but the book is better.
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
― George Orwell, 1984
I don't think I ever read this one though was forced to read Animal Farm
and did not like it.
Now I am older and understand how the world works and see Orwell as a modern Nostradamus .
Odd, though how Russians lived through this from Lenin on and many still admire Stalin, so I read.
A few Russian born doctors who I spoke to when I ask about this seem to say it is the same here.
It certainly is becoming more and more obvious every day .
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https://populistpress.com/
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https://populistpress.com/
Anyone surprised?
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DO NOT CLICK ON ANYTHING ON THAT POPULIST PRESS PAGE!!!
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***DO NOT CLICK ON ANYTHING ON THAT POPULIST PRESS PAGE!!!***
CD ,
do you have more info on this?
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In the spirit of supporting free speech I clicked on something that I thought would sign me up for emails from them but instead got taken to a nasty virus looking thing that would not let me click it off so I had to entirely log out and come back on.
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https://corp.rumble.com/blog/rumble-reports-record-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2022-results/
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumble_(company)
trying to figure this out
is it like FB , Youtube , twitter or what?
:?
is the forum on Rumble?
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My understanding is that it is like youtube but without the censorship.
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https://wgme.com/news/nation-world/pbs-follows-nprs-lead-quits-twitter-after-being-labeled-government-funded-media-pubic-broadcasting-station-national-radio-elon-musk-social-media
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https://wgme.com/news/nation-world/pbs-follows-nprs-lead-quits-twitter-after-being-labeled-government-funded-media-pubic-broadcasting-station-national-radio-elon-musk-social-media
The truth hurts.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/04/30/mark-zuckerberg-meta-layoffs/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F39df5e2%2F644e8c1fa61bab12f747ac9f%2F61cdf026ae7e8a4ac205b2b3%2F9%2F72%2F644e8c1fa61bab12f747ac9f
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https://www.zerohedge.com/political/censorship-industrial-complex-top-50-organizations-know?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1482
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really good chart listing the big gov tech academic elite DNC complex
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/rep-jim-jordan-threatens-white-house-with-subpoenas-over-social-media-censorship_5335948.html?utm_source=Goodevening&src_src=Goodevening&utm_campaign=gv-2023-06-16&src_cmp=gv-2023-06-16&utm_medium=email
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Google joins Meta in blocking news rather than paying outlets
BY RYAN LOVELACE THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Google said Thursday it will block news via its Search and News tools in Canada because of the country’s legislation forcing Big Tech platforms to pay media organizations for news used on their services.
The company’s clash with Canada comes on the heels of Meta’s announcement last week that it would restrict news on Facebook and Instagram after Canada passed the Online News Act, also known as Bill C-18.
Related legislation in the U.S. is defunct, as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy declared an antitrust journalism bill dead in Congress earlier this month.
Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs, said his company did not make the decision to squash news lightly and wanted Canadian users and publishers to know as soon as possible.
“We have now informed the government that when the law takes effect, we unfortunately will have to remove links to Canadian news from our Search, News and Discover products in Canada, and that C-18 will also make it untenable for us to continue offering our Google News Showcase product in Canada,” Mr. Walker wrote on Google’s blog.
Last week, Canada’s Senate passed the Online News Act and the Canadian government said its Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission would handle implementation of the law.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau previously sounded optimistic that Google would play ball with the government’s efforts to oversee negotiations and bargaining between media companies and Big Tech, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
“I will say the conversations with Google are ongoing,” Mr. Trudeau said Wednesday. “It is important that we find a way to ensure that Canadians can continue to access content in all sorts of ways but also that we protect rigorous independent journalism that has a foundational role in our democracies.”
The Canadian government could try to resolve its dispute with the Big Tech titans like Australia did.
Meta threatened to block news in Australia in 2021 in response to legislation directing Big Tech companies to pay but it ultimately brokered an agreement with the government and didn’t resort to a blockade of news online.
In the U.S., antitrust journalism legislation is headed nowhere at the federal level. The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act this month, but Mr. McCarthy said he would not allow it to move forward in the House. Sen. Alex Padilla, California Democrat, said he would block its passage in the Senate.
The News Media Alliance, a coalition of publishers including The Washington Times, has lobbied in support of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act. The Alliance applauded the reintroduction of the bill earlier this year and called for its passage.
The California State Assembly passed a state-specific version of the antitrust journalism legislation earlier this month after Meta similarly threatened to remove news from its platforms in that state.
• This article was based in part on wire service reports.
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https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/musks-tweet-limiting-move-prevent-completion-ai-censorship-death-star?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1621
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https://www.zerohedge.com/political/macron-demands-platforms-delete-riot-content-blames-social-media-video-games-protest?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1623
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https://www.thecentersquare.com/florida/article_a0ffff5c-1f7b-11ee-ae32-0768ce6c6daa.html
"Meta" (facebook, Instagram) used in human trafficking according to Florida attorney general.
They censor us. They (apparently) don't censor them.
Leftist censorship is the highest form of free speech, if you ask them. If so, do a better job.
We freed the slaves 158 years ago. Why do we have human trafficking running rampant in this country under leftist rule, or lack of enforcement? It is beyond shameful.
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https://patriotpost.us/articles/98678-facebook-speech-suppression-reaches-a-new-low-2023-07-10?mailing_id=7635&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.7635&utm_campaign=digest&utm_content=body
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https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/4085934-mr-zuckerberg-release-the-facebook-files/
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https://washingtontimes-dc.newsmemory.com/?token=652f7a90b6fd689c0c4937ece40c02a9_64aea50b_6d25b5f&selDate=20230712&goTo=A01&artid=1&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=washingtontimes-E-Editions&utm_source=washingtontimes&utm_content=Read-Button
Judge unmasks staffers who stifled social posts
White House officials browbeat sites to pull content
BY SUSAN FERRECHIO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
A federal judge who excoriated the Biden administration for pressuring social media platforms to censor Americans’ speech shined a light on a group of obscure but powerful White House staffers who leaned on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other sites to remove posts and ban users whose content they opposed.
U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty, acting on a lawsuit filed against the Biden administration by two states and a group of plaintiffs, said the case “arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.”
Court documents show that while top Biden administration officials such as Dr. Anthony Fauci sought publicly and privately to censor social media posts over COVID-19 content, the task was more extensively carried out behind the scenes by a select band of staffers.
These aides led the administration’s efforts to squelch content they opposed, mostly by pressuring social media platforms with repeated requests for content removal, deplatforming of specific users and relentless demands for access to their internal content moderation policies and practices.
The effort began almost as soon as Mr. Biden entered the White House with a Jan. 23, 2021, email from Clarke Humphrey, then the digital director for the administration’s COVID-19 response team.
Mr. Humphrey emailed Twitter officials at 1 a.m. on Mr. Biden’s third day in office and asked them to remove a tweet posted a day earlier by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that suggested, without evidence, that the death of Hank Aaron, 86, could be tied to the coronavirus vaccine.
“Hey folks — Wanted to flag the below tweet and am wondering if we can get moving on the process of having it removed ASAP,” Mr. Humphrey wrote to Twitter.
The job of policing social media appeared to fall mostly to Mr. Humphrey’s White House colleague, Rob Flaherty, who recently left the administration, reportedly to take a job in President Biden’s reelection campaign.
Mr. Humphrey had looped in Mr. Flaherty on the Jan. 23 email to Twitter,
requesting he “keep an eye out for tweets that fall in this same genre.”
Mr. Flaherty, who served as deputy assistant to the president and director of digital strategy, subsequently led a dogged campaign to coerce Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms to remove content about COVID-19 that went against the Biden administration’s policies, especially on posts and content that were skeptical of the vaccines or pandemic-related mandates.
Mr. Flaherty continually pressured Facebook to share with the White House the company’s internal policies for removing or moderating content.
He demanded Facebook take more aggressive action to censor “borderline” anti-vaccine content, which included posts that did not violate the platform’s rules but made the administration uncomfortable.
Mr. Flaherty in March 2021 sent Facebook offi cials a media report about Facebook’s internal study on the link between vaccine hesitancy and “borderline” Facebook content.
Such content included Facebook posts about experiencing or fearing severe vaccine side effects.
Mr. Flaherty accused Facebook of “hiding the ball” from the White House by not turning over the platform’s internal study information, to which Facebook responded that the media report did not accurately convey the research they are conducting.
“I don’t think this is a misunderstanding,” Mr. Flaherty wrote to Facebook in response. “I’ve been asking you guys pretty directly, over a series of conversations, for a clear accounting of the biggest issues you are seeing on your platform when it comes to vaccine hesitancy, and the degree to which borderline content — as you define it — is playing a role.”
In the exchange, Mr. Flaherty accused Facebook of allowing social media posts that spurred the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack. He demanded to know “what actions and changes you are making to ensure you are not making our country’s vaccine hesitancy problem worse.”
