Most Trump voters aren't "radicalized", Matt, nor are we in danger of becoming so. You may have noticed that it wasn't Trump voters who raged through the streets of our cities this summer, burning, looting and killing. We ARE mighty pissed off, though. Who wouldn't be, with the media, Big Tech, the entire Democrat party and half the GOP working together to drag Biden over the finish line. The YouTube fiasco is merely the icing on a very rotten cake. Fuck Google, Facebook and Twitter, their woke-but-morally-bankrupt CEOs, and their obvious progressive biases. I don't know what the answer is, but an old-fashioned pillory might not be a bad place to start.
I consider myself a cynic of the highest order but not in my darkest dreams did I think that tech companies would intentionally transform themselves into biased political actors intent on openly censoring information that does not comport with San Francisco Bay Area dogma (and I have a pretty decent handle on this dogma having lived here since 1985).
How could anyone of whatever political stripe think what YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are doing is appropriate? I'm at a complete loss.
The scariest bit to me is the preemptive inoculation of the entire population against the idea that domestic dissent could exist. If every form of dissent and criticism is automatically classified as of-foreign-origin, then domestic critics cease to be a recognizable category of people. We’re just erased, along with our views. Zeroed out.
This is a sturdy piece, it’s what we once stood for. Some don’t mind the foot on the neck, don’t see the tearing of the compact, or don’t care. They think selective news, blocking, and buried stories are temporary and necessary, limited to Trump. Who are the anonymous censors deciding what millions of Americans can see and hear? One needn’t be a Trumpster – I am not- to find the ponderous Amanpour’s smugness grating – and unforgivably dense.
I'm pretty far from being "radicalized." So YouTube is explicitly trending into a propaganda organ. Since they’ve made that explicit, I’ll be trending away from them and toward one of the alternatives. At an individual level, I think they can do whatever they like. So can I.
As for the business of regulating big tech platforms, the principles have been in place for a long time. Antitrust legislation has been around for half our history. This medium for interactive transmission of information by private parties and privately-owned businesses is a jumped-up next step from broadcast frequencies. The government has asserted public-good regulatory authority over those for at least 93 years.
It's not that nobody knows how to do it. It's not that it's magically so revolutionary and unapproachable because it's happening on a GIZMO instead of a television set. It's that we lack political will to move ahead at this point. Since we have people seriously asserting that half of their fellow Americans are a dangerous sub-citizen element in need of re-education and firm control, maybe a lack of political will to develop new broad-based government regulatory schemes is understandable. Maybe we have bigger fish to fry at the moment.
Good on you for publicly criticizing these boneheads, Taibbi.
Funny how "disinformation" seems to be anything that is even in the slightest way subversive to approved political orthodoxly. Think American imperialism is bad? Disinformation! People are suffering because of government policies? Disinformation!
Also this phrase "domestic anti-democracy disinformation". We invaded Iraq and Afghanistan in order to "Spread Democracy™" and that they are now using language like that targeted at American citizens should be fucking terrifying to everyone.
Matt Taibbi keeps hitting every piece out of the park. I think he's juicing like Barry Bonds did! I know Silicon Valley will be happy to allow that scurrilous accusation.
The MSM and Silicon Valley are acting just like the mullahs in Iran, only allowing the masses to read and see what they deem "truth." Wouldn't it be ironic if we US citizens and Iranian citizens have a revolt at the same time.
I notice Russia mentioned frequently but China wasn’t. One of the charter plays in the Democrat playbook is accuse your opponent of what you are guilty of. The racist label is a good example.
Russia is not one of the top 10 world economies, China is number two. While Obama was prez I was employed by LMT and that portion of the Military Industrial Complex (MIC), freaked out when, while BO was visiting Asia, China rolled out their stolen, from MIC/LMT, version of the F22.
Only a fool (think the Bush family) thinks China is our pal They control much more of the US than the deep state is willing to admit. Money, also known as power, talks in DC.
