A brief note to subscribers about YouTube's decision to demonetize TK material, saying Matt Orfalea's factual video "isn't suitable for all advertisers"
And then Rumble can start controlling information. There's really no solution to power, money, and influence that doesn't involve a Stoic-meets-Buddhist approach to life (I'm not suggesting this works or doesn't work, but it's the only system that believes all systems are inherently corrupt). I wish "we" could "take back" this power, but power is the issue, not who wields it.
Agreed. Only potential solution is adoption of a decentralized, administrative blockchain the removes the inevitable abuse of power. In addition to promoting high ethical standards amongst friends and family.
Odysee uses something like this. Odysee is really just a frontend to a LBRY instance, which is more or less what you describe. Odysee can delist, but they can't delete.
Youtube dominates for two reasons. First, inertia. People post videos on Youtube because that's where people go to watch videos. People watch videos on Youtube because that's where they get posted. Second, the ENORMOUS storage and processing costs of bulk video hosting.
The first is starting to break down. The second is much harder to overcome. We'll see how a more distributed structure ends up scaling.
I'm not saying it can't happen. I hope it does. Competition is good. But when it comes to videos, specifically, there are issues with economies of scale that are different from most other types of web hosting.
I think we are safe for the time being from Rumble overtaking Google on the power, money, and influence scale. It wouldn't be the worst thing to try and siphon some power away from them if possible. If liberty is the brand, controlling information becomes a liability for the company. It is worth a shot.
I appreciate your comments, Mike--in fact, some Buddhists might even call our present times the Mappo or End of the Law, when the teachings of Buddha are no longer able to guide us to enlightenment--but I disagree (on a practical, day to day level) with your conclusion. From my point of view, we can't leave power in the hands of oligarchs or authoritarians. A healthy democracy that preserves and defends our "liberty" (a word that has gone out of use) is the best answer for what's happening in our country today.
By the way, and keeping it light; many Buddhists would consider the whole idea of "Stoic-meets-Buddhist," somewhat redundant...
My concern is that YouTube and Google more broadly are too big too fail and enjoy far too much of a market share for us plebians to make a dent in their bottom line.
Today, Google’s search market share stands at 92.47%. For comparison, Yahoo!’s is 1.48%. YouTube, meanwhile, is the world’s second most popular search engine. As early as 2009, search volume on YouTube outstripped Yahoo!’s by 50% and Bing’s by 150%. YouTube has more than 2.6 billion active users. 1 billion hours of content is watched across the world every day on the platform, and every single minute, more than 500 hours of new content is uploaded.
The monopoly that Google enjoys is much different than monopolies of old—think Andrew Carnegie’s Steel Company. The product over which Google has a monopoly is us: Our attention, our personal information, our content—the three key ingredients for human manipulation in the 21st century.
Somewhat true, but market share is still in YTs favor, by miles. I still recommend going to Rumble, and leave them the same way if they ever get as big as YT and become as biased. By the way, boycott all Alphabet companies while you're at it. YT dances to the tune of a higher power.
But all google did was demonetize the video. They didn’t take it down. Functionally, it is equivalent to TK having posted the video to any of the myriad of “free” platforms that don’t offer money. Google doesn’t care.
Exactly. And Google has routinely demonstrated a willingness to use its unrivaled surveillance apparatus in pursuit of its vague lodestar, “The public good.”
A central responsibility of an information intermediary is, or ought to be, refraining from using data in ways designed to further the political goals of the intermediary. When Google’s employees or algorithms block our access to information about a news story, business, or politician, reputations can be ruined, businesses can crumble, and opinions and votes can shift. Moreover, since its inception and in contrast to other companies, the tech giant has maintained incestuous relationships with Democratic administrations.
I would write a long rant about how the 'leaders' continue to demonetize anything that goes against the narrative, but I'm pretty sure that I originally got onto that story because of you!
We all knew it was coming, and this most recent video is just an excuse to swat you away.
Edit: Here's the video I've posted a couple times -- 10 minutes of Democrats denying elections.
It's almost like these "leaders" are playing kingmaker by picking and choosing winners and losers. This kind of monopolistic behavior has to stop. I think anti-trust lawsuits are in order.
....nope (unfortunately). Anti-trust is formulated on the basis of market power over price and output of goods or services. You don't pay for basic social media, e.g. f'book, so they escape that net.
The power that the big techs have is over the information you volunteer to them. A new regulatory paradigm is needed, in which they are not allowed control over 'content' but are protected from legal action for platforming it.
....it may yet come to that P ! After thirty plus years, (and still counting) in the field, and in four different countries, I have to say that it is not at all straight forward to address the information dominance problem in regulatory terms, which do not have potential detrimental side effects. Information does not have the same characteristics as other goods or services. (So simplistically, if I give you a banana, then you have the fruit and I don't. If I provide you with some information about the banana, you have the info but, in effect I still do too.
The level of brazen hypocrisy is beyond anything that anyone could have believed possible even ten years ago. And there appears to be no level it can sink to where the MSM even pauses before happily endorsing it.
It is also true, however, that in 2013 President Barack Obama signed into law the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act (H.R. 5736), making it legal for government-produced media—such as was broadcast overseas by Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and other outlets throughout the Cold War—to be directed toward U.S. citizens themselves. Needless to say, such government-penned narratives spin the news so as to reflect favorably upon the United States. To understand the sheer power of the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act, it suffices to do a quick Google of the name of this piece of legislation to see how it has generated a logical quandary befitting of Orwell’s Nineteen Eigthy-Four. For if it is true that the American people are being propagandized by the U.S. government through its control of the major media outlets and tech giants, then any assertion to that effect will be countered—and ultimately defeated—by yet more government propaganda.
