The Goolag, Facebook, Youtube, Amazon, Twitter, Gov censorship via Tech Octopus

[G M]

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.

[Crafty_Dog]

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.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzokmbSXhhg&feature=share

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.city-journal.org/html/platform-or-publisher-15888.html

[Crafty_Dog]

https://humanevents.com/2019/05/29/twitter-bans-analyst-who-revealed-journalists-antifa-connections/

[G M]

https://summit.news/2020/06/11/facebook-says-page-celebrating-dead-cops-doesnt-violate-its-community-standards/

[G M]

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/how-check-if-your-iphone-secretly-coronavirus-tracker

Don't worry, they won't abuse this! Promise!

[G M]

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

[DougMacG]

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

[G M]

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...

[DougMacG]

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.

[G M]

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.

[Crafty_Dog]

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

[G M]

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/apple-can-now-unlock-your-car-and-listen-you-washing-your-hands

[G M]

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.

[G M]

https://news.gab.com/2020/06/26/social-credit-score-is-in-america-visa-blacklisted-my-business-and-my-family-for-building-gab/

[G M]

https://reclaimthenet.org/ugandas-huaweis-safe-cities-surveillance/

[Crafty_Dog]

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/

[G M]

[Crafty_Dog]

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

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/v7g7k9/facebook-just-labeled-the-boogaloos-a-dangerous-organization-and-banned-500-groups-and-pages

[G M]

https://www.boredpanda.com/tik-tok-reverse-engineered-data-information-collecting/

A Chinese app spying??

NO WAY!

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L3SY9PmAQw

[DougMacG]

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

[ccp]

"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   

[ccp]

https://www.westernjournal.com/google-reportedly-diminished-breitbart-search-results-99-7-daily-caller-gets-savaged/

[Crafty_Dog]

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.

[Crafty_Dog]

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.

[Crafty_Dog]

I'm beginning to like Cong. Gaetz more and more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=bX4ymRHZwZY&feature=emb_logo

[G M]

https://www.chron.com/opinion/article/Data-isn-t-just-being-collected-from-your-phone-15451658.php

[Crafty_Dog]

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.

[Crafty_Dog]

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.

[ccp]

"This isn’t price fixing; it’s “idea fixing.”

good point

[Crafty_Dog]

And getting that point properly made seems to me to be the heart of finding the solution.

[G M]

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/inside-one-big-brothers-location-harvesting-contractors-tracking-hundreds-millions

Got privacy?

[G M]

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.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16330/tiktok-china

[Crafty_Dog]

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

[G M]

https://www.cnet.com/news/two-children-sue-google-for-allegedly-collecting-students-biometric-data/

[ccp]

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/facebook-could-face-500-billion-171653204.html

[G M]

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/facial-recognition-face-masks/

[DougMacG]

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-tech-monsters

[Crafty_Dog]

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/

[Crafty_Dog]

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.

[G M]

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
FONT SIZE:

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.”

[G M]

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/google-geofence-warrant-keeps-locking-innocent-people-who-were-proximity-crime-scene

[Crafty_Dog]

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

[Crafty_Dog]

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.

[Crafty_Dog]

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

[G M]

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!