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Big Tech, Social media and the government

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  • #16
    Re: Big Tech, Social media and the government

    YouTube Becomes Latest to Censor Trump, Citing “Potential for Violence”

    The purge continues. The Google-owned video-sharing platform YouTube on Tuesday placed a temporary suspension on President Donald Trump’s account, preventing the president from uploading new content for a week. “After review, and in light of concerns about the ongoing potential for violence, we removed new content uploaded to Donald J. Trump’s channel for violating our policies,” YouTube said in a statement Tuesday night. “It now has its 1st strike & is temporarily prevented from uploading new content for a *minimum* of 7 days,” the company continued.

    If a content creator gets three “strikes” within a 90-day period, his or her channel will be permanently banned from the platform. “Given the ongoing concerns about violence, we will also be indefinitely disabling comments on President Trump’s channel, as we’ve done to other channels where there are safety concerns found in the comments section,” YouTube added.



    This comes amid the effort by various social-media companies to censor or ban the president on grounds that his words “incite violence,” a claim allegedly evidenced by the march on Congress last week, in which a crowd entered into the Capitol Building without authorization. Following those events, the social-media platforms Facebook, Instagram (which is owned by Facebook), and Twitter banned President Trump. This is a perilous moment for freedom of speech, and not only in the sphere of social media. The establishment has shown that they are willing to use whatever industry they control to silence political dissidents. Are you guilty of “right-wing hate speech?” The major social-media sites will ban you. The major telecom firms will take down your websites. Soon all the major banks will shut down your account, and even if you use a local credit union, Visa and Mastercard will blacklist you so you can’t use cards.

    https://thenewamerican.com/youtube-b...-for-violence/

    Comment


    • #17
      Re: Big Tech, Social media and the government

      Twitter and Facebook have seen $51 billion of combined market value wiped out since booting Trump from their platforms



      Facebook and Twitter have collectively seen $51.2 billion erased from their market caps over the last two trading sessions as investors balk at their banning of President Trump.
      Facebook saw $47.6 billion erased from its public valuation, while Twitter's market cap dropped by $3.5 billion.
      Both companies announced last week they would permanently ban the president, saying keeping him on their platforms posed too large a risk of additional violence.
      The bans come as Trump faces blowback from the government and corporations for his role in inciting last week's violent riots at the Capitol.

      https://markets.businessinsider.com/...1-1-1029965338
      That's it my fellow Americans... send a loud clear message by hitting those greedy SOB's and POS where it hurts the most... in their pocketbooks!!!

      Comment


      • #18
        Re: Big Tech, Social media and the government

        Originally posted by Docker View Post
        That's it my fellow Americans... send a loud clear message by hitting those greedy SOB's and POS where it hurts the most... in their pocketbooks!!!
        Duckduckgo is the search engine I use now.. Facebook and twitter.. They are both down even further today.. good for them..

        Comment


        • #19
          Re: Big Tech, Social media and the government

          Originally posted by crazy View Post
          Duckduckgo is the search engine I use now.. Facebook and twitter.. They are both down even further today.. good for them..
          DuckDuckGo also has a very good stand alone Browser............

          Comment


          • #20
            Re: Big Tech, Social media and the government

            Glenn Greenwald: Democrats Claim Censorship Necessary to Stop ‘Fascism’, But They Still Serve Militarism & Corporatism

            Democrats claim censorship necessary to stop ‘fascism’, but they still serve militarism and corporatism, Glenn Greenwald tells RT. Democrats are cheering for censorship as a means to root out “fascism,” even as they serve corporate interests that continue to exacerbate the social and economic issues that gave rise to Donald Trump, Glenn Greenwald told RT. The acclaimed American journalist issued a scathing critique of the American Left during a conversation with Chris Hedges, host of RT’s On Contact. The interview will air in full on Sunday.

            Pointing to Donald Trump’s indefinite Twitter suspension, Greenwald accused Democrats of appealing to Big Tech to police speech that could undermine their hold on power, using the pretext of fighting far-right extremism to quash dissent.

            "They’re on their knees pleading with billionaires and oligarchs and monopolists and Silicon Valley to censor in a way that they believe is politically advantageous."