The fact that the complete negation of the original Smith-Mundt Act was deceptively labeled the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act marked the first stage in what might be termed the Orwellian turn. Unsurprisingly, a lengthy list of articles calling out the alleged piece of “disinformation” that “Barack Obama legalized government propaganda against citizens” appears at the top of the Google search results. Among the critics who warned about the new Act was now-deceased investigative journalist Michael Hastings, who also, it is worth mentioning, expressed concern about the dangerous influence of the Pentagon’s “public relations” wing, which already by 2009 employed 27,000 persons full-time as war marketeers. A number of other notable figures who sounded alarms about the dangers of government propaganda and overreach are now dead, imprisoned, or living in exile.
And before that, Clinton endorsed the change of media regulations so the conglomerates that we now see became legal. Their megaphone just got bigger & bigger. It seems obvious that a lot of effort is expended to silence critics no matter how minor they are or how little threat they realistically pose.
This is very distressing. And why I want the GOP to take Congress. Democrats are strong-arming Big Tech and the end result is fascism. They don't see it that way because they don't understand what fascism means. But by subverting the Constitution using Big Tech that is what this is. Time to smack them down in a big way.
lol conservatives are going to fire the entire upper mgmt of Silicon Valley now? When Progressives reach a critical mass in any organization they work together to expunge wrongthink.
The only conservatives in big tech mgmt are incognito.
Last I looked, progressives had not fired one single CEO or C-suite manager at YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, or any other social media. Not one manager at Apple or Microsoft, either. Even the Left doesn't have that power, and neither does the Right.
If the GOP takes control, it's not because the GOP is in control. Do you understand? Today's GOP leadership is in bed with the DNC. Haven't you watched Lizard Cheney and Adam Kinzingerererer?
Cheney was fired from GOP leadership and lost her re-election bid. Kinzinger was never a GOP leader, and he retires this year. Neither of them are "today's GOP leadership." That would be Trump, McConnell, McCarthy, and other Swells who the DNC wouldn't invite over for drinks . . . unless they could serve hemlock.
If you think McConnell and McCarthy are on the same side as the base and aren't reviled outside of their home electorates, as Judas Priest once sang.... you've got another thing comin'.
They certainly aren't on the side of the GOP's MAGA base, but they aren't sleeping with the DNC, either. They're Big Corporate Republicans who use social warfare to cover their bribe-taking. That gives them common cause with Big Corporate Democrats who use social warfare to cover their own bribe-taking, but doesn't make them Democrats in disguise. McConnell and McCarthy are a separate breed of pestilence.
What say you about the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoMfIkz7v6s and You Tube taking it down? How do you suggest this kind of suppression by Big Tech get turned on its head?
First, I just watched it on YouTube, so if it was taken down, how could I watch it?
Second, YouTube is a private company and can censor whatever it wants. If we want to turn Big Tech into public utilities with no censorship allowed, that's a discussion worth having. Until then, if Matt can delete comments he doesn't like--fortunately for us, he doesn't, but he has every right as the owner of this private medium--then so can YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and the rest of the gang.
I'd like to see the free market create a censorship-free alternative so everyone can post and be subject only to libel laws, not death bots. But it won't make money, so it won't happen.
Oh, and the video itself? Fair commentary, absolutely. Annoying childish production values, but the information is legit. Though I will point out that as much as Hillary and other Democrats yakked about Trump winning, they didn't file umpteen lawsuits to overturn the results, nor did they storm the Capitol to stop the certification.
I was pointing to the fact that someone has posted it above so you didn't have to search for it. The significant and vast difference is the Orfalea video was a compilation of actual news bites put together. That might be those people's opinions but they were happy to spout them and the media was more than happy to air them back in 2016/17/18.
A commenter on Taibbi's Substack is a personal opinion and yes, if it doesn't meet the criteria set by either Substack or Taibbi (I have no idea who has control or how much control Matt has) then they are open to censorship. How many of the individual video pieces in the mash up were NOT on YouTube before?
Is there a law against how many lawsuits can be filed before or is it simply an emotional reaction to the disgust of it? Should they have walked into the Capitol or destroyed windows, etc? No---but as you know that bar was set quite high after George Floyd, the autonomous zone in Seattle, etc, etc. And watch the video of that and tell me why the Capitol police didn't stop, didn't immediately remove them from the floor of the House, why Pelosi turned down the National Guard?
You have to move past feelings and to the facts. That's what Taibbi does brilliantly. I just listened to Matt T. on Megyn Kelly's podcast and he said he doesn't regard politicians as "liking or not liking" them. His job is to be a journalist. You see, we've gotten so far away from journalism that it's almost unrecognizable.
By they way, listen to Bari Weiss' Honestly podcast titled "The Great Canadian Mass Graves Hoax". There's the crossroads of journalism there. I actually sent to my brother who is in the media in NYC it was so astonishing.
Agree about Matt---he goes to the heart of matters with facts, not soap opera feelings. It's why I signed up, and he delivers.
Also agree about the Great Canadian Mass Graves Hoax, although "Hoax" overstates things as much as the original story. I read Bari's piece then did a deep dive on where "remains" originated. It came from a tribal press release claiming that ground-penetrating radar found "remains" of children on the grounds of the Indian school in Kamloops. But the press release cautioned that digging needed to be done to confirm these "remains."
