I remember the chortling over the banning of Alex Jones and the worry by a few sincere anti-war folks that anti-establishment left sites would get the boot too. This proved true, but needless to say the VOX readers of the world saw no reason to be bothered.
If Biden is elected, there will soon be a call for military action in Syria. And there will be an accompanying effort to screen out anti-war people as subversives working for Russia, be they right or left. And people like Matt Taibbi will be appalled, wondering if the left realizes what it has done with its promotion of state-encouraged tech-driven censorship. The left and right wings of the military industrial complex, though, will quietly open the champagne and celebrate how concessions won to sideline the far left and far right allow the state to control the most powerful communication tool in the world in the United States. And the same people who denounce China and/or Russia will laud the muzzling of dissent in America.
So is a true conservative...but I think we can agree that both organized parties have become about little other than power/control.
It's why I think the only solution is to devolve power back to the states. At that level, there's a chance of occasional sanity. In DC, I no longer think such a chance exists.
I'm more or less with you. My pulse quickens at the thought of those states at the poles of dysfunction (California, maybe Mississippi) being given near-total sovereignty, but a lot of places would thrive or at least be better off.
I don’t think you can stop crazy anymore. And if the people in various places want it, let them have it, as long as it doesn’t violate a limited reading of the Constitution (limited by the text of the doc that is).
I agree with your comment generally but I don't believe Biden will be any tougher on Syria than Obama was when the Iranians told him to back down. Biden has all but pledged to be Obama's third term from a foreign policy standpoint.
Why should any president "be tough on Syria?" The US has no right to pull off coups, attack sovereign countries, decided elected presidents can be replaced by the US, and tell the rest of the world to do as we say or else they will be sorry. The best foreign policy the US could have is to stay out of other countries' business. It's about time everyone on earth turned against this arrogant, idiotic country.
"The best foreign policy the US could have is to stay out of other countries' business." AMEN, brother. This is the most important issue for our country.
IT's kind of why Trump got elected... These stuffed suits who "lead" us, are nothing more than than ruddy grifters. All they know how to do is act pretty for the camera and take money from donors. That's all they know.
To wit: They've kept us in endless war since 9/11 and have no plans of stopping any time soon. They dance and dine while the whole ship goes down.
Nope. There hasn't been a justified war we've started or entered since WWII, and even in that case, there's more than meets the eye. For example, the US (Standard Oil) kept right on sending Germany oil because they didn't have their own, in order for the Germans to fight more successfully against Russia (our ally, but behind closed door, our future enemy, thus the cold war). And in that stupid cold war, the plan to bomb 66 cities/towns in Russia with 204 nuclear weapons was set aside at the last minute. Daniel Ellsberg was in the room at the time and has just written a book on this strange idea to genocide an entire country. There's no way to justify what this country stands for: ultimate total hegemony of all the world. Thank god, all empires eventually fall. But, heck, not to worry, climate destruction will take out humanity first.
A bunch of Russian Oligarchs are not as much of a threat to Europe and the world as the USSR was. Not even close. They've been neutered.
Sure, for the handful of justifiable military actions the US has been involved in since WWII there are SCADS more that were profit only, and at the behest of very rich industries, but the fact remains -The cold war was won, for what that's worth.
Trouble is, they committed all manner of heinous war crimes while it went on. Unforgivable.
Hey, Rome wasn't built in a day and it didn't collapse in a day, either. Give it time, friend. It'll be over soon enough.
"handful of justifiable military actions the US has been involved in..." Name one.
BTW, our kids can't survive if there's no ice left, no trees, no uncontaminated water and air. Chris Hedges says we seek and moved toward life or toward death. We seek and are headed for death. Someone else said, "No hope knows no fear." I don't believe that. I fear greatly for the children, all the children.
I'm getting out of this thread. Nice talking with you. Rob
Wasn't there just a slew of leaked documents about the gas attack in Syria detailing how military contractor's & US intelligence used an army of "journalists" to feed fake stories to everyone from the BBC to Al Jazeera about a gas attack that never really happened?
Syria is obstructing a gas pipeline. That's why the US wants Assad out. No other reason.
Who, in their right mind, thinks the prime function of the military industrial complex is to protect America?
Or even the secondary function?
If Democrats really think Trump is a threat why did they gleefully sign off on his military budget increases?
Increase his spying powers?
Only makes sense if this is all just political theater meant to flummox the rubes.
You are so right. There were three attacks, none by Bashar al Assad. The first was proven by the UN investigative team; I heard Carla del Ponte, the lead, say it was the rebels (paid by the US)...never heard from her again, of course. The second was proven to be NOT Assad by none other than Sy Hersh..who couldn't get his report printed by the NYT, WaPo, The New Yorker or the UK Guardian. Finally, it was printed by Deir Walt (sp?) in Germany where I read it. The third I witnessed myself when the White Helmet types began coldwater hosing little kids who naturally started crying; the hosers were screaming, "chemicals," though the doctors inside the hospital where the kids were dragged said clearly there were no chemicals. It's a sad day when Democracy Now! and the New Yorker, famous for fact checking, falls for propaganda, just as they did for Russiagate. Thanks for writing. RR
I looked for evidence of leaked documents you describe and did not find any. Please provide a link to that story, specifically how "US intelligence used an army of "journalists" to feed fake stories."
I wasn't the commentator who said something about pipes. Here's the source you wanted regarding my comment. "Leaked Docs Expose Massive Syria Propaganda Operation by Western Govt Contractors & Media" October 12, 2020 The GrayzoneProject Ben Norton
You can trust Ben Norton, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, et.al., you don't find on MSM. [Syria was set up by the usual false flags, as was Russiagate.]
You may also want to see this one: "Russiagate on Both Sides of the Duopoly: Former Intel Officials Try To Downplay Ratcliffe’s Russiagate Releases," by Dave DeCamp, a new reporter to me but the article is valid.
While it's certain that the Pentagon wants to maintain a permanent presence in the Middle East, and continuously plays one side against the other to maintain access to key installations, the President has openly rebuked that decades-long standing policy, if only rhetorically and not in practice. There are reasons why the leadership at the Pentagon despise Trump.
"...a recent Washington Post warning that we are being targeted by a foreign campaign of “perception hacking,” or “manipulating people into thinking they are being manipulated,” represent just a few examples of Approved™ nonsense."
I'm related through marriage to a very smart, analytical person who nevertheless believes every bit of nonsense that is produced by these major journalistic institutions. When I fact-checked him on the convention week fiction that Melania cut down Jackie Kennedy's cherry trees, a story he regurgitated uncritically, I was told I was being petty. He has told me that reality is the exact opposite of what I think. I know I'm in good company.
How can we have a conversation when most people would rather believe lies that support their chosen narrative, and instead of objectively settling the score, the Fourth Estate is often the source of untruth, and anyone who dares to question it gets accused of gaslighting?
That sounds pretty toxic, and very depressing. The last four years of constant orange man bad attacks have destroyed mutual trust. I don’t even like Donald Trump, but I find myself defending him most of the time simply because the attacks are so outrageous.
The attack on Melania was insane. I listened to the tape and thought “what’s the scandal”?
It wasn’t until I saw the very selective editing of quotes that are understood the “newsworthiness” of the tape. The disingenuousness of the media is vomit inducing.
I love how we’re constantly told that we’re living under an existential threat, but the same people are suddenly defending the sanctity of freaking Christmas decorations at the White House
It is indeed increasingly hard to have a conversation. I'm right of center but not far right (save maybe on federalism). The people I know to the far right say crazy stuff and claim it as fact and so do the people on the far left.
In my opinion, it is driven by the premise that we have increasingly ceded control of almost every aspect of our lives to the government. Thus, both sides believe the stakes are so high that being in control is more important than anything else. We have arrived at the place where the end is perceived to be so important that it justifies any means.
If Trump is reelected, the world is not going to end. Taxes will be a little lower, regulation a little looser, and no major new trillion dollar programs will pass (except for maybe an infrastructure bill). If Biden is elected, the world is not going to end. Taxes will be a little higher, regulations tighter and the deficit wider despite the higher taxes. I genuinely hope court packing doesn't happen under Biden. It is honestly my only fear, not for its proximate outcome on the Court but for the end of SCOTUS as a body that is seen as anything other than a political power play.
Regardless of the outcome, most of our lives will not be massively affected. Some will in both cases for both the positive and the negative. It is failure to accept this fundamental "truth" (as I see it) that is driving the insanity and the inability to engage in constructive dialog.
Social media makes it worse by feeding us a steady diet of the echo chamber and by becoming another element of the political power game.
But the issue isn't social media or the media at all. The issue is that we've convinced ourselves that every thing that happens, particularly in DC is of existential importance.
Well I'm a mostly(?) straight dude who, in general, likes Trump's policies but not his personality, but who at the same time is very very afraid of what Biden represents. So I think we are on the same page, kinda.
I'm a straight, married, Libertarian dude with three kids and dislike Trump personally but like what I see out of the Administration. What's more, I look at what I see from the Left and can't imagine voting for it. Just under four years ago Trump was elected and the Left and their media handlers claimed he would start WW3, was Hitler, was a despot, a dictator in waiting, would cause world economic ruin, would strip gays of their rights, abortions would be back to being done in dark alleys, our allies would hate us and that he would be personally enriching himself and his family. And that was just the first hour of CNN on day 1.
Yes, I'd like to chop his finger off so he'd stop Tweeting. Yes, I wish he'd knock-off the "nobody has ever seen this before" and "perhaps greatest ever" nonsense. And yes, he should stop picking stupid fights with nobodies. But, he has been under attack since day 1 by an organized cabal of people intent on overturning an election. And what's more, he's had 24x7 negative coverage by 90% of the media.
Despite having some Left leans in terms of social policy, Trump could roast puppies and eat them on stage and there's still no way I could vote for what I've seen out of the Democrat Party for the past four years and, in particular, the last 7 months. I am not going to vote to condone riots, looting, racism and the breakdown of law and order.
If it's a man who want's a job he will go with Trump. What you do in your bedroom is your own business. If you want to vote on who you THINK likes you more, you can do that too.
To me, it’s all one giant center right corporatist cabal is the biggest conspiracy theory of all...pushed frequently on the far left and by you by inference just now.
I question if you know what the term conspiracy theory means. Critical Race Theory is a sociological theory. As with all scientific theories, it is argued for and championed by it's supporters, and has competing theories that are studied and championed by other researchers. That's science, not conspiracy.
Nothing in your rant of a response gives one any level of confidence that you understand what the term conspiracy theory means. Sociology is a scientific discipline which means its publishings are subject to peer review, unlike news media or 4chan. If one has a hypotheses and finds data to support their assertions, that data is scrutinized by fellow scientists. If any of the data is found to be suspect (or cherry-picked), that scientist will be black-listed and in the findings will be redacted. If you have any evidence that a scientific journal has published tarnished data, I encourage you to contact the editors of that journal. I can assure you that the journal will take any credible claims, that can be backed up with evidence, seriously.
For someone who abhors postmodernism, his writing style is exactly that. You know what post-postmoderists hate more than anything? People who try to show how much smarter they are than everybody else by over-writing. Geesh.
Regardless, I think you're on to a helpful idea, but the major impediment to that future is the reality that most people are too stupid and/or too lazy to think for themselves in a political context. And of the rest, the influencers usually have a horse in the race. You can't teach people how to think if they don't want to learn or are incapable of putting in the work to find objective truth in an ever murkier and volatile information cloud, and of course half the point is that it's too difficult for us to figure it out on our own, so let's pick a side and trust them unquestioningly.
Taibbi's comments section is one of the few mediums I've encountered where people - many of us - speak honestly. I believe that's a function of Matt's integrity coming through his work.
Well, first, I still have all my friends. Thanks for your kind consideration of my social circle because of my pithy, off-hand remark about having friends that have fallen for Russiagate. They're still my friends. If I ditched every friend that thought differently than I did, I'd have no friends.
But to the more important point I was trying to make, you're wrong to think Qanon is a phenomenon with more real-world impact than Russiagate. Russiagate was just used as a soft coup in the USA. Just this week, "Russian disinformation" was employed by the US to silence whistleblowers in the OPCW Syrian chemical attack testimony at the UN. (Just ask Aaron Mate). Russiagate is essential in the PR campaign against Julian Assange to justify his extradition to the US. The same entities that advanced Russiagate (Intelligence services, media) are coordinating with Facebook to ban Qanon. I could go on and on and on regarding the global impact of Russiagate. It's adorable that you think Russiagate is nothing more than "laughable PR." Qanon is ridiculous and yes, a handful of legislators have gone down that rabbit hole. Nearly EVERY Democratic legislator operates under the assumption that Russia is why we have Trump.
Good for you for keeping those weirdo Qanon friends of yours though!
" Russiagate was just used as a soft coup in the USA."
I do not think that you're clear on the meaning of the word "coup."
"Soft coup" is an oxymoron in the first place. But the Democratic Party hasn't even managed to increase its influence in the Capitol or on the Presidency, much less shifting into a position of dominance and control over the levers of State power. Their attempt at impeachment was successfully countered (which was entirely predictable.) It's questionable whether the Democrats will even reap a net benefit from their Russiagate efforts at the ballot box, when all the votes are finally counted.
Come on. Trump gave the GOP everything they care about from a President: a massive income tax cut that mostly went to the wealthy; a huge business tax cut; nearly $1 trillion increase in military spending, much of it in weapons procurement; all of the tax cuts and spending put on the credit card, inflating the debt and deficit and thereby proving that "government doesn't work" and "there's no money left" when the economy eventually goes south again and control returns to the Democrats; a Supreme Court judge whose vote can be counted on to overturn Roe v. Wade, the ACCA, and favor the other items on the GOP wish list; 50 appellate judges that are all reliably biased toward the Republican wish list; and a repeal of various environmental standards that impede the hoarding of profits- and the political influence it buys- by the GOP-dominated fossil fuels industry (annual revenues larger than the Federal government.) Thankfully, most of the gutted regulations have not been in place long enough to do much damage to the future of the natural world. But with another term of Trump, the absence of EPA headwaters protections and gutted power plant emission rules will empower the $hort-term gain>>long term pain, privatize the profits>>socialize the costs game plan of today's GOP in classic style.
This explains the lockstep fealty of the Republicans in Congress (and most of their financial backers) toward Donald Trump. They'll put with anything, to get results like those.
Meanwhile- what Trump initiative were the Democrats able to stop? What part of their own agenda were they able to get past the Republican Senate, and Trump's veto pen? Trump walked away from negotiating the second stimulus bill, leaving a lot of formerly full-time working Americans are the end of their rope. It's to be taken for granted that he's framing this as an act of heroism against the extortionate Democrats. Although that narrative has recently taken a back seat to Trump's by now predictable confusion-hypnosis topic swerve into imperious demands for Justice Department indictments of Obama, Biden, the Clintons, every usual suspect in the Democratic Congress, various FBI heads, et. al. Like the White Queen, in Alice in Wonderland- "Off With Their Heads!" Although I've always found Trump's affect to be more along the lines of the Reverend Jim Jones. An impression that his most recent TV performances have only served to confirm.
In that regard, it should be enlightening to find out how Teh Donzo splits the difference when he's inevitably asked about his reaction to the recent roundup of armed would-be insurrectionists in Michigan who are currently charged by Federal and State law enforcement agencies with various minor infractions, like planning to kidnap the Governor there. Donald Trump has always exhibited a marked preference for finding a way to get two entirely opposite statements on the record, when the duties of high office demand that he offer his views on events of that sort.
The increase in military spending from fiscal 2016 to fiscal 2020 is approximate $130 billion, not $1 trillion. It's closer to $200 trillion if you include VA, foreign aid, etc. But still nowhere near a trillion.
https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/rev/google_vis.php?title=Recent Defense Spending&units=b&size=800_600&legend=Military defense-total_Veterans-total_Foreign military aid-total_Foreign economic aid-total&year=2000_2020&sname=US&bar=1&stack=1&col=g&source=a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_g&spending0=294.36_304.73_348.46_404.73_455.81_495.29_521.82_551.26_616.07_661.01_693.49_705.55_677.85_633.45_603.46_589.66_593.37_598.72_631.13_686.00_718.85&spending1=47.40_45.36_51.34_57.85_61.23_71.30_70.82_73.86_85.79_96.48_109.27_128.20_125.57_140.13_150.75_160.83_175.94_177.37_180.21_201.24_209.22&spending2=6.39_6.56_7.91_8.62_8.37_7.90_7.81_7.98_9.48_6.25_11.36_12.04_11.46_9.95_11.38_12.91_11.31_12.24_11.42_11.23_17.12&spending3=10.83_9.93_14.41_12.58_18.50_26.67_21.69_20.50_19.38_31.28_33.83_33.64_25.34_36.51_35.50_39.13_34.00_34.07_37.58_41.51_50.34
The federal government's revenues are far larger than US fossil fuel companies. Comparing a global company list to the revenue of the US government is a false comparison, which I suspect you know well.
Thanks for your reply. Allow me briefly respond: how did Russiagate sabotage the Trump presidency? First, the outrageous takedown of Mike Flynn deprived Trump of a National Security Advisor who, it is said, knew where the bodies were buried. (so to speak) in the intel community and posed a threat to exposing them. Second, Russiagate prevented what might have been a valuable truce in the New Cold War with Russia. Funny how making peace with our adversaries something liberals are now opposed to. Third, the Russiagate Hoax forced Trump to expend enormous amounts of time, energy, and political capital fighting it. No one can say what would have been done, but it seems reasonable to assume the Hoax did function as a roadblock. There's more, but I'm limited time-wise.
Bottom line: the Russiagate torpedo severely damaged the SS Trump, leaving it listing but still afloat. I think that qualifies as "sabotage."
The "Gates" are just part of the continuous SMEAR campaign that has been very successful. Now they want to suggest that the President is unable to lead due to mental disorder and just before the election. It doesn't have to be true. It's the kind of colossal gossip their constituency enjoys and it does the trick. That's what the first part of Matts essay was about, how Biden was protected and everyone they don't like is left twisting in the wind.
Every single paper was part of the un named "official" said. That's how Russiagate was perpetuated. Hillary paid the spy, Steel, for dirt on Trump. That went no where. The papers harped and harped on the Trump tower meeting and believed every word of the "Dossier" right down to the, still repeated, "Golden Shower".
Flynn should be exonerated for having been crushed in the JudicialGate, carte blanch bias.
It was the DNC backed by Hillary who couldn't bear to lose to Trump so had to invent interference by Putin (the most stable president in the world). The DNC are so stupid, they TWICE booted Sanders, the only person who could have beaten Trump and who could beat him now. The DNC would rather have Trump than Sanders. Why? Because Sanders actually cares about the citizens of this country. My God, can't have anyone like that. Biden is not a good choice.