            The Democrats are very good at creating a brand that is radically different from their reality. But essentially the Democratic Party serves militarism, imperialism, and corporatism.
            He added that the crackdown on free speech was particularly egregious because it was being carried out by a “tiny number of Silicon Valley oligarchs” who operate outside of the realm of democratic accountability.”

            https://www.rt.com/usa/512717-glenn-...-hedges-trump/

            Comment


            • #21
              Re: Big Tech, Social media and the government

              Tech Supremacy: Silicon Valley Can No Longer Conceal Its Power

              Last week provided a near-perfect analogy. For years before the 2020 election, nearly all American conservatives were in favour of standing up to big tech: the majority of them were also against changing the laws and regulations enough to make such a stand effective. The difference is that, unlike the German threat, which was geographically remote, the threat from Silicon Valley was literally in front of our noses, day and night: on our mobile phones, our tablets and our laptops. Writing in this magazine more than three years ago, I warned of a coming collision between Donald Trump and Silicon Valley. ‘Social media helped Donald Trump take the White House,’ I wrote. ‘Silicon Valley won’t let it happen again.’ The conclusion of my book The Square and the Tower was that the new online network platforms represented a new kind of power that posed a fundamental challenge to the traditional hierarchical power of the state.

              By the network platforms, I mean Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Google and Apple, or FATGA for short — companies that have established a dominance over the public sphere not seen since the heyday of the pre-Reformation Catholic Church. FATGA had humble enough origins in garages and dorm rooms. As recently as 2008, not one of them could be found among the world’s largest companies by market capitalisation. Today, they occupy first, third, fourth and fifth places in the market cap league table, just above their Chinese counterparts, Tencent and Alibaba. What happened was that the network platforms turned the originally decentralised worldwide web into an oligarchically organised and hierarchical public sphere from which they made money and to which they controlled access. That the original, superficially libertarian inclinations of these companies’ founders would rapidly crumble under political pressure from the left was also perfectly obvious, if one bothered to look a little beyond one’s proboscis.

              Following the violent far-right rally at Charlottesville in August 2017, Matthew Prince, chief executive of the internet service provider Cloudflare, described how he had responded: ‘Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the internet.’ On the basis that ‘the people behind the [white supremacist magazine] Daily Stormer are assholes’, he denied their website access to the internet. ‘No one should have that power,’ he admitted. ‘We need to have a discussion around this with clear rules and clear frameworks. My whims and those of Jeff [Bezos] and Larry [Page] and … Mark [Zuckerberg] shouldn’t be what determines what should be online.’ But that discussion had barely begun in 2017. Indeed, many Republicans at that time still believed the notion that FATGA were champions of the free market that required only the lightest regulation. They know better now. After last year’s election Twitter attached health warnings to Trump’s tweets when he claimed that he had in fact beaten Joe Biden. Then, in the wake of the storming of the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters, Twitter and Facebook began shutting down multiple accounts — including that of the President himself, now ‘permanently suspended’ from tweeting. When Trump loyalists declared their intention to move their conversations from Twitter to rival Parler — in effect, Twitter with minimal content moderation — Google and Apple deleted Parler from their app stores. Then Amazon kicked Parler off its ‘cloud’ service, effectively deleting it from the internet altogether. It was a stunning demonstration of power.

              It is tempting to complain that Democrats are hypocrites — that they would be screaming blue murder if the boot were on the other foot and it was Kamala Harris whose Twitter account had been cancelled. But if that were the case, how many Republicans would now be complaining? Not many. No, the correct conclusion to be drawn is that the Republicans had their chance to address the problem of over-mighty big tech and completely flunked it.Only too late did they realise that Section 230 was Silicon Valley’s Achilles heel. Only too late did they begin drafting legislation to repeal or modify it. Only too late did Section 230 start to feature in Trump’s speeches. Even now it seems to me that very few Republicans really understand that, by itself, repealing 230 would not have sufficed. Without some kind of First Amendment for the internet, repeal would probably just have restricted free speech further.