I don't really blame the NYT and other media for publishing that remains were found; they correctly tagged the information to the tribal press release, and they had no way to confirm or deny the tribe's claim independently. They had to take the tribe's word for it.
But politicians should not have proclaimed with zero proof that the Church, which ran the Indian schools, was dumping dead children in unmarked graves. That was waaaaaauy too big a stretch from the press release. And the media should have more fully reported that those "remains" turned out to be nothing but dirt and rocks.
It wasn't a hoax, in my opinion, but poor wording and assumptions in the tribal press release, and too much eagerness among politicians to believe the worst about Mother Church without anything resembling proof.
Well it's a hoax since it began on a false premise and then blew up without a single person ever asking for proof. All I kept thinking was where are the pictures? Why wouldn't an actual journalist ask to see pictures. We have pictures from the Holocaust some 80 years ago, why not ask for proof before writing the expose in the NYT? And to cancel the guy who actually blew open the hoax, tells you everything. It's a hoax because it was completely false. They elected to believe the story because it was the indigenous peoples of Canada alleging the Catholic Church perpetuated the worst possible crimes. It's a hoax and I'm glad Bari dove right in and interviewed the guy who took the risk to do real journalism.
Democrats have a tendency to repurpose words and distort definitions so that they can be weaponized against political opponents. The end result is always the same: The words cease to mean what they're supposed to mean and are diluted of authority. Fascism, Nazi, racism, woman, etc.
The longer I live, the less I think it possible that humans can effectively-impartially govern themselves fairly above a certain number of population. Someone is ALWAYS going to get screwed over.
For some reason (limited intelligence, viz. Ape Thought vs. Feline Thought), I tend to conflate this with Jerry Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy and PKD's Black Iron Prison, similar yet distinct concepts.
They understand very well what it means. They simply DGAF, seeing as how they’re on a mission from Gaia, or some such shit, and are therefore justified.
However, looking up and down the 2024 GOP lineup, the sad truth is that freedom-loving ‘public servants’ are few and far between. Rand Paul took Tony Fauci out to the woodshed a couple times, but Fauci keeps spewing lies on TV and getting paid for it. Ron DeSantis ‘followed the science’ better than nearly all governors, but (to my certainly imperfect knowledge) Kristi Noem was the only governor who (correctly) proclaimed to not have the power to close your business. Ron Johnson has been holding covid hearings and allowing ignored voices to be heard. And…….that’s everybody?
And realistically, even the people I mentioned — the ‘best’ of the GOP — don’t really have a freedom-first mindset. Over time this creates a huge problem, as generally “both sides” agree that government should be DOING MORE. And while this works out great for government officials and their families, regular people are stuck paying the bill for the trillions of dollars rained down on the politically connected — who proclaim the only way to fix this problem is with government DOING MORE…..
I know Ron DeSantis personally. He actually is the real deal. We do not agree on everything, but he understands individual freedom and the limited role of government and truly believes it. And he is not afraid (as a Seal-team embedded Navy officer would likely be) to act on what he believes.
There are a handful of strong, well-balanced leaders in the GOP. Let us hope they do not end up mysteriously dead before they can do some more of what needs to be done.
Maybe, but he isn't independently wealthy and will need to do the bidding of the highest bidders if he wants to maintain his career path. This does not auger well for the nation.
And Ron Johnson, my senator, is being outspent by dark money some $100 million. The good guys are being squeezed in every possible way. I think he'll still win because his opponent is left of AOC, but you never know.
UPDATE: Updating my earlier reply that a Google search for this video couldn't find it, the same search is now number one on Google's search results. I guess the 30,000 views in the last seven hours helps. And get this - the video now has ads and the opening ad I just saw is a Democratic fundraiser to "stop Donald Trump"!
Wow! That's insane! Since I don't watch those networks, I guess I was totally ignorant of this. But what's more insane is that that compilation only edited to splice together is now not seeable. Holy crap!
After a bit of looking they don't seem to publicly disclose exactly where their physical servers are located. It looks like they have their own ASN, which means they're serious about not depending on third party infrastructure more than necessary. They have a Tweet here that says where their datacenter ISN'T located, but not where it IS located.
They were founded in Canada, which is concerning, since Canada has much more stringent speech laws. But it looks like they recently opened a location of SOME kind in Florida, maybe for exactly for that reason.
They went public recently though, which isn't a good sign for keeping any kind of principles.
My main concern about Rumble is that it is a public company. Unless there is a class of super voting stock held by the founders, they are just a hostile tender offer away from compromise.
Everything (and I mean Everything) done by Team Global Corporate Social Justice is done to "protect Democracy". (And yes this includes telling you what you're allowed to say and who you're allowed to vote for.)
And everything done by any of their opponents is either "Fascism" or "dangerous disinformation". (And this includes Matt and Glenn and Substack and all of us here.)
Our elite overlords are going to install their totalitarian global surveillance state or die tryin...
Wow. Unbelievable. We've stumbled into USSR-like doublespeak and censorship. YouTube is not accountable to its users. Their only recourse is to stop using it.
Well, let’s be honest here. The government cannot keep pissing on civil rights to use swat teams to arrest people charged with misdemeanors for being in the vicinity of the Capitol during the hillbilly riot if you can prove this is common rhetoric used by both sides. The 1/6 committee cannot subpoena your whole life if they can’t claim it’s an attack on democracy to question elections. Can’t make that claim if the people on the committee can be seen doing the very thing they want to tear peoples lives apart for.
No worries. It’s just coordination between the media, big tech and one political party to suppress the other political party.