Some friends and I have come up with a great way to become massively wealthy, we are opening a nation-wide chain of schools to teach Mandarin. You better register soon, beat the rusha... [sic]
Excellent Matt. You are punching in the right direction and with sufficient force. It will take some time and effort, but the public needs- desperately needs- to see the MSM for the cancer they are. That certainly includes the social media and youtube guys. Their efforts are well supported, coordinated and funded to program us.
It is also censorship to fail to differentiate between reasonable and unreasonable beliefs, stating "no evidence" , etc. for any idea about fraud.
Unreasonable: Foreign powers (Venezuela, etc.) were hacking the election. While it is a great mystery that tales of a voting machine ceased in Germany appear true, nothing came of it. A promise of evidence in a lawsuit turned out to be "The machines are proven to have the potential to be hacked, but are programmed such that no hacking can be traced even if it took place". Because something could have happened does not prove it did.
Reasonable: There are videos of thousands of ballots hidden under a table with a long tablecloth and only brought out and counted when all observers were told to leave in Fulton County. It is proven observers were told to leave. I'm still looking into proof that the count from those ballots was almost all Biden (have not seen it yet) but why tell everyone to leave, sit and talk for half an hour until you can be sure they are gone, then start counting hidden ballots?
Lots of other things are reasonable as well. However, it would take months to prove whether or not fraud was sufficient to influence the election. *****It is an open question as to whether the fraud was sufficient to influence the election, one we will probably never answer*****
Cries by lawyers of "throw out all votes in the state because it was unconstitutional to drop the signature verification process" simply won't work. But since there were, for example 17 time as many mail in ballots disallowed for signature problems in Georgia's election before 2020 as in the 2020 election, it appears not verifying signatures likely had an effect on Biden's approximately 12,000 winning margin- Mail -in ballots were heavily democratic - It was Stacy Abrams group that got Georgia to agree to not verify signatures. But there is no remedy - ballots have long been separated from their signatures.
Near-all Trump supporters ***will accept*** that though there was widespread fraud, we can't prove it changed the election result in court, or certainly can't prove it in the time allowed. Republicans are "rule of law" people. They know the law states that the courts have final say on this, and the courts have spoken.
The next battle is to do what Democrats asked all along until Nov 3 - combat election fraud by doing things such as getting rid of the Dominion machines that all experts can can be hacked. Also (Democrats don't want this but they are wrong) send mail-in ballots only after a voter request to receive one - You send a form to every voter on the list and they send it back with a signed request. That is what we did in Florida and it worked well.
"As of September 24th,1964, the Warren Commission determined that President Kennedy was killed by an unassisted weirdo with a bolt action rifle. The accuracy of assassination investigations is guaranteed by many safeguards. No discussion of conspiracy will be permitted. Click SHOW ME MORE to be directed to trustworthy information."
another crucial piece Matt, thanks.....beautifully fleshed out by detailed examples drawn from the past several years, particularly the examples drawn around the 2016 election...so ironic that people on the left are now complaining about the nearly exact thing they did when Trump was elected...any attempt to block or adjudicate the free flow of information and opinion is bad, no matter who is doing the adjudicating or blocking...used to be conservatives were the ones try to block information/opinion...now it is more so people on the left, which is disheartening. How to fight this?
This is the finest article Taibbi has written since I started subscribing. I agree that the election wasn’t rigged, but Silicon Valley putting it’s thumb on the scale of justice post hoc is a recipe for utter disaster. Biden is mentally unprepared for the tsunami his idiotic puppet masters are going to unleash through actions such as those described in the article. Hold n, it’s going to a be a wild ride.
Most Trump voters aren't "radicalized", Matt, nor are we in danger of becoming so. You may have noticed that it wasn't Trump voters who raged through the streets of our cities this summer, burning, looting and killing. We ARE mighty pissed off, though. Who wouldn't be, with the media, Big Tech, the entire Democrat party and half the GOP working together to drag Biden over the finish line. The YouTube fiasco is merely the icing on a very rotten cake. Fuck Google, Facebook and Twitter, their woke-but-morally-bankrupt CEOs, and their obvious progressive biases. I don't know what the answer is, but an old-fashioned pillory might not be a bad place to start.