The Democrats didn't boot Bernie out of stupidity. When a group of powerful, well connected people make a choice that seems obviously wrong and stupid to you, go back and reexamine your assumptions. Collectively they probably know more than you do, and then some. Maybe they care about things that you don't care about. Maybe they don't care about things that you do care about. Maybe they lie about the things they care about. Also, Bernie went willingly. He was never in it to win it. His job like all fake opposition was to pace and lead stragglers back to the herd.
"The Democrats didn't boot Bernie out of stupidity." No, they booted him out of greed; i.e., keeping the status quo for: big pharma and for-profit medical care (can't let the people have universal healthcare), the MIC, the bankers, the weapon manufactures (forever wars), Israel (can't let those pesky Palestinians have any civil rights), and generally power, money and control. Bernie didn't go "willingly." Obama dragged him into the White House and talked at him for three hours, finally, just wearing him down. (Bernie shouldn't have caved.) He was "in it to win it." I should "reexamine...assumptions?" I don't make assumptions. I ferret out facts, a steady job these days. Try reading more Matt Taibbi, Max Blumenthal (the Grayzone Project), Aaron Mate (Push Back), Mondoweiss, the electronic intifada, CounterPunch, Seymour Hersh, Stephen F. Cohen, Consortium News, Craig Murray, John Pilger...you know, real reporters, not stenographers such as, say, Rachel Maddow. Whatever you do, skip the MSM.
Can we please stop using the absurd term 'the left"? There is no and has never been a true left in America. What we have is moderate-right and batshit-crazy right, both corrupt.
I can't use moderate right to describe someone who is NOT right. How about:
Anti individualism?
Anti American Tradition
For Big Government
Anti Business.
Welfare state.
What's a good word for all that? I'll use it.
The world does not see the US Right opposing the US right. The Democrats are not the least bit right in any of their ideals. Only their representatives are right in their personal lives like Nance investing in Crowdstrike. Just look at the personal worth of members of Congress. That doesn't in any way represent their constituency. Nancy should be on welfare if she truly represents those who vote for her.
The ideals of the "Left" have not changed because people THINK that's what they are voting for. Everyone on the right knows exactly who they're voting for and why.
Left is supposed to be for Unions yet 5 states went right to work under Obama and he replaced US workers with foreign born lowering middle and lower income wages. Why are they for more visas an migrants? What is the political and economic reason. Most of all, how does it help laborers?
"Medicare for all"? That's a program paid in ADVANCE by workers. How do you allow people (who are not working and may never have paid into it) to take part in that program? Will Social Security (retirement) still be viable?
That's a bait and switch. Is that what progressive means - getting rid of the old stuff. Nancy wouldn't donate her retirement to subsidize 20,000,000 new citizens living in the shadows. but that's what she expects others to do.
And isn't that what communism is, making everyone equal? The "Anti American Traditionalists" think Trumpers are communists. What are they teaching in school? Individualism is just the opposite.
Masking their faces is perfect as they have finally reached Hurd Anonymity, and they are ready for the NEW NORM. Until Biden get's in, then all MSM COVID news will meticulously stop being reported because he healed everyone and all their money and headlines will be put into more investigations (Instead of infrastructure) and jailing Trump.
So what's the word?
The Hurd Party
The Commoners Party
The Justice Party
Perhaps they need to decide who they are. After all they voted for the people who chose Hillary over Bernie (who I campaigned for).
Long time reader, first time poster. I don't claim to be an expert on many things, especially public policy, but I've followed the relationship between free speech and technology for many years.
I'm wondering if this piece was provoked by some of the recent proposals to repeal (or at least heavily modify) section 230. Even if not, I'd like to say something on the topic, because it's closely related and people may be thinking about it. For those not familiar, section 230 of the Communications Decency Act says (more or less) that you can't sue a website for content posted by the user. Instead, you have to sue the user who posted it.
Right now, if post a comment here that says something like "Governor Bill Bribetaker takes bribes", Bill Bribetaker can't sue Matt for defamation. Matt might politely comply with a request to take my post down, but Bill Bribetaker can't sue Matt, Bill Bribetaker has to sue ME. If Bill Bribetaker tries to sue Matt, Matt can point to section 230 and ask Bill Bribetaker politely but firmly to leave. That's what section 230 does. It does that whether Matt chooses to moderate his comments section or not, even if that moderation is completely arbitrary and capricious.
Why does this matter for what we might colloquially call Big Tech? That's Facebook, Google, Twitter, Reddit, etc. Well, it means they have the legal power to be arbitrary and capricious in moderating their comments. Legally speaking, they could take down all pro-Trump posts while leaving anti-Trump posts up, or vice versa. There is entirely reasonable concern over this when a small handful of sites have so much power over national political discourse.
Both Trump and Biden have publicly stated their desire to repeal section 230. We may be screwed either way on this one. It's easy for politicians to score points by promising to Do Something™ about the unchecked power of Big Tech. It's understandable to want to go along with that. Fight the temptation. Don't allow politicians to smear their grubby little hands all over 230. What will happen is that the internet will turn into cable TV, where you can only access information that's been approved and published the media-priests. (For what it's worth, I don't count Matt in that category, and that's a compliment.)
Now as Matt has correctly identified, that kind of censorship is already unofficially in progress with Big Tech run sites. But at least other sites still EXIST. If for some reason you want to discuss the possibility that humble patriot and water filter salesman Alex Jones is right about the Illuminati lizard people, there are places you can go to do that. That may not hold. If the so-called solution to the current information monopoly turns out to be a 230 repeal, Big Tech will be all that's left. Smaller websites with user submitted content will vanish overnight, because they won't be able to afford the legal liability. And when I say user submitted content, I mean ANYTHING. Photos, comment sections, discussion boards, all of it. Gone. Big Tech will be damaged in the short term, but will survive through deep pockets and legal black magic, and all their competition will be de facto eliminated by law. Forever.
What do we do instead? I'm not sure. I don't think that (for example) conventional anti-trust laws will help here. Social networking sites may be a form of natural monopoly. Why does everyone use Facebook? Because everyone uses Facebook. If you want to communicate, you have to go where people are already communicating. Kill Facebook, and something else will consolidate in its place.
I don't have an answer, but it seems to me that the way to approach the problem is to recognize that for better or worse, major social networking sites are the new public square, or at least a major segment of it. The President (whether you like him or not) uses Twitter to communicate with citizens. Court have declared he can't block his critics on Twitter. Twitter is recognized by law (incompletely, but still) as being an official political channel.
So how do we want to treat the public square? Well... I think it means allowing crazies with sandwich boards shouting that the end is near. There's some legal precedent for this. Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins declared that a mall had to allow political speech on private property. Maybe we should start thinking of Twitter like that?
The other thing I would propose is to remove the biggest obstacle to competition. Believe it or not, the thing we need to do is not allow VISA and Mastercard to refuse to do business with an individual or coporate entity unless they have committed a crime. If ithat sounds out of left field, let me explain. There have been repeated attempts to set up alternative social networking sites focused on free speech. Some have had some modest success, others not to much. But the single biggest obstacle is that if someone complains to your payment processor and gets you removed from it, you're done. If you get blacklisted by VISA or Mastercard (and they share info), you cease to exist. Period. End of. And that's what happens to sites focused on controversial speech. This leads to further consolidation into Big Tech sites. Start your own payment processor, you say? You CAN'T "start your own" payment processor. It's not anything resembling a free market. The banking regulation costs MILLIONS to comply with. It CANNOT be done. The barriers to entry are unfathomable.
On the off chance anybody is still with me... here's my point. I share in Matt's frustration, but I disagree with the assessment that this is the worst of all possible worlds. As bad as things are now, people have no earthly idea how much worse they can get if we don't handle this with EXTREME care. The most popular solution to this being floated right now is to repeal section 230, and it's as wrong as anything could possibly be. If 230 gets repealed, 80% of the internet will vanish overnight, and the sites everyone was worried about will have permanent lock in protected by the full force of the law.
Posting made up statistics stating with certainty about what will happen in the future is not a particularly compelling position. The sites already have “permanent” lock in. What comes after permanent? I stuck with you through the entire missive, and by the time you got to the end, it’s running on fumes. Anyone with a desire to make the world a better place will delete their FB account, not worry about what might happen to it.
I wouldn't be so sure that the current monopoly is permanent. I've seen a lot of sites come and go that were considered unassailable in their own day. People believed nothing could ever replace MySpace, then Facebook came along. I could go down a list of Yahoo, Geocities, etc.
But that becomes impossible if nobody can start a website because they're afraid of getting sued over a single user comment.
Many of those sites you speak of didn't have massive government backing like the big tech companies of today do. They weren't used as a tool by law enforcement, and Alphabet agencies like they are today. Those sites were in the early days of the Internet when your connection was measured in Kbps and you had awesome clanky sounds while you waited for your system to connect.
Today's systems are live and constantly on line and becoming ever more so as now your TV and even your toaster is wired into the world and feeding information about you and yours. Yes, today cannot be compared to yesterday.
You’re making the mistake of imagining what happened in the past is how it works in the future. Fukuyama imagined that history ended in the same manner. The original post by Taibbi and nearly all of the comments in here are an encyclopedia of non sequitur-ial imagining.
Well, let me ask you then. And I'm not asking rhetorically.
Suppose that anyone is allowed to sue a website for content posted by users. What do you think will happen? How would that change the internet?
And in your defense, yes, the 80% statistic is made up. The "vanish overnight" part isn't. I know at least one website on the extreme free speech side whose owner says that the day section 230 is repealed, he will shut down the website and vanish from the face of the earth due to the legal liability.
What do I think will happen? How would it change the internet? The answer to both questions is I honestly don’t care if social media platforms get sued out of existence. I live in China much of the year and go from ultimate tech censorship to ultimate open ended anything goes-ness. If it all went away something awful would happen, like folks would might become interested and involved in projects of their own creation, maybe plant a garden or talk to their neighbor, or meditate or race bicycles, or ANYTHING other than giving a shit about what happens on FB. And, thank you for your civil discourse. It’s refreshing. We both love Taibbi, or we wouldn’t be in here.
You didn't answer the whole question. Your point about social media is well taken, but would it bother you if substack had to shut down? Would that be a bad thing?
Lots of websites would shut down because they have to face the same legal framework that other companies face. Should we cry for them? I think not.
Facebook would not be one such company. They would be like google and every other large company. They would fight in court and pay when the lost and settle when they thought they needed to.
I would also like to include the NYT in the Vacuity Hall of Fame. They’re as complicit in the idiocy of Q-ness as FB, by continually pushing it into the faces of the blank minded looking for a distraction fix as if it’s some world sweeping movement. It’s not. And now Taibbi is writing about it, which is a disappointment. That Q is being “censored” on FB does not portend anything in particular, and making the jump from Q being banned to us being on the doorstep of totalitarian thought crushing restrictions is simply a bridge too far for me to cross.
I was actually thinking about including some of Techdirt's "Content moderation is impossible at scale" content in the original post, but I figured it was already too long.
I don't endorse everything Techdirt says, but they're absolutely right about that one.
The protocols thing is... a mixed bag. We already have test cases in the form of things like e-mail and IRC. They work... -ish. (Actually, e-mail is terrible, but nevermind.)
But even those can fragment. I can't seem to find the story at the moment, but there was something a couple years back where a Mastodon (I think?) group refused to federate with another group due to perceived extremist views.
Whether that's a bug or a feature depends on the individual.
Yeah, he is. If I have a point, it’s that it doesn’t matter. FB is testament to humans insatiable appetite for distraction. Censored, uncensored....doesn’t matter. In a world absent coherency, that anyone cares is the worrisome element.
I certainly could be. Then again, I live much of the year in China and understand content moderation on levels the average Westerner does not, what it does and does not do. That Q is being “censored” has all the world changing impact of a small potato popping in the microwave. That anyone would give much thought to it reinforces all my worst misanthropic tendencies. Of course Mr. Bob’s concerns are valid. Everyone’s concerns are valid. My own concerns are that people care about FB in all the wrong ways. Everyone is entirely free to do whatever they want, but it’s not incumbent on any platform to provide the megaphone for lunatic fringe conspiracy theories grounded in fantasyland.
"... but it’s not incumbent on any platform to provide the megaphone for lunatic fringe conspiracy theories grounded in fantasyland."
Here's the thing. I understand why that's a common position, but I still disagree with it. When any entity is SO MUCH a part of public discourse that politicians using it can't legally block anyone, that's a part of the public square. And part of being the public square means allowing crazy people to use it sometimes. That's just the cost of doing business. We may not like it that Facebook or Twitter have become a significant political platforms. I don't. I hardly ever use either, especially for anything related to politics. But a huge number of people do. That's where we are, and we're going to have to figure out how to deal with it.
As far as China, I plead ignorance. I have a decent handle on the technical aspects of Chinese censorship, but the social and legal ones, not so much. I wouldn't know where to begin making a comparison.
....because what “happens” is a distraction. My thesis is that nothing is happening, and that’s the problem. That FB and Twitter are now the platform for world governance discourse is enervating, as it’s neither politics or discourse. It’s a distraction. I have a very good handle on censorship in the PRC. On the front end, it is a maddening and restrictive environment on more levels than I care to describe. Once one gets past this sort of surface issue, something else happens, and it’s surprisingly elegant and exposes a lot of what is best about humans. That does not make me a proponent of totalitarian governments, but it does make me understand that limitations can sometimes lead to good things. This is anathema to a too broad swath of Americans, and it is our loss. I never imagined I would write something like the preceding, but a little experience in other environments can change one’s perspective. That folks put so much emphasis on the vacuity of FB and Twitter is the problem, not all the other stuff that seems to be at the crux of this thread.
So... you're saying that government surveillance and censorship on a massive scale leading to people being jailed or simply disappearing for what they say online is a *good* thing? You'll have to explain that one to me.
I hear you - I agree that "illegal speech" should be moderated. However, "controversial speech" that may be harmful but not illegal gets tricky, and who is responsible for removing it is trickier still. I think the meta-concern here is exactly who draws the line on what constitutes "controversial speech"? Is it someone like me, an industry insider who builds the AI that does this? Is it the federal government? How do we ensure that "controversial speech" today isn't filtering the Galileo of tomorrow? I think FAANG companies are in a tough position. Would de-ranking conspiracies be sufficient in results or recommendations? Big tech already does that. What about users who deliberately search for this stuff given their confirmation biases? Should Big tech block that content too, even though they derank it? Ugh it's tough.
If I have a point, which I admit to not really having, it’s that this stuff ceases to matter if one simply walks away and doesn’t engage in it. Delete your FB account. See what happens. Trust in our civil institutions a little bit; this requires dismissing conspiratorial thinking about trusting institutions. If you can’t, OK, go back to reading stuff on FB. Our civil institutions have both created and solved problems; we need to determine how to get more of the latter and less of the former. I propose this will not be done on FB or Twitter.
Trust voting, question protest. Republicans organized and lean in heavily on voting and they now control most State legislatures, the Senate, Executive, and Supreme Court. Democrats and progressives protest; they temporarily control a couple blocks of territory in Seattle and Portland, to little apparent effect other than pissing off everyone else in their cities. Protest is fine to get one’s frustrations vented and to show support. Voting gets control. Which do folks think they wanna support?
I see it largely as being part of the “unreal”, and a function of our severely deficient media industry. Reread (or read) McLuhan and Postman; they saw what was coming and described it perfectly 60 and 35 years ago respectively. Lapore addresses it in her recent “These Truths”. We are dealing with the same issues now as then, with vastly more complicated tech accelerating disintegration.
I'd suggest reading some John Taylor Gatto too. Mainstream media is trash, and the people who uncritically consume it are a deliberate product of our fine education system.
The VISA/credit problem is key. Many banks and financial institutions are taking steps to ban any use of their products-in a consumer or corporate financing sphere-by firearms companies, or firearm related purchases.
There's a mountain of evidence suggesting that if social media were to disappear, the world would be vastly better off. So there's no doom or gloom in social media's demise. In fact, just the opposite. These outfits are using artificial intelligence to actually warp our minds and agitate people to a high degree because negative content draws the most eyeballs and best serves advertisers. In brief, making people rabidly nuts is profitable. And more than that, there can never, ever be a more profitable model for these platforms and they will continue until forever to do what they're doing now and accelerate the process if possible.
Sites like Facebook already invest massive amounts of money in moderation, both automated and not. Anything smaller can't AFFORD to spend that proportion of resources on moderation.
That's the point. Smaller sites will either fold or ban user content completely. What other choice will they have? Big Tech will be the last ones standing because they can throw money at the problem.
Sites like Facebook do not invest massive amounts in moderation, relative to the content published on their platforms. In fact, they invest almost nothing.
Content moderation, absent AI, is a variable cost.
Modify 230 so that monopolists that have the power to control the agenda don't enjoy it.
And you ignored a underlying incentive that's guaranteed to screw any social media project: by being funded by advertising they are necessarily in the mind control business.
Your points deserve wider public exposure and more discussion. If what you say is true, we may be on the verge of a Gatekeeper Era that makes the old days of "freedom of the press belongs to the person who owns one" seem quaint.
What are your thoughts on treating Facebook and Twitter as public utilities? I've seen this floated in some circles; do you have some insight what that might look like?
The specific legal aspects are above my pay grade, but my instinct is that it's probably the wrong analogy. A utility is for something like electricity, or city water, or an ISP. In other words: Dumb pipes. Services that take a thing from point A to point B and (more or less) don't worry about the content. Any social media platform will have to do quite a bit more than that to be functional.
I've heard proposals to treat Facebook, etc as utilities, or common carriers, or media companies. But I personally think the correct way to view them is as private companies that are de facto a substantial portion of the public square. Now how does that work in practice? Well, in a lot of ways, I think we're in uncharted territory. But there is some precedent. In principle, it should be difficult to moderate political speech, no matter how off the wall, because that's what the public square is for. That's where I'd start.
User count? Is that unique IPs? Registered users? Is there a way to filter bots?
Financials? I would guess Facebook can afford to borrow some Hollywood accountants to "prove" that their total assets are two bucks and a moldy hot dog.
Employees? Do contractors count? What about automated services performing similar work that give you effectively more manpower? As an example, Patreon, a major culprit in financial cancelling that holds an outsized amount of power in that area, has something like 300 employees. By headcount it's technically a medium enterprise!
Don't get me wrong, some kind of sliding scale based on company size is a reasonable thought. But I don't know how to make it stick. The devil is in the details.
"Public private partnership" is just a cute euphemism for fascism. The sooner we all wake up to that, the better.
Also, don't dump your "loved ones" over politics. Not unless you're afraid of politics causing them to literally hit you or call police on you. Otherwise stay in touch, your ideology is not worth it. Please.
Can't agree on that. More is required than the simple equivalent you've stated. NASA is functionally a public-private partnership. The NIH is a public-private partnership. So is the CDC, arguably.