Thanks for bringing this to light. The blatant double standard makes it impossible to trust anything the democratic regime is saying or doing right now.
More and more it's transparently not about public health, it's not about "misinformation," it's not about science; it's simply down to political ideas they disagree with.
By the way, I watch several channels on YouTube that have been demonetized (like Brett Wienstein's) and guess what? I still see ads. So YouTube is openly lying about the reasons for demonetization.
I don't understand why so-called social media companies want to restrict speech on their platforms; each user they kick off means fewer people on their network. The strength of networks is the total number of users, not the viewpoints the users espouse.
Frankly, I wonder why no one has sued YouTube for stealing profits from content that YouTube didn't create–that's got to be fraud or theft.
I hear that Rumble is picking up steam. Both VivaFrei and Russel Brand have went Rumble exclusive. Perhaps you'll be next?
This is literally the CDC telling Facebook and Twitter (and maybe more!) what to censor and how to censor it — a blatant First Amendment violation for thousands of Americans. And as we now know, the CDC’s ‘information’ was the actual misinformation. I have no doubt that if we had complete access to CDC files, we’d find a similar slide trying to silence ‘misinformation’ about the vaccine affecting women’s periods.
Acutally, they'll still run your material and run ads on it. But instead of sharing the revenue with you, they'll keep all the revenue to themselves. Because it's so "unsuitable."
if Republicans once in power do not severely punish big tech where it hurts ( pocketbook) by removing liability protections and severely restricting their users personal data connections and by breaking them up I am done with Republicans. I suspect that is fine with the Republican Party as long as they get some crumbs from Big Tech themselves in donations and lobbying gigs.
The bottom line is Big Tech completely controls the main channels of communications the way Railroad Trusts and JD Rockefeller once controlled transportation and oil and we are powerless over it.
Removing 230 is the WORST possible fix. All it does is cement the current crop of big tech companies forever, since they'll be the only ones able to afford the lawyers to vet everything. Anything smaller will cease to exist overnight.
This needs to be treated as an anti-trust problem.
as i said in my post - they need to be broken up smaller market share chunks. But 230 also has to go so they will have to choose if they are a carrier or a publisher. Nobody has enough money or lawyers to defend millions of posts and uploads. If they choose carrier they cannot censor anymore than Zoom or ATT can, if they chose publisher their business model is gone and having been broken up to many companies if they censor your video as a publisher the outfit operating as a carrier will carry it. It is not that complicated.
If everyone goes on Rumble, then YouTube will finally get the hint.
Nothing wakes you up more than loss of revenue
And then Rumble can start controlling information. There's really no solution to power, money, and influence that doesn't involve a Stoic-meets-Buddhist approach to life (I'm not suggesting this works or doesn't work, but it's the only system that believes all systems are inherently corrupt). I wish "we" could "take back" this power, but power is the issue, not who wields it.
Well, no matter what, a market place of ideas is only as good as the fear by the platform that it’s suppression, will cause it’s demise.
That’s how you control the controllers.
General rule: You can't control the controllers. You kill as many of them as you can while minimizing your losses and casualties.
Ok, that’s not how democracy works. We let our money do the talking.
Don’t like a venue? We move the venue.
Murder only brings more murder.
That’s not a marketplace of ideas, that’s a killing field.
What does democracy have to do with it?
I think you are referring to capitalism, not democracy.
From my experience capitalism is the driver of democracy.
They are not one and the same. You could have democracy and not necessarily capitalism, right?
No doubt that Taibbi's work is in the crosshairs of the powerful and I suspect there are paid trolls doing their best to derail the comments section.
Wading into the TK comments gives you goose bumps and makes you feel like a shadowy character in a John Lecarre, no doubt.
Hitler killed more with a pen than a gun. That's the effing truth.
Were you in the Ukrainian partisans during WWII?
Yes, but I don't like to talk about it.
well said!
But until that happens...go to Rumble.
Already did!
Agreed. Only potential solution is adoption of a decentralized, administrative blockchain the removes the inevitable abuse of power. In addition to promoting high ethical standards amongst friends and family.
Exactly!
Get enough people into a platform where there are no “stockholders” and it will be the best as well as the most Dangerous place, on the internet.
Dangerous to governments and the Elites that is.
Get Elon Musk to buy it.
I don’t think so.
Elon, is a megalomaniac like all the others.
Make the platform an open marketplace
Megalomaniacs have their uses.
Another character out of a LeCarre novel.
Odysee uses something like this. Odysee is really just a frontend to a LBRY instance, which is more or less what you describe. Odysee can delist, but they can't delete.
Youtube dominates for two reasons. First, inertia. People post videos on Youtube because that's where people go to watch videos. People watch videos on Youtube because that's where they get posted. Second, the ENORMOUS storage and processing costs of bulk video hosting.
The first is starting to break down. The second is much harder to overcome. We'll see how a more distributed structure ends up scaling.
Your points about youtube are well put, but that can change, remember back when yahoo was the big search platform?
Oh yeah. And I remember Alta Vista before that.
I'm not saying it can't happen. I hope it does. Competition is good. But when it comes to videos, specifically, there are issues with economies of scale that are different from most other types of web hosting.
Good lord -- I'm so old I remember "Ask Jeeves." 🤣
I think we are safe for the time being from Rumble overtaking Google on the power, money, and influence scale. It wouldn't be the worst thing to try and siphon some power away from them if possible. If liberty is the brand, controlling information becomes a liability for the company. It is worth a shot.