While Mr. Flaherty strong-armed Twitter and Facebook to cooperate with the White House, another staffer, Andy Slavitt, ramped up the effort by threatening the social media platforms with federal action.
Mr. Slavitt at the time was serving as a senior adviser to the Biden administration’s pandemic response team and was copied in on Mr. Flaherty’s emails to Facebook. He followed up with a message to the social media giant, warning them that “internally, we have been considering our options on what to do” about the platform’s failure to comply with White House demands.
Mr. Slavitt didn’t say specifically what the administration was considering.
The federal government can’t control private social media platforms but could hobble them significantly by working with Congress to eliminate their liability shield, known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The 1996 law protects them from legal liability over the content posted on their sites.
Mr. Slavitt also played a role in coercing Twitter to deplatform Alex Berenson, a former New York Times reporter who during the pandemic posted questions, concerns and research about the mRNAbased vaccine’s side effects.
Mr. Berenson’s tweets also highlighted the research and data demonstrating the limited efficacy of the vaccines, lockdowns, masks and other Biden administration pandemic policies.
According to court documents, Mr. Slavitt, during a White House meeting with Twitter officials in April 2021, called Mr. Berenson “the epicenter of disinfo that radiated outwards to the persuadable public.”
Mr. Berenson was suspended by Twitter on July 16, 2021, and deplatformed on Aug. 28, 2021.
Mr. Berenson, who successfully sued Twitter to reactivate his account, is suing Mr. Slavitt and other White House officials as well as two senior board members of the vaccine maker Pfizer, over their bid to silence him.
“The White House was particularly concerned about me as someone whose questions could not be dismissed as mere conspiracy theories or paranoid delusions,” Mr. Berenson told The Washington Times. “They targeted me because — not in spite of — the fact that I presented reasonable, data-driven objections to mRNA vaccinations for young people and for mandates.”
Mr. Slavitt, who left the administration in June 2021, did not respond to a request for comment.
Upon his departure from the White House, Mr. Slavitt introduced Surgeon General Vivek Murthy to senior Facebook officials to help Dr. Murthy carry out the administration’s quest to quash COVID-19 social media content it opposed.
Eric Waldo, who is a senior adviser to Dr. Murthy, led the effort to implement Dr. Murthy’s July 2021 “health advisory on misinformation.” The advisory aimed to “stop the spread of misinformation on social media platforms” related to COVID-19.
Mr. Waldo worked to ensure Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google and YouTube turned over internal company data on the content they labeled as misinformation as well as the steps taken by them to censor information that was critical of the vaccine or the Biden administration’s pandemic policies.
In August 2021, The surgeon general’s staff ramped up the pressure on Facebook, giving the platform a two-week deadline to provide the information.
Facebook responded with the report “How We’re Taking Action Against Vaccine Misinformation Superspreaders.” It included a detailed list of steps it had taken to block content posted by a White House-promoted list of users called the “Disinformation Dozen.”
The dozen social media accounts were identifi ed in March 2021 by the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate, which has ties to the left-wing British Labor Party. The group worked to get conservative commentator Katie Hopkins banned from Twitter in the United Kingdom and attempted to coerce Google into deplatforming the U.S. conservative website The Federalist.
The center’s list of a dozen offending posters included Mr. Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic who is now a Democratic presidential candidate.
The White House promoted the center’s list of a dozen offenders as part of Dr. Murthy’s “misinformation” health advisory. “There are about 12 people who are producing 65% of vaccine misinformation on social media platforms,” then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on July 15, 2021.
In addition to Mr. Kennedy, the list of offending users included osteopath physician Sherri Tenpenny, who the center cited for posting on Facebook a study that concluded cloth masks are ineffective and may increase the risk of infection.
Facebook in response provided Mr. Waldo with two additional reports in September 2021 on its efforts to silence the so-called misinformation on COVID policies and mute some of the pages and posts of the dozen offending platforms.
Mr. Waldo sought similar updates from Twitter, Instagram, Google and YouTube, according to court documents.
Carol Crawford, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s digital media director, also helped carry out the White House’s censorship scheme.
The court documents detail how she began holding weekly meetings in January 2021 with Facebook’s content mediation team to discuss “misinformation” about the vaccines. She looped in Census Bureau officials, who partnered with the CDC on the effort and wanted to discuss “misinformation topics,” including concerns about the vaccine causing side effects, infertility and death.
Ms. Crawford repeatedly emailed Facebook about specific postings that she deemed as misinformation on both Facebook and Instagram, which are both owned by Meta.
According to court documents, Facebook “began to rely on Crawford and the CDC to determine whether claims were true or false,” including whether the virus had a 99.96% survival rate, whether the vaccine caused Bells’ palsy and whether people who were administered the shot were part of a medical experiment.
Under the direction of Ms. Crawford, Facebook would remove or censor claims the CDC said were false.
Ms. Crawford also had regular contact with Twitter over posts that she and CDC experts believed were misinformation.
She sent Twitter a list of content the CDC, working with the Census Bureau, identified as false. The list included posts alleging the vaccines were not approved by the FDA, posts about “fraudulent cures,” vaccine injury data “taken out of context,” and claims the COVID shot caused infertility.
Ms. Crawford, according to the court documents, “understood she was flagging the posts for Twitter for possible censorship.”
Twitter responded to Ms. Crawford that some of the offending posts had been “reviewed and actioned.”
The behind-the-scenes efforts by the White House and the Biden administration to censor social media content were effective. The platforms began removing content and banning users almost as soon as Biden administration officials began contacting them, and they set up special portals that allowed White House and administration staffers to collaborate with the companies about content moderation.
The Biden administration is seeking to halt Judge Doughty’s injunction. White House officials defended their actions and said they were aimed at preserving public health, safety and security during a deadly pandemic.
The Justice Department on Monday filed an emergency stay motion in a federal appeals court after Judge Doughty, who was a Trump nominee, denied the department’s initial request to lift the ban on communicating with social media outlets.
Just a few days into the Biden presidency, a White House staffer asked Twitter personnel to remove a post from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who posted tweeted an anti-vax opinion about Hank Aaron’s death.
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy worked with social media companies to quash certain COVID-19 content.
Andy Slavitt, then-senior adviser to the White House COVID-19 Response Team, ramped up efforts to remove some posts. ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTOGRAPHS
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12280359/Mark-Zuckerbergs-Threads-app-censoring-people-questioning-gender-ideology.html
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https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/jason-aldean-blm-footage
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aldean is no hero
remember when during the Vegas shooting he ran of the stage faster then a bat flies over my head at dusk without even taking a few seconds to warn the crowd.
I allege he is also one who seems to sing lyrics that are same as some that disappeared out of our house
No I don't allege he steals anything - but I allege his friends do......
he is a phony.
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https://www.creators.com/read/ben-shapiro/08/23/meet-the-company-trying-to-control-your-mind
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https://www.revolver.news/2023/08/journalist-goes-undercover-exposes-dark-and-nefarious-adl-social-media-censorship-scheme/
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/health/youtube-to-censor-content-contradicting-who-guidelines-5472977?utm_source=Health&src_src=Health&utm_campaign=health-2023-08-22&src_cmp=health-2023-08-22&utm_medium=email&est=Ghyrs2mqvntXEw8nvQ4nkdduUUjeXM4Roe0veN%2BkTSn%2BRWLPuz2FqDVk1xgwx82xP6jg
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U.S. v. Google: What to Know About the Biggest Antitrust Trial in 20 Years
Search engine faces charges of using illegal agreements with partners such as Apple to maintain a monopoly
By
Dave Michaels
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Sept. 11, 2023 9:00 pm ET
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The Justice Department argues that Google’s exclusive deals prevent rivals from effectively competing for search business. PHOTO: JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES
Google, the country’s dominant search engine, faces its biggest legal threat ever this week when the company goes on civil trial in Washington on allegations of violating U.S. antitrust laws.
The Justice Department’s case is aimed at Google search, and whether the company has used illegal agreements to sideline its rivals and harmed consumers and advertisers in the process. Google pays billions of dollars to Apple, for example, to be the default search engine on the Safari browser.
Alphabet GOOG -0.21%decrease; red down pointing triangle-owned Google grew up during an era of more relaxed antitrust enforcement, particularly against technology companies that developed innovative—and often free—ways to explore and use the internet. Efforts to regulate Google and other technology giants have failed to advance in Congress in recent years. In the absence of such rules, the government is trying to use antitrust law to govern competition on the web and put curbs on the internet’s gatekeepers. Here are some crucial questions about the biggest U.S. antitrust trial since the government challenged Microsoft more than 20 years ago.
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Why is Google facing an antitrust lawsuit?
The Justice Department and a group of states sued Google three years ago, alleging it illegally maintains a monopoly in online search and related advertising markets. Google has about a 90% market share in search and maintains its dominance through restrictive agreements with browser and phone partners such as Apple, Mozilla, Samsung and Verizon, according to the Justice Department. These deals, which the government says are illegal, make Google the default search engine on most U.S. phones. Google’s separate agreements with Android-based mobile-device manufacturers forbid pre-installing or promoting rival search engines if they opt to take a cut of Google’s search revenue.