Not all public-private partnerships are benign, of course. The dangers are usually less dramatic than full-scale economic Fascism, although a strong argument can be made that they're pernicious and corrupt. Consider the phenomenon of low-bid contracts in the realm or weapons procurement and the quartermastery of the armed services: the contract awarded to Halliburton to provide material support for the military occupation of Iraq was a no-bid contract, for example. Regulatory capture is another sketchy form of "public-private partnership": that can take various forms, from mandating credentials from an industry-controlled certification board in some professions to the reliance by the FDA on studies supplied by the drug manufacturers they're supposed to regulate. (Pharmaceutical manufacture is the one area where I oppose patent protections and would support a nationalized industry; synthetic drugs are are inherently generic chemicals, not consumer items. I'm fine with public contracts with private R&D firms, though, including lucrative outcome-based rewards for newly developed medicines of proven worth. I just don't support providing a profit-making business with decades of patent protection, just because one of their research teams invented a particular chemical compound costing only a pittance to make that they want to exploit as a cash cow with their patent monopoly. That isn't about ethical medical practice.)
Fascist economics typically endorses the goal of merging Big Business and the State so its power and interests are identical. What might be called the final phase of Regulatory Capture; a monopoly corporation that makes profits for its private owners and investors supported by the concentration of State power in the hands of an authoritarian crony leader with dictatorial executive powers. But the absence of a strong connection between the public sector and the private sector can lead to plutocratic imbalances almost as grotesque, such as those associated with private monopolies that emerge in the absence of antitrust regulation. There are valid reasons why trust-busting became a central political issue in the Teddy Roosevelt era, for instance. Horizontal monopolies are bad for independent business, and amount to something akin to an arbitrary regulatory state run for the sole benefit of the private owners.
Horizontal monopoly describes a situation that's very close to the control exercised by Amazon.com over e-commerce, for example: 72% of all online sales are now done through Amazon. And while the Federal government has taken no steps to break up Amazon's overwhelming dominance in mail-order sales, Amazon has managed to cut an unprecedented deal for preferential low parcel shipping rates with our Post Office. Which is an example of the sort of deal that's allowed them to gain such a competitive advantage over independent shippers that Amazon can accurately be said to constitute a horizontal monopoly. To get a more complete idea of that situation, read this article from the September 2020 issue of Harper's; lots of material on Facebook and Uber, as well. (Harper's has a paywall, but they've been known to provide free stories. A rare plug from yours truly: the magazine is well worth a subscription.) https://harpers.org/archive/2020/09/the-big-tech-extortion-racket/
Addressing the pharmaceutical issue specifically, the reason drug companies are awarded patent protection for new drugs -- or at least, the rational justification -- is that they don't just cook up a new chemical compound in a lab and ship it out; it has to go through extensive testing and clinical trials, at astronomical expense, paid for out of their own pockets. The patent allows them to recoup those expenses by solely profiting off their investment for a time.
It wasn't clear from your comment, but I take it from "nationalized industry" you mean the Federal government would take over the process, and costs, of drug trials? So the private R&D labs would come up with a new drug they *think* might work, then submit it to the FDA to manage the testing and approval process? I can only imagine that system resulting in slowing the process to a glacial pace (and it's not fast as it is), at massive taxpayer expense, with even greater vulnerability to regulatory capture and political influence over which drugs get the "royal treatment" and which get ignored.
We could have a discussion of ways to address the problems with the current system -- and I don't deny that drug companies can and do use their patents to gouge consumers while they can -- but government takeover of private industries is rarely the best solution. Natural monopolies (e.g. utilities like power and water) come to mind. That is about it.
"they don't just cook up a new chemical compound in a lab and ship it out; it has to go through extensive testing and clinical trials, at astronomical expense, paid for out of their own pockets."
I get that.
I think that the reward for inventing and developing medicines of proven value should go directly to the researchers and developers, not to the owners of drug manufacturing factories and venture capitalists. I think that the mechanism for reward should take a form other than patent protections on chemical compounds and their formulations.
I don't think the FDA should be in the position of relying on studies commissioned by private pharmaceutical companies to determine the safety and efficacy of new drugs. I don't think that drug manufacturers should use commission salespeople to soft-soap physicians into prescribing their product lines. I don't think there's any justification for marketing prescription medications directly to a consumer customer base, in magazines and especially not on television. I question their practice of spending enormous amounts of money on marketing and advertising- for products that arguably shouldn't require marketing at all; we aren't selling toothpaste or TVs here, the product is generic chemicals (and formulations that are typically so basic that they might as well be generic, like time-release dosages.)
There's some controversy over the oft-repeated claim that the largest pharma companies spend more on advertising and marketing than they do on research and development. But even those who claim that's an overstatement admit that the companies don't spend very much less on advertising and marketing than they do on R&D. And my point is that the debate is a distraction anyway, because drug prescription should not be an affair of marketing. The agenda of medicine is to produce the best possible health outcome for all patients; the agenda of profit-making drug companies is to sell as many of their products as possible, for the maximum amount the market will bear. Those priorities are inimical.
I read a recent article by the widow of the patriarch of the Sackler family, claiming that he's being unfairly scapegoated for the opioid epidemic, when his actual innovation was the introduction of marketing techniques that applied to all of the products sold by his companies (a practice taken up in turn by the rest of the industry.) She's missing the point. The emphasis on pitching patented medications to doctors IS the problem. Oxycontin is only the most egregious example.
"So the private R&D labs would come up with a new drug they *think* might work, then submit it to the FDA to manage the testing and approval process?"
I don't see why that would have to be entirely the case; the role of the FDA could be confined to doing end-stage confirmation of tests already done by the research companies. As for the approval process, the FDA is supposed to be managing that already.
As for your concerns about "massive taxpayer expense", we're dealing with exorbitant expenses already, both on an individual basis (that's often widely disparate) and as a pooled expense administered through insurance company premiums and co-pays, with much of the cost related to the unique regulatory capture of prescription drugs by the pharmaceutical industry in this country.
I mean, sure, it's going to cost something if the public sector takes more of a role in the pharmaceutical industry. But I don't have a superstitious aversion to "Taxes", per se- like, compared to what? The bite from drug companies, for drugs that can often be manufactured for pennies a dose? A pharmaceutical industry that conditions doctors- and the medical schools where they learn their profession- with the message that the implicit baseline of modern medicine is to put their patients on as many medications as possible, and keep them on them in perpetuity?
This is issue is destined to loom even larger if it's the case that there are research breakthroughs related to youth extension, biological repair and rejuvenation, the reversal of degenerative disease, etc. If those advances are simply to be exploited as a cash cow with availability restricted to the wealthy- not for lack of supply or due to manufacturing expense, but on account of legal provisions that sequester their availability through regulations like patents- the consequences are liable to be grave, and terribly disruptive.
Ironically, I'm more of a fee-for-service, independent physician guy on a lot of health care issues. I've seen how much more insurance companies get billed by doctors, compared to the patients who simply pay for their own office visits. The same goes for lab tests, and the like. I'm of the mind that public insurance should be primarily concerned with catastrophic health expenses, paying for hospitalizations, and matters related to long-term care and home health care. But the control of drugs by unaccountable private interests primarily concerned with owner/investor/stockholder profit rather than patient interests or due reward for the actual inventors of their products has no place in modern medicine.
Money is a great incentive for invention. Perhaps that's why China can't invent anything. That and the inability to accept failure as It's difficult to develop something on the first try.
I'm fine with researchers being amply rewarded for their creations and innovations. I just don't think that reward should consist of patent-protected medicines. Especially when that proprietary profit goes to people who aren't the inventors, but merely the funders.
That said, I don't necessarily object to having some portion of the profit from successful research and development efforts to develop new medicines going to private funders, either. But, as I said, not through patents, or control over manufacture and distribution. I'd perfer to see a system of outcome-based rewards, because with some medicines it's difficult to determine their actual worth until an expanse of time has passed. Like years.
Chinese people have invented plenty of things over the expanse of human history, of course. And while I agree that the Communist system of education and the control of thought encouraged by a collectivist societal paradigm ends up stifling a lot of individual creative potential, I don't think that it discourages it entirely. The Chinese regime undeniably rely on stealing a lot of foreign patents in order to advance technologically, but I'd bet that there are some scientific and tech realms where their R&D efforts may be out in front of other nations, like advanced nuclear reactor technology and genetic engineering.
O.K. This is my third attempt to reply. If this doesn't work, I give up.
All utilities such as water and electric power should be public. Always. Never private. [Look at Bechtel in Bolivia, for example. At least it LOST the water wars there, in a court of law. They even tried to charge people for rainwater the citizens caught and saved in barrels!] Schools, roads & bridges, libraries, infrastructure, hospitals should all be public and never belong to profit-making entities. Should people like Betsy DeVos be in charge of our children's education? Should schools be military-nationalistic-patriot-building endeavors to produce fodder for endless wars? Should there be profit in healthcare? No. Rob Roy
"72% of all online sales are now done through Amazon."
I apologize, that's an inaccurate statistical claim. (And an example of what can happen when I don't check my work.)
The information I was intending to convey, as quoted from the original reference source:
"...companies sell on Amazon because there are few other places to find customers online. According to data collected last year, 66% of all online shoppers start their searches on Amazon. Of those looking for a particular product, the figure is 74%. In short, when it comes to commerce in consumer goods, if you are not on Amazon, you are not really in the market..." https://harpers.org/archive/2020/09/the-big-tech-extortion-racket/
Obviously, that does not equate to my previous assertion, which implied that "72% of online sales" are completed through Amazon. But I'd say that gist of it is the same. It's reasonable to think that most of those who search for a particular product on Amazon use the platform to complete their sale. Especially given the fact that there are now over 112 million US members of Amazon Prime, which offers, among other benefits in return for the $119 annual fee (up from $99 just a couple of years ago), a shipping rate- free, for all items- that other platforms and independent sellers are unable to match. (I get the temptation to join. But I just can't bring myself to do it.)
The article goes on: "...sellers who come to depend on Amazon soon find that the company can manipulate their sales in seemingly infinite ways. That's because Amazon controls how information is presented to the potential buyer, down to the price of every good- including, of course, whether the information is presented at all...last year, the company's average cut of a given sale on its platform was more than 40%- roughly triple what it was only a few years before..."
A little tip on harper's-- they have a policy of letting you read an article once every so so often then putting up a wall. You can get around the wall by browsing in incognito mode. But if you like the content please consider subscribing.
Yes. Like why has the CDC not reported on the number of people who wore masks and died anyway? It seems that would be an important number for analysis purposes.
I have a BA, and have found that level of formal education to be crucial to acquainting myself with scholarly discipline and essential for accruing a knowledge base sufficiently extensive to provide some semblance of accurate context on matters of history and politics.
But I refuse to give up the advantages of being a generalist and a self-directed independent researcher. I've observed how narrowing grad school can get, what with the typical demand for concentration on a specialized field of focus, as well as the requirement to please a tenured hierarchy of instructors. So I've assumed a different set of burdens, associated with the autodidactic path. This has its own set of drawbacks and possible pitfalls. But I don't regret the choice. And I still partake of the peerless resource of well-stocked university libraries with actual books on the shelves (also, interlibrary loan services? Definitely a thing.) There's more to self-education and research than surfing the Internet and doing keyword searches.
Speaking of keyword searches, what's up with so many Internet users evidently viewing it as an arcane skill beyond their abilities? (Except for shopping.) The decision to be spoonfed like a pampered princeling by relying on a news feed that stovepipes information through a Facebook algorithm, I can't imagine that. To me, it's like volunteering to be stupid. But even if someone does go that sad route, they could at least learn how to do keyword searches to check facts and trace sources on the stories they receive.
If a claim is too flattering, too horrible, too sensational, too [anything]- check it. Readers should be able to tell when news information is pressing their buttons, whichever button it might happen to be. That should serve as an alert to be skeptical, not a signal to swallow the info hook, line, and sinker. It can be very clarifying to confirm that someone is trying to yank your chain, and how they're trying to do it, and why they're trying to do it, and who they are. And at least as entertaining as the befuddling boo-yow from uncritically consuming disinfo-crack.
Well, what can I say...autodidacts have a way of going into lecture mode.
Might as well note that I get a lot out of your board contributions, too. You sound like a member of the reality-based community. At least so far, ha ha...
I would argue that the United States has been fascist to one degree or another since the 1900s, but definitely since 1971. It just sped up dramatically during the last 20 years.
Jim Rogers, a right-wing professional investor, stated in passing that in the 19th century the USA did not even have the rule of law, and I guess not just in the "Wild West". Even the laws sometimes are "weird", e.g. "apex" mining rights, and hereditary peanut monopolies.
You're both right. I've known since I was a teenager how easy it is for cops in the US to violate someone's 4th and 5th amendment rights and get away with it, how normalized such violations are provided they happen to an underclass group. I guess...you fight for a place in society you think is safe, and then you see govts expand who's in the underclass and what can be done to them. And then the media everywhere tells you "vote D or R", as if it isn't happening under both.
«I've known since I was a teenager how easy it is for cops in the US to violate someone's 4th and 5th amendment rights and get away with it, how normalized such violations are provided they happen to an underclass group.»
Here is a report by naive Governor Carter of Georgia:
"Jimmy Carter's University of Georgia Law Day Address, May 4, 1974"
«I said I didn't know what a consent search warrant was. They said, "Well, that's when two policemen go to a house. One of them goes to the front door and knocks on it, and the other one runs around to the back door and yells 'come in'."»
Not all corporatists are fascist, but all real fascists-Mussolini, Franco, Park Chung Hee—South Korean strongman in 60s/70s,etc-are definitely corporatists.
Thank you Matt -- a complete mass media silence on Julian Assange or on silencing the truth about CIA-managed OPCW illustrates the complete censorship already in place.
Independent public TV, free of advertising income, could be one approach (although BBC attempt is failure)
PS: Re-reading your 2010 "Griftopia" -- what an amazing effort and accomplishment. It is as seminal and profound as, e.g., Max Blumenthal's "The management of Savagery".
Our freedoms are rapidly disappearing, including any talk about the CIA-DNC Russia-gate hoax and War party foreign policy that has now resulted in two new Cold wars (with Russia and with China)
In my opinion, the solution is pretty easy to imagine. Simply admit that social media companies are media companies and make them accountable as such. If they want to ban speech and the speaker can show harm, they can get taken to court.
If they want to leave speech alone, those harmed can also sue.
The root cause of this was effectively exempting these entities from the normal process for settling speech disputes.
The combination of that exemption and increasingly heavy handed intervention by political actors is extremely concerning.
If it were clear that Facebook could lose such a suit, individuals would not have to pay. The tort lobby would spring into action. Class action lawsuits would flourish.
The central fiction that is if a company pays people directly for their contribution, they are a media company with editorial responsibility and accountability, but any other arrangement makes them a "neutral platform." It is an utterly absurd argument, which is why the tech industry bends over backwards never to have to make it in public.
Someone like Matt writes (or used to, anyway) content for publishers who pay him for said content, which they place next to advertisements; they take money from advertisers and give it to Matt. Someone literally calling themselves a creator makes a video and posts it to YouTube, which places it next to advertisements; Google takes money from advertisers and gives it to the creator. Yet, somehow a publisher has editorial responsibility, can be sued for libel, etc., while YouTube is just a "neutral platform for user-generated content", which absolves it of any and all accountability or responsibility.
What is truly insane, though, is that we keep asking the owners of these platforms their opinions about how to treat them and swallow their bullshit narrative that it is a very complex problem that only they can solve and the most important consideration is their ability to continue to make obscene amounts of money, so we should just throw some more AI at the problem. Oh, and they are so very sorry about accidentally imploding a few democracies --- move fast and break things, right!
The companies behind these platforms are draining academia of talent in an arms race to create the most profitable AI by monitizing human misery. They use people who are poor of money, but rich of time to train algorithms that they then unleash on people who are poor of time, but rich of money. We are already at the point that these companies cannot even tell you what content the AI's are serving, let alone why they choose any particular set of content --- they can only show you how much money the AI's are making by serving it. And they use that money to choke off competition and further consoludate every manner of arranging pixels on a screen to drive user engagment.
Until we finally see social media companies as media companies that make money by exploiting loopholes in laws that were written before the Internet, we are doomed to wage tribal warfare with each other over whose crazies should be censored.
We’ve lost the timber of lawmaker who would pursue anti-trust measures, and the power just keeps congealing. When people fear speaking up or disagreeing, we’re already in an oppressive environment.
The robotic sameness coming out of news and editorial rooms is suffocating speech. Over three years ago I was baptized into the pathology of intersectionality during a failed shakedown – diktats that we ignored -- of our organization. At the same time, I noticed the appearance of the same article in six or seven different publications over the span of a week’s time. The pieces blamed/shamed white women for how their horribly white husbands voted, and charged them to change their husbands’ votes. It wasn’t a coincidence. It seemed the type of thing in cheesy 50s anti-commie shorts on TCM, not something we ever see here. I didn’t vote for Trump –also something we’d never see here --– (when refusing to conform one is accused of being “far right” or a Trumper), but I knew propaganda when I saw it.
«(SJWs, cultural marxists/neomarxists, the PC-left, etc.)»
That as a rule is not the "left", it is the liberist/neoliberal right, the progressive "whigs" opposed to the conservative "tories".
«the actual intellectual fraud of SJWs such as "white privilege" or "implicit bias" theory.»
Unfortunately "white privilege" and "implicit bias" (and even more so "disparate impact") are very real. The intellectual fraud is how they are exaggerated and distorted into diversions from class and income related privileges and biases, of which they are largely consequences. The biggest problem in the USA (and other countries) is not how some minorities suffer poverty and deprivation, but how many more "majority" people suffer the same, as if it they deserved it for being "bigots".
As a computer scientist living in Silicon Valley my whole life I can tell you with not an ounce of doubt that these big tech companies are Out Of Control. They must be brought to heel. They are not platforms, they are content delivery systems and must be treated as such. They need to be broken up or taxed to the point on non-existence.
The main problem is that their AI algorithms have taken over and are now promoting anything divisive in terms of the news you get. There is no promotion of what is good for society, just the AI algorithms promoting division and hate.
Finally, they are gobbling up all of the tech startups and this has massively hurt productivity in silicon valley.
Fortunately if the government doesn't start controlling these beasts, we know that trees don't grow forever. Eventually they will kill themselves, but there could be a lot of pain on the way to that death.
Facebook is a horror. It's now censoring any mention of "Julian Assange" and "Palestine" and "BDS." Mark Zuckerberg is a boot-licker of Israel and his top censor decider is a Zionist as well. As you say, AI algorithms have taken over and not only spread hate and division but also prevent news from going forward. It's as bad as the mainstream press (NYT, WaPo, MSNBC, Fox, all broadcast stations, etc.) not speaking/standing up for Julian Assange, Palestinians, and BDS.
Ever think how much better off the world would be without the United States and Israel?