I appreciate your comments, Mike--in fact, some Buddhists might even call our present times the Mappo or End of the Law, when the teachings of Buddha are no longer able to guide us to enlightenment--but I disagree (on a practical, day to day level) with your conclusion. From my point of view, we can't leave power in the hands of oligarchs or authoritarians. A healthy democracy that preserves and defends our "liberty" (a word that has gone out of use) is the best answer for what's happening in our country today.
By the way, and keeping it light; many Buddhists would consider the whole idea of "Stoic-meets-Buddhist," somewhat redundant...
My concern is that YouTube and Google more broadly are too big too fail and enjoy far too much of a market share for us plebians to make a dent in their bottom line.
Today, Google’s search market share stands at 92.47%. For comparison, Yahoo!’s is 1.48%. YouTube, meanwhile, is the world’s second most popular search engine. As early as 2009, search volume on YouTube outstripped Yahoo!’s by 50% and Bing’s by 150%. YouTube has more than 2.6 billion active users. 1 billion hours of content is watched across the world every day on the platform, and every single minute, more than 500 hours of new content is uploaded.
https://euphoricrecall.substack.com/p/googlegov-part-1
The monopoly that Google enjoys is much different than monopolies of old—think Andrew Carnegie’s Steel Company. The product over which Google has a monopoly is us: Our attention, our personal information, our content—the three key ingredients for human manipulation in the 21st century.
Except for those of us using Duck Duck Go.. thinking we are not in the equation because we are invisible......
Besides Rumble there is Mastodon and Fediverse.party to try out.
Somewhat true, but market share is still in YTs favor, by miles. I still recommend going to Rumble, and leave them the same way if they ever get as big as YT and become as biased. By the way, boycott all Alphabet companies while you're at it. YT dances to the tune of a higher power.
Bravo.
But all google did was demonetize the video. They didn’t take it down. Functionally, it is equivalent to TK having posted the video to any of the myriad of “free” platforms that don’t offer money. Google doesn’t care.
Exactly. And Google has routinely demonstrated a willingness to use its unrivaled surveillance apparatus in pursuit of its vague lodestar, “The public good.”
https://euphoricrecall.substack.com/p/googlegov-part-2
A central responsibility of an information intermediary is, or ought to be, refraining from using data in ways designed to further the political goals of the intermediary. When Google’s employees or algorithms block our access to information about a news story, business, or politician, reputations can be ruined, businesses can crumble, and opinions and votes can shift. Moreover, since its inception and in contrast to other companies, the tech giant has maintained incestuous relationships with Democratic administrations.
Sorry, the real lesson is reminding people of history, in this case that the Democrats also were a "semi-fascist threat to 'our' democracy."
I'm loathe to promote anything Jonah Goldberg related these days, but I think the title of his book, _Liberal Fascism_ , is spot on!
That was before he lost his mind and/or sold his soul, but I agree. That book was maginificent.
Out of the loop. What's wrong with him, what'd he do.
Seconded. He's been remarkably consistent the past few years.
TDS
I had thought Jonah Goldberg choked to death a few years ago on a Wendy's triple-decker. No?
The term "semi-fascist" cracks me up. It's like "sort-of Nazi" or "teensy-bit rapey."
Kind of pregnant, or in the immortal words of Monty Python, "only mostly dead."
Mostly dead was the Princess Bride, Monty Python's dead parrot was "resting" 🙂
Basically any British rock star from the 70s on both counts…
This is why we should enforce Section 230 ("We're just platforms!") or get rid of it so Big Tech can be sued. And: what's nice girl like you... ;-).
I would write a long rant about how the 'leaders' continue to demonetize anything that goes against the narrative, but I'm pretty sure that I originally got onto that story because of you!
We all knew it was coming, and this most recent video is just an excuse to swat you away.
Edit: Here's the video I've posted a couple times -- 10 minutes of Democrats denying elections.
https://vimeo.com/738785281
It's almost like these "leaders" are playing kingmaker by picking and choosing winners and losers. This kind of monopolistic behavior has to stop. I think anti-trust lawsuits are in order.
Sue Tammany Hall!
....nope (unfortunately). Anti-trust is formulated on the basis of market power over price and output of goods or services. You don't pay for basic social media, e.g. f'book, so they escape that net.
The power that the big techs have is over the information you volunteer to them. A new regulatory paradigm is needed, in which they are not allowed control over 'content' but are protected from legal action for platforming it.
When the government refuses to enact anti-trust enforcement, the guillotines come out next.
....it may yet come to that P ! After thirty plus years, (and still counting) in the field, and in four different countries, I have to say that it is not at all straight forward to address the information dominance problem in regulatory terms, which do not have potential detrimental side effects. Information does not have the same characteristics as other goods or services. (So simplistically, if I give you a banana, then you have the fruit and I don't. If I provide you with some information about the banana, you have the info but, in effect I still do too.
The level of brazen hypocrisy is beyond anything that anyone could have believed possible even ten years ago. And there appears to be no level it can sink to where the MSM even pauses before happily endorsing it.
IMO it was the gutting of the Smith-Mundt Act.
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/the-smith-mundt-moderniziation-act-from-propaganda-to-censorship-to-tyranny/
It is also true, however, that in 2013 President Barack Obama signed into law the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act (H.R. 5736), making it legal for government-produced media—such as was broadcast overseas by Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and other outlets throughout the Cold War—to be directed toward U.S. citizens themselves. Needless to say, such government-penned narratives spin the news so as to reflect favorably upon the United States. To understand the sheer power of the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act, it suffices to do a quick Google of the name of this piece of legislation to see how it has generated a logical quandary befitting of Orwell’s Nineteen Eigthy-Four. For if it is true that the American people are being propagandized by the U.S. government through its control of the major media outlets and tech giants, then any assertion to that effect will be countered—and ultimately defeated—by yet more government propaganda.