              As Orwell rightly observed, ‘we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality.’ Those words sum up quite a lot that has gone on inside the Republican party over the past four years. There it was, right in front of their noses: Trump would lead the party to defeat. And he would behave in the most discreditable way when beaten. Those things were predictable. But what was also foreseeable was that FATGA — the ‘new governors’, as a 2018 Harvard Law Review article called them — would be the true victors of the 2020 election.

              https://www.zerohedge.com/technology...ceal-its-power

              Comment


              • #22
                Re: Big Tech, Social media and the government

                Originally posted by Docker View Post
                Glenn Greenwald: Democrats Claim Censorship Necessary to Stop ‘Fascism’, But They Still Serve Militarism & Corporatism

                Democrats claim censorship necessary to stop ‘fascism’, but they still serve militarism and corporatism, Glenn Greenwald tells RT. Democrats are cheering for censorship as a means to root out “fascism,” even as they serve corporate interests that continue to exacerbate the social and economic issues that gave rise to Donald Trump, Glenn Greenwald told RT. The acclaimed American journalist issued a scathing critique of the American Left during a conversation with Chris Hedges, host of RT’s On Contact. The interview will air in full on Sunday.

                Pointing to Donald Trump’s indefinite Twitter suspension, Greenwald accused Democrats of appealing to Big Tech to police speech that could undermine their hold on power, using the pretext of fighting far-right extremism to quash dissent.



                He added that the crackdown on free speech was particularly egregious because it was being carried out by a “tiny number of Silicon Valley oligarchs” who operate outside of the realm of democratic accountability.”

                https://www.rt.com/usa/512717-glenn-...-hedges-trump/
                Excellent post Docker on so many levels...It shows your not just using conservative web-sites to get your point across,and this is exactly the kind of Truth to Power journalism that 'We the People' so desperately need coming from multiple sides of the political divide...Thank You....Glenn Greenwald is a 'left-leaning' journalist and along with Chris Hedges and Matt Taibbi are 'just' 3 of my favorite journalists who take on corporate power with a fair and balanced insight...No spin,no BS,no ideology,no agenda,no red/blue,just the truth!!!!!...Glen Greenwald was one of the original founders of the 'left-wing' web-site The 'Intercept'...Last October he quit the Intercept on 'principle'...He wrote a scathing account on the 47 year corruption that IS Joe Biden's political record...They told him they weren't going to 'print' it...''Censorship''...He told them to GO TO HELL!!!!...

                ''It is stunning to watch now as every War on Terror rhetorical tactic to justify civil liberties erosions is now being invoked in the name of Trumpism,including the aggressive exploitation of the emotions triggered by yesterday's events at the Capitol to accelerate their implementation and demonize dissent over the quickly formed consensus...The same framework used to assault civil liberties in the name of foreign terrorism is now being seamlessly applied,often by those who spent the last two decades objecting to it,to the threat posed by ''Domestic White Supremacist Terrorists'',the term preferred by liberal elites,especially after yesterday,for Trump supporters generally...In so many ways,yesterday was the liberals ''9/11'',as even the ''most sensible commentators'' among them are resorting to the most ''unhinged'' rhetoric available''......Glen Greenwald

                http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56171.htm


                ''What we've been watching for four years,and what we saw explode last week,is a paradox,a political and informational system that ''profits'' from division and conflict,and uses a factory style process to stimulate it,but professes shock and horror when real conflict happens...It's time to admit this is a failed system...You can't ''sell hatred'' and expect it to end''......Matt Taibbi

                http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56177.htm

                Comment


                • #23
                  Re: Big Tech, Social media and the government

                  Originally posted by wizard View Post
                  Excellent post Docker on so many levels...It shows your not just using conservative web-sites to get your point across,and this is exactly the kind of Truth to Power journalism that 'We the People' so desperately need coming from multiple sides of the political divide...Thank You....Glenn Greenwald is a 'left-leaning' journalist and along with Chris Hedges and Matt Taibbi are 'just' 3 of my favorite journalists who take on corporate power with a fair and balanced insight...No spin,no BS,no ideology,no agenda,no red/blue,just the truth!!!!!...Glen Greenwald was one of the original founders of the 'left-wing' web-site The 'Intercept'...Last October he quit the Intercept on 'principle'...He wrote a scathing account on the 47 year corruption that IS Joe Biden's political record...They told him they weren't going to 'print' it...''Censorship''...He told them to GO TO HELL!!!!...