Until yesterday I thought Google blacklisting was a myth or overblown, but then I saw a post from bookwormroon.com, a very small conservative website, complaining that she had been blacklisted by Google. She was wanting to write about Pope Francis' latest silly pronunciation about Covid and Capitalism. Wanting to review her earlier posts on the subject she googled her own site and found no results. I've tried it too. Google "bookwormroom Francis marxist" and then do the same on any other search engine. You'll find lots of results anywhere but Google, which returns "It looks like there aren't any great matches for your search."
I deleted Google on every device I have. The blacklisting is real, even when it comes to tiny sites that don't follow the narrative.
In addition to not filtering things unduly, Duck Duck Go has the added benefit of not leaving a tracing for the people who one day decide you are troublesome and use your search history to police you. Or, for that matter, to shovel content "catered to you" at you, which basically means that if you eat bangers and mash a couple of times then they offer you English food forever, which is exactly why content consumption narrows into the rabbit hole and tribes form.
I just googled "bookwormroom" and got multiple hits including the website, twitter, facebook, blogspot, and podcast. I'm not seeing the blacklisting at all...
You're bringing up very real, very important free speech issues, but you've picked a miserable occasion to do it.
The core of the QAnon movement is the desire to see the enemies of Donald Trump arrested, taken to Gitmo, tried by the military, and then executed. This is the central, founding belief of the movement. Yes, it's dressed up in a lot of ridiculous garbage about Luciferian pedovores, JFK Jr faking his death, and marines rescuing mole children from under Central Park, but sitting at its core is a call to violence. It losing a platform to call for violence right before a potentially contested is a net positive, despite the very serious problems with how speech is being regulated on social media platforms.
I believe that a sitting president, giving his blessing to his potential successor president in her campaign to use Russian disinformation to paint her opponent as a “Russian Stooge”, while also authorizing the CIA and FBI to assist her, is sufficient for arrest, trial, and execution for treason.
The abuses of power undertaken by the Obama administration towards the incoming Trump administration are so beyond the bounds of our legal system that unless they are punished severely it is the end of our country.
Unfortunately, not only will the crimes of the Obama Admin likely not be punished, I'm afraid they won't even be acknowledged/remembered. So, please keep doing that for us.
Your comment might sound extreme to some but it is actually a concise and accurate history of the odious hoax known as Russiagate. Have you seen the late Stephen F. Cohen's book on this, "War With Russia"? He called out the coup as it was happening.
The sad part is that nobody ever thought an administration could be more corrupt than the Cheney administration. Than the Chicago crew came in and took over the White House, and then we got what we all deserved. The current administration, and they are just following the trajectory precedent set forth by what came before.
If Biden wins, and I still think he does, you just wait. It's going to get downright amazing how bad it gets. The Political and corporate class has it's own rules, and like George Carlin said. We don't get to play by them.
There is one problem with this. Trump is not part of that insider club. I agree with your overall premise, I do think we could finally see a difference though, and they will do so to send a message to any other corporate class types that try to cross the line.
And there are “legitimate sources saying Trump is a complete anti-Semite, a racist, a thief, etc., etc.
Do a google search isn’t really an answer.
And the second part of my question? Because there are certainly a lot of people and organizations who have threatened violence on social media platforms.
Not to belittle Matt's concerns...I didn't support the Infowars banning & I don't support the banning of QAnon...but I have to wonder about who actually uses Fakebook these days? I have 4 kids, ages 16-22, and none of them have ever used Fakebook. They actually laugh when I ask them about it saying, "that's for moms & dads not us."
While my wife & I have never Fakebook-ed, we eventually had to join for our business. Thankfully my wife handles that bit of horror although she does have a "never post" rule that she abides by quite rigorously. My kids have actually thanked us on a number of occasions for not being the narcissist parents who feel compelled to place their children's entire lives on the internet to gain some vague emotional jolt from a "like."
Honestly, the little that I've seen of Fakebook it looks more like a meme dumping ground than anything else. Or, more appropriately, a virtual RV where old people affix their meme bumperstickers because their opinions are best expressed in mass produced one-liners that are only vaguely amusing if you have no sense of humor.
I may be wrong, but it appears that all of this censorship is grounded in the belief that ideas are infectious, like viruses. Now, if you take that as true (I don't), you can extend the analogy to ask what is one's best defense against a virus. Obviously a strong immune system would be the answer. In my opinion, the mental equivalent of a strong immune system would be strong critical thinking skills.
Now, if politicians were really serious about "infectious falsehoods," they'd be pushing for critical thinking skills to be taught from an early age.
Of course they're not doing that. And it's easy to see why. So much of America sits on a veritable ocean of its own mass produced bullshit. Most of its cornerstone institutions, politics, religion, big business, couldn't survive without a constant stream of utter crap spewing from every one of their orifices.
This drive for censorship doesn't appear, at least to me, as a battle between what's true and what's false, as much as a battle for control of the bullshit stream.
Saying that the world is controlled by elite pedophiles doesn't appear much different than Obama saying that he knows that, "Kamala & Joe care about each & every American."
And, actually, given the trials & tribulations of Epstein and his merry band of perverts, there's probably a lot more circumstantial evidence to support the elite pedophile train of thought than there's proof that any politician cares about anyone other than themselves.
"I have to wonder about who actually uses Fakebook these days?"
Around 2 billion people, if the page account tabulation is to be believed.
Ever since it was first revealed that Facebook was indiscriminately mining personal data and recording it permanently without regard for personal privacy (at the outset, exposing vast amounts of personal information to a general audience, until the outcry persuaded them to add some privacy safeguards), my question about Facebook use has always been "what for"?
OK. I'll take your word for it. Not a Fakebook expert. Don't use it. Don't care to. As far as the data mining goes, I think it's obvious most people who use it don't really give a tinker's toot about being mined. I think it's fairly obvious that there are far more narcissists on the planet than anyone could have predicted in the pre-internet days. I think folk are so desperate to have someone stare at their banality that they know, deep inside, that if no one else will, they will always have the government.
Then again maybe folk don't think about it at all. Maybe their social media addiction is so deep they just dismiss the downside, like generations of smokers didn't think about that eventual lung cancer as they were coffin nailing themselves into an early grave.
While I doubt most young folk bother with Fakebook, they have their own issues involving smartphone addiction.
Anytime I find myself working with a youngster, the first thing they do when they walk in the door is whip out the smartphone & pop in those earbuds. My employer used to have strict guidelines about phone use. Those quickly went out the window when staff shortages surpassed 100 open positions. They couldn't discipline staff & risk them walking when they had no one to take their place.
Speaking of data mining, wasn't there a program where the NSA remotely took a screen grab from everyone's computer camera thinking that they'd stumble on someone plotting a terrorist attack? What they actually learned was that Americans
like to record themselves fucking using that camera. Now there's a shocking revelation.
You care about the truth, and principles, and what the abandonment of both by soi disant liberals leaves us circa 2020.
Splitting the country into 50 smaller independent states is the only peaceful solution that I can conceive of.
All other scenarios lead to mass violence and the destruction of what made America great to begin with. California and Alabama have little in common with Pennsylvania or Idaho. All 50 states have robust government systems fully capable of handling the functions currently usurped by the federal government. (I’m a tenth amendment guy😉)
Retain portions of the judiciary to settle purely Interstate problems, and a civilian military leadership that protects us from any domestic invasion. Civilian military leaders would be randomly selected from groups of people who were able to gather 100 letters of recommendation from friends, family, coworkers, etc. attesting to their character. Four year terms, with 25 new members each year. They would be able to use force against another nation only if a super majority agreed.
Remember the breakup of the Soviet Union? How well that went? Ask the Armenian community if you need a reminder. sorry but as bad as the US military industrial complex is, breaking the country up will be worse.
"antifa and the proud boys - come on! They make up a *tiny* fraction of the population".
Yeah, but each are at least tacitly likely backed by huge portions of the public, and (many charge), are effectively the informal Military Arms of the major parties.
BTW, civil wars/ revolutions are often started, not by majorities, but by determined minorities.
And, each are at least tacitly likely backed by huge portions of the public, to the extent that any effort, to calmly critique any issues pushed by such tiny fractions, almost always leads, in due course, to a torrent of abuse from such backers.
"With this new, non-transparent, private star-chamber type system, what content we do and do not see is now dependent upon upper-class intellectual fashions, and the whims of politicians, media employees, and executives at tech firms."
Reminds me of this, written by Orwell in 1945:
"Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news – things which on their own merits would get the big headlines – being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ʻit wouldn't doʼ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ʻnot doneʼ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ʻnot doneʼ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals."
One additional element of this I'd be interested to hear your take on, is the fact that QAnon would hardly exist were it not for these platforms.
As much as the internet has complicated issues around speech, it has equally elevated groups (and the dark side of our collective psyche) that previously, would never have received the amplification.
So, I agree, we need a new approach. And it will require a supple and nuanced approach -- how Facebook deals with governments will need to be different than how they deal with militia groups deciding to get together and fuck shit up in downtown Portland.
Unfortunately, discretion tempered by regulation may be our only way forward.
Either way, I just wonder if, considering insanity such as QAnon owes its birth to these platforms, maybe it's okay that they see their death there too. Or at least a partial death.
This is a smart point. Finding a school shooters' manifesto or the Turner Diaries or whatever other similar unsavory, hateful shit used to be difficult. Remember hearing a quote from a former KKK guy, one of those guys that's atoning by doing school assemblies and preaching against hate groups, talk about how easy it is for kids to get their hands on this stuff now. It's a legitimate problem–not just on Facebook but the internet writ large.
The problem is: I can't see how we solve it without getting into some genuinely scary territory. It's an incredibly difficult issue where every solution leaves me wanting. Yet to hear one that's satisfying.
@sasinsea...not scary. We live in an environment that has handed the microphone to everyone at once, there are no apparent social stigmas attached to spouting violent nonsense, and the loudest voices drown out everything. What to do?
Here’s a solution....delete your FB account. I deleted mine after the 2016 election, and it’s changed my life for the better in every way. I missed it for approximately 11 minutes.
Ah, Kurt. Mine's been gone for a decade now. Came to realize that outside of the some occasional great discussion and jokes during a basketball game, social media was a net negative on my psyche. I'm sure the pandemic is teaching that to a lot of people---you don't need to be constantly plugged into a stream of dubious information and whining.
Yeah. Everyone walking away from the noise does not empower the loons; it lets the air out of their tires. If suddenly the loons are control FB, what’s the loss to society? I propose it is all gain. FB goes away, or at minimum, is marginalized. Glad to hear someone else out there has pulled the plug.
Yes, all true, and thank you for a thoughtful response. I was never promoting the Chinese model, contrary to the fevered responses of others. I was only pointing out that experiencing another method made me think about things from an entirely opposite perspective. Limitations are not necessarily a bad thing.
.....and time.... There’s always time, just not enough of it. Living in a civilization...and China should be thought of as a civilization and not a culture....that thinks of time in thousands of years, one starts to change their perceptions of time. Your question of “do we have time?”, is the astute one.
When it comes to QAnon, I'm happy to step up, if that's what my fellow citizens so decree!
But in all seriousness, you're right to ask. It's a major conundrum with no clear answers.
As I wrote, all I have at this point is "discretion tempered by regulation". Private interests tempered by public sentiment and corporate citizenship (which is just a PR exercise, but whatever), balanced out by government oversight.
It ain't clean, but we gotta work with what we have. The size and reach of the platform is also crucial here. There will always be some 8chan message board somewhere for an insanity circle jerk.
But as long as whatever version of it we go with allows us to identify cults of disinformation with harmful real-world outcomes, and make their ability to function and disseminate more difficult, then all aboard!
(as Taibbi wrote - free speech is already tempered in tons of ways, so I'll take the lesser of two evils please)
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. It certainly is, as you say, " major conundrum." I don't know what the answer is, but I do get nervous when people start using the term "insanity." Recall that Stalin's opponents were often deemed "insane."
I take your point, but I do not think society will ever really adjust to the biggest mass communications development since the printing press unless we allow hard lessons to be learned about the power that it brings, without relying on the (virtually monopolistic) controllers of the expressive medium to decide what's fit to express. It took about 500 years from the advent of Gutenberg's press in the 1450s for the value of free speech to become widely accepted all over the globe, yet throughout that time, people with access to the technology of mass communication could and did publish things that would inevitably run afoul of the censors or foster "dangerous" movements.
In the present circumstance, the people who control the means of communication - the figurative printing press - are also acting as the censors, and unlike in the past, they control virtually all of the presses at the same time. That is one hell of a dangerous power to vest in any person or entity, much less one with modest accountability to the public (outside from their shareholders).
Would outrageous conspiracy theories exist without the current platforms? I think they would still exist, maybe not as easily accessible. The thing is, the media constantly lies to promote certain narratives, and it seems to be getting worse, and this is very, very obvious to anyone who is a critical thinker. How do we know what's true at this point? I can see how some people would spin out and latch onto outrageous theories in this climate.
There’s a recurring question of “who gets to decide what constitutes insanity?”. For folks that understand that facts are immutable information supported by empirical evidence, or that scientific study reveals truth, it seems relatively simple to decide what constitutes insanity.
Correct, not complicated. The NYT is also complicit in pushing these mopes into our faces at every opportunity to get clicks. Matt’s recent “Hate, Inc.”, breaks this down beautifully, and is one of the reasons I’m paying to hear more of what he has to say.
I remember the chortling over the banning of Alex Jones and the worry by a few sincere anti-war folks that anti-establishment left sites would get the boot too. This proved true, but needless to say the VOX readers of the world saw no reason to be bothered.
If Biden is elected, there will soon be a call for military action in Syria. And there will be an accompanying effort to screen out anti-war people as subversives working for Russia, be they right or left. And people like Matt Taibbi will be appalled, wondering if the left realizes what it has done with its promotion of state-encouraged tech-driven censorship. The left and right wings of the military industrial complex, though, will quietly open the champagne and celebrate how concessions won to sideline the far left and far right allow the state to control the most powerful communication tool in the world in the United States. And the same people who denounce China and/or Russia will laud the muzzling of dissent in America.
Right. It's why a true left is supposed to care about speech suppression happening to ANYONE. The precedent snowballs.
So is a true conservative...but I think we can agree that both organized parties have become about little other than power/control.
It's why I think the only solution is to devolve power back to the states. At that level, there's a chance of occasional sanity. In DC, I no longer think such a chance exists.
I'm more or less with you. My pulse quickens at the thought of those states at the poles of dysfunction (California, maybe Mississippi) being given near-total sovereignty, but a lot of places would thrive or at least be better off.
I don’t think you can stop crazy anymore. And if the people in various places want it, let them have it, as long as it doesn’t violate a limited reading of the Constitution (limited by the text of the doc that is).
Um, when last I looked, most of the left has repeatedly sold out to globalist over and over and over as well.
In fact, if you simply swapped "conservative" with "liberal" your statement would still be fully accurate.
I agree with you and raise you one truth.
I think we're on to something here, don't you?
I agree with your comment generally but I don't believe Biden will be any tougher on Syria than Obama was when the Iranians told him to back down. Biden has all but pledged to be Obama's third term from a foreign policy standpoint.
Why should any president "be tough on Syria?" The US has no right to pull off coups, attack sovereign countries, decided elected presidents can be replaced by the US, and tell the rest of the world to do as we say or else they will be sorry. The best foreign policy the US could have is to stay out of other countries' business. It's about time everyone on earth turned against this arrogant, idiotic country.
"The best foreign policy the US could have is to stay out of other countries' business." AMEN, brother. This is the most important issue for our country.
IT's kind of why Trump got elected... These stuffed suits who "lead" us, are nothing more than than ruddy grifters. All they know how to do is act pretty for the camera and take money from donors. That's all they know.
To wit: They've kept us in endless war since 9/11 and have no plans of stopping any time soon. They dance and dine while the whole ship goes down.
So the alternative is to allow forces to gather at the gates until they amass enough energy or power to just crash it?
Where would Europe be now if the US hadn't shored up the remaining allies with the Marshall Plan?
I shudder to think of how that may have ended up, but I don't sincerely support the US' pay to play military for hire antics across the globe.
What's the answer? Who knows? It's certainly some bizarre mix of the two.
Scott,
Nope. There hasn't been a justified war we've started or entered since WWII, and even in that case, there's more than meets the eye. For example, the US (Standard Oil) kept right on sending Germany oil because they didn't have their own, in order for the Germans to fight more successfully against Russia (our ally, but behind closed door, our future enemy, thus the cold war). And in that stupid cold war, the plan to bomb 66 cities/towns in Russia with 204 nuclear weapons was set aside at the last minute. Daniel Ellsberg was in the room at the time and has just written a book on this strange idea to genocide an entire country. There's no way to justify what this country stands for: ultimate total hegemony of all the world. Thank god, all empires eventually fall. But, heck, not to worry, climate destruction will take out humanity first.
Except... The Soviet Union collapsed.
Did you miss that?
A bunch of Russian Oligarchs are not as much of a threat to Europe and the world as the USSR was. Not even close. They've been neutered.
Sure, for the handful of justifiable military actions the US has been involved in since WWII there are SCADS more that were profit only, and at the behest of very rich industries, but the fact remains -The cold war was won, for what that's worth.
Trouble is, they committed all manner of heinous war crimes while it went on. Unforgivable.
Hey, Rome wasn't built in a day and it didn't collapse in a day, either. Give it time, friend. It'll be over soon enough.
Teach your kids how to survive.
"handful of justifiable military actions the US has been involved in..." Name one.
BTW, our kids can't survive if there's no ice left, no trees, no uncontaminated water and air. Chris Hedges says we seek and moved toward life or toward death. We seek and are headed for death. Someone else said, "No hope knows no fear." I don't believe that. I fear greatly for the children, all the children.
I'm getting out of this thread. Nice talking with you. Rob
Wasn't there just a slew of leaked documents about the gas attack in Syria detailing how military contractor's & US intelligence used an army of "journalists" to feed fake stories to everyone from the BBC to Al Jazeera about a gas attack that never really happened?
Syria is obstructing a gas pipeline. That's why the US wants Assad out. No other reason.
Who, in their right mind, thinks the prime function of the military industrial complex is to protect America?
Or even the secondary function?
If Democrats really think Trump is a threat why did they gleefully sign off on his military budget increases?
Increase his spying powers?
Only makes sense if this is all just political theater meant to flummox the rubes.
Spiderbaby,
You are so right. There were three attacks, none by Bashar al Assad. The first was proven by the UN investigative team; I heard Carla del Ponte, the lead, say it was the rebels (paid by the US)...never heard from her again, of course. The second was proven to be NOT Assad by none other than Sy Hersh..who couldn't get his report printed by the NYT, WaPo, The New Yorker or the UK Guardian. Finally, it was printed by Deir Walt (sp?) in Germany where I read it. The third I witnessed myself when the White Helmet types began coldwater hosing little kids who naturally started crying; the hosers were screaming, "chemicals," though the doctors inside the hospital where the kids were dragged said clearly there were no chemicals. It's a sad day when Democracy Now! and the New Yorker, famous for fact checking, falls for propaganda, just as they did for Russiagate. Thanks for writing. RR
I wish I could hit like ten times on this comment.