The fact that the complete negation of the original Smith-Mundt Act was deceptively labeled the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act marked the first stage in what might be termed the Orwellian turn. Unsurprisingly, a lengthy list of articles calling out the alleged piece of “disinformation” that “Barack Obama legalized government propaganda against citizens” appears at the top of the Google search results. Among the critics who warned about the new Act was now-deceased investigative journalist Michael Hastings, who also, it is worth mentioning, expressed concern about the dangerous influence of the Pentagon’s “public relations” wing, which already by 2009 employed 27,000 persons full-time as war marketeers. A number of other notable figures who sounded alarms about the dangers of government propaganda and overreach are now dead, imprisoned, or living in exile.
And before that, Clinton endorsed the change of media regulations so the conglomerates that we now see became legal. Their megaphone just got bigger & bigger. It seems obvious that a lot of effort is expended to silence critics no matter how minor they are or how little threat they realistically pose.
Careful — Vimeo is not an anti-censorship platform, and is run by wokies.
This is very distressing. And why I want the GOP to take Congress. Democrats are strong-arming Big Tech and the end result is fascism. They don't see it that way because they don't understand what fascism means. But by subverting the Constitution using Big Tech that is what this is. Time to smack them down in a big way.
If the GOP takes control, it will strongarm tech the same way, just using other social warfare reasons.
lol conservatives are going to fire the entire upper mgmt of Silicon Valley now? When Progressives reach a critical mass in any organization they work together to expunge wrongthink.
The only conservatives in big tech mgmt are incognito.
Last I looked, progressives had not fired one single CEO or C-suite manager at YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, or any other social media. Not one manager at Apple or Microsoft, either. Even the Left doesn't have that power, and neither does the Right.
If the GOP takes control, it's not because the GOP is in control. Do you understand? Today's GOP leadership is in bed with the DNC. Haven't you watched Lizard Cheney and Adam Kinzingerererer?
There's a conspiracy theory with a fresh take on the U.S political system.
Cheney was fired from GOP leadership and lost her re-election bid. Kinzinger was never a GOP leader, and he retires this year. Neither of them are "today's GOP leadership." That would be Trump, McConnell, McCarthy, and other Swells who the DNC wouldn't invite over for drinks . . . unless they could serve hemlock.
If you think McConnell and McCarthy are on the same side as the base and aren't reviled outside of their home electorates, as Judas Priest once sang.... you've got another thing comin'.
They certainly aren't on the side of the GOP's MAGA base, but they aren't sleeping with the DNC, either. They're Big Corporate Republicans who use social warfare to cover their bribe-taking. That gives them common cause with Big Corporate Democrats who use social warfare to cover their own bribe-taking, but doesn't make them Democrats in disguise. McConnell and McCarthy are a separate breed of pestilence.
What say you about the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoMfIkz7v6s and You Tube taking it down? How do you suggest this kind of suppression by Big Tech get turned on its head?
First, I just watched it on YouTube, so if it was taken down, how could I watch it?
Second, YouTube is a private company and can censor whatever it wants. If we want to turn Big Tech into public utilities with no censorship allowed, that's a discussion worth having. Until then, if Matt can delete comments he doesn't like--fortunately for us, he doesn't, but he has every right as the owner of this private medium--then so can YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and the rest of the gang.
I'd like to see the free market create a censorship-free alternative so everyone can post and be subject only to libel laws, not death bots. But it won't make money, so it won't happen.
Oh, and the video itself? Fair commentary, absolutely. Annoying childish production values, but the information is legit. Though I will point out that as much as Hillary and other Democrats yakked about Trump winning, they didn't file umpteen lawsuits to overturn the results, nor did they storm the Capitol to stop the certification.
I was pointing to the fact that someone has posted it above so you didn't have to search for it. The significant and vast difference is the Orfalea video was a compilation of actual news bites put together. That might be those people's opinions but they were happy to spout them and the media was more than happy to air them back in 2016/17/18.
A commenter on Taibbi's Substack is a personal opinion and yes, if it doesn't meet the criteria set by either Substack or Taibbi (I have no idea who has control or how much control Matt has) then they are open to censorship. How many of the individual video pieces in the mash up were NOT on YouTube before?
Is there a law against how many lawsuits can be filed before or is it simply an emotional reaction to the disgust of it? Should they have walked into the Capitol or destroyed windows, etc? No---but as you know that bar was set quite high after George Floyd, the autonomous zone in Seattle, etc, etc. And watch the video of that and tell me why the Capitol police didn't stop, didn't immediately remove them from the floor of the House, why Pelosi turned down the National Guard?
You have to move past feelings and to the facts. That's what Taibbi does brilliantly. I just listened to Matt T. on Megyn Kelly's podcast and he said he doesn't regard politicians as "liking or not liking" them. His job is to be a journalist. You see, we've gotten so far away from journalism that it's almost unrecognizable.
By they way, listen to Bari Weiss' Honestly podcast titled "The Great Canadian Mass Graves Hoax". There's the crossroads of journalism there. I actually sent to my brother who is in the media in NYC it was so astonishing.
Agree about Matt---he goes to the heart of matters with facts, not soap opera feelings. It's why I signed up, and he delivers.