                  'It is stunning to watch now as every War on Terror rhetorical tactic to justify civil liberties erosions is now being invoked in the name of Trumpism,including the aggressive exploitation of the emotions triggered by yesterday's events at the Capitol to accelerate their implementation and demonize dissent over the quickly formed consensus...The same framework used to assault civil liberties in the name of foreign terrorism is now being seamlessly applied,often by those who spent the last two decades objecting to it,to the threat posed by ''Domestic White Supremacist Terrorists'',the term preferred by liberal elites,especially after yesterday,for Trump supporters generally...In so many ways,yesterday was the liberals ''9/11'',as even the ''most sensible commentators'' among them are resorting to the most ''unhinged'' rhetoric available''......Glen Greenwald

                  http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56171.htm

                  ''What we've been watching for four years,and what we saw explode last week,is a paradox,a political and informational system that ''profits'' from division and conflict,and uses a factory style process to stimulate it,but professes shock and horror when real conflict happens...It's time to admit this is a failed system...You can't ''sell hatred'' and expect it to end''......Matt Taibbi

                  http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56177.htm
                  Thanks wizard... and IMO... this statement couldn't be more precise...

                  ''What we've been watching for four years,and what we saw explode last week,is a paradox,a political and informational system that ''profits'' from division and conflict,and uses a factory style process to stimulate it,but professes shock and horror when real conflict happens...It's time to admit this is a failed system...You can't ''sell hatred'' and expect it to end''......Matt Taibbi
                  Along with this fron the article you just posted...

                  We Need a New Media System

                  Media firms work backward. They first ask, “How does our target demographic want to understand what’s just unfolded?” Then they pick both the words and the facts they want to emphasize. What happened last Wednesday was the apotheosis of the Hate Inc. era, when this audience-first model became the primary means of communicating facts to the population. For a hundred reasons dating back to the mid-eighties, from the advent of the Internet to the development of the 24-hour news cycle to the end of the Fairness Doctrine and the Fox-led discovery that news can be sold as character-driven, episodic TV in the manner of soap operas, the concept of a “Just the facts” newscast designed to be consumed by everyone died out.

                  News companies now clean world events like whalers, using every part of the animal, funneling different facts to different consumers based upon calculations about what will bring back the biggest engagement kick. The Migrant Caravan? Fox slices off comments from a Homeland Security official describing most of the border-crossers as single adults coming for “economic reasons.” The New York Times counters by running a story about how the caravan was deployed as a political issue by a Trump White House staring at poor results in midterm elections.

                  Repeat this info-sifting process a few billion times and this is how we became, as none other than Mitch McConnell put it last week, a country:

                  Drifting apart into two separate tribes, with a separate set of facts and separate realities, with nothing in common except our hostility towards each other and mistrust for the few national institutions that we all still share.
                  The flaw in the system is that even the biggest news companies now operate under the assumption that at least half their potential audience isn’t listening. This leads to all sorts of problems, and the fact that the easiest way to keep your own demographic is to feed it negative stories about others is only the most obvious. On all sides, we now lean into inflammatory caricatures, because the financial incentives encourage it.

                  http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56177.htm

                  Comment


                  • #24
                    Re: Big Tech, Social media and the government

                    Amazon can ban Parler...but allows this?


                    https://mobile.twitter.com/ryanafour...95494531936263

                    Comment


                    • #25
                      Re: Big Tech, Social media and the government

                      Originally posted by Sayheykid View Post
                      Amazon can ban Parler...but allows this?


                      https://mobile.twitter.com/ryanafour...95494531936263
                      Nothing to see here,it fits their narrative..

                      Comment


                      • #26
                        Re: Big Tech, Social media and the government

                        Originally posted by Docker View Post
                        Thanks wizard... and IMO... this statement couldn't be more precise...



                        Along with this fron the article you just posted...
                        And the comment from McConnell couldn't be any more poignant and ever so 'revealing'...It tells us,We the People,that they know exactly what the hell is going on...Begs the question,what the hell are they going to do about it?...Just more BS,status quo,and division,or will they work 'together' to do what's Right and Just for ALL Americans,and not just 'their' party?...

                        The squelching of free speech is exactly what happens when ''SIX'' giant multi-national conglomerates control the means of communication...And yes I've read and heard the libertarian prattle that these massive corporations can do whatever they want on their platforms because their private companies...These companies are 'dominating' the new social commons,they thrived on 'tax breaks' and 'government subsidies' and also non-enforcement of anti-trust laws...Damn right the First Amendment should apply....

