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Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security

greenwald.substack.com

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Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security

#111

Post by stuxnet »

aweiland wrote: post #49
chasil wrote: post #7

James Clapper is a signatory? The man who perjured himself in front of congress? I think not. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/01/19/james-clap...

I don't put much faith in things Turley writes. He went off the deep end a long time ago and went into crazy town. Marc Elias has, correctly IMO, labeled him as "the pillow guy, but with tenure."

Why would you place stock in anything Marc Elias has to say? He is, at the very least, a partisan ideologue. And he’s certainly not a journalist unlike “the pillow guy, but with tenure”.

Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security

#112

Post by incomingpain »

notacoward wrote: post #79
incomingpain wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the complication of the position. Occams razor puts me back to the plain option that twitter is simply controlled by us gov.

Occam's Razor has nothing to do with this, and its improper invocation is fallacious. Literally it means "do not multiply entities beyond necessity"; in practice it's also called the principle of parsimony, meaning that one should not assume a more complicated explanation when a simpler one will do. Positing a connection between Twitter and the US government, without supporting evidence but just because it "makes sen…

>ccam's Razor has nothing to do with this, and its improper invocation is fallacious.

My mistake. Maybe I can't think of the one I'm trying to think of. I don't need a name or rule really.

Philosophically speaking, if you have a few competing ideas and no way to come to a conclusion. The simplest explanation is the best one to go with.

> Positing a connection between Twitter and the US government, without supporting evidence but just because it "makes sense" - is anything but parsimonious. That remains true even if such a connection does eventually turn out to exist. "Do not attribute to malice that which is explained by incompetence" is likely to be the more applicable principle here.

I did provide evidence in my original post. Perhaps you dont accept my evidences for some reason?

I believe I should consider a rebuttal to my evidences. Are the other S&P500 companies so tremendously undefended from takeover?

WBD recently joined S&P and they are pretty undefended, not as bad as twitter.

CPT is worse than WBD.

MOH is worse than CPT.

NDSN is about WBD.

CEG is worse than all of them.

Woah. I kind of disproved myself? I haven't considered this. Tesla is like the only defended stock I can find? I haven't checked them all.

https://www.multpl.com/s-p-500-pe-ratio

Haven't checked on this in awhile. It's high but is trending down post covid recession.

The S&P500 is full of zombies? Is this seriously happening? wow. I haven't seen anyone talking about this. What the hell happened?

Just checked TSX60 for Canada. AEM, AQN, ATD, BCE, BMO, BNS, ABX, and they are all good. BHC is the first one that looks maybe questionable but nowhere near problematic.

Just checked a random selection of FTSE 100. BP, BATS, BLND. All healthy.

I feel like disproving myself wasn't a good thing though. I need to go spend some time on questrade.

Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security

#113

Post by bavell »

tomrod wrote: post #86
bavell wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL no sane person thought the country was going to be taken over by some grandmas and goofy morons...

Correct. But interfering with election proceedings, never mind being encouraged to kill the people charged with finalizing those proceedings, could lend to chaos and give incumbents (who are stocking the chaos) opportunities to seize control -- an effective coup. Don't confuse tools with crafters.

I hear you, but as soon as anyone "siezed control" they would be summarily thrown out in the mud and made a laughing stock by the entirety of the nation.

Don't let the tiny vocal minority of fools chanting election fraud trick you into thinking regular folks would go along with some half-baked coup attempt - they'd be met with laughter and scorn. I've discussed this at length with friends and family, some of whom have pretty strong political views.

Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security

#114

Post by incomingpain »

nemothekid wrote: post #106
incomingpain wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don’t understand how “Twitter is controlled by the government” is the simplest explanation. Do you actually use Twitter? I don't use twitter. Because of Elon I wanted to test and do have an account right now. I connected to my canadian political folks and chess people. I liked lots of things, but I never commented or retweeted. I then commented on a chess person with a positive tweet and I was quietly censored. Ab…

> I then commented on a chess person with a positive tweet and I was quietly censored. This is no different than HN's shadowbans but I don't see people complain about free speech on HN to the same frequency on Twitter. Further still, the fact that you are only just now creating an account further reinforces to me that most people don't actually use Twitter and their entire perception of the platform comes from news h…

So I just typed this up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31110938

I retract my comment that US gov owns Twitter. It's not that, it's way way worse. I had an incorrect assumption.

Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security

#117

Post by bilbo0s »

helen___keller wrote: post #44

I'm sure if it was on the table, intelligence and national security officials would issue a jointly signed letter that implementing a "Great Firewall" in America is necessary for national security. Luckily, these people don't get a say in what congress does. I will continue to vote for legislators who advocate busting tech monopolies.

That makes one vote, unfortunately, it doesn't matter.

The set of people who vote on tech issues is dwarfed by the set of people who vote based on what "team" the candidate is on. That's simple reality, and it's not changing anytime soon.

If we want real change, we'll have to start paying the large "campaign contributions" that the organizations on the other side pay. It's a horrible thing to say, but that's how the system works.

Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security

#118

Post by stjohnswarts »

incomingpain wrote: post #2

On april 17th I made the prediction that the US government was in control of twitter for probably this reason. I got flagged for this. A day later a bunch of former intelligence people basically said this is a good idea. That's funny to me.

I don't think people think it's impossible but you need a source. The article in the headline does not prove this. Of course US security/war hawks want control over twitter but that doesn't make it true.

Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security

#119

Post by stjohnswarts »

kornhole wrote: post #110
jjulius wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>... previous experience working in intelligence Previous? But just moments ago you said... >... she works for US intelligence. And even still, the comment you reference is pretty innocuous if you have actual context. She has publicly stated that she worked alongside intelligence assets at a "threat intelligence unit" at Facebook[1]. [1] https://twitter.com/Rasha_Abdul/status/1496788958084280320

Of course I cannot prove that she still works with intelligence. The funding and direction of such assets is understably obscured. My statement is merely logical conclusion that you can choose to agree with or not.

logical possibility? Sure. Logic conclusion, I don't think so.

Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security

#120

Post by stjohnswarts »

Barrin92 wrote: post #69

The hilarious thing about this is that China is at the same time cracking down hard on its own tech sector for reasons of domestic competition and concentration of power. So on the one hand you have the country of freedom that must preserve its monopolistic structures and accept the lesser evil to fight the enemies abroad but the communist security state is busy... reigning their giants in? Probably a good time to qu…

This is only because the CCP wants full control over these entities and to shut out any Western/Non-CCP approve opinions and messages quickly and permanently.
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