I would add only that they are playing 4D chess and using asymmetrical warfare on their own people in order to make it collapse faster.
I looked for evidence of leaked documents you describe and did not find any. Please provide a link to that story, specifically how "US intelligence used an army of "journalists" to feed fake stories."
I also looked into the gas pipeline angle, and found stories which support your assertion, but also found a later story which debunks it: https://truthout.org/articles/the-war-against-the-assad-regime-is-not-a-pipeline-war/
I wasn't the commentator who said something about pipes. Here's the source you wanted regarding my comment. "Leaked Docs Expose Massive Syria Propaganda Operation by Western Govt Contractors & Media" October 12, 2020 The GrayzoneProject Ben Norton
You can trust Ben Norton, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, et.al., you don't find on MSM. [Syria was set up by the usual false flags, as was Russiagate.]
You may also want to see this one: "Russiagate on Both Sides of the Duopoly: Former Intel Officials Try To Downplay Ratcliffe’s Russiagate Releases," by Dave DeCamp, a new reporter to me but the article is valid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-zG1t_qv3Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnJYNCtwB60
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-zG1t_qv3Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnJYNCtwB60
Bingo. They'd been building a pipeline so that Iran and Russia could move oil.
Notice how Russian warships showed up when Obama started setting up an invasion force -then they suddenly backed away from the red line?
Yeah, totally... if the Pentagon wanted open war with Syria, they'd be doing it right now -Trump or not.
The elected boob-in-chief is of no consequence.
While it's certain that the Pentagon wants to maintain a permanent presence in the Middle East, and continuously plays one side against the other to maintain access to key installations, the President has openly rebuked that decades-long standing policy, if only rhetorically and not in practice. There are reasons why the leadership at the Pentagon despise Trump.
so, you know this because you came here from the future?
I'm your groopie.
Excellent comment. Thank you for taking the time to write that.
"...a recent Washington Post warning that we are being targeted by a foreign campaign of “perception hacking,” or “manipulating people into thinking they are being manipulated,” represent just a few examples of Approved™ nonsense."
I'm related through marriage to a very smart, analytical person who nevertheless believes every bit of nonsense that is produced by these major journalistic institutions. When I fact-checked him on the convention week fiction that Melania cut down Jackie Kennedy's cherry trees, a story he regurgitated uncritically, I was told I was being petty. He has told me that reality is the exact opposite of what I think. I know I'm in good company.
How can we have a conversation when most people would rather believe lies that support their chosen narrative, and instead of objectively settling the score, the Fourth Estate is often the source of untruth, and anyone who dares to question it gets accused of gaslighting?
That sounds pretty toxic, and very depressing. The last four years of constant orange man bad attacks have destroyed mutual trust. I don’t even like Donald Trump, but I find myself defending him most of the time simply because the attacks are so outrageous.
The attack on Melania was insane. I listened to the tape and thought “what’s the scandal”?
It wasn’t until I saw the very selective editing of quotes that are understood the “newsworthiness” of the tape. The disingenuousness of the media is vomit inducing.
I find myself defending Donald Trump, too, and while also not liking him. I just can't stand intellectual dishonesty.
Cheers to you for that sentiment. Keep on. Old school liberals are a vanishing breed.
I love how we’re constantly told that we’re living under an existential threat, but the same people are suddenly defending the sanctity of freaking Christmas decorations at the White House
It is indeed increasingly hard to have a conversation. I'm right of center but not far right (save maybe on federalism). The people I know to the far right say crazy stuff and claim it as fact and so do the people on the far left.
In my opinion, it is driven by the premise that we have increasingly ceded control of almost every aspect of our lives to the government. Thus, both sides believe the stakes are so high that being in control is more important than anything else. We have arrived at the place where the end is perceived to be so important that it justifies any means.
If Trump is reelected, the world is not going to end. Taxes will be a little lower, regulation a little looser, and no major new trillion dollar programs will pass (except for maybe an infrastructure bill). If Biden is elected, the world is not going to end. Taxes will be a little higher, regulations tighter and the deficit wider despite the higher taxes. I genuinely hope court packing doesn't happen under Biden. It is honestly my only fear, not for its proximate outcome on the Court but for the end of SCOTUS as a body that is seen as anything other than a political power play.
Regardless of the outcome, most of our lives will not be massively affected. Some will in both cases for both the positive and the negative. It is failure to accept this fundamental "truth" (as I see it) that is driving the insanity and the inability to engage in constructive dialog.
Social media makes it worse by feeding us a steady diet of the echo chamber and by becoming another element of the political power game.
But the issue isn't social media or the media at all. The issue is that we've convinced ourselves that every thing that happens, particularly in DC is of existential importance.
Imagine being a gay man who thinks that Trump is superior to Biden.
I can imagine that quite easily. But I suspect you cannot. And more is the pity...
I didn’t word that correctly. I’m a gay guy who actually thinks that Trump is marginally better than Biden.
Me too, dude. You're not alone.
That's because you're actually thinking.
There are more of them than you seem to realize.
I wasn’t clear. I’m a gay dude who despises Trump but HATES Biden.
Well I'm a mostly(?) straight dude who, in general, likes Trump's policies but not his personality, but who at the same time is very very afraid of what Biden represents. So I think we are on the same page, kinda.
I'm a straight, married, Libertarian dude with three kids and dislike Trump personally but like what I see out of the Administration. What's more, I look at what I see from the Left and can't imagine voting for it. Just under four years ago Trump was elected and the Left and their media handlers claimed he would start WW3, was Hitler, was a despot, a dictator in waiting, would cause world economic ruin, would strip gays of their rights, abortions would be back to being done in dark alleys, our allies would hate us and that he would be personally enriching himself and his family. And that was just the first hour of CNN on day 1.
Yes, I'd like to chop his finger off so he'd stop Tweeting. Yes, I wish he'd knock-off the "nobody has ever seen this before" and "perhaps greatest ever" nonsense. And yes, he should stop picking stupid fights with nobodies. But, he has been under attack since day 1 by an organized cabal of people intent on overturning an election. And what's more, he's had 24x7 negative coverage by 90% of the media.
Despite having some Left leans in terms of social policy, Trump could roast puppies and eat them on stage and there's still no way I could vote for what I've seen out of the Democrat Party for the past four years and, in particular, the last 7 months. I am not going to vote to condone riots, looting, racism and the breakdown of law and order.
Please ignore my prior post...I didn't fully consider the potential implications of your statement. And no edit function...grr...
Stand up job to acknowledge a mildly presumptive original statement but reel it back in when you got the bigger picture. Very humble thing to do
If it's a man who want's a job he will go with Trump. What you do in your bedroom is your own business. If you want to vote on who you THINK likes you more, you can do that too.
To me, it’s all one giant center right corporatist cabal is the biggest conspiracy theory of all...pushed frequently on the far left and by you by inference just now.
9/11 truthers.
Russiagate.
Hitler ain’t got shit on Chairman Mao in the body count depart.
Of course millions of Mao’s victims were ostensibly fellow Chinese communists-wouldn’t that make him a target for the twitter mob.....
See I knew you believed it.
Thanks for proving my point.
I question if you know what the term conspiracy theory means. Critical Race Theory is a sociological theory. As with all scientific theories, it is argued for and championed by it's supporters, and has competing theories that are studied and championed by other researchers. That's science, not conspiracy.
Nothing in your rant of a response gives one any level of confidence that you understand what the term conspiracy theory means. Sociology is a scientific discipline which means its publishings are subject to peer review, unlike news media or 4chan. If one has a hypotheses and finds data to support their assertions, that data is scrutinized by fellow scientists. If any of the data is found to be suspect (or cherry-picked), that scientist will be black-listed and in the findings will be redacted. If you have any evidence that a scientific journal has published tarnished data, I encourage you to contact the editors of that journal. I can assure you that the journal will take any credible claims, that can be backed up with evidence, seriously.
I'm in the same boat with my partner. We're having a hard time connecting at the moment. It's tough. I feel for you.
For someone who abhors postmodernism, his writing style is exactly that. You know what post-postmoderists hate more than anything? People who try to show how much smarter they are than everybody else by over-writing. Geesh.
Regardless, I think you're on to a helpful idea, but the major impediment to that future is the reality that most people are too stupid and/or too lazy to think for themselves in a political context. And of the rest, the influencers usually have a horse in the race. You can't teach people how to think if they don't want to learn or are incapable of putting in the work to find objective truth in an ever murkier and volatile information cloud, and of course half the point is that it's too difficult for us to figure it out on our own, so let's pick a side and trust them unquestioningly.
Taibbi's comments section is one of the few mediums I've encountered where people - many of us - speak honestly. I believe that's a function of Matt's integrity coming through his work.
I'm confident that I've lost more friends to the Russiagate conspiracy theory than anyone has lost to Qanon batshittery.
Well, first, I still have all my friends. Thanks for your kind consideration of my social circle because of my pithy, off-hand remark about having friends that have fallen for Russiagate. They're still my friends. If I ditched every friend that thought differently than I did, I'd have no friends.
But to the more important point I was trying to make, you're wrong to think Qanon is a phenomenon with more real-world impact than Russiagate. Russiagate was just used as a soft coup in the USA. Just this week, "Russian disinformation" was employed by the US to silence whistleblowers in the OPCW Syrian chemical attack testimony at the UN. (Just ask Aaron Mate). Russiagate is essential in the PR campaign against Julian Assange to justify his extradition to the US. The same entities that advanced Russiagate (Intelligence services, media) are coordinating with Facebook to ban Qanon. I could go on and on and on regarding the global impact of Russiagate. It's adorable that you think Russiagate is nothing more than "laughable PR." Qanon is ridiculous and yes, a handful of legislators have gone down that rabbit hole. Nearly EVERY Democratic legislator operates under the assumption that Russia is why we have Trump.
Good for you for keeping those weirdo Qanon friends of yours though!
I prefer QAnon to CNN, because I can be 100% certain that CNN is lying.
Ha, ha, ha.
" Russiagate was just used as a soft coup in the USA."
I do not think that you're clear on the meaning of the word "coup."
"Soft coup" is an oxymoron in the first place. But the Democratic Party hasn't even managed to increase its influence in the Capitol or on the Presidency, much less shifting into a position of dominance and control over the levers of State power. Their attempt at impeachment was successfully countered (which was entirely predictable.) It's questionable whether the Democrats will even reap a net benefit from their Russiagate efforts at the ballot box, when all the votes are finally counted.
Gotta challenge you here, Mascot. The Russiagate Hoax has already worked, insofar as it basically sabotaged Trump's (first?) term.
Come on. Trump gave the GOP everything they care about from a President: a massive income tax cut that mostly went to the wealthy; a huge business tax cut; nearly $1 trillion increase in military spending, much of it in weapons procurement; all of the tax cuts and spending put on the credit card, inflating the debt and deficit and thereby proving that "government doesn't work" and "there's no money left" when the economy eventually goes south again and control returns to the Democrats; a Supreme Court judge whose vote can be counted on to overturn Roe v. Wade, the ACCA, and favor the other items on the GOP wish list; 50 appellate judges that are all reliably biased toward the Republican wish list; and a repeal of various environmental standards that impede the hoarding of profits- and the political influence it buys- by the GOP-dominated fossil fuels industry (annual revenues larger than the Federal government.) Thankfully, most of the gutted regulations have not been in place long enough to do much damage to the future of the natural world. But with another term of Trump, the absence of EPA headwaters protections and gutted power plant emission rules will empower the $hort-term gain>>long term pain, privatize the profits>>socialize the costs game plan of today's GOP in classic style.
This explains the lockstep fealty of the Republicans in Congress (and most of their financial backers) toward Donald Trump. They'll put with anything, to get results like those.
Meanwhile- what Trump initiative were the Democrats able to stop? What part of their own agenda were they able to get past the Republican Senate, and Trump's veto pen? Trump walked away from negotiating the second stimulus bill, leaving a lot of formerly full-time working Americans are the end of their rope. It's to be taken for granted that he's framing this as an act of heroism against the extortionate Democrats. Although that narrative has recently taken a back seat to Trump's by now predictable confusion-hypnosis topic swerve into imperious demands for Justice Department indictments of Obama, Biden, the Clintons, every usual suspect in the Democratic Congress, various FBI heads, et. al. Like the White Queen, in Alice in Wonderland- "Off With Their Heads!" Although I've always found Trump's affect to be more along the lines of the Reverend Jim Jones. An impression that his most recent TV performances have only served to confirm.
In that regard, it should be enlightening to find out how Teh Donzo splits the difference when he's inevitably asked about his reaction to the recent roundup of armed would-be insurrectionists in Michigan who are currently charged by Federal and State law enforcement agencies with various minor infractions, like planning to kidnap the Governor there. Donald Trump has always exhibited a marked preference for finding a way to get two entirely opposite statements on the record, when the duties of high office demand that he offer his views on events of that sort.
Welfare exceeds Military for the first time.
You're worried about trump walking away from the second stimulus while chastising him for the outrageous debt? Which is it?
Russiagate was not only bad for Trump but the US in general.
He got a lot of good things done in spite of the Democrats and biased press and judges:
1. The middle-class incomes, after adjusting for inflation, have surged by $5,003 a year more since Donald Trump
2. United States has added more than 10,000 manufacturing BUSINESSES
3. He brokered peace between N&S Korea, Israel and Arabs, Kosovo, called a Syrian Ceasefire and is being nominated for a 3 peace prize. NO NEW WARS.
And it was Democrats creating fear kerfuffle with the "Crazy Red Button", "Orange Man" theme that the papers supported endlessly.
It is the Democrats throwing fits from the first day because Hillary didn't get in. I see Trump balancing out the Democrats perfectly.
Thanks for your engaged reply--more than I have time to respond to at this time. But as for "sabotage"--see my reply to Cypher, below.
But yes, Trump's recent debate performance was dismal. I don't see how any fair-minded person could think otherwise.
The income tax cut didn't mostly go to the wealthy. It went to people roughly in proportion to their share of federal taxes.
https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/distributional-analysis-conference-agreement-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act/full
The increase in military spending from fiscal 2016 to fiscal 2020 is approximate $130 billion, not $1 trillion. It's closer to $200 trillion if you include VA, foreign aid, etc. But still nowhere near a trillion.
https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/rev/google_vis.php?title=Recent Defense Spending&units=b&size=800_600&legend=Military defense-total_Veterans-total_Foreign military aid-total_Foreign economic aid-total&year=2000_2020&sname=US&bar=1&stack=1&col=g&source=a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_g&spending0=294.36_304.73_348.46_404.73_455.81_495.29_521.82_551.26_616.07_661.01_693.49_705.55_677.85_633.45_603.46_589.66_593.37_598.72_631.13_686.00_718.85&spending1=47.40_45.36_51.34_57.85_61.23_71.30_70.82_73.86_85.79_96.48_109.27_128.20_125.57_140.13_150.75_160.83_175.94_177.37_180.21_201.24_209.22&spending2=6.39_6.56_7.91_8.62_8.37_7.90_7.81_7.98_9.48_6.25_11.36_12.04_11.46_9.95_11.38_12.91_11.31_12.24_11.42_11.23_17.12&spending3=10.83_9.93_14.41_12.58_18.50_26.67_21.69_20.50_19.38_31.28_33.83_33.64_25.34_36.51_35.50_39.13_34.00_34.07_37.58_41.51_50.34
The federal government's revenues are far larger than US fossil fuel companies. Comparing a global company list to the revenue of the US government is a false comparison, which I suspect you know well.
But you hate Trump, that much is clear.
Thanks for your reply. Allow me briefly respond: how did Russiagate sabotage the Trump presidency? First, the outrageous takedown of Mike Flynn deprived Trump of a National Security Advisor who, it is said, knew where the bodies were buried. (so to speak) in the intel community and posed a threat to exposing them. Second, Russiagate prevented what might have been a valuable truce in the New Cold War with Russia. Funny how making peace with our adversaries something liberals are now opposed to. Third, the Russiagate Hoax forced Trump to expend enormous amounts of time, energy, and political capital fighting it. No one can say what would have been done, but it seems reasonable to assume the Hoax did function as a roadblock. There's more, but I'm limited time-wise.
Bottom line: the Russiagate torpedo severely damaged the SS Trump, leaving it listing but still afloat. I think that qualifies as "sabotage."
This is what he did in spite of Democrats in trade alone:
US wins WTO case against China over grain exports https://apnews.com/article/3fd7f5959c484321892749ce16ba3d67
U.S. Wins $7.5 Billion Award in Airbus Subsidies Case https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/press- releases/2019/october/us-wins-75-billion-award-airbus
US wins end of EU lobster tariffs in mini trade deal
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53870136
Trade wins for U.S. pork producers
https://www.nationalhogfarmer.com/business/trade-wins-us-pork-producers
Montana beef declared winner in U.S.-Japan trade deal https://billingsgazette.com/business/montana-beef-declared-winner-in-u-s--japan-trade-deal/article_07577f7a-bc4d-57fc-85d6-b77e96fb2e4d.html
Long-outlawed U.S. trade policy wins WTO approval in Canada lumber dispute
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-canada-wto-idUSKCN1RL1V6
Canada, Mexico lift tariffs on US goods after Trump scraps steel, aluminum levies
https://thehill.com/policy/finance/444581-canada-mexico-lift-tariffs-on-us-goods-after-trump-scraps-steel-aluminum
The "Gates" are just part of the continuous SMEAR campaign that has been very successful. Now they want to suggest that the President is unable to lead due to mental disorder and just before the election. It doesn't have to be true. It's the kind of colossal gossip their constituency enjoys and it does the trick. That's what the first part of Matts essay was about, how Biden was protected and everyone they don't like is left twisting in the wind.
Every single paper was part of the un named "official" said. That's how Russiagate was perpetuated. Hillary paid the spy, Steel, for dirt on Trump. That went no where. The papers harped and harped on the Trump tower meeting and believed every word of the "Dossier" right down to the, still repeated, "Golden Shower".
Flynn should be exonerated for having been crushed in the JudicialGate, carte blanch bias.
But Comey should be in jail.
Trump IS mentally unstable. Did you see the "debate?"
Soft response. I hope that's clear.
I have a pretty conservative circle of friends, and I have only heard of QAnon via liberal media.
I haven't lost any friends that I know of.
It seems to me it was the LEFT that pushed Russiagate, Quid Pro Quo gate, and Trump Virus gate.
It was the DNC backed by Hillary who couldn't bear to lose to Trump so had to invent interference by Putin (the most stable president in the world). The DNC are so stupid, they TWICE booted Sanders, the only person who could have beaten Trump and who could beat him now. The DNC would rather have Trump than Sanders. Why? Because Sanders actually cares about the citizens of this country. My God, can't have anyone like that. Biden is not a good choice.