Why the FTC’s Lina Khan Is Taking on Big Tech, Even if It Means Losing
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Why the FTC’s Lina Khan Is Taking on Big Tech, Even if It Means Losing
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Play video: Why the FTC’s Lina Khan Is Taking on Big Tech, Even if It Means Losing
Since Lina Khan became Federal Trade Commission chair in 2021, she has taken on Meta, Microsoft and Amazon, making her a lightning rod for controversy. WSJ breaks down the battles she has picked and why she is willing to lose. Photo illustration: Xingpei Shen
What harm comes from Google’s agreements?
The Justice Department argues that Google’s exclusive deals with Apple and others prevent rivals from effectively competing for search business or improving their products. Because Google locks up all the browsers and gets all the queries, other companies such as Microsoft can’t perform enough searches to improve their product, the government says, giving it an anticompetitive scale advantage. Google’s agreements also stifle innovation, the Justice Department says, because the company doesn’t have to improve its search engine to maintain market share. Finally, Google has used its monopoly to raise prices for advertising on its search-results pages, according to the government.
How does Google explain the deals?
Google says its deals with Apple and others promote competition by supplying browser providers with what they want: a single default search option for customers. Apple and Mozilla chose Google because it continues to outstrip rival search engines, and not because they are coerced by revenue sharing or other inducements, it says. Windows users, who don’t have any Google products preloaded on their personal computers, generally opt for Google search because it is the best way to explore the internet, the company says.
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Google also points out that its agreements don’t prevent its partners from offering other search engines, because users of Apple’s Safari or Mozilla’s Firefox browsers can change the default search option in their settings. And on Android phones, Google says, consumers can switch away from its preloaded search engine to other products on their own; the fact that few do so isn’t evidence of exclusionary practice, Google says, but of consumers sticking with a superior product.
What happens if Google loses?
In theory, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta could order Google broken up but legal analysts consider that unlikely. More possible, they say, are new constraints on how Google does business, such as its ability to pay Apple, Samsung and others to be the default search engine on phones. “That seems like the most natural remedy,” said Paul Gallant, a tech-policy analyst at Cowen Washington Research Group. “Breaking up the company over unlawful payments to equipment manufacturers seems unlikely relative to the harm.”
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When did the U.S. government last challenge a big monopoly in court?
The government sued Microsoft in 1998 over its attempt to control the market for internet browsers on Windows computers. The Justice Department prevailed in the lawsuit, which created an opening for rivals such as Google and Facebook to flourish in the future, according to the DOJ. The Justice Department says Google has emulated Microsoft’s 1990s playbook to build and maintain its own monopoly in internet search and advertising, while Google says the comparison is inapt.
How long will the trial last and when will a verdict be reached?
The Justice Department has one month to present its case, meaning the states and Google won’t question witnesses until October. Witness testimony is expected to conclude in November, and then the two sides will write briefs to the judge summarizing the case and arguing which way he should rule. Closing arguments and a judgment aren’t expected until next year. If Judge Mehta finds that Google violated the Sherman Antitrust Act, he would schedule a separate trial to decide penalties. The decision is likely to be appealed, so the final outcome might be years away.
Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google parent Alphabet, is likely to be questioned during the trial. PHOTO: HELYNN OSPINA FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Who are the key witnesses in the trial?
While a complete witness list isn’t available yet, Alphabet Chief Executive Sundar Pichai and some Apple executives, such as Eddy Cue, senior vice president of services, are likely to be questioned. The Justice Department is likely to call executives from Microsoft and DuckDuckGo, which operate competing search engines.
Who are the key lawyers working on the case?
Google’s principal trial lawyer is John Schmidtlein, a partner at litigation powerhouse Williams & Connolly. Schmidtlein represented a group of states in part of the 1998 trial against Microsoft. Google Chief Legal Officer Kent Walker and Susan Creighton, a partner at the Silicon Valley law firm Wilson Sonsini, have played key roles in dealing with the Justice Department and shaping trial strategy.
The Justice Department’s top lawyer in the courtroom is Kenneth Dintzer, a 30-year veteran of high-stakes government litigation. Dintzer began his DOJ career in the early 1990s and worked on the early Microsoft investigation. His trial colleagues include Adam Severt, Meagan Bellshaw and David Dahlquist.
—Miles Kruppa contributed to this article.
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A Rebuke to Biden-Tech Censorship
The Fifth Circuit issues a landmark on collusion against free speech.
By
The Editorial Board
Follow
Sept. 11, 2023 6:38 pm ET
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday against federal officials for colluding with tech platforms to suppress speech, but you’d hardly know it from the limited press coverage. The decision in Missouri v. Biden deserves more attention because it defines the constitutional limits to coordination between government and private actors and may be headed to the Supreme Court.
Missouri and Louisiana—joined by individuals whose posts opposing government views on Covid were censored—sued various federal officials for violating their First Amendment rights. Federal Judge Terry Doughty ruled against the government on nearly all points. The three-judge Fifth Circuit panel largely upheld his findings of fact and law while narrowing his injunction.
The unsigned 74-page opinion begins by detailing the unprecedented coordination during the pandemic between government agencies and social-media platforms. Tech employees “attended regular meetings” with government officials and “seemingly stepped-up their efforts” to remove content to appease them, the decision explains.
Platforms “gave the officials access to an expedited reporting system, downgraded or removed flagged posts, and deplatformed users,” the opinion says. And they “changed their internal policies to capture more flagged content and sent steady reports on their moderation activities to the officials.”
The Biden Administration argued that the tech platforms acted independently, and that communications by federal officials are protected “government speech.” The Fifth Circuit disagreed, holding that officials crossed the First Amendment line by coercing platforms with threats of antitrust action and legal liability for user content under Section 230.
A private party “is ‘not ordinarily constrained by the First Amendment,’” the Fifth Circuit explains. “That changes, though, when a private party is coerced or significantly encouraged by the government to such a degree that its ‘choice’” if “made by the government would be unconstitutional.” The court calls this the “close nexus test.”
Its decision analyzes in depth how government actions violate the First Amendment under this test. “Significant encouragement requires ‘omething more’ than uninvolved oversight from the government,” the ruling says, citing the Supreme Court’s Blum (1982) precedent. Yet federal officials were far from “uninvolved” in content decisions.
The Fifth Circuit distinguishes the complaints in Missouri from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s lawsuit against Sen. Elizabeth Warren for asking Amazon to modify its algorithms to make his book harder to find. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected that suit this year. Unlike the facts in this case, Ms. Warren’s letter was framed as a “request rather than a command” and she “lacked regulatory authority” over Amazon. The Senator’s letter also “contain[ed] no explicit reference” to “adverse consequences,” and “there was no indication that Amazon perceived the message as a threat.”
The nuanced opinion dismisses complaints against Anthony Fauci and other National Institutes of Health officials because they had merely “promoted the government’s scientific and policy views and attempted to discredit opposing ones—quintessential examples of government speech that do not run afoul of the First Amendment.”
The Fifth Circuit also narrows Judge Doughty’s injunction by spelling out how government officials can communicate with platforms without violating the First Amendment. For instance, they could ask social media companies to “Be on The Lookout” for certain posts provided there’s no intimidation.
The careful, detailed opinion sets the case up well for a Supreme Court appeal if the Biden Administration has the nerve. It may prefer to quit while it’s behind. In either case the ruling is a landmark that protects free speech from the government’s current method of laundering its censorship through private platforms.
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https://westminsterdeclaration.org/
Matt Taibbi, et al
(Quite a list of signatories)
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Interesting: Google pays big bucks to be the default browser:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/10/google-paid-26b-for-default-contracts-in-2021-google-exec-testified/
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Sounds like CNN at airports , , ,
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https://notthebee.com/article/youtube-suspends-the-los-angeles-police-departments-channel-for-posting-can-you-help-us-identify-videos-of-violent-criminals?utm_source=Not+The+Bee+Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=10312023
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anyone see the Charles Loughton move "Island of lost souls" early 30's
remade with Marlon Brando in the 70s or 80s ?
I am thinking justice would be for the peasants who are mind controlled rebel
and physically take the brat into the lab and hook his brain up to the Metaverse and force feed him and make him addicted to conservative values
this is getting beyond diabolically sick:
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/11/14/exposed-metas-36-billion-plot-to-reengineer-society-and-mark-zuckerbergs-dangerous-future-plans-for-tech-addiction/
The Chinese are in a way doing this to us already with shittock
but they are too smart to let FB or meta , whatever , get away with doing it to them.
yet of course we will let FB do it to us. :x
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https://www.thefp.com/p/how-china-got-our-kids-hooked-on
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/china-s-president-xi-jinping-turns-down-mark-zuckerberg-s-request-to-name-his-unborn-child-at-white-house-dinner-a6679156.html
Grovel harder, Zuck.
anyone see the Charles Loughton move "Island of lost souls" early 30's
remade with Marlon Brando in the 70s or 80s ?
