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The Silicon Oligarchy

themargins.substack.com

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Re: The Silicon Oligarchy

#31

Post by ramraj07 »

zpeti wrote: post #4

I love this new narrative that allowing the president of the USA to communicate on the largest platform in the world is siding with him or being in alliance with him. At least be honest and say that you want Zuckerberg to censor and police trump. That’s the truth. But don’t pretend that somehow it’s immoral to allow the US President to post on your platform. He’s the president, whether you like it or not.

The president didn't post a video making cupcakes. He explicitly reused a racist phrase to suggest the black protesters should be shot down. Anyone else making this comment would have been flagged but not the president.

Zuckerberg is not the kid in the social network movie who's "not an asshole, you're just trying really hard to be one." No one has ever said a single good thing about him, or his partner Sandberg, in a long time. By all measures they seem to be selfish people who have nothing else in their minds other than keeping and growing the power they have now. The only other thing they are now famous for is how they manipulate good founders of great products with false promises and then kick them out to consolidate even more power. At least that's all you can tell from what little we know of these billionaire oligarchs lives.

In the end, I'm going to hypothesize that America became a great country because for a while some of its leaders and rich people at least tried to do _some_ good things to its people and try to be the better person now and then. Given the degree to which every single rich person and politician in power seems self-obsessed if not overtly corrupt, it doesn't bode too well for the life of the common man in America or anywhere else for the matter.

I'm not particularly worried about WW3 though, because I don't see any good country left behind to fight every totalitarian nation that's getting created now.

Re: The Silicon Oligarchy

#32

Post by champagneben »

ramraj07 wrote: post #31
zpeti wrote: post #4

I love this new narrative that allowing the president of the USA to communicate on the largest platform in the world is siding with him or being in alliance with him. At least be honest and say that you want Zuckerberg to censor and police trump. That’s the truth. But don’t pretend that somehow it’s immoral to allow the US President to post on your platform. He’s the president, whether you like it or not.

The president didn't post a video making cupcakes. He explicitly reused a racist phrase to suggest the black protesters should be shot down. Anyone else making this comment would have been flagged but not the president. Zuckerberg is not the kid in the social network movie who's "not an asshole, you're just trying really hard to be one." No one has ever said a single good thing about him, or his partner Sandberg, in…

>He explicitly reused a racist phrase to suggest the black protesters should be shot down.

I thought the consensus was that the looters were mostly young out-of-states whites? And to insinuate that the President had read some 1940s Florida mayor's (sorry, I can't remember who the saying is originally attributed to) speeches and knew the connotations of that phrase is ridiculous.

Re: The Silicon Oligarchy

#33

Post by 082349872349872 »

bsanr2 wrote: post #28

>One of my new grand theories is that America lags 5-7 years behind emerging markets when it comes to the impact of American companies on society. And now, whatever heaven and hell tech companies have wrought upon the emerging markets is now on our doorstep. This dovetails quite nicely with my conviction that whatever fortune or misfortune that's allowed to visit American blacks will eventually hit the rest of the co…

It's been 30 years since Yugoslavia so you all have fortunately avoided that particular misfortune arising from polarisation and breakdown in civil discourse.

Re: The Silicon Oligarchy

#34

Post by 082349872349872 »

proc0 wrote: post #9

tl;dr: I'm from Turkey and "orange man bad" So boring and unoriginal, missing one side completely and spinning it as unbiased, when it's borderline propaganda. C'mon.

The great advantage of Trump for those of us in the rest of the world is that his emphasis has been on doing unto his own rather than doing unto others.

Re: The Silicon Oligarchy

#35

Post by vbezhenar »

ramraj07 wrote: post #31
zpeti wrote: post #4

I love this new narrative that allowing the president of the USA to communicate on the largest platform in the world is siding with him or being in alliance with him. At least be honest and say that you want Zuckerberg to censor and police trump. That’s the truth. But don’t pretend that somehow it’s immoral to allow the US President to post on your platform. He’s the president, whether you like it or not.

The president didn't post a video making cupcakes. He explicitly reused a racist phrase to suggest the black protesters should be shot down. Anyone else making this comment would have been flagged but not the president. Zuckerberg is not the kid in the social network movie who's "not an asshole, you're just trying really hard to be one." No one has ever said a single good thing about him, or his partner Sandberg, in…

> Anyone else making this comment would have been flagged

Fix that problem then. Censorship on huge public platforms should not be allowed.