I consider myself a cynic of the highest order but not in my darkest dreams did I think that tech companies would intentionally transform themselves into biased political actors intent on openly censoring information that does not comport with San Francisco Bay Area dogma (and I have a pretty decent handle on this dogma having lived here since 1985).
How could anyone of whatever political stripe think what YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are doing is appropriate? I'm at a complete loss.
The scariest bit to me is the preemptive inoculation of the entire population against the idea that domestic dissent could exist. If every form of dissent and criticism is automatically classified as of-foreign-origin, then domestic critics cease to be a recognizable category of people. We’re just erased, along with our views. Zeroed out.
This is a sturdy piece, it’s what we once stood for. Some don’t mind the foot on the neck, don’t see the tearing of the compact, or don’t care. They think selective news, blocking, and buried stories are temporary and necessary, limited to Trump. Who are the anonymous censors deciding what millions of Americans can see and hear? One needn’t be a Trumpster – I am not- to find the ponderous Amanpour’s smugness grating – and unforgivably dense.
I'm pretty far from being "radicalized." So YouTube is explicitly trending into a propaganda organ. Since they’ve made that explicit, I’ll be trending away from them and toward one of the alternatives. At an individual level, I think they can do whatever they like. So can I.
As for the business of regulating big tech platforms, the principles have been in place for a long time. Antitrust legislation has been around for half our history. This medium for interactive transmission of information by private parties and privately-owned businesses is a jumped-up next step from broadcast frequencies. The government has asserted public-good regulatory authority over those for at least 93 years.
It's not that nobody knows how to do it. It's not that it's magically so revolutionary and unapproachable because it's happening on a GIZMO instead of a television set. It's that we lack political will to move ahead at this point. Since we have people seriously asserting that half of their fellow Americans are a dangerous sub-citizen element in need of re-education and firm control, maybe a lack of political will to develop new broad-based government regulatory schemes is understandable. Maybe we have bigger fish to fry at the moment.
Good on you for publicly criticizing these boneheads, Taibbi.
What if 74 million Americans switched from Google Chrome to Brave browser...by Monday. Would Google notice?? RT to make it happen
Funny how "disinformation" seems to be anything that is even in the slightest way subversive to approved political orthodoxly. Think American imperialism is bad? Disinformation! People are suffering because of government policies? Disinformation!
Also this phrase "domestic anti-democracy disinformation". We invaded Iraq and Afghanistan in order to "Spread Democracy™" and that they are now using language like that targeted at American citizens should be fucking terrifying to everyone.
Matt Taibbi keeps hitting every piece out of the park. I think he's juicing like Barry Bonds did! I know Silicon Valley will be happy to allow that scurrilous accusation.
The MSM and Silicon Valley are acting just like the mullahs in Iran, only allowing the masses to read and see what they deem "truth." Wouldn't it be ironic if we US citizens and Iranian citizens have a revolt at the same time.
I notice Russia mentioned frequently but China wasn’t. One of the charter plays in the Democrat playbook is accuse your opponent of what you are guilty of. The racist label is a good example.
Russia is not one of the top 10 world economies, China is number two. While Obama was prez I was employed by LMT and that portion of the Military Industrial Complex (MIC), freaked out when, while BO was visiting Asia, China rolled out their stolen, from MIC/LMT, version of the F22.
Only a fool (think the Bush family) thinks China is our pal They control much more of the US than the deep state is willing to admit. Money, also known as power, talks in DC.