I am thinking justice would be for the peasants who are mind controlled rebel
and physically take the brat into the lab and hook his brain up to the Metaverse and force feed him and make him addicted to conservative values
this is getting beyond diabolically sick:
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/11/14/exposed-metas-36-billion-plot-to-reengineer-society-and-mark-zuckerbergs-dangerous-future-plans-for-tech-addiction/
The Chinese are in a way doing this to us already with shittock
but they are too smart to let FB or meta , whatever , get away with doing it to them.
yet of course we will let FB do it to us. :x
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Zuck's wife:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priscilla_Chan
CCP connection ? probably not but a thought.
" at the dinner, which included Apple’s Tim Cook and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Zuckerberg reportedly asked President Xi whether he would be able to give an honorary Chinese name to the daughter he and wife Priscilla Chan are expecting.
Page Six claims President Xi said the task would be “too much responsibility” and declined, though a spokesperson for Zuckerberg told the newspaper this was not correct."
if true, I am sure Xi would have not been smart enough to guess this was a business play from the get go.
Zuck at least would have been more honest if he simply asked if he could shine Xi's shoes.
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For those not reading the small print, it should be noted that this was in 2015:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/china-s-president-xi-jinping-turns-down-mark-zuckerberg-s-request-to-name-his-unborn-child-at-white-house-dinner-a6679156.html
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Second
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/house/house-gop-report-us-government-partnered-universities-election-censorship?utm_source=deployer&utm_medium=email&utm_content=&utm_campaign=newslink&utm_term=members
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Ooh, looky: member of the settled science got my own legion of fact checkers camp had to unplug his new science toy after 48 hours:
https://www.cnet.com/science/meta-trained-an-ai-on-48-million-science-papers-it-was-shut-down-after-two-days/?fbclid=IwAR2Brxl4uLNiYVYp27QpTETEr4Q-yBQ1jtvd-myoJdPBcBst3M0NI8GG50Q
Edited to add a related link: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-11-medical-ai-easily-generate-large.html
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https://michaelyon.substack.com/p/elon-musk-and-alex-jones-rile-the?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=459345&post_id=139704869&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=z2120&utm_medium=email
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https://patriotpost.us/articles/97085?mailing_id=8031&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.8031&utm_campaign=all_subscribers&utm_content=body
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Second time I’m posting something from Just Security, a source I rarely agree with:
https://www.justsecurity.org/90879/advances-in-ai-increase-risks-of-government-social-media-monitoring/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=advances-in-ai-increase-risks-of-government-social-media-monitoring
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https://www.oann.com/newsroom/google-lays-off-hundreds-including-engineer-teams/
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Right:
https://nypost.com/2024/01/22/business/google-news-searches-ranked-ai-generated-ripoffs-above-real-articles-including-a-post-exclusive/
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Add “Snopes” to the topic line for this to fit, but it’s a lovely case in point of a website carrying water for a Democrat despite an obvious error, and ought to be all anyone needs to know about the veracity of that site:
https://www.mediaite.com/news/snopes-fact-check-calls-true-biden-story-false-despite-photos-they-included-in-post-then-reverses-it/
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Censor "deniers" on social media! Oh, and create an AI to scour social media for heretics the Church of Anthropomorphic Climate Apocalypse can burn at the digital stake so as to protect their CACA canons.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/01/23/our-best-climate-realism-communicators/
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This could go more than one place, but given the censorship involved I'm dropping it here. Jaw dropping stuff:
“Externalizing the Difficult Responsibility of Censorship”: Higher Education in the Censorship Triad
Jonathan Turley, Feb. 7, 2024
This week, the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government issued a new report on the Biden Administration’s massive censorship system. The ongoing investigation has exposed the coordination in a system of blacklisting, throttling, and suspensions of targeted citizens and groups. Now, it appears that the Biden White House also pushed for Amazon to target dissenting books to suppress sales by blocking promotions. After all, why burn books when you can bury them?
The apparently successful effort by the White House was little surprise given what a federal court called Biden’s “Orwellian” and unprecedented censorship efforts. As I discuss in my new book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in the Age of Rage,” Biden is now unquestionably the most anti-free speech president since John Adams.
What is new is the details on how academic institutions are critical to this censorship system and the coordination with the government to deal with the backlash from the public. The disclosed emails show how government officials orchestrated media campaigns to shield the system, and their academic partners, from attacks over free speech. The report includes discussions in response to my own past writing denouncing this system.
Some of us have been raising the alarm over the role of universities in this censorship system. While faculty and students once opposed any academic research supporting the military industrial complex, there has been no such opposition to researchers supporting a censorship system targeting dissenting views and supplying blacklists to government and corporate partners.
There has long been a narrative in the media that portrayed academics working in this system as victims hounded by critics. For example, one article featured the work of Kate Starbird, director and co-founder of the UW Center for an Informed Public. The University of Washington is one of the most important partners in the academic-corporate-government triad. Other key institutions include Stanford University, University of Michigan, and the University of Wisconsin. The article discussed how “her attempt to promote factual information and strengthen democracy has gotten her sued, blasted by congressional inquiries and subjected to a death threat.”
The internal messages revealed by the House show how such media campaigns were coordinated to frame the coverage. While these researchers actively work to target others, they often object to criticism of their work as bullying and the work of disinformers.
Notably, in her communications disclosed by the House, Starbird cautions against giving examples of disinformation to keep them from being used by critics, adding “since everything is politicized and disinformation inherently political, every example is bait.”
She and others reached out to grant managers in dealing with the public spin. Wisconsin Journalism Professor Michael Wagner flagged one of my columns to Michael Pozmantier, a program manager at the National Science Foundation, an independent government agency. What is striking that the two suggest that the column was wrong but do not state a single mistaken fact. Indeed, the report confirms the extensive effort to coordinate the identification of those spreading what the researchers deemed disinformation. In another email, Pozmantier explained that “Track F is the NSF ‘Accelerator track focused on combating mis/disinformation.'”
Pozmantier also shows the sweeping agenda behind these grants, noting “Projects in Track F will pursue a convergence research agenda and leverage multi-sector partnerships to address issues of trust and authenticity in communication systems, including predicting, preventing, detecting, correcting, and mitigating the spread of inaccurate information that harms people and society.”
Other academic institutions in the report are shown marketing their own eagerness to become part of this censorship system. University of Michigan’s James Park is shown pitching that school’s WiseDex First Pitch program, promising that “our misinformation service helps policy makers at platforms who want to . . . push responsibility for difficult judgments to someone outside the company . . . by externalizing the difficult responsibility of censorship.”
These emails show the fluidity of what is deemed unacceptable viewpoints for these academics and their partners. The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), during prior court testimony. CISA’s director, Jen Easterly, previously declared the administration’s intent to extend its role over maintaining critical infrastructure to include “our cognitive infrastructure” and combating not just mis- and disinformation but also “malinformation,” which CISA describes as “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.”
For academic institutions, the central role played in this censorship infrastructure is alarming. Some of these programs have now pledged that they will no longer target content on the Internet. However, for years, the Biden Administration funded blacklisting systems as well as programs to target the advertisers of conservative sites.
For example, the federal government helped to fund the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), to discourage advertisers from supporting certain sites. All of the top 10 most risky sites are popular with conservatives, libertarians and independents. GDI warned advertisers against “financially supporting disinformation online.” Those top disinformation sites included Reason, a libertarian-oriented source of news and commentary about the government. However, HuffPost, a far left media outlet, was included among the 10 sites at lowest risk of spreading disinformation.
Universities should be places where false claims and conspiracy theories are debated and exposed. However, there is a dangerous line that is crossed when universities partner with the government or corporations in a system targeting individuals and groups for censorship.
Here is the report: NSF-Staff-Report_Appendix
ETA Here's the link for the NSF report cited above: https://jonathanturley.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/NSF-Staff-Report_Appendix.pdf
Executive summary for the above:
This interim report details the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) funding of AI- powered censorship and propaganda tools, and its repeated efforts to hide its actions and avoid political and media scrutiny.
In the name of combatting alleged misinformation regarding COVID-19 and the 2020 election, NSF has been issuing multi-million-dollar grants to university and non-profit research teams. The purpose of these taxpayer-funded projects is to develop artificial intelligence (AI)- powered censorship and propaganda tools that can be used by governments and Big Tech to shape public opinion by restricting certain viewpoints or promoting others.
Non-public documents obtained by the House Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government demonstrate that these federal bureaucrats, “disinformation” researchers, and non-profit groups understood that their actions—“content moderation” and combatting so-called misinformation—amounted to “censorship.”2 And yet, NSF forged ahead, supporting new technologies that would essentially enable the censorship of online speech “at scale.”