Also agree about the Great Canadian Mass Graves Hoax, although "Hoax" overstates things as much as the original story. I read Bari's piece then did a deep dive on where "remains" originated. It came from a tribal press release claiming that ground-penetrating radar found "remains" of children on the grounds of the Indian school in Kamloops. But the press release cautioned that digging needed to be done to confirm these "remains."
I don't really blame the NYT and other media for publishing that remains were found; they correctly tagged the information to the tribal press release, and they had no way to confirm or deny the tribe's claim independently. They had to take the tribe's word for it.
But politicians should not have proclaimed with zero proof that the Church, which ran the Indian schools, was dumping dead children in unmarked graves. That was waaaaaauy too big a stretch from the press release. And the media should have more fully reported that those "remains" turned out to be nothing but dirt and rocks.
It wasn't a hoax, in my opinion, but poor wording and assumptions in the tribal press release, and too much eagerness among politicians to believe the worst about Mother Church without anything resembling proof.
Well it's a hoax since it began on a false premise and then blew up without a single person ever asking for proof. All I kept thinking was where are the pictures? Why wouldn't an actual journalist ask to see pictures. We have pictures from the Holocaust some 80 years ago, why not ask for proof before writing the expose in the NYT? And to cancel the guy who actually blew open the hoax, tells you everything. It's a hoax because it was completely false. They elected to believe the story because it was the indigenous peoples of Canada alleging the Catholic Church perpetuated the worst possible crimes. It's a hoax and I'm glad Bari dove right in and interviewed the guy who took the risk to do real journalism.
Democrats have a tendency to repurpose words and distort definitions so that they can be weaponized against political opponents. The end result is always the same: The words cease to mean what they're supposed to mean and are diluted of authority. Fascism, Nazi, racism, woman, etc.
Haha - the GOP is taking notes, if anything. In truth, it matters not who wins the clown show.
Because it’s never the people.
A duopoly is not the answer.
The longer I live, the less I think it possible that humans can effectively-impartially govern themselves fairly above a certain number of population. Someone is ALWAYS going to get screwed over.
Dunbar's number in full effect here.
Contemplate The Iron Law Of Oligarchy.
For some reason (limited intelligence, viz. Ape Thought vs. Feline Thought), I tend to conflate this with Jerry Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy and PKD's Black Iron Prison, similar yet distinct concepts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Pournelle's_laws:~:text=Another%20%22law%22%20of%20his%20is%20%22Pournelle%27s%20iron%20law%20of%20bureaucracy%22%3A
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valis_(novel)#:~:text=Black%20Iron%20Prison%5B,knew%20it.%5B9%5D
They understand very well what it means. They simply DGAF, seeing as how they’re on a mission from Gaia, or some such shit, and are therefore justified.
I think it's less "seeing as how they’re on a mission from Gaia" than "on a mission for $$$." Greenwashing is all the rage right now.
Free Ted Kacyznski and let him run! https://www.factcheck.org/2008/11/felons-in-office/
Don't forget to stash your cash in the UBOM ETF!
I think the elites are definitely in it for the money (and the power ain’t too shabby, either), but for the rank-and-file, this is a religion.
No argument there. Poor kids are going to get a wake-up call sooner or later...
...and it will be from INSIDE the HOUSE!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0oVsVQmc_M
It's sadly true. :(
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/democrats-have-gone-crazy-but-freedom
However, looking up and down the 2024 GOP lineup, the sad truth is that freedom-loving ‘public servants’ are few and far between. Rand Paul took Tony Fauci out to the woodshed a couple times, but Fauci keeps spewing lies on TV and getting paid for it. Ron DeSantis ‘followed the science’ better than nearly all governors, but (to my certainly imperfect knowledge) Kristi Noem was the only governor who (correctly) proclaimed to not have the power to close your business. Ron Johnson has been holding covid hearings and allowing ignored voices to be heard. And…….that’s everybody?
And realistically, even the people I mentioned — the ‘best’ of the GOP — don’t really have a freedom-first mindset. Over time this creates a huge problem, as generally “both sides” agree that government should be DOING MORE. And while this works out great for government officials and their families, regular people are stuck paying the bill for the trillions of dollars rained down on the politically connected — who proclaim the only way to fix this problem is with government DOING MORE…..
True. We don't have leaders, we have self serving leeches.
I know Ron DeSantis personally. He actually is the real deal. We do not agree on everything, but he understands individual freedom and the limited role of government and truly believes it. And he is not afraid (as a Seal-team embedded Navy officer would likely be) to act on what he believes.
There are a handful of strong, well-balanced leaders in the GOP. Let us hope they do not end up mysteriously dead before they can do some more of what needs to be done.
Maybe, but he isn't independently wealthy and will need to do the bidding of the highest bidders if he wants to maintain his career path. This does not auger well for the nation.
Nope. He fights the good fight. Don't think it's in his DNA to flip flop. Plus, he is surrounded by base people, really great ones.
And Ron Johnson, my senator, is being outspent by dark money some $100 million. The good guys are being squeezed in every possible way. I think he'll still win because his opponent is left of AOC, but you never know.
I don't often send money out of state (CA), but when I do it goes to people like Ron Johnson.
Nice!
Free Dumb, come and get it...
So where can we find the video?
https://youtu.be/uoMfIkz7v6s
MaryJohanna - Thanks for the link. I tried a Google video search using the exact title and came up with just three, unrelated hits.
Matt should include the link in his content.
Glad I could help
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/memory-holed-part-ii-the-rigged-election
I guess he just wanted it to be the focus of his second piece?