The Democrats didn't boot Bernie out of stupidity. When a group of powerful, well connected people make a choice that seems obviously wrong and stupid to you, go back and reexamine your assumptions. Collectively they probably know more than you do, and then some. Maybe they care about things that you don't care about. Maybe they don't care about things that you do care about. Maybe they lie about the things they care about. Also, Bernie went willingly. He was never in it to win it. His job like all fake opposition was to pace and lead stragglers back to the herd.
"The Democrats didn't boot Bernie out of stupidity." No, they booted him out of greed; i.e., keeping the status quo for: big pharma and for-profit medical care (can't let the people have universal healthcare), the MIC, the bankers, the weapon manufactures (forever wars), Israel (can't let those pesky Palestinians have any civil rights), and generally power, money and control. Bernie didn't go "willingly." Obama dragged him into the White House and talked at him for three hours, finally, just wearing him down. (Bernie shouldn't have caved.) He was "in it to win it." I should "reexamine...assumptions?" I don't make assumptions. I ferret out facts, a steady job these days. Try reading more Matt Taibbi, Max Blumenthal (the Grayzone Project), Aaron Mate (Push Back), Mondoweiss, the electronic intifada, CounterPunch, Seymour Hersh, Stephen F. Cohen, Consortium News, Craig Murray, John Pilger...you know, real reporters, not stenographers such as, say, Rachel Maddow. Whatever you do, skip the MSM.
Can we please stop using the absurd term 'the left"? There is no and has never been a true left in America. What we have is moderate-right and batshit-crazy right, both corrupt.
I can't use moderate right to describe someone who is NOT right. How about:
Anti individualism?
Anti American Tradition
For Big Government
Anti Business.
Welfare state.
What's a good word for all that? I'll use it.
The world does not see the US Right opposing the US right. The Democrats are not the least bit right in any of their ideals. Only their representatives are right in their personal lives like Nance investing in Crowdstrike. Just look at the personal worth of members of Congress. That doesn't in any way represent their constituency. Nancy should be on welfare if she truly represents those who vote for her.
The ideals of the "Left" have not changed because people THINK that's what they are voting for. Everyone on the right knows exactly who they're voting for and why.
Left is supposed to be for Unions yet 5 states went right to work under Obama and he replaced US workers with foreign born lowering middle and lower income wages. Why are they for more visas an migrants? What is the political and economic reason. Most of all, how does it help laborers?
"Medicare for all"? That's a program paid in ADVANCE by workers. How do you allow people (who are not working and may never have paid into it) to take part in that program? Will Social Security (retirement) still be viable?
That's a bait and switch. Is that what progressive means - getting rid of the old stuff. Nancy wouldn't donate her retirement to subsidize 20,000,000 new citizens living in the shadows. but that's what she expects others to do.
And isn't that what communism is, making everyone equal? The "Anti American Traditionalists" think Trumpers are communists. What are they teaching in school? Individualism is just the opposite.
Masking their faces is perfect as they have finally reached Hurd Anonymity, and they are ready for the NEW NORM. Until Biden get's in, then all MSM COVID news will meticulously stop being reported because he healed everyone and all their money and headlines will be put into more investigations (Instead of infrastructure) and jailing Trump.
So what's the word?
The Hurd Party
The Commoners Party
The Justice Party
Perhaps they need to decide who they are. After all they voted for the people who chose Hillary over Bernie (who I campaigned for).
Long time reader, first time poster. I don't claim to be an expert on many things, especially public policy, but I've followed the relationship between free speech and technology for many years.
I'm wondering if this piece was provoked by some of the recent proposals to repeal (or at least heavily modify) section 230. Even if not, I'd like to say something on the topic, because it's closely related and people may be thinking about it. For those not familiar, section 230 of the Communications Decency Act says (more or less) that you can't sue a website for content posted by the user. Instead, you have to sue the user who posted it.
Right now, if post a comment here that says something like "Governor Bill Bribetaker takes bribes", Bill Bribetaker can't sue Matt for defamation. Matt might politely comply with a request to take my post down, but Bill Bribetaker can't sue Matt, Bill Bribetaker has to sue ME. If Bill Bribetaker tries to sue Matt, Matt can point to section 230 and ask Bill Bribetaker politely but firmly to leave. That's what section 230 does. It does that whether Matt chooses to moderate his comments section or not, even if that moderation is completely arbitrary and capricious.
Why does this matter for what we might colloquially call Big Tech? That's Facebook, Google, Twitter, Reddit, etc. Well, it means they have the legal power to be arbitrary and capricious in moderating their comments. Legally speaking, they could take down all pro-Trump posts while leaving anti-Trump posts up, or vice versa. There is entirely reasonable concern over this when a small handful of sites have so much power over national political discourse.
Both Trump and Biden have publicly stated their desire to repeal section 230. We may be screwed either way on this one. It's easy for politicians to score points by promising to Do Something™ about the unchecked power of Big Tech. It's understandable to want to go along with that. Fight the temptation. Don't allow politicians to smear their grubby little hands all over 230. What will happen is that the internet will turn into cable TV, where you can only access information that's been approved and published the media-priests. (For what it's worth, I don't count Matt in that category, and that's a compliment.)
Now as Matt has correctly identified, that kind of censorship is already unofficially in progress with Big Tech run sites. But at least other sites still EXIST. If for some reason you want to discuss the possibility that humble patriot and water filter salesman Alex Jones is right about the Illuminati lizard people, there are places you can go to do that. That may not hold. If the so-called solution to the current information monopoly turns out to be a 230 repeal, Big Tech will be all that's left. Smaller websites with user submitted content will vanish overnight, because they won't be able to afford the legal liability. And when I say user submitted content, I mean ANYTHING. Photos, comment sections, discussion boards, all of it. Gone. Big Tech will be damaged in the short term, but will survive through deep pockets and legal black magic, and all their competition will be de facto eliminated by law. Forever.
What do we do instead? I'm not sure. I don't think that (for example) conventional anti-trust laws will help here. Social networking sites may be a form of natural monopoly. Why does everyone use Facebook? Because everyone uses Facebook. If you want to communicate, you have to go where people are already communicating. Kill Facebook, and something else will consolidate in its place.
I don't have an answer, but it seems to me that the way to approach the problem is to recognize that for better or worse, major social networking sites are the new public square, or at least a major segment of it. The President (whether you like him or not) uses Twitter to communicate with citizens. Court have declared he can't block his critics on Twitter. Twitter is recognized by law (incompletely, but still) as being an official political channel.
So how do we want to treat the public square? Well... I think it means allowing crazies with sandwich boards shouting that the end is near. There's some legal precedent for this. Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins declared that a mall had to allow political speech on private property. Maybe we should start thinking of Twitter like that?
The other thing I would propose is to remove the biggest obstacle to competition. Believe it or not, the thing we need to do is not allow VISA and Mastercard to refuse to do business with an individual or coporate entity unless they have committed a crime. If ithat sounds out of left field, let me explain. There have been repeated attempts to set up alternative social networking sites focused on free speech. Some have had some modest success, others not to much. But the single biggest obstacle is that if someone complains to your payment processor and gets you removed from it, you're done. If you get blacklisted by VISA or Mastercard (and they share info), you cease to exist. Period. End of. And that's what happens to sites focused on controversial speech. This leads to further consolidation into Big Tech sites. Start your own payment processor, you say? You CAN'T "start your own" payment processor. It's not anything resembling a free market. The banking regulation costs MILLIONS to comply with. It CANNOT be done. The barriers to entry are unfathomable.
On the off chance anybody is still with me... here's my point. I share in Matt's frustration, but I disagree with the assessment that this is the worst of all possible worlds. As bad as things are now, people have no earthly idea how much worse they can get if we don't handle this with EXTREME care. The most popular solution to this being floated right now is to repeal section 230, and it's as wrong as anything could possibly be. If 230 gets repealed, 80% of the internet will vanish overnight, and the sites everyone was worried about will have permanent lock in protected by the full force of the law.
Kurt just now
Posting made up statistics stating with certainty about what will happen in the future is not a particularly compelling position. The sites already have “permanent” lock in. What comes after permanent? I stuck with you through the entire missive, and by the time you got to the end, it’s running on fumes. Anyone with a desire to make the world a better place will delete their FB account, not worry about what might happen to it.
I wouldn't be so sure that the current monopoly is permanent. I've seen a lot of sites come and go that were considered unassailable in their own day. People believed nothing could ever replace MySpace, then Facebook came along. I could go down a list of Yahoo, Geocities, etc.
But that becomes impossible if nobody can start a website because they're afraid of getting sued over a single user comment.
What?! I've been putting my GeoCities webzine link in my AIM away message for months now. No wonder it hasn't had any hits.
Many of those sites you speak of didn't have massive government backing like the big tech companies of today do. They weren't used as a tool by law enforcement, and Alphabet agencies like they are today. Those sites were in the early days of the Internet when your connection was measured in Kbps and you had awesome clanky sounds while you waited for your system to connect.
Today's systems are live and constantly on line and becoming ever more so as now your TV and even your toaster is wired into the world and feeding information about you and yours. Yes, today cannot be compared to yesterday.
Kurtjust now
You’re making the mistake of imagining what happened in the past is how it works in the future. Fukuyama imagined that history ended in the same manner. The original post by Taibbi and nearly all of the comments in here are an encyclopedia of non sequitur-ial imagining.
Well, let me ask you then. And I'm not asking rhetorically.
Suppose that anyone is allowed to sue a website for content posted by users. What do you think will happen? How would that change the internet?
And in your defense, yes, the 80% statistic is made up. The "vanish overnight" part isn't. I know at least one website on the extreme free speech side whose owner says that the day section 230 is repealed, he will shut down the website and vanish from the face of the earth due to the legal liability.
What do I think will happen? How would it change the internet? The answer to both questions is I honestly don’t care if social media platforms get sued out of existence. I live in China much of the year and go from ultimate tech censorship to ultimate open ended anything goes-ness. If it all went away something awful would happen, like folks would might become interested and involved in projects of their own creation, maybe plant a garden or talk to their neighbor, or meditate or race bicycles, or ANYTHING other than giving a shit about what happens on FB. And, thank you for your civil discourse. It’s refreshing. We both love Taibbi, or we wouldn’t be in here.
You didn't answer the whole question. Your point about social media is well taken, but would it bother you if substack had to shut down? Would that be a bad thing?
Lots of websites would shut down because they have to face the same legal framework that other companies face. Should we cry for them? I think not.
Facebook would not be one such company. They would be like google and every other large company. They would fight in court and pay when the lost and settle when they thought they needed to.
I would also like to include the NYT in the Vacuity Hall of Fame. They’re as complicit in the idiocy of Q-ness as FB, by continually pushing it into the faces of the blank minded looking for a distraction fix as if it’s some world sweeping movement. It’s not. And now Taibbi is writing about it, which is a disappointment. That Q is being “censored” on FB does not portend anything in particular, and making the jump from Q being banned to us being on the doorstep of totalitarian thought crushing restrictions is simply a bridge too far for me to cross.
Ever heard of a piltdown man? Yes.. the Germans used the Bolsheviks in the same way media is using the QAnon/Antifa/Proud Boys.
When your Fuhrer becomes chancellor, you'll be all set.
You are grossly underestimating the complexity of content moderation. Mr. Bob has shared some wise words and his concerns are valid. See https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2053951719897945 and https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190825/21540442853/protocols-not-platforms-technological-approach-to-free-speech.shtml
I was actually thinking about including some of Techdirt's "Content moderation is impossible at scale" content in the original post, but I figured it was already too long.
I don't endorse everything Techdirt says, but they're absolutely right about that one.
Agreed. I'm skeptical on his protocol argument but am learning more. I was going to link to Stanford's Center for Internet and Society but I think the site is down atm. Professor Keller writes a lot on this https://law.stanford.edu/publications/?primary_author=Daphne%20Keller&page=1
The protocols thing is... a mixed bag. We already have test cases in the form of things like e-mail and IRC. They work... -ish. (Actually, e-mail is terrible, but nevermind.)
But even those can fragment. I can't seem to find the story at the moment, but there was something a couple years back where a Mastodon (I think?) group refused to federate with another group due to perceived extremist views.
Whether that's a bug or a feature depends on the individual.
Yup.
Yeah, he is. If I have a point, it’s that it doesn’t matter. FB is testament to humans insatiable appetite for distraction. Censored, uncensored....doesn’t matter. In a world absent coherency, that anyone cares is the worrisome element.
And how, pray tell, is anyone supposed to determine what IS coherency without absolutely free speech?
Please, DO tell us all how China's totalitarian inhumanity is graceful again.
That's fucking nuts, and I'm not going to be delicate about that.
I certainly could be. Then again, I live much of the year in China and understand content moderation on levels the average Westerner does not, what it does and does not do. That Q is being “censored” has all the world changing impact of a small potato popping in the microwave. That anyone would give much thought to it reinforces all my worst misanthropic tendencies. Of course Mr. Bob’s concerns are valid. Everyone’s concerns are valid. My own concerns are that people care about FB in all the wrong ways. Everyone is entirely free to do whatever they want, but it’s not incumbent on any platform to provide the megaphone for lunatic fringe conspiracy theories grounded in fantasyland.
"... but it’s not incumbent on any platform to provide the megaphone for lunatic fringe conspiracy theories grounded in fantasyland."
Here's the thing. I understand why that's a common position, but I still disagree with it. When any entity is SO MUCH a part of public discourse that politicians using it can't legally block anyone, that's a part of the public square. And part of being the public square means allowing crazy people to use it sometimes. That's just the cost of doing business. We may not like it that Facebook or Twitter have become a significant political platforms. I don't. I hardly ever use either, especially for anything related to politics. But a huge number of people do. That's where we are, and we're going to have to figure out how to deal with it.
As far as China, I plead ignorance. I have a decent handle on the technical aspects of Chinese censorship, but the social and legal ones, not so much. I wouldn't know where to begin making a comparison.
....because what “happens” is a distraction. My thesis is that nothing is happening, and that’s the problem. That FB and Twitter are now the platform for world governance discourse is enervating, as it’s neither politics or discourse. It’s a distraction. I have a very good handle on censorship in the PRC. On the front end, it is a maddening and restrictive environment on more levels than I care to describe. Once one gets past this sort of surface issue, something else happens, and it’s surprisingly elegant and exposes a lot of what is best about humans. That does not make me a proponent of totalitarian governments, but it does make me understand that limitations can sometimes lead to good things. This is anathema to a too broad swath of Americans, and it is our loss. I never imagined I would write something like the preceding, but a little experience in other environments can change one’s perspective. That folks put so much emphasis on the vacuity of FB and Twitter is the problem, not all the other stuff that seems to be at the crux of this thread.
So... you're saying that government surveillance and censorship on a massive scale leading to people being jailed or simply disappearing for what they say online is a *good* thing? You'll have to explain that one to me.
I hear you - I agree that "illegal speech" should be moderated. However, "controversial speech" that may be harmful but not illegal gets tricky, and who is responsible for removing it is trickier still. I think the meta-concern here is exactly who draws the line on what constitutes "controversial speech"? Is it someone like me, an industry insider who builds the AI that does this? Is it the federal government? How do we ensure that "controversial speech" today isn't filtering the Galileo of tomorrow? I think FAANG companies are in a tough position. Would de-ranking conspiracies be sufficient in results or recommendations? Big tech already does that. What about users who deliberately search for this stuff given their confirmation biases? Should Big tech block that content too, even though they derank it? Ugh it's tough.
Yes, and who decides what speech is illegal? The church? Should we burn scientists as "witches"?
Good idea. Let's burn books while we're at it, Uncle Adolf.
If I have a point, which I admit to not really having, it’s that this stuff ceases to matter if one simply walks away and doesn’t engage in it. Delete your FB account. See what happens. Trust in our civil institutions a little bit; this requires dismissing conspiratorial thinking about trusting institutions. If you can’t, OK, go back to reading stuff on FB. Our civil institutions have both created and solved problems; we need to determine how to get more of the latter and less of the former. I propose this will not be done on FB or Twitter.
Trust voting, question protest. Republicans organized and lean in heavily on voting and they now control most State legislatures, the Senate, Executive, and Supreme Court. Democrats and progressives protest; they temporarily control a couple blocks of territory in Seattle and Portland, to little apparent effect other than pissing off everyone else in their cities. Protest is fine to get one’s frustrations vented and to show support. Voting gets control. Which do folks think they wanna support?
I see it largely as being part of the “unreal”, and a function of our severely deficient media industry. Reread (or read) McLuhan and Postman; they saw what was coming and described it perfectly 60 and 35 years ago respectively. Lapore addresses it in her recent “These Truths”. We are dealing with the same issues now as then, with vastly more complicated tech accelerating disintegration.
I'd suggest reading some John Taylor Gatto too. Mainstream media is trash, and the people who uncritically consume it are a deliberate product of our fine education system.
The VISA/credit problem is key. Many banks and financial institutions are taking steps to ban any use of their products-in a consumer or corporate financing sphere-by firearms companies, or firearm related purchases.
Doing away with 230 isn't a good solution but it is the best available solution.
And no, 80% of the internet will not vanish overnight. What will happen is sites will either have to invest in moderation or they will not allow UGC.
Overwrought claims about doom are just that.
There's a mountain of evidence suggesting that if social media were to disappear, the world would be vastly better off. So there's no doom or gloom in social media's demise. In fact, just the opposite. These outfits are using artificial intelligence to actually warp our minds and agitate people to a high degree because negative content draws the most eyeballs and best serves advertisers. In brief, making people rabidly nuts is profitable. And more than that, there can never, ever be a more profitable model for these platforms and they will continue until forever to do what they're doing now and accelerate the process if possible.
Sites like Facebook already invest massive amounts of money in moderation, both automated and not. Anything smaller can't AFFORD to spend that proportion of resources on moderation.
That's the point. Smaller sites will either fold or ban user content completely. What other choice will they have? Big Tech will be the last ones standing because they can throw money at the problem.
Sites like Facebook do not invest massive amounts in moderation, relative to the content published on their platforms. In fact, they invest almost nothing.
Content moderation, absent AI, is a variable cost.
Modify 230 so that monopolists that have the power to control the agenda don't enjoy it.
And you ignored a underlying incentive that's guaranteed to screw any social media project: by being funded by advertising they are necessarily in the mind control business.
They've created a race of robots that Davros would be proud of.
"Exterminate!"
"I obey!"
Your points deserve wider public exposure and more discussion. If what you say is true, we may be on the verge of a Gatekeeper Era that makes the old days of "freedom of the press belongs to the person who owns one" seem quaint.
What are your thoughts on treating Facebook and Twitter as public utilities? I've seen this floated in some circles; do you have some insight what that might look like?
The specific legal aspects are above my pay grade, but my instinct is that it's probably the wrong analogy. A utility is for something like electricity, or city water, or an ISP. In other words: Dumb pipes. Services that take a thing from point A to point B and (more or less) don't worry about the content. Any social media platform will have to do quite a bit more than that to be functional.