Some friends and I have come up with a great way to become massively wealthy, we are opening a nation-wide chain of schools to teach Mandarin. You better register soon, beat the rusha... [sic]
My personal response:
1. Cancel subscriptions with pandering, one-sided publications, including NPR, WaPo and NYT, and recently NR and Fox
1.5 Open Substack account for subscriptions to individual journalists such as Matt and Glenn Greenwald
1.75 Become more familiar with Edward Snowden and Julian Assange
2. Close online accounts for Twitter, LinkedIn, etc
3. Exit Google ecosystem for Brave
4. Source foreign publications to read in-depth analysis of whatever the hell it is that's going on here
5. Exercise, a lot
Excellent Matt. You are punching in the right direction and with sufficient force. It will take some time and effort, but the public needs- desperately needs- to see the MSM for the cancer they are. That certainly includes the social media and youtube guys. Their efforts are well supported, coordinated and funded to program us.
It is also censorship to fail to differentiate between reasonable and unreasonable beliefs, stating "no evidence" , etc. for any idea about fraud.
Unreasonable: Foreign powers (Venezuela, etc.) were hacking the election. While it is a great mystery that tales of a voting machine ceased in Germany appear true, nothing came of it. A promise of evidence in a lawsuit turned out to be "The machines are proven to have the potential to be hacked, but are programmed such that no hacking can be traced even if it took place". Because something could have happened does not prove it did.
Reasonable: There are videos of thousands of ballots hidden under a table with a long tablecloth and only brought out and counted when all observers were told to leave in Fulton County. It is proven observers were told to leave. I'm still looking into proof that the count from those ballots was almost all Biden (have not seen it yet) but why tell everyone to leave, sit and talk for half an hour until you can be sure they are gone, then start counting hidden ballots?
Lots of other things are reasonable as well. However, it would take months to prove whether or not fraud was sufficient to influence the election. *****It is an open question as to whether the fraud was sufficient to influence the election, one we will probably never answer*****
Cries by lawyers of "throw out all votes in the state because it was unconstitutional to drop the signature verification process" simply won't work. But since there were, for example 17 time as many mail in ballots disallowed for signature problems in Georgia's election before 2020 as in the 2020 election, it appears not verifying signatures likely had an effect on Biden's approximately 12,000 winning margin- Mail -in ballots were heavily democratic - It was Stacy Abrams group that got Georgia to agree to not verify signatures. But there is no remedy - ballots have long been separated from their signatures.
Near-all Trump supporters ***will accept*** that though there was widespread fraud, we can't prove it changed the election result in court, or certainly can't prove it in the time allowed. Republicans are "rule of law" people. They know the law states that the courts have final say on this, and the courts have spoken.
The next battle is to do what Democrats asked all along until Nov 3 - combat election fraud by doing things such as getting rid of the Dominion machines that all experts can can be hacked. Also (Democrats don't want this but they are wrong) send mail-in ballots only after a voter request to receive one - You send a form to every voter on the list and they send it back with a signed request. That is what we did in Florida and it worked well.
"As of September 24th,1964, the Warren Commission determined that President Kennedy was killed by an unassisted weirdo with a bolt action rifle. The accuracy of assassination investigations is guaranteed by many safeguards. No discussion of conspiracy will be permitted. Click SHOW ME MORE to be directed to trustworthy information."
another crucial piece Matt, thanks.....beautifully fleshed out by detailed examples drawn from the past several years, particularly the examples drawn around the 2016 election...so ironic that people on the left are now complaining about the nearly exact thing they did when Trump was elected...any attempt to block or adjudicate the free flow of information and opinion is bad, no matter who is doing the adjudicating or blocking...used to be conservatives were the ones try to block information/opinion...now it is more so people on the left, which is disheartening. How to fight this?
How is it Matt literally drives a mack truck through the lefts logic of trying to silence dissent?
This is the finest article Taibbi has written since I started subscribing. I agree that the election wasn’t rigged, but Silicon Valley putting it’s thumb on the scale of justice post hoc is a recipe for utter disaster. Biden is mentally unprepared for the tsunami his idiotic puppet masters are going to unleash through actions such as those described in the article. Hold n, it’s going to a be a wild ride.