UPDATE: Updating my earlier reply that a Google search for this video couldn't find it, the same search is now number one on Google's search results. I guess the 30,000 views in the last seven hours helps. And get this - the video now has ads and the opening ad I just saw is a Democratic fundraiser to "stop Donald Trump"!
Wow! That's insane! Since I don't watch those networks, I guess I was totally ignorant of this. But what's more insane is that that compilation only edited to splice together is now not seeable. Holy crap!
Interesting it doesn't even show up in his feed when you go to his profile.
Same
Doesn't appear he published it yet. It should probably show up under his account when he does. In the meantime he has tons of other excellent videos.
https://www.youtube.com/user/Orf/videos
Matt, my subscription was on pause for personal financial reasons. I just unpaused it to support your efforts to expose the game here.
Rumble is probably alternating between licking its chops and watching its back.
Now might be a good time to buy Rumble stock.
Where are Rumble's servers hosted? Please don't say Amazon...
My understanding is that Rumble built its' own servers.
After a bit of looking they don't seem to publicly disclose exactly where their physical servers are located. It looks like they have their own ASN, which means they're serious about not depending on third party infrastructure more than necessary. They have a Tweet here that says where their datacenter ISN'T located, but not where it IS located.
https://ipinfo.io/AS399647
https://mobile.twitter.com/rumblevideo/status/1574938103885996033
They were founded in Canada, which is concerning, since Canada has much more stringent speech laws. But it looks like they recently opened a location of SOME kind in Florida, maybe for exactly for that reason.
They went public recently though, which isn't a good sign for keeping any kind of principles.
My main concern about Rumble is that it is a public company. Unless there is a class of super voting stock held by the founders, they are just a hostile tender offer away from compromise.
good question. anyone know?
Cmon we all know the equation by now:
Everything (and I mean Everything) done by Team Global Corporate Social Justice is done to "protect Democracy". (And yes this includes telling you what you're allowed to say and who you're allowed to vote for.)
And everything done by any of their opponents is either "Fascism" or "dangerous disinformation". (And this includes Matt and Glenn and Substack and all of us here.)
Our elite overlords are going to install their totalitarian global surveillance state or die tryin...
Can I vote for the 2nd choice? The 1st one sounds like it will really suck.
I’d like to help facilitate the part associated with trying.
Wow. Unbelievable. We've stumbled into USSR-like doublespeak and censorship. YouTube is not accountable to its users. Their only recourse is to stop using it.
Well, let’s be honest here. The government cannot keep pissing on civil rights to use swat teams to arrest people charged with misdemeanors for being in the vicinity of the Capitol during the hillbilly riot if you can prove this is common rhetoric used by both sides. The 1/6 committee cannot subpoena your whole life if they can’t claim it’s an attack on democracy to question elections. Can’t make that claim if the people on the committee can be seen doing the very thing they want to tear peoples lives apart for.
No worries. It’s just coordination between the media, big tech and one political party to suppress the other political party.
Thanks for bringing this to light. The blatant double standard makes it impossible to trust anything the democratic regime is saying or doing right now.
"Caliconservative"? It must be lonely there... :)
More and more it's transparently not about public health, it's not about "misinformation," it's not about science; it's simply down to political ideas they disagree with.
By the way, I watch several channels on YouTube that have been demonetized (like Brett Wienstein's) and guess what? I still see ads. So YouTube is openly lying about the reasons for demonetization.
I don't understand why so-called social media companies want to restrict speech on their platforms; each user they kick off means fewer people on their network. The strength of networks is the total number of users, not the viewpoints the users espouse.
Frankly, I wonder why no one has sued YouTube for stealing profits from content that YouTube didn't create–that's got to be fraud or theft.
I hear that Rumble is picking up steam. Both VivaFrei and Russel Brand have went Rumble exclusive. Perhaps you'll be next?
They're being strongarmed by government. The documents have been leaking out for a couple years.
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/emails-reveal-extensive-coordination
This is literally the CDC telling Facebook and Twitter (and maybe more!) what to censor and how to censor it — a blatant First Amendment violation for thousands of Americans. And as we now know, the CDC’s ‘information’ was the actual misinformation. I have no doubt that if we had complete access to CDC files, we’d find a similar slide trying to silence ‘misinformation’ about the vaccine affecting women’s periods.
Perhaps Substack could start a Twitter Facebook social medium that does not suck or demonetize users.
Acutally, they'll still run your material and run ads on it. But instead of sharing the revenue with you, they'll keep all the revenue to themselves. Because it's so "unsuitable."
if Republicans once in power do not severely punish big tech where it hurts ( pocketbook) by removing liability protections and severely restricting their users personal data connections and by breaking them up I am done with Republicans. I suspect that is fine with the Republican Party as long as they get some crumbs from Big Tech themselves in donations and lobbying gigs.
The bottom line is Big Tech completely controls the main channels of communications the way Railroad Trusts and JD Rockefeller once controlled transportation and oil and we are powerless over it.
Removing 230 is the WORST possible fix. All it does is cement the current crop of big tech companies forever, since they'll be the only ones able to afford the lawyers to vet everything. Anything smaller will cease to exist overnight.
This needs to be treated as an anti-trust problem.
as i said in my post - they need to be broken up smaller market share chunks. But 230 also has to go so they will have to choose if they are a carrier or a publisher. Nobody has enough money or lawyers to defend millions of posts and uploads. If they choose carrier they cannot censor anymore than Zoom or ATT can, if they chose publisher their business model is gone and having been broken up to many companies if they censor your video as a publisher the outfit operating as a carrier will carry it. It is not that complicated.