I've heard proposals to treat Facebook, etc as utilities, or common carriers, or media companies. But I personally think the correct way to view them is as private companies that are de facto a substantial portion of the public square. Now how does that work in practice? Well, in a lot of ways, I think we're in uncharted territory. But there is some precedent. In principle, it should be difficult to moderate political speech, no matter how off the wall, because that's what the public square is for. That's where I'd start.
How do you define large companies?
User count? Is that unique IPs? Registered users? Is there a way to filter bots?
Financials? I would guess Facebook can afford to borrow some Hollywood accountants to "prove" that their total assets are two bucks and a moldy hot dog.
Employees? Do contractors count? What about automated services performing similar work that give you effectively more manpower? As an example, Patreon, a major culprit in financial cancelling that holds an outsized amount of power in that area, has something like 300 employees. By headcount it's technically a medium enterprise!
Don't get me wrong, some kind of sliding scale based on company size is a reasonable thought. But I don't know how to make it stick. The devil is in the details.
"Public private partnership" is just a cute euphemism for fascism. The sooner we all wake up to that, the better.
Also, don't dump your "loved ones" over politics. Not unless you're afraid of politics causing them to literally hit you or call police on you. Otherwise stay in touch, your ideology is not worth it. Please.
Can't agree on that. More is required than the simple equivalent you've stated. NASA is functionally a public-private partnership. The NIH is a public-private partnership. So is the CDC, arguably.
Not all public-private partnerships are benign, of course. The dangers are usually less dramatic than full-scale economic Fascism, although a strong argument can be made that they're pernicious and corrupt. Consider the phenomenon of low-bid contracts in the realm or weapons procurement and the quartermastery of the armed services: the contract awarded to Halliburton to provide material support for the military occupation of Iraq was a no-bid contract, for example. Regulatory capture is another sketchy form of "public-private partnership": that can take various forms, from mandating credentials from an industry-controlled certification board in some professions to the reliance by the FDA on studies supplied by the drug manufacturers they're supposed to regulate. (Pharmaceutical manufacture is the one area where I oppose patent protections and would support a nationalized industry; synthetic drugs are are inherently generic chemicals, not consumer items. I'm fine with public contracts with private R&D firms, though, including lucrative outcome-based rewards for newly developed medicines of proven worth. I just don't support providing a profit-making business with decades of patent protection, just because one of their research teams invented a particular chemical compound costing only a pittance to make that they want to exploit as a cash cow with their patent monopoly. That isn't about ethical medical practice.)
Fascist economics typically endorses the goal of merging Big Business and the State so its power and interests are identical. What might be called the final phase of Regulatory Capture; a monopoly corporation that makes profits for its private owners and investors supported by the concentration of State power in the hands of an authoritarian crony leader with dictatorial executive powers. But the absence of a strong connection between the public sector and the private sector can lead to plutocratic imbalances almost as grotesque, such as those associated with private monopolies that emerge in the absence of antitrust regulation. There are valid reasons why trust-busting became a central political issue in the Teddy Roosevelt era, for instance. Horizontal monopolies are bad for independent business, and amount to something akin to an arbitrary regulatory state run for the sole benefit of the private owners.
Horizontal monopoly describes a situation that's very close to the control exercised by Amazon.com over e-commerce, for example: 72% of all online sales are now done through Amazon. And while the Federal government has taken no steps to break up Amazon's overwhelming dominance in mail-order sales, Amazon has managed to cut an unprecedented deal for preferential low parcel shipping rates with our Post Office. Which is an example of the sort of deal that's allowed them to gain such a competitive advantage over independent shippers that Amazon can accurately be said to constitute a horizontal monopoly. To get a more complete idea of that situation, read this article from the September 2020 issue of Harper's; lots of material on Facebook and Uber, as well. (Harper's has a paywall, but they've been known to provide free stories. A rare plug from yours truly: the magazine is well worth a subscription.) https://harpers.org/archive/2020/09/the-big-tech-extortion-racket/
the podcast may be more generally accessible https://harpers.org/2020/09/the-big-tech-extortion-racket/
Addressing the pharmaceutical issue specifically, the reason drug companies are awarded patent protection for new drugs -- or at least, the rational justification -- is that they don't just cook up a new chemical compound in a lab and ship it out; it has to go through extensive testing and clinical trials, at astronomical expense, paid for out of their own pockets. The patent allows them to recoup those expenses by solely profiting off their investment for a time.
It wasn't clear from your comment, but I take it from "nationalized industry" you mean the Federal government would take over the process, and costs, of drug trials? So the private R&D labs would come up with a new drug they *think* might work, then submit it to the FDA to manage the testing and approval process? I can only imagine that system resulting in slowing the process to a glacial pace (and it's not fast as it is), at massive taxpayer expense, with even greater vulnerability to regulatory capture and political influence over which drugs get the "royal treatment" and which get ignored.
We could have a discussion of ways to address the problems with the current system -- and I don't deny that drug companies can and do use their patents to gouge consumers while they can -- but government takeover of private industries is rarely the best solution. Natural monopolies (e.g. utilities like power and water) come to mind. That is about it.
"they don't just cook up a new chemical compound in a lab and ship it out; it has to go through extensive testing and clinical trials, at astronomical expense, paid for out of their own pockets."
I get that.
I think that the reward for inventing and developing medicines of proven value should go directly to the researchers and developers, not to the owners of drug manufacturing factories and venture capitalists. I think that the mechanism for reward should take a form other than patent protections on chemical compounds and their formulations.
I don't think the FDA should be in the position of relying on studies commissioned by private pharmaceutical companies to determine the safety and efficacy of new drugs. I don't think that drug manufacturers should use commission salespeople to soft-soap physicians into prescribing their product lines. I don't think there's any justification for marketing prescription medications directly to a consumer customer base, in magazines and especially not on television. I question their practice of spending enormous amounts of money on marketing and advertising- for products that arguably shouldn't require marketing at all; we aren't selling toothpaste or TVs here, the product is generic chemicals (and formulations that are typically so basic that they might as well be generic, like time-release dosages.)
https://www.pharmacychecker.com/askpc/pharma-marketing-research-development/#!
https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2019/7/do-biopharma-companies-really-spend-more-on-market
There's some controversy over the oft-repeated claim that the largest pharma companies spend more on advertising and marketing than they do on research and development. But even those who claim that's an overstatement admit that the companies don't spend very much less on advertising and marketing than they do on R&D. And my point is that the debate is a distraction anyway, because drug prescription should not be an affair of marketing. The agenda of medicine is to produce the best possible health outcome for all patients; the agenda of profit-making drug companies is to sell as many of their products as possible, for the maximum amount the market will bear. Those priorities are inimical.
I read a recent article by the widow of the patriarch of the Sackler family, claiming that he's being unfairly scapegoated for the opioid epidemic, when his actual innovation was the introduction of marketing techniques that applied to all of the products sold by his companies (a practice taken up in turn by the rest of the industry.) She's missing the point. The emphasis on pitching patented medications to doctors IS the problem. Oxycontin is only the most egregious example.
"So the private R&D labs would come up with a new drug they *think* might work, then submit it to the FDA to manage the testing and approval process?"
I don't see why that would have to be entirely the case; the role of the FDA could be confined to doing end-stage confirmation of tests already done by the research companies. As for the approval process, the FDA is supposed to be managing that already.
As for your concerns about "massive taxpayer expense", we're dealing with exorbitant expenses already, both on an individual basis (that's often widely disparate) and as a pooled expense administered through insurance company premiums and co-pays, with much of the cost related to the unique regulatory capture of prescription drugs by the pharmaceutical industry in this country.
I mean, sure, it's going to cost something if the public sector takes more of a role in the pharmaceutical industry. But I don't have a superstitious aversion to "Taxes", per se- like, compared to what? The bite from drug companies, for drugs that can often be manufactured for pennies a dose? A pharmaceutical industry that conditions doctors- and the medical schools where they learn their profession- with the message that the implicit baseline of modern medicine is to put their patients on as many medications as possible, and keep them on them in perpetuity?
This is issue is destined to loom even larger if it's the case that there are research breakthroughs related to youth extension, biological repair and rejuvenation, the reversal of degenerative disease, etc. If those advances are simply to be exploited as a cash cow with availability restricted to the wealthy- not for lack of supply or due to manufacturing expense, but on account of legal provisions that sequester their availability through regulations like patents- the consequences are liable to be grave, and terribly disruptive.
Ironically, I'm more of a fee-for-service, independent physician guy on a lot of health care issues. I've seen how much more insurance companies get billed by doctors, compared to the patients who simply pay for their own office visits. The same goes for lab tests, and the like. I'm of the mind that public insurance should be primarily concerned with catastrophic health expenses, paying for hospitalizations, and matters related to long-term care and home health care. But the control of drugs by unaccountable private interests primarily concerned with owner/investor/stockholder profit rather than patient interests or due reward for the actual inventors of their products has no place in modern medicine.
Money is a great incentive for invention. Perhaps that's why China can't invent anything. That and the inability to accept failure as It's difficult to develop something on the first try.
I'm fine with researchers being amply rewarded for their creations and innovations. I just don't think that reward should consist of patent-protected medicines. Especially when that proprietary profit goes to people who aren't the inventors, but merely the funders.
That said, I don't necessarily object to having some portion of the profit from successful research and development efforts to develop new medicines going to private funders, either. But, as I said, not through patents, or control over manufacture and distribution. I'd perfer to see a system of outcome-based rewards, because with some medicines it's difficult to determine their actual worth until an expanse of time has passed. Like years.
Chinese people have invented plenty of things over the expanse of human history, of course. And while I agree that the Communist system of education and the control of thought encouraged by a collectivist societal paradigm ends up stifling a lot of individual creative potential, I don't think that it discourages it entirely. The Chinese regime undeniably rely on stealing a lot of foreign patents in order to advance technologically, but I'd bet that there are some scientific and tech realms where their R&D efforts may be out in front of other nations, like advanced nuclear reactor technology and genetic engineering.
I found you.
O.K. This is my third attempt to reply. If this doesn't work, I give up.
All utilities such as water and electric power should be public. Always. Never private. [Look at Bechtel in Bolivia, for example. At least it LOST the water wars there, in a court of law. They even tried to charge people for rainwater the citizens caught and saved in barrels!] Schools, roads & bridges, libraries, infrastructure, hospitals should all be public and never belong to profit-making entities. Should people like Betsy DeVos be in charge of our children's education? Should schools be military-nationalistic-patriot-building endeavors to produce fodder for endless wars? Should there be profit in healthcare? No. Rob Roy
A portion of R&D is already paid for by the Taxpayers through IRS tax deduction weather we ever use the drug or not!
"72% of all online sales are now done through Amazon."
I apologize, that's an inaccurate statistical claim. (And an example of what can happen when I don't check my work.)
The information I was intending to convey, as quoted from the original reference source:
"...companies sell on Amazon because there are few other places to find customers online. According to data collected last year, 66% of all online shoppers start their searches on Amazon. Of those looking for a particular product, the figure is 74%. In short, when it comes to commerce in consumer goods, if you are not on Amazon, you are not really in the market..." https://harpers.org/archive/2020/09/the-big-tech-extortion-racket/
Obviously, that does not equate to my previous assertion, which implied that "72% of online sales" are completed through Amazon. But I'd say that gist of it is the same. It's reasonable to think that most of those who search for a particular product on Amazon use the platform to complete their sale. Especially given the fact that there are now over 112 million US members of Amazon Prime, which offers, among other benefits in return for the $119 annual fee (up from $99 just a couple of years ago), a shipping rate- free, for all items- that other platforms and independent sellers are unable to match. (I get the temptation to join. But I just can't bring myself to do it.)
The article goes on: "...sellers who come to depend on Amazon soon find that the company can manipulate their sales in seemingly infinite ways. That's because Amazon controls how information is presented to the potential buyer, down to the price of every good- including, of course, whether the information is presented at all...last year, the company's average cut of a given sale on its platform was more than 40%- roughly triple what it was only a few years before..."
Hey, you said, "...are now done through Amazon." Not that they were purchased through Amazon. I'm willing to call that good.
You actually don't have to guess at that number...there are numerous reports on it.
https://www.emarketer.com/content/amazon-remains-the-undisputed-no-1
Well below 70% but still quite high.
A little tip on harper's-- they have a policy of letting you read an article once every so so often then putting up a wall. You can get around the wall by browsing in incognito mode. But if you like the content please consider subscribing.
Yes. Like why has the CDC not reported on the number of people who wore masks and died anyway? It seems that would be an important number for analysis purposes.
Yeah, Mascot, nice job. Welcome contribution to the discussion.
I have a BA, and have found that level of formal education to be crucial to acquainting myself with scholarly discipline and essential for accruing a knowledge base sufficiently extensive to provide some semblance of accurate context on matters of history and politics.
But I refuse to give up the advantages of being a generalist and a self-directed independent researcher. I've observed how narrowing grad school can get, what with the typical demand for concentration on a specialized field of focus, as well as the requirement to please a tenured hierarchy of instructors. So I've assumed a different set of burdens, associated with the autodidactic path. This has its own set of drawbacks and possible pitfalls. But I don't regret the choice. And I still partake of the peerless resource of well-stocked university libraries with actual books on the shelves (also, interlibrary loan services? Definitely a thing.) There's more to self-education and research than surfing the Internet and doing keyword searches.
Speaking of keyword searches, what's up with so many Internet users evidently viewing it as an arcane skill beyond their abilities? (Except for shopping.) The decision to be spoonfed like a pampered princeling by relying on a news feed that stovepipes information through a Facebook algorithm, I can't imagine that. To me, it's like volunteering to be stupid. But even if someone does go that sad route, they could at least learn how to do keyword searches to check facts and trace sources on the stories they receive.
If a claim is too flattering, too horrible, too sensational, too [anything]- check it. Readers should be able to tell when news information is pressing their buttons, whichever button it might happen to be. That should serve as an alert to be skeptical, not a signal to swallow the info hook, line, and sinker. It can be very clarifying to confirm that someone is trying to yank your chain, and how they're trying to do it, and why they're trying to do it, and who they are. And at least as entertaining as the befuddling boo-yow from uncritically consuming disinfo-crack.
Well, what can I say...autodidacts have a way of going into lecture mode.
As a fellow autodidact I salute you!
Might as well note that I get a lot out of your board contributions, too. You sound like a member of the reality-based community. At least so far, ha ha...
I would argue that the United States has been fascist to one degree or another since the 1900s, but definitely since 1971. It just sped up dramatically during the last 20 years.
Jim Rogers, a right-wing professional investor, stated in passing that in the 19th century the USA did not even have the rule of law, and I guess not just in the "Wild West". Even the laws sometimes are "weird", e.g. "apex" mining rights, and hereditary peanut monopolies.
Two words: "Patriot Act."
You're both right. I've known since I was a teenager how easy it is for cops in the US to violate someone's 4th and 5th amendment rights and get away with it, how normalized such violations are provided they happen to an underclass group. I guess...you fight for a place in society you think is safe, and then you see govts expand who's in the underclass and what can be done to them. And then the media everywhere tells you "vote D or R", as if it isn't happening under both.
«I've known since I was a teenager how easy it is for cops in the US to violate someone's 4th and 5th amendment rights and get away with it, how normalized such violations are provided they happen to an underclass group.»
Here is a report by naive Governor Carter of Georgia:
http://www.floating-world.org/Law%20Day.htm
"Jimmy Carter's University of Georgia Law Day Address, May 4, 1974"
«I said I didn't know what a consent search warrant was. They said, "Well, that's when two policemen go to a house. One of them goes to the front door and knocks on it, and the other one runs around to the back door and yells 'come in'."»
OR even happening to everyone.
Not all corporatists are fascist, but all real fascists-Mussolini, Franco, Park Chung Hee—South Korean strongman in 60s/70s,etc-are definitely corporatists.
Great point about family and politics too.
Thank you Matt -- a complete mass media silence on Julian Assange or on silencing the truth about CIA-managed OPCW illustrates the complete censorship already in place.
Independent public TV, free of advertising income, could be one approach (although BBC attempt is failure)
PS: Re-reading your 2010 "Griftopia" -- what an amazing effort and accomplishment. It is as seminal and profound as, e.g., Max Blumenthal's "The management of Savagery".
Our freedoms are rapidly disappearing, including any talk about the CIA-DNC Russia-gate hoax and War party foreign policy that has now resulted in two new Cold wars (with Russia and with China)
In my opinion, the solution is pretty easy to imagine. Simply admit that social media companies are media companies and make them accountable as such. If they want to ban speech and the speaker can show harm, they can get taken to court.
If they want to leave speech alone, those harmed can also sue.
The root cause of this was effectively exempting these entities from the normal process for settling speech disputes.
The combination of that exemption and increasingly heavy handed intervention by political actors is extremely concerning.
So I have to start litigation against Facebook when they take down my post?
This doesn't even work with cases that are clear cut under law. People don't have the resources to open litigation against megacorps.
If it were clear that Facebook could lose such a suit, individuals would not have to pay. The tort lobby would spring into action. Class action lawsuits would flourish.
_most_ people, I should say. Clearly people like Bloomberg can.
The central fiction that is if a company pays people directly for their contribution, they are a media company with editorial responsibility and accountability, but any other arrangement makes them a "neutral platform." It is an utterly absurd argument, which is why the tech industry bends over backwards never to have to make it in public.
Someone like Matt writes (or used to, anyway) content for publishers who pay him for said content, which they place next to advertisements; they take money from advertisers and give it to Matt. Someone literally calling themselves a creator makes a video and posts it to YouTube, which places it next to advertisements; Google takes money from advertisers and gives it to the creator. Yet, somehow a publisher has editorial responsibility, can be sued for libel, etc., while YouTube is just a "neutral platform for user-generated content", which absolves it of any and all accountability or responsibility.
What is truly insane, though, is that we keep asking the owners of these platforms their opinions about how to treat them and swallow their bullshit narrative that it is a very complex problem that only they can solve and the most important consideration is their ability to continue to make obscene amounts of money, so we should just throw some more AI at the problem. Oh, and they are so very sorry about accidentally imploding a few democracies --- move fast and break things, right!
The companies behind these platforms are draining academia of talent in an arms race to create the most profitable AI by monitizing human misery. They use people who are poor of money, but rich of time to train algorithms that they then unleash on people who are poor of time, but rich of money. We are already at the point that these companies cannot even tell you what content the AI's are serving, let alone why they choose any particular set of content --- they can only show you how much money the AI's are making by serving it. And they use that money to choke off competition and further consoludate every manner of arranging pixels on a screen to drive user engagment.
Until we finally see social media companies as media companies that make money by exploiting loopholes in laws that were written before the Internet, we are doomed to wage tribal warfare with each other over whose crazies should be censored.
We’ve lost the timber of lawmaker who would pursue anti-trust measures, and the power just keeps congealing. When people fear speaking up or disagreeing, we’re already in an oppressive environment.