                        Comment


                        • #27
                          Re: Big Tech, Social media and the government

                          Amazon and Google are the only 2 who every website must use to be on the internet.
                          I figure the Navy created RCA.
                          And the Pentagon probably created the web.
                          And it's intent was to spy and control.

                          Comment


                          • #28
                            Re: Big Tech, Social media and the government

                            Isn't this just great...

                            Calif. becomes less desirable for Big Tech and residents

                            It appears dozens of Big Tech companies are leaving California for other states across America. According to a report Friday, many employees of major tech companies said remote work due to coronavirus restrictions led them to leave San Francisco for places where they say “life is easier.” One big factor in the move was the continued rise of taxes in the Golden State, which makes states without income tax more desirable. California has one of the highest income tax levels in the nation.

                            “California’s top marginal income tax rate is now 13.3 percent, which is already one of the highest in the nation,” political commentator Ben Shapiro said. “The legislator is actively discussing raising it to 16.8, which on top of federal taxation means that if you’re in the top tax bracket you’re paying 54 percent of your income to the federal and state government.”

                            In the meantime, the number one place for these tech workers to move turned out to be Austin, Texas followed by Seattle, New York and Chicago. Austin has a healthy tech industry with tech company ‘Dell’ based nearby. Companies like Twitter and Facebook have reportedly tried to sublet some of their San Francisco office space as office vacancy rates in the area have spiked more than 16 percent, which is the highest in a decade. However, it isn’t only tech companies moving away. Ordinary California families are also finding new lives in other states.

                            Sahin Boydas, a former San Francisco resident and founder of a remote start-up, said he understands how the top one percent can be happy in California, but not so much for everyone else. The price of living is just one factor, as Boydas noted that selling his former three-bedroom apartment in the Bay Area got his family a five-bedroom house on an acre of land in Texas.

                            Additionally, a new population estimate from a December report shows more than 130,000 people left California than those who moved there. This marks the third-largest net migration loss ever recorded.

                            https://www.oann.com/calif-becomes-l...and-residents/
                            Greedy Big Tech and simple minded libs ruin one state then simply move on to eventually ruin another.

                            Comment


                            • #29
                              Re: Big Tech, Social media and the government

                              Are you strong enough to break them?
                              Drop big tech
                              Don't use
                              Facebook Twitter YouTube Amazon......
                              Drop all surveillance.
                              Get a regular phone.
                              Don't watch any news
                              Buy local
                              Ban China.....
                              Good luck


                              The last president has left the building

                              Comment


                              • #30
                                Re: Big Tech, Social media and the government

                                Anti-Trump Lincoln Project Funneled Over $10 Million to Founders’ Companies

                                Financial records from The Lincoln Project, the ostensibly conservative anti-Trump group touted and monetarily supported by the establishment, reveal that the group funneled over $10,000,000 to fatten the wallets of its founders through their communications and consulting firms.

                                Since its founding in 2019 for the purpose of “defeating President Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box,” the Lincoln Project has routinely funneled the millions it has raised to its founders and advisors.

                                For example, co-founder Reed Gallen’s Summit Strategic Communications LLC took in $6,160,664.99 in 2020 in what was the highest-paid entity by The Lincoln Project.

                                Then there’s fellow founder and advisor Ron Steslow, whose “Tusk Digital” firm received $4,014,913.24.

                                Another Lincoln Project Founder, Mike Madrid, took home $61,000 for his “Grassroots Lab” firm.

                                Communications Advisor Ryan Wiggins’s Full Contact Strategies got $41,000 from the Lincoln Project, Senior Advisor Trygve Olson’s Viking Strategies received $49,003.81, and Senior Advisor Jeff Timmer’s Two Rivers Public Affairs firm received $50,000 from two transactions.

                                The news comes mere days after Lincoln Project co-founder John Weaver admitted to sending sexually inappropriate messages to young men and had sex with younger men after promising them job opportunities that never materialized.

                                Weaver ultimately came out as “gay” and parted with the organization.

                                https://thenewamerican.com/anti-trum...ers-companies/

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