Re: The Silicon Oligarchy

#36

Post by throw0101a »

leereeves wrote: post #22
aspenmayer wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s for common carriers. Twitter isn’t a common carrier.

All Twitter does is transmit messages between people. Why do you consider them different from other services that do so?

Twitter is a private company, which uses private servers and network switches, that communicates with ISPs and their private equipment, to send the information we're talking about.

Radio and TV use public resources (EM waves), to which they have been granted a government license, to transmit information, so the government can ask them to do certain things at times.

Re: The Silicon Oligarchy

#37

Post by michaelt »

leereeves wrote: post #22
aspenmayer wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s for common carriers. Twitter isn’t a common carrier.

All Twitter does is transmit messages between people. Why do you consider them different from other services that do so?

Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and so on are following (or being pushed for political reasons) down the traditional slippery slope where first they ban child porn, KKK recruiters, anarchist groups exchanging bomb-making instructions and people openly selling illegal drugs.

Then things get broadened because yes, that is copyrighted stuff being shared, guess we should stop that. Yes, if that revenge porn isn't illegal it will be soon, guess we should block that. Yes, if they literally chose a nazi flag as their logo we can agree they're a hate group. Yes, that user's post about the smooth taste of Lucky Strike cigarettes does look like it was upvoted by a botnet. Yes, we could probably detect those rape threat messages you received and block them, senator.

And before you know it, you're adjudicating whether that person was joking when he said he'd blow up the airport for cancelling his flight; whether that 'parody news' website claiming vaccines cause autism is clearly enough a parody; and whether the letter Q is a hate symbol.

Re: The Silicon Oligarchy

#38

Post by golergka »

ramraj07 wrote: post #31
zpeti wrote: post #4

I love this new narrative that allowing the president of the USA to communicate on the largest platform in the world is siding with him or being in alliance with him. At least be honest and say that you want Zuckerberg to censor and police trump. That’s the truth. But don’t pretend that somehow it’s immoral to allow the US President to post on your platform. He’s the president, whether you like it or not.

The president didn't post a video making cupcakes. He explicitly reused a racist phrase to suggest the black protesters should be shot down. Anyone else making this comment would have been flagged but not the president. Zuckerberg is not the kid in the social network movie who's "not an asshole, you're just trying really hard to be one." No one has ever said a single good thing about him, or his partner Sandberg, in…

I may be a bit out of context of American politics, so an honest question here: how a threat to looters, who actively commit a crime, without any reference to skin color, can be racist?

Seeing how violent these riots can get, that phrase is exactly what I would love to hear from authorities as black business owner, for example.

Re: The Silicon Oligarchy

#39

Post by nfin »

champagneben wrote: post #32
ramraj07 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The president didn't post a video making cupcakes. He explicitly reused a racist phrase to suggest the black protesters should be shot down. Anyone else making this comment would have been flagged but not the president. Zuckerberg is not the kid in the social network movie who's "not an asshole, you're just trying really hard to be one." No one has ever said a single good thing about him, or his partner Sandberg, in…

>He explicitly reused a racist phrase to suggest the black protesters should be shot down. I thought the consensus was that the looters were mostly young out-of-states whites? And to insinuate that the President had read some 1940s Florida mayor's (sorry, I can't remember who the saying is originally attributed to) speeches and knew the connotations of that phrase is ridiculous.

if he doesn’t know the connotations of the words he employs, he should finally learn that the white house would be happy to proof read his tweets (or any person he would like to choose) in case he makes a mistake.

This is easy and standard procedure for talks, ... of big company leaders, politicians, ...

Re: The Silicon Oligarchy

#40

Post by JumpCrisscross »

torgian wrote: post #30
eeZah7Ux wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything, public figures should have LESS permissions than other citizens. The main different between acting as a public figure VS a private citizen is that you represent (and influence) other people.

It boggles my mind that as a member of the military , I was more restricted in what I could do and say than our public figures are.... at least it seemed like that.

> as a member of the military, I was more restricted in what I could do and say than our public figures are

As it should be. The military reports to our civilian leadership. The latter constrains the former. That, almost by definition, leaves the latter less constrained than the former.

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