But NSF’s taxpayer funding for this potential automated censorship is only half of the story. The Committee and the Select Subcommittee have also obtained, via document requests and subpoenas, nonpublic emails and other documents that reveal a years-long, intentional effort by NSF to hide its role in funding these censorship and propaganda tools from media and political scrutiny. From legal scholars, such as Jonathan Turley, to conservative journalists, NSF tracked public criticisms of its work in funding these projects. NSF went so far as to develop a media strategy that considered blacklisting certain American media outlets because they were scrutinizing NSF’s funding of censorship and propaganda tools.
The First Amendment prohibits the government from “abridging the freedom of speech.”3 Thus, “any law or government policy that reduces that freedom on the [social media] platforms . . . violates the First Amendment.”4 To inform potential legislation, the Committee and Select Subcommittee have been investigating the Executive Branch’s collusion with third- party intermediaries, including universities, non-profits, and businesses, to censor protected speech on social media. The Committee and Subcommittee have uncovered serious violations of the First Amendment throughout the Executive Branch, including:
The Biden White House directly coercing large social media companies, such as Facebook, to censor true information, memes, and satire, eventually leading Facebook to change its content moderation policies;5
Stanford’s Election Integrity Partnership (EIP)—created at the request of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)—working with the federal government to flag thousands of links and submit recommendations directly to large social media platforms to censor Americans’ online speech in the lead-up to the 2020 U.S. election;6 and
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) harassing Elon Musk’s Twitter (now X) because of Musk’s commitment to free speech, even going so far as to target certain journalists by name.7
As egregious as these violations of the First Amendment are, each still faced the same limitation: the censors were human. Senior Biden White House officials had to spend time personally berating the social media companies into changing their content moderation policies. Social media executives expended considerable time and effort responding to the White House’s threats and evaluating the flagged content. Stanford had nearly a hundred people working for the EIP in shifts flagging thousands of posts, which was only a fraction of the number of election- related posts made in the fall of 2020.8
But what happens if the censorship is automated and the censors are machines? There is no need for shifts or huge teams of people to identify and flag problematic online speech. AI- driven tools can monitor online speech at a scale that would far outmatch even the largest team of “disinformation” bureaucrats and researchers. This interim report reveals how NSF is using American taxpayer dollars to fund the tools that could usher in an even greater threat to online speech than the original efforts to censor speech on social media. The NSF-funded projects threaten to help create a censorship regime that could significantly impede the fundamental First Amendment rights of millions of Americans, and potentially do so in a manner that is instantaneous and largely invisible to its victims.
The Committee and the Select Subcommittee are responsible for investigating “violation of the civil liberties of citizens of the United States.”9 In accordance with this mandate, this interim staff report on NSF’s violations of the First Amendment and other unconstitutional activities fulfills the obligation to identify and report on the weaponization of the federal government against American citizens. The Committee’s and Select Subcommittee’s investigation remains ongoing. NSF still has not adequately complied with a request for relevant documents, and more fact-finding is necessary. In order to better inform the Committee’s legislative efforts, the Committee and Select Subcommittee will continue to investigate how the Executive Branch worked with social media platforms and other intermediaries to censor disfavored viewpoints in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY... 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS ... 4
I.
II.
A.
B.
Can Lead to Censorship “At Scale”................................................................................................ 9 C. The National Science Foundation’s Funding of Censorship Tools ................................... 10
1. The National Science Foundation ...................................................................................... 10
2. NSF’s Convergence Accelerator Program ......................................................................... 11
3. NSF’s Track F: The Censorship Program.......................................................................... 11
D. Censorship and Propaganda in Action: Universities and Non-Profits Develop AI Tools and Other New Technologies to Censor at Scale with Help of Federal Funding ......................... 13
1. The University of Michigan: WiseDex .............................................................................. 14
2. Meedan: Co-Insights ... 16
3. The University of Wisconsin: CourseCorrect .................................................................... 21
4. MIT: Search Lit... 21
III. THE FEDERALLY FUNDED CENSORS: PARTISAN AND CONDESCENDING............................. 22 A. In Their Own Words, “Disinformation” Pseudo-Scientists Describe Their Work As “Political” and “Censorship” ... 23 B. NSF-Funded Researchers Believe the American Public is Not Smart Enough to Discern Fact from Fiction, Especially Conservatives, Minorities, and Veterans....................................... 25 C. NSF-Funded Researchers Understand the Leverage They Have Over Social Media Companies to Ensure the Platforms Bow to Their Demands ....................................................... 26 IV. NSF IS TRYING TO COVER UP ITS FUNDING OF AI CENSORSHIP........................................ 28 A. NSF Developed an Official Media Strategy to Hide its Track F Censorship Program from the American People ... 28
B. NSF Considered Blacklisting Conservative Media Outlets............................................... 32
C. NSF Attempted to Hide Additional Funding to Its Track F Censorship Program............. 33
D. NSF Continues to Try to Cover Up Its Funding of Censorship Tools............................... 34
E. NSF Is Attempting to Stonewall Congressional Investigations......................................... 38
V. The Role of Congress: Defund the Censorship-Industrial Complex and Fight the Next Battle to Defend Free Speech ... 38
APPENDIX A:
APPENDIX B: APPENDIX C:
APPENDIX D:
LETTER FROM THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION DIRECTOR SETHURAMAN PANCHANATHAN TO REP. JIM JORDAN, CHAIRMAN OF HOUSE COMM. ON JUDICIARY COMMITTEE (JUNE 13, 2023).
NSF’S “TRACK F MEDIA STRATEGY” DOCUMENT (NOV. 22, 2021).
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN’S WISEDEX FIRST PITCH SLIDE DECK (OCT. 26, 2021).
MIT’S SEARCH LIT PHASE I PROPOSAL TO NSF (2021).
THE HISTORICAL LIMITS OF HUMAN CENSORSHIP ............................................................... 5
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS FUNDING AI-POWERED CENSORSHIP TOOLS ..................... 7 Government Censorship Has Extended to the West, including the United States............... 8 Free Speech Advocates Have Sounded the Alarm Regarding How Artificial Intelligence
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BBG: Suitable thread! Yay! :-D
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one can easily see why he has an escape bunker on a relatively remote Hawaiian island...
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2024/02/10/zuck-wants-you-distracted-instagram-threads-to-stop-recommending-political-content/
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This also piece fails to note the distinction between Platform and Publisher (also see Section 230)
=========================
Big Tech Censorship Goes to the Supreme Court
Florida and Texas want government to police free speech on social-media platforms. That never turns out well and it violates the First Amendment.
By The Editorial Board
WSJ
Can government tell Big Tech companies how to edit content and police their platforms? That’s the question before the Supreme Court on Monday in two cases with major First Amendment implications (Moody v. NetChoice and NetChoice v. Paxton).
NetChoice, a tech industry group, is challenging Texas and Florida laws that seek to prevent social-media platforms from silencing conservatives. Republicans are rightly frustrated by censorship that often tilts against conservatives, including us. But the solution to business censorship of conservatives isn’t government censorship of business.
***
The Florida law bans large social-media platforms from removing the accounts of political candidates, or suppressing posts by or about them. Platforms also can’t take “any action to censor, deplatform, or shadow ban a journalistic enterprise based on the content of its publication or broadcast,” and they must apply their standards “in a consistent manner” among their users.
The Texas law bars platforms from making editorial decisions based on the viewpoint of a user’s expression, which isn’t clearly defined. The law is so broad it could be read to bar platforms from suppressing pro-Nazi speech or content that glorifies eating disorders. Both laws require platforms to explain in detail why posts are removed. Companies could face stiff government penalties and lawsuits.
NetChoice makes a strong case that the laws abridge First Amendment speech rights by restricting the editorial discretion of platforms. Only last term the Court ruled in 303 Creative LLC that Colorado couldn’t compel a website designer to create work that violates her values. The same principle, NetChoice says, should apply to the Texas and Florida laws.
While such social-media platforms as Instagram and YouTube aren’t traditional publishers like newspapers and broadcasters, they exercise editorial judgment when they decide what content to remove, suppress or amplify. They also exercise discretion when curating user feeds and making recommendations.
The states disagree. They claim their laws regulate business conduct, not expression. They also argue that states can prohibit businesses that open themselves to the public from discriminating against customers under the common-carrier legal doctrine that predates the U.S. Constitution.
“Common carriers have generally opened their facilities to all speakers and speech,” Florida writes in its brief. “Requiring them to open that door a crack more interferes with no expression of their own. Thus, the telephone company, internet-service provider, and delivery service have license neither to snuff out the speech they carry, nor to cancel disfavored subscribers.”
This analogy is inapt. Businesses that are regulated as common carriers like telephone companies, taxis, railroads and electric utilities don’t engage in editorial or expressive activity. Yet the states implicitly concede that social-media platforms do engage in such expression when they accuse them of discriminating against disfavored speech. Florida and Texas can’t have it both ways.