The robotic sameness coming out of news and editorial rooms is suffocating speech. Over three years ago I was baptized into the pathology of intersectionality during a failed shakedown – diktats that we ignored -- of our organization. At the same time, I noticed the appearance of the same article in six or seven different publications over the span of a week’s time. The pieces blamed/shamed white women for how their horribly white husbands voted, and charged them to change their husbands’ votes. It wasn’t a coincidence. It seemed the type of thing in cheesy 50s anti-commie shorts on TCM, not something we ever see here. I didn’t vote for Trump –also something we’d never see here --– (when refusing to conform one is accused of being “far right” or a Trumper), but I knew propaganda when I saw it.
«(SJWs, cultural marxists/neomarxists, the PC-left, etc.)»
That as a rule is not the "left", it is the liberist/neoliberal right, the progressive "whigs" opposed to the conservative "tories".
«the actual intellectual fraud of SJWs such as "white privilege" or "implicit bias" theory.»
Unfortunately "white privilege" and "implicit bias" (and even more so "disparate impact") are very real. The intellectual fraud is how they are exaggerated and distorted into diversions from class and income related privileges and biases, of which they are largely consequences. The biggest problem in the USA (and other countries) is not how some minorities suffer poverty and deprivation, but how many more "majority" people suffer the same, as if it they deserved it for being "bigots".
As a computer scientist living in Silicon Valley my whole life I can tell you with not an ounce of doubt that these big tech companies are Out Of Control. They must be brought to heel. They are not platforms, they are content delivery systems and must be treated as such. They need to be broken up or taxed to the point on non-existence.
The main problem is that their AI algorithms have taken over and are now promoting anything divisive in terms of the news you get. There is no promotion of what is good for society, just the AI algorithms promoting division and hate.
Finally, they are gobbling up all of the tech startups and this has massively hurt productivity in silicon valley.
Fortunately if the government doesn't start controlling these beasts, we know that trees don't grow forever. Eventually they will kill themselves, but there could be a lot of pain on the way to that death.
Facebook is a horror. It's now censoring any mention of "Julian Assange" and "Palestine" and "BDS." Mark Zuckerberg is a boot-licker of Israel and his top censor decider is a Zionist as well. As you say, AI algorithms have taken over and not only spread hate and division but also prevent news from going forward. It's as bad as the mainstream press (NYT, WaPo, MSNBC, Fox, all broadcast stations, etc.) not speaking/standing up for Julian Assange, Palestinians, and BDS.
Ever think how much better off the world would be without the United States and Israel?
AI doesn't stand for Artificial Intelligence. It stands for Artificial Input. Input by Artifice.
Until yesterday I thought Google blacklisting was a myth or overblown, but then I saw a post from bookwormroon.com, a very small conservative website, complaining that she had been blacklisted by Google. She was wanting to write about Pope Francis' latest silly pronunciation about Covid and Capitalism. Wanting to review her earlier posts on the subject she googled her own site and found no results. I've tried it too. Google "bookwormroom Francis marxist" and then do the same on any other search engine. You'll find lots of results anywhere but Google, which returns "It looks like there aren't any great matches for your search."
I deleted Google on every device I have. The blacklisting is real, even when it comes to tiny sites that don't follow the narrative.
In addition to not filtering things unduly, Duck Duck Go has the added benefit of not leaving a tracing for the people who one day decide you are troublesome and use your search history to police you. Or, for that matter, to shovel content "catered to you" at you, which basically means that if you eat bangers and mash a couple of times then they offer you English food forever, which is exactly why content consumption narrows into the rabbit hole and tribes form.
I just googled "bookwormroom" and got multiple hits including the website, twitter, facebook, blogspot, and podcast. I'm not seeing the blacklisting at all...
You're bringing up very real, very important free speech issues, but you've picked a miserable occasion to do it.
The core of the QAnon movement is the desire to see the enemies of Donald Trump arrested, taken to Gitmo, tried by the military, and then executed. This is the central, founding belief of the movement. Yes, it's dressed up in a lot of ridiculous garbage about Luciferian pedovores, JFK Jr faking his death, and marines rescuing mole children from under Central Park, but sitting at its core is a call to violence. It losing a platform to call for violence right before a potentially contested is a net positive, despite the very serious problems with how speech is being regulated on social media platforms.
I believe that a sitting president, giving his blessing to his potential successor president in her campaign to use Russian disinformation to paint her opponent as a “Russian Stooge”, while also authorizing the CIA and FBI to assist her, is sufficient for arrest, trial, and execution for treason.
The abuses of power undertaken by the Obama administration towards the incoming Trump administration are so beyond the bounds of our legal system that unless they are punished severely it is the end of our country.
Unfortunately, not only will the crimes of the Obama Admin likely not be punished, I'm afraid they won't even be acknowledged/remembered. So, please keep doing that for us.
Your comment might sound extreme to some but it is actually a concise and accurate history of the odious hoax known as Russiagate. Have you seen the late Stephen F. Cohen's book on this, "War With Russia"? He called out the coup as it was happening.
The sad part is that nobody ever thought an administration could be more corrupt than the Cheney administration. Than the Chicago crew came in and took over the White House, and then we got what we all deserved. The current administration, and they are just following the trajectory precedent set forth by what came before.
If Biden wins, and I still think he does, you just wait. It's going to get downright amazing how bad it gets. The Political and corporate class has it's own rules, and like George Carlin said. We don't get to play by them.
If Biden wins the election, do you really think that any of Trump's crimes will be investigated?
Yes, all of the real ones, and at least a few imaginary ones, like those of Gen. Flynn.
There is one problem with this. Trump is not part of that insider club. I agree with your overall premise, I do think we could finally see a difference though, and they will do so to send a message to any other corporate class types that try to cross the line.
The Awoken ones won't stand for defiance of their chant "no Justice, no Peace".
If a Biden Admin. won't "settle accounts" (as Hitler would say) with the Deplorables, the Awoken ones will take matters into their own hands;
unless the Awoken ones are willing to trust (?), that the Deep State will arrange for ad hoc "justice", of the sort inflicted upon JFK & Oswald.
Barring such trust, a Biden Admin. may have to choose, between that ad hoc route, vs. the route Robespierre chose vs. the Hebertists.
One way or the other, I expect a bloodbath (at *least* in the metaphorical sense).
So, OK, there *may* not be Official Investigations, any more than their were of the Kulaks in Stalin's day.
But, one way or the other, the Deplorables, or at very least their top leaders, will (again, as Hitler would say) "be dealt with radically".
"the route Robespierre chose vs. the Hebertists", or the
route Hitler chose vs. Röhm etc. in 1934.
I suspect, that it'll be easier for Hate Inc. to gin up fanaticism, than for them to control it.
+1 for the Carlin reference
Am not sure if you are agreeing or disagreeing with aNanyMous. Would you clarify?
Can you quote some of these "calls for violence?"
Do you support all of those who "call for violence" being deplatformed? If not, why not?
I don't support them. They are nuts. But I do support free speech and you should as well.
The ADL, exactly like the SPLC, has long ago turned left while shouting their neutrality...
And there are “legitimate sources saying Trump is a complete anti-Semite, a racist, a thief, etc., etc.
Do a google search isn’t really an answer.
And the second part of my question? Because there are certainly a lot of people and organizations who have threatened violence on social media platforms.
The assurances of an insulting bully don't mean much.
Keep stalking...
Not to belittle Matt's concerns...I didn't support the Infowars banning & I don't support the banning of QAnon...but I have to wonder about who actually uses Fakebook these days? I have 4 kids, ages 16-22, and none of them have ever used Fakebook. They actually laugh when I ask them about it saying, "that's for moms & dads not us."
While my wife & I have never Fakebook-ed, we eventually had to join for our business. Thankfully my wife handles that bit of horror although she does have a "never post" rule that she abides by quite rigorously. My kids have actually thanked us on a number of occasions for not being the narcissist parents who feel compelled to place their children's entire lives on the internet to gain some vague emotional jolt from a "like."
Honestly, the little that I've seen of Fakebook it looks more like a meme dumping ground than anything else. Or, more appropriately, a virtual RV where old people affix their meme bumperstickers because their opinions are best expressed in mass produced one-liners that are only vaguely amusing if you have no sense of humor.
I may be wrong, but it appears that all of this censorship is grounded in the belief that ideas are infectious, like viruses. Now, if you take that as true (I don't), you can extend the analogy to ask what is one's best defense against a virus. Obviously a strong immune system would be the answer. In my opinion, the mental equivalent of a strong immune system would be strong critical thinking skills.
Now, if politicians were really serious about "infectious falsehoods," they'd be pushing for critical thinking skills to be taught from an early age.
Of course they're not doing that. And it's easy to see why. So much of America sits on a veritable ocean of its own mass produced bullshit. Most of its cornerstone institutions, politics, religion, big business, couldn't survive without a constant stream of utter crap spewing from every one of their orifices.
This drive for censorship doesn't appear, at least to me, as a battle between what's true and what's false, as much as a battle for control of the bullshit stream.
Saying that the world is controlled by elite pedophiles doesn't appear much different than Obama saying that he knows that, "Kamala & Joe care about each & every American."
And, actually, given the trials & tribulations of Epstein and his merry band of perverts, there's probably a lot more circumstantial evidence to support the elite pedophile train of thought than there's proof that any politician cares about anyone other than themselves.
"I have to wonder about who actually uses Fakebook these days?"
Around 2 billion people, if the page account tabulation is to be believed.
Ever since it was first revealed that Facebook was indiscriminately mining personal data and recording it permanently without regard for personal privacy (at the outset, exposing vast amounts of personal information to a general audience, until the outcry persuaded them to add some privacy safeguards), my question about Facebook use has always been "what for"?
OK. I'll take your word for it. Not a Fakebook expert. Don't use it. Don't care to. As far as the data mining goes, I think it's obvious most people who use it don't really give a tinker's toot about being mined. I think it's fairly obvious that there are far more narcissists on the planet than anyone could have predicted in the pre-internet days. I think folk are so desperate to have someone stare at their banality that they know, deep inside, that if no one else will, they will always have the government.
Then again maybe folk don't think about it at all. Maybe their social media addiction is so deep they just dismiss the downside, like generations of smokers didn't think about that eventual lung cancer as they were coffin nailing themselves into an early grave.
While I doubt most young folk bother with Fakebook, they have their own issues involving smartphone addiction.
Anytime I find myself working with a youngster, the first thing they do when they walk in the door is whip out the smartphone & pop in those earbuds. My employer used to have strict guidelines about phone use. Those quickly went out the window when staff shortages surpassed 100 open positions. They couldn't discipline staff & risk them walking when they had no one to take their place.
Speaking of data mining, wasn't there a program where the NSA remotely took a screen grab from everyone's computer camera thinking that they'd stumble on someone plotting a terrorist attack? What they actually learned was that Americans
like to record themselves fucking using that camera. Now there's a shocking revelation.
Another reason I support your work.
You care about the truth, and principles, and what the abandonment of both by soi disant liberals leaves us circa 2020.
Splitting the country into 50 smaller independent states is the only peaceful solution that I can conceive of.
All other scenarios lead to mass violence and the destruction of what made America great to begin with. California and Alabama have little in common with Pennsylvania or Idaho. All 50 states have robust government systems fully capable of handling the functions currently usurped by the federal government. (I’m a tenth amendment guy😉)
Retain portions of the judiciary to settle purely Interstate problems, and a civilian military leadership that protects us from any domestic invasion. Civilian military leaders would be randomly selected from groups of people who were able to gather 100 letters of recommendation from friends, family, coworkers, etc. attesting to their character. Four year terms, with 25 new members each year. They would be able to use force against another nation only if a super majority agreed.
Alternatively, why not separate the bulk of the urban Northeast, from most of the rest of the U.S., with many states split (mostly rural from urban).
I could see a wall, running largely along the Blue Ridge range, eventually getting to the Hudson, then N. along it to Lake Champlain.
A similar wall could separate the West Coast, running, say somewhere in the Rockies, down to along the Rio Grande, and to the Gulf.
Remember the breakup of the Soviet Union? How well that went? Ask the Armenian community if you need a reminder. sorry but as bad as the US military industrial complex is, breaking the country up will be worse.
If the only issue were the US military industrial complex, I'd lean toward agreeing with you.
Alas, there are other factors, e.g. Hate Inc.
Unless these two factions are separated, the bloodbath will dwarf what happened to the Armenians.
"antifa and the proud boys - come on! They make up a *tiny* fraction of the population".
Yeah, but each are at least tacitly likely backed by huge portions of the public, and (many charge), are effectively the informal Military Arms of the major parties.
BTW, civil wars/ revolutions are often started, not by majorities, but by determined minorities.
And, each are at least tacitly likely backed by huge portions of the public, to the extent that any effort, to calmly critique any issues pushed by such tiny fractions, almost always leads, in due course, to a torrent of abuse from such backers.
This:
"With this new, non-transparent, private star-chamber type system, what content we do and do not see is now dependent upon upper-class intellectual fashions, and the whims of politicians, media employees, and executives at tech firms."
Reminds me of this, written by Orwell in 1945:
"Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news – things which on their own merits would get the big headlines – being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ʻit wouldn't doʼ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ʻnot doneʼ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ʻnot doneʼ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals."
Thanks for that great quote, Plan 17. Gonna pass it on. What's the source on that?
It's from an unpublished (with the book) preface to Animal Farm, apparently found in George's notes in the 70s.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/orwell/1945/preface.htm
Thank you! Gonna keep that one.
"just as in mid-Victorian times it was ʻnot doneʼ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady." Wait, what?
The English are, and have always been, deeply weird.
Oh yeah. I tease the English, but we're all pretty weird fancy monkeys.
One additional element of this I'd be interested to hear your take on, is the fact that QAnon would hardly exist were it not for these platforms.
As much as the internet has complicated issues around speech, it has equally elevated groups (and the dark side of our collective psyche) that previously, would never have received the amplification.
So, I agree, we need a new approach. And it will require a supple and nuanced approach -- how Facebook deals with governments will need to be different than how they deal with militia groups deciding to get together and fuck shit up in downtown Portland.
Unfortunately, discretion tempered by regulation may be our only way forward.
Either way, I just wonder if, considering insanity such as QAnon owes its birth to these platforms, maybe it's okay that they see their death there too. Or at least a partial death.
I'm sure not sorry to see them take the hit.
This is a smart point. Finding a school shooters' manifesto or the Turner Diaries or whatever other similar unsavory, hateful shit used to be difficult. Remember hearing a quote from a former KKK guy, one of those guys that's atoning by doing school assemblies and preaching against hate groups, talk about how easy it is for kids to get their hands on this stuff now. It's a legitimate problem–not just on Facebook but the internet writ large.
The problem is: I can't see how we solve it without getting into some genuinely scary territory. It's an incredibly difficult issue where every solution leaves me wanting. Yet to hear one that's satisfying.
@sasinsea...not scary. We live in an environment that has handed the microphone to everyone at once, there are no apparent social stigmas attached to spouting violent nonsense, and the loudest voices drown out everything. What to do?
Here’s a solution....delete your FB account. I deleted mine after the 2016 election, and it’s changed my life for the better in every way. I missed it for approximately 11 minutes.
Ah, Kurt. Mine's been gone for a decade now. Came to realize that outside of the some occasional great discussion and jokes during a basketball game, social media was a net negative on my psyche. I'm sure the pandemic is teaching that to a lot of people---you don't need to be constantly plugged into a stream of dubious information and whining.
Yeah. Everyone walking away from the noise does not empower the loons; it lets the air out of their tires. If suddenly the loons are control FB, what’s the loss to society? I propose it is all gain. FB goes away, or at minimum, is marginalized. Glad to hear someone else out there has pulled the plug.
Yes, all true, and thank you for a thoughtful response. I was never promoting the Chinese model, contrary to the fevered responses of others. I was only pointing out that experiencing another method made me think about things from an entirely opposite perspective. Limitations are not necessarily a bad thing.
.....and time.... There’s always time, just not enough of it. Living in a civilization...and China should be thought of as a civilization and not a culture....that thinks of time in thousands of years, one starts to change their perceptions of time. Your question of “do we have time?”, is the astute one.
Yes, Paul, but who gets to decide what constitutes "insanity" on the internet--you?
When it comes to QAnon, I'm happy to step up, if that's what my fellow citizens so decree!
But in all seriousness, you're right to ask. It's a major conundrum with no clear answers.
As I wrote, all I have at this point is "discretion tempered by regulation". Private interests tempered by public sentiment and corporate citizenship (which is just a PR exercise, but whatever), balanced out by government oversight.
It ain't clean, but we gotta work with what we have. The size and reach of the platform is also crucial here. There will always be some 8chan message board somewhere for an insanity circle jerk.
But as long as whatever version of it we go with allows us to identify cults of disinformation with harmful real-world outcomes, and make their ability to function and disseminate more difficult, then all aboard!
(as Taibbi wrote - free speech is already tempered in tons of ways, so I'll take the lesser of two evils please)
QAnon is more reputable than CNN, so the rubicon is already crossed.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. It certainly is, as you say, " major conundrum." I don't know what the answer is, but I do get nervous when people start using the term "insanity." Recall that Stalin's opponents were often deemed "insane."
You're right on that. There's definitely more constructive and specific language I could have chosen.
I take your point, but I do not think society will ever really adjust to the biggest mass communications development since the printing press unless we allow hard lessons to be learned about the power that it brings, without relying on the (virtually monopolistic) controllers of the expressive medium to decide what's fit to express. It took about 500 years from the advent of Gutenberg's press in the 1450s for the value of free speech to become widely accepted all over the globe, yet throughout that time, people with access to the technology of mass communication could and did publish things that would inevitably run afoul of the censors or foster "dangerous" movements.
In the present circumstance, the people who control the means of communication - the figurative printing press - are also acting as the censors, and unlike in the past, they control virtually all of the presses at the same time. That is one hell of a dangerous power to vest in any person or entity, much less one with modest accountability to the public (outside from their shareholders).
Well said. I don't know what the answer is.
Would outrageous conspiracy theories exist without the current platforms? I think they would still exist, maybe not as easily accessible. The thing is, the media constantly lies to promote certain narratives, and it seems to be getting worse, and this is very, very obvious to anyone who is a critical thinker. How do we know what's true at this point? I can see how some people would spin out and latch onto outrageous theories in this climate.
There’s a recurring question of “who gets to decide what constitutes insanity?”. For folks that understand that facts are immutable information supported by empirical evidence, or that scientific study reveals truth, it seems relatively simple to decide what constitutes insanity.
But what if someone chooses to "deplatform" you?
Correct, not complicated. The NYT is also complicit in pushing these mopes into our faces at every opportunity to get clicks. Matt’s recent “Hate, Inc.”, breaks this down beautifully, and is one of the reasons I’m paying to hear more of what he has to say.