The overriding problem is that extending common-carrier regulation to social-media platforms invites more government control of speech. Do Florida and Texas want Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan dictating what can and can’t be said online? Could California pass a law requiring companies to remove posts that criticize male transgender participation in women’s sports?
Texas and Florida lean heavily on the Court’s Pruneyard precedent (1980), which held that California could extend its constitutional free speech protections to malls because they are open to the public. But malls don’t typically engage in activities protected by the First Amendment. Pruneyard also gave short shrift to the property rights of business owners.
A more relevant precedent is Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo (1974), which overturned a Florida law requiring newspapers to offer equal space to political candidates to respond to editorials that criticize them. The Court said the law compelled and chilled speech because “editors might well conclude that the safe course is to avoid controversy.”
The Florida and Texas laws do the same. If the laws stand, companies would no doubt refrain from policing their platforms to avoid being bankrupted by litigation. Some conservatives might prefer an online free-for-all, and the free market has given birth to platforms for them. Elon Musk has taken a lighter touch to content regulation since buying X, formerly Twitter. But if you’re worried about the cultural damage from social media now, imagine if sites are obliged to let anything go.
***
These two cases, by the way, are separate from one the Court will hear in a few weeks concerning Biden Administration pressure on tech platforms to censor conservatives. That case, Murthy v. Missouri, implicates government censorship that strikes us as a First Amendment violation.
Conservatives are understandably concerned that left-leaning tech companies want to exclude their ideas. There is no easy solution to this problem. Exposure and condemnation of the censorship has helped. But it never turns out well for conservatives, or anyone else, when the supposed remedy is giving government more power to control speech. The Supreme Court can make that clear to Texas and Florida.
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A pleasnat surprise to see that this prof is from Columbia.
Is There Any Remedy When You’re Censored?
The Supreme Court has three opportunities this term to give teeth to the First Amendment.
By Philip Hamburger
Feb. 25, 2024 3:33 pm ETA
It’s said that for every right there’s a remedy. Three cases before the Supreme Court will test whether that’s true for the freedom of speech.
In National Rifle Association v. Vullo, a New York state official took aim at gun advocacy by threatening regulatory hassle for bankers and insurers that continued to do business with the NRA. Recognizing the threat, they dumped the organization. Now that the official, Maria Vullo, is being sued, she claims that under the qualified-immunity doctrine, she can’t be ordered to pay damages.
Qualified immunity broadly protects officials from liability, so most plaintiffs who are censored don’t bother seeking damages for past suppression. Instead they seek injunctions against future censorship. In Murthy v. Missouri, however, the Biden administration is trying to foreclose that remedy, too.
Although the government pressured social-media platforms to censor users, it now claims the plaintiffs shouldn’t get an injunction because they can’t show that they are likely to be censored again. They also want injunctive protection for their ability to read other authors, but again the government objects. More seriously, even if the court sustains the injunction in Murthy, it won’t be sufficient, as it doesn’t bar the full breadth of the current censorship. Injunctions will always be inadequate in the face of secret suppression. In this case, because the government kept its role secret, it has taken more than half a decade to get an injunction against the censorship.
Americans are thus in a strange predicament. Under Supreme Court doctrine, they can’t be confident of getting either damages for past censorship or a prompt and effective injunction against future censorship. And it gets worse. In NetChoice v. Paxton, in which the justices hear oral arguments on Monday, there’s a danger the court will strike down Texas’ free-speech statute. That law treats the dominant social-media platforms as common carriers and bars them from discriminating on the basis of viewpoint.
This sort of antidiscrimination law is the only effective remedy for the current regime of government censorship. It’s unlikely that federal law will adequately limit federal censorship, so state law is structurally essential to stop it. And only when common-carrier antidiscrimination rules are applied to the platforms will the federal government be fully precluded from imposing censorship through them.
A decision that state common-carrier laws can’t be used to stop federal censorship through the platforms would render such censorship all but irremediable. Damages are generally unavailable for past censorship, and injunctions are too slow and otherwise inadequate against future censorship—so a decision against an antidiscrimination rule would make it a trifecta against free speech.
This risk is especially startling because it’s only recently that Americans have needed a remedy against censorship. The government once couldn’t actually suppress speech; it could only punish the speaker, and for this it had to go to court. The government once had to go to court to charge a particular defendant with seditious libel or some other offense and prove its accusation. Now, the government can simply pressure or induce the dominant social-media platforms to suppress speech en masse. That approach doesn’t merely punish speakers; it snuffs out speech. And it places the onus of going to court on the censored individuals.
Whereas the censored once merely had to defend themselves when prosecuted, they now need to persuade a court to stop the censorship. The current federal censorship thus silences Americans and puts the burden of proof on those who wish to speak. And even when they meet that burden, as in the current cases, they usually can’t get damages or a timely and effective injunction.
Mr. Hamburger teaches at Columbia Law School and is CEO of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, which represents the individual plaintiffs in Murthy v. Missouri. He is author of “Courting Censorship.”
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Interesting essay examining the various incongruities emerging in the wake of Google’s AI debacle, with the pithiest noting the jaw-dropping idiocy required to allow an obviously flawed product that had undergone extensive beta testing with NO ONE noting its obvious issue as it appears everyone at Google is unaware of the woke water in which they swim.
https://instapundit.substack.com/p/googles-ai-debacle?r=1qo1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&fbclid=IwAR0W9dciaBuHwBebCRnPlb9fT-KPnr4Wj8VP6WfQ0-wEf8VwFTJMTN6Jo-4&open=false
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Tackling the TikTok Threat
A House bill to force the social-media site from Beijing’s control deserves support.
By
The Editorial Board
Follow
March 11, 2024 6:20 pm ET
The House on Wednesday is expected to vote on a bill that would give popular social-media app TikTok an ultimatum: Break up with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), or break up with the U.S. It didn’t need to come to this, but Beijing and TikTok’s Chinese-owner ByteDance left Washington with no choice.
Congress has spent years debating how to mitigate the national-security risks of TikTok’s Chinese ownership that have grown with the site’s popularity. About 150 million Americans use TikTok, and the app is a top source of news and search for Generation Z.
Donald Trump tried in 2020 to force ByteDance to divest TikTok, but his executive order was blocked in court, partly because the President lacked clear authority from Congress. Legislation by Wisconsin Republican Mike Gallagher and Illinois Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi aims to overcome the legal obstacles.
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Their bill would ban TikTok from app stores and web-hosting services in the U.S. if the company doesn’t divest from ByteDance. It also establishes a process by which the President can prohibit other social-media apps that are “controlled by a foreign adversary.” The bill is narrowly tailored while giving the President tools to combat future threats.
Banning TikTok should be a last resort, but ByteDance and Beijing have demonstrated that they can’t be trusted. Reams of evidence show how the Chinese government can use the platform for cyber-espionage and political influence campaigns in the U.S.
Numerous reports have found that posts about Uyghur forced labor in Xinjiang province, the Tiananmen Square massacre, Hong Kong protests, Tibet and other politically sensitive content in China are suppressed on TikTok. A December study by the Network Contagion Research Institute found significant disparities between hashtags on Instagram and TikTok. The site also appears to amplify content that sows discord and ignorance in America. Pro-Hamas videos trend more than pro-Israel ones. Videos promoting Osama bin Laden’s 2002 “letter to America” went viral on TikTok last autumn.
How has TikTok responded to allegations that its algorithms are controlled by the Chinese government? In January it restricted researcher access to its hashtag data to make it harder to study. “Some individuals and organizations have misused the Center’s search function to draw inaccurate conclusions, so we are changing some of the features to ensure it is used for its intended purpose,” a TikTok spokesperson said.
Yet TikTok can’t explain why posts that are divisive in America go viral, while those that are sensitive for the CCP get few views. TikTok tried to ameliorate concerns about CCP wizards behind the screen with its Project Texas, which houses American user data on Oracle servers and gives the U.S. software company access to its algorithms.
But TikTok’s algorithms are still controlled by ByteDance engineers in China. The Journal reported in January that TikTok executives have said internally that they sometimes need to share protected U.S. data with ByteDance to train the algorithms and keep problematic content off the site. Like protests for democracy in Hong Kong?
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TikTok’s other major security risk is cyber-espionage. The app vacuums up sensitive American user information, including searches, browsing histories and locations. This data can and does flow back to China. “Everything is seen in China,” a TikTok official said in a leaked internal recording reported by Buzzfeed.
ByteDance employees tried to uncover internal leakers by spying on American journalists. After this surveillance was reported, ByteDance blamed “misconduct of certain individuals” who were no longer employed. But there’s nothing to stop CCP puppets in ByteDance back-offices from spying on Americans.
Meta ignited a firestorm several years ago when it was found to have given British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica access to user personal data. Political campaigns used the data to target ads. TikTok’s privacy risks and malign political influence are more disturbing since it answers to Beijing.
Xi Jinping has eviscerated any distinction between the government and private companies. ByteDance employs hundreds of employees who previously worked at state-owned media outlets. A former head of engineering in ByteDance’s U.S. offices has alleged that the Communist Party “had a special office or unit” in the company “sometimes referred to as the ‘Committee.’”
Chinese law requires ByteDance to comply with Beijing’s surveillance demands. This is why there’s no way to mitigate TikTok’s security risks besides a forced divestment. U.S. investors have expressed interest in buying TikTok, though a Chinese government official last year said it would block a sale. If TikTok is banned, users can blame Beijing.
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Mr. Trump and some conservatives are opposing the House bill. The former President groused last week that banning TikTok would help Meta, which he called on Truth Social a “true Enemy of the People!” He’s apparently still angry that Meta banned him after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. But conservatives who dislike U.S. Big Tech censorship should fear Beijing speech control even more.
In any case, the House bill doesn’t restrict First Amendment rights. It regulates national security. It also has ample precedent since U.S. law restricts foreign ownership of broadcast stations. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States forced the Chinese owners of Grindr, the gay dating app, to give up control of the company.
China has blocked U.S. social-media companies that don’t comply with its censorship regime, and the House bill would prevent Beijing from applying its political speech controls and surveillance in the U.S. Despite America’s political divisions, this ought to be a shared goal.
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Jeepers, what possible utility could Deep State intelligence types have in the world of social media?
https://thekennedybeacon.substack.com/p/meta-google-as-extensions
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/savingandinvesting/former-treasury-secretary-steven-mnuchin-is-putting-together-an-investor-group-to-buy-tiktok/ar-BB1jSR5o?ocid=msedgntphdr&cvid=6e57871ca42d40f9d114cfec89919d12&ei=19
seems like the best solution
if TikTok would sell......
keep millions of TikTok fans happy.
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/savingandinvesting/former-treasury-secretary-steven-mnuchin-is-putting-together-an-investor-group-to-buy-tiktok/ar-BB1jSR5o?ocid=msedgntphdr&cvid=6e57871ca42d40f9d114cfec89919d12&ei=19
seems like the best solution
if TikTok would sell......
keep millions of TikTok fans happy.
A Trump official buying tiktok. Liberal excrement would hit the fan.
I love the idea. We had no ownership of anything and then twitter goes to Musk and TikTok to Mnuchin. Maybe that would bring Google and Facebook Instagram political influence down a notch. Then they can't all "cover the big stories of the day, with a pillow, until they stop breathing".
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Good point Doug.
Ever since Musk took over twitter he has been an endless daily target from morning till night by left MSM.
Don Lemon who wanted to partner with him tries to "Stephanopolous" him by asking about drug use.........
Now goes on CNN's (Erin Burnett and I presume the DNC girl Collins likely weighed in too)
to cry about cancellation of his contract . I am sure shysters will be gearing up to sue Musk for breach of contract and CNN carrying those headlines and having the shysters and their partisan legal analysts turning this topic into frequent topic to discuss.
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(2) TIKTOK BAN WILL EXPAND FEDERAL GRIP ON INTERNET: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he would only commit to reviewing the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which passed in a 353-65 vote in the House yesterday.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) said the TikTok ban “grants undue power to the administrative state” and would allow the White House to unilaterally designate which websites and applications are subject to divestiture.
Why It Matters: Broad language in the bill would likely allow the federal government to restrict access to foreign-owned apps, websites, and social media platforms the President unilaterally determines to be “controlled by a foreign adversary.” Due to the nature of internet traffic, this would broadly block Americans’ access to information from foreign sources and give greater control to federal agencies to shape Americans’ opinions by filtering available information online. – R.C.
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I agree 100 % with Mark Levin on this from his podcast the night before last.
This is NOT a Constitutional free speech issue.
It is a security issue.
For God's sake, China as at war with us.
Fucking Schumer and the other pols on the China payroll or payroll of donors who only care about their Chinese investments @ the expense of national security.
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start @ 1:26:40 for the part about Tik Tok
https://www.marklevinshow.com/audio-rewind/
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https://nypost.com/2024/03/14/us-news/trump-considering-billionaire-tiktok-investor-jeff-yass-for-treasury-secretary-report/
1) Trump desperate for cash
2) Trump backed banning TikTok
3) Trump changes his mind and does not back banning Tiktok with concern for helping FB
4) Jeff Yass billionaire Republican donor ( Jewish too - wow) holds large stake in TikTok
5) Trump meets with Jeff Yass just at a time Congress passes bill to ban his investment (or sell to US entity)
6) Reports Trump considering this guy Yass for Sec of Treas.
Awful coincidental.
Of course Trump could have simply calculated he didn't want to loss his increasing support among the young.
I agree no one here likes FB.
??? -> https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=rotten+egg+image&fr=mcafee&type=E210US1494G0&imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.fineartamerica.com%2Fimages-medium-large-5%2Frotten-egg-cordelia-molloyscience-photo-library.jpg#id=-1&iurl=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.fineartamerica.com%2Fimages-medium-large-5%2Frotten-egg-cordelia-molloyscience-photo-library.jpg&action=click
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America Enters the Samizdat Era
Thanking fellow honorees Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Miranda Devine, and explaining why an American Samizdat Prize is both great and scary
MATT TAIBBI
MAR 7, 2024
I began studying in Leningrad, in the waning days of the Soviet Union, beginning in the fall of 1989. I was 19 years old, more interested in girls than politics, and thought of life behind the Iron Curtain as more novelty than terror. There was little visible suffering or hardship. The once-mighty Soviet government was already a ghost ship and the closest thing to repression I saw was a farsovshik or black-market dealer shoved into a cop car near my school’s subway station.
Not until much later, after I’d heard years of stories from Russians who’d lived through harder times, did I start to understand the brutal system whose end I got to witness. Parents of friends talked about going on vacations and trying to guess who was the snitch on the “Intourist” bus (the ratio was one party snoop for every four or five travelers), or making sure to be out of earshot of the old lady sitting na lavochke (on the bench outside the apartment building) before sharing a dangerous opinion, or the stress of sharing a kommunalka, or communal apartment, with a politically orthodox family. The bloodiest period of Soviet totalitarianism ended in the fifties, but the habits remained long after, including the advanced system of alternative media that ultimately broke the state: samizdat.
Tonight, along with Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and New York Post reporter Miranda Devine, I’ll be accepting the inaugural Samizdat Prize, given by the RealClear Media Fund. Samizdat is a bit of a play on words, since like a lot of politically oppressive groups the Soviets had a mania for reducing beautiful language to state-acceptable ugly compound words (GosPlan, GULAG, etc.), so in place of GosIzdat (State-Publish, the official publisher) dissidents created Sam- or “Self” Izdat: “Self-Publish.”
Ten years ago PBS did a feature that quoted a Russian radio personality calling Samizdat the “precursor to the Internet.” Sadly this is no longer accurate. Even a decade ago Internet platforms were mechanical wonders brimming with anarchic energy whose ability to transport ideas to millions virally and across borders made episodes like the Arab Spring possible. Governments rightly trembled before the destabilizing potential of tools like Twitter, whose founders as recently as 2012 defiantly insisted they would remain “neutral” on content control, seeing themselves as the “free speech wing of the free speech party.”
As writers like former CIA analyst Martin Gurri began noticing long before the election of Donald Trump, the Internet gave ordinary people access to information in ways that before had never been allowed. The inevitable result was that populations all over the world began to see more clearly the warts of leaders and governments that had previously been covered up, thanks to tight control over the flow of information. It also made communication and organization of dissident movements much easier. We started to see this with Occupy and the Tea Party in the United States, and the aforementioned Arab Spring, but the election of Donald Trump was the Rubicon-crossing event for information overlords.
I had the privilege (misfortune?) of seeing how presidential campaign journalism worked before the Internet took over. Politicians needed the mainstream press to reach high office. Sitting among the traveling press on campaigns of people like John Kerry and Barack Obama, I heard how campaign reporters talked, how they thought of their jobs. They were fiercely protective of their gatekeeping role, which gave them enormous power. If reporters didn’t think a candidate was good enough for them — if he was too “kooky” like Ron Paul, too “elfin” like Dennis Kucinich, or too “lazy” as just a handful of influential reporters decided about Fred Thompson — the “Boys on the Bus” would snort and trade cutting remarks in riffing sessions before and after events. Campaigns would be elevated or die in these moments. I thought it was crazy, and said so in print, which made me a pariah, and I never thought it would end.
Then Trump came along and destroyed the whole system with one stroke, getting elected in spite of the blunt disapproval of media. His single Twitter account allowed him to bypass the press and speak to people directly. When that worked, and similar episodes like Brexit caused panic abroad, governments decided to take the anarchic potential of the Internet and turn it on its head. What was something like the “Self-publish” culture of the Soviet Union suddenly became, as we saw in the Twitter Files, an instrument of surveillance and social control.
Jay, Miranda, and I all share a connection to the same story. When Miranda published her blockbuster New York Post exposé of October 14, 2020, “Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad,” Internet platforms Twitter and Facebook experimented for the first time with disappearing a major political story in the middle of an election year. Not only did both platforms suppress the story, but as I later found in internal correspondence, Twitter used tools previously reserved for child pornography to prevent individuals from sharing the story in direct messages — the digital version of a Cheka agent intercepting that copy of a Solzhenitsyn or Voinovich story before one person could hand it to another.
Meanwhile, when Dr. Bhattacharya conducted an experiment on his own initiative proving that the WHO had massively overstated the infection mortality rate of Covid-19, and later organized against lockdown policies he and many others felt were both ineffective and dangerous, the result was digital suppression — not because he was incorrect, but because his message was politically undesirable. Along with Bari Weiss, one of the first things I saw when Elon Musk opened Twitter’s internal files was a page showing Jay had been placed on a “trends blacklist.” This was just before we discovered that the platforms were in regular contact about content with agents of the American versions of the KGB or NKVD in the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, State, and Defense, among others.
The Internet, in other words, was being transformed from a system for exchanging forbidden or dissenting ideas, like Samizdat, to a system for imposing top-down control over information and narrative, a GozIzdat. Worse, while the Soviets had to rely on primitive surveillance technologies, like the mandatory registration of typewriters, the Internet offered breathtaking new surveillance capability, allowing authorities to detect thoughtcrime by algorithm and instantaneously disenfranchise those on the wrong side of the information paradigm, stripping them of the ability to raise money or conduct business or communicate at all.
Like Jay and Miranda I’m sure, I’m honored to be chosen for the Samizdat prize, but also a little horrified that such an award is now necessary. People with dissenting ideas will now have to find alternative ways to distribute. As was the case in the Soviet Union, official news will be unpopular in America because the public will know in advance that it is full of untruths and false narratives — but that won’t translate into instant popularity for true reporting or great satire or comedy, because the reach of these things can be artificially suppressed.
We’re going to need to find new ways of getting the truth to each other, and it’s not clear yet how those networks will work, if they will at all. It may come down to handing each other mimeographed papers in subway tunnels, as they did in Soviet times. We haven’t built that informational underground yet, but no matter what, the first steps will necessarily involve raising awareness that there’s a problem at all. That’s why prizes like this are important, and the agitation and resistance of people like Jay and Miranda and so many others right now are so crucial. We don’t want our speech freedoms to go gentle into that good night; we want them to go kicking and screaming, or better yet, not go at all.
The good news? As the Soviets proved, lies don’t have staying power, but even passed hand to hand, truth and good art do. The more the Soviets tried to clamp down, the more power they gave to books and stories like Master and Margarita or A Circle of Friends. As depressing as things sometimes look now, those who would suppress speech have the real problem. Imagine the problem of stopping the truth in the digital age? There will always be people who’ll try, but history shows — they never succeed for long.
https://www.racket.news/p/america-enters-the-samizdat-era
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/tucker-carlson-attacks-dan-crenshaw-over-house-vote-texas-republican-fires-back-lying-for-attention-as-usual/ar-BB1jYjMb?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=99debbca8d2c4c0f80e25021183cd209&ei=17
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/epochtv/hollywood-takeover-5595342
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News: On March 4, YouTube took down the trailer of the new NTD Original Documentary “Hollywood Takeover: China’s Control in the Film Industry” and removed the Hollywood Takeover YouTube account. The account and trailer were only reinstated two days later after a news outlet asked Youtube why and reported about this news.
“Hollywood Takeover: China’s Control in the Film Industry” is an NTD Original Documentary that pulls back the curtain on how Hollywood is helping to further a global adversary’s agenda, the consequences of that on the future, and what brave individuals are doing to change the tide.
“Hollywood Takeover” follows Chris Fenton, a former Hollywood executive, and Tiffany Meier, an investigative news reporter, on their journey to uncover the must-tell story behind Hollywood and China’s lucrative union, which didn’t happen by accident.
The survival of the United States depends on people waking up to the Chinese Communist Party’s relentless literal and cognitive takeover of our country. At this crucial historical moment, the truth may be inconvenient to many, but we all have a choice to make: will we continue to feed the red dragon?
Official website: HollywoodTakeover.com
Please give and share this documentary: HollywoodTakeover.com/share
Join us for the star-studded red carpet premiere event of “Hollywood Takeover”:
https://www.theepochtimes.com/epochtv/red-carpet-premiere-hollywood-takeover-5603402
Also the panel after the red carpet premiere:
https://www.theepochtimes.com/epochtv/panel-on-hollywood-takeover-5606124
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Piece looks at social media platforms designed to “addict” users, particularly young ones, in the context of public health laws meant to address negative outcomes and its impact on free speech:
Journal of Free Speech Law: "Public Health Law's Digital Frontier: Addictive Design, Section 230, and the Freedom of Speech," by Prof. Matthew Lawrence
The Volokh Conspiracy / by Eugene Volokh / Mar 22, 2024 at 8:40 PM
The article is here; the Abstract:
A new generation of claims argues that addictive design by social media companies has caused a national mental health crisis, and so seeks to join nascent state legislative efforts in making addictive design by technology companies public health law's next frontier. But the threshold, global objections of leading social media platforms (including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Tik Tok, and YouTube) to pioneering addictive design tort lawsuits—In re Social Media Adolescent Addiction Litigation in federal court and the Social Media Cases in California—suggest that state authority to regulate addictive design (through litigation or otherwise) will depend on the resolution of a conflict between two regulatory paradigms: the public health regulatory paradigm and the internet regulatory paradigm. The public health paradigm prizes federalism, with states historically playing a lead role in safeguarding the public's health through law—including against unwitting exposure to addictive products. Under this paradigm states would be permitted to develop and implement legal responses to an emerging public health threat through their courts and legislatures, as they have done with alcohol, gambling, opioids, and tobacco. The internet paradigm, on the other hand, usually insists on a "hands off" approach to regulation online, with broad federal preemption under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and often-prohibitive constraints under the First Amendment.
In the pioneering cases, the platforms argue that the internet paradigm makes pending lawsuits asserting addictive design claims non-starters, regardless of their merits. On the section 230 and First Amendment legal theories they advance, states could not regulate content-related addictive design by providers of interactive computer services (including social media platforms and some online video game manufacturers), no matter the evidence and no matter how intentional, effective, or harmful to kids or adults. Not surprisingly, the plaintiffs offer alternative views that would permit broad state regulation of addictive design.
This Article argues that, even if courts are unpersuaded by the broadest arguments in favor of a public health approach to regulation of addictive design, they should nonetheless reject the platforms' efforts to make addictive design a public-health-law-free zone. The public health and internet paradigms can be reconciled as a policy matter because addictive design threatens both public health and innovation online. The public health and internet paradigms can also be reconciled as a legal matter because even strong theories of section 230 and the First Amendment, properly understood, leave states a safe harbor in which to regulate much addictive design. Addictive design claims allege platforms engage in what psychologists call "operant conditioning" by using content-neutral intermittent reinforcement and variable reward techniques associated with slot machines to foster compulsion in users. These techniques need not entail content moderation or "editorial expression"; indeed, such techniques are ordinarily hidden from users, who may never realize they have been conditioned by a provider. State regulation of such content-neutral platform activity is not insulated from state public health regulation even under broad theories of the reach of section 230 and the First Amendment. To make maximal use of this safe harbor, public health researchers studying the harms of addictive design, legislators devising tailored regulatory responses, and courts adjudicating novel addictive design claims should remain mindful of the value of separating content-based addictive design claims from conditioning-based claims made in advancing public health law's digital frontier.
The post Journal of Free Speech Law: "Public Health Law's Digital Frontier: Addictive Design, Section 230, and the Freedom of Speech," by Prof. Matthew Lawrence appeared first on Reason.com.
https://www.journaloffreespeechlaw.org/lawrence.pdf
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https://www.techdirt.com/2024/03/26/feds-now-adding-dragnet-searches-of-youtube-users-to-their-investigative-arsenal/
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https://www.frontpagemag.com/google-warns-freedom-center-to-censor-mentions-of-islamic-terror/
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https://wgme.com/news/nation-world/chrome-internet-web-browser-google-delete-purge-billions-files-containing-info-personal-data-settle-lawsuit-surfing-tech-illegal-surveillance#
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Check out this exchange between Marky and Tony. It doesn’t get more clear cut than this:
https://x.com/DrJBhattacharya/status/1775221797098852545?s=20
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Clear as day and will be unseen and unnoticed by most people.
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/business/elon-musk-says-x-will-defy-court-order-from-brazils-supreme-court-principles-matter-more-than-profit-5623418?utm_source=News&src_src=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2024-04-07-2&src_cmp=breaking-2024-04-07-2&utm_medium=email&est=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYvAqcwcVzc7PzLYPrHFRB710wA0AIj31kx5JTWZu9FddhEg4S8RP