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The Silicon Oligarchy

themargins.substack.com

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Re: The Silicon Oligarchy

#41

Post by 082349872349872 »

zxcb1 wrote: post #2

VECTORALISTS

If medieval military structure influenced feudalism, I can see strategic bombing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23572030 as influencing vectoralism.

But I'm not super convinced vectoralist/hacker is that useful a distinction. I think Orwell called it correctly in predicting Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia. Where he went too far[1], perhaps because he grew up in a parliamentary system, is in not predicting that the Oceanic outer party would be dualised in two distinct thought-monitoring parties: the pitchfork party and the torch party. https://i.imgur.com/RlmIFzj.jpeg

[1] I haven't read anything but the Goldstein chapters, so all my knowledge of the rest is from pop culture. Is there anything there, or is it "fast-forward?" (Also, it seems pop culture overplays universal oppression: at least 87% of the population appears to be unaffected. Doesn't the severe dystopia only hit those readers who identify with outer party members?)

Re: The Silicon Oligarchy

#42

Post by cinquemb »

Tools of the national security™ apparatus and its profiteers repurposed for domestic use[0]:

2014 CFR discussion[1]: "… What about Twitter? I have no idea what Twitter is good for. But if it flips out every tyrant in the Middle East, I'm interested." - Michael Rogers, Founder, Practical Futurist; Futurist-in-Residence, New York Times Company

[0][1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15623278

Re: The Silicon Oligarchy

#43

Post by pjc50 »

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…

> quite nicely with my conviction that whatever fortune or misfortune that's allowed to visit American blacks will eventually hit the rest of the country

One of my wilder observations is that, while the conspiracy theorists are wrong, they're "exactly wrong": the unevidenced thing looks a bit like something that actually happened but with completely different details.

The thing they're worried about is the US doing to white people what it's already done to nonwhite people. Illegal medical experiments? Tuskeegee. "FEMA camps"? The post-Katrina mess. COINTELPRO? Already deployed against civil rights leaders in the 60s and 70s.

Re: The Silicon Oligarchy

#44

Post by pjc50 »

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.

It turns out that the orange man is bad, in many of the same ways that Erdogan is bad.

Re: The Silicon Oligarchy

#45

Post by aspenmayer »

michaelt wrote: post #37
leereeves wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wi…

Guys in suits getting interviewed on cable news wear Q lapel pins for a reason. It’s to show the 8channers that they’re part of the in-group. Just like Trump tweeting a doctored CNN chyron on top of a doctored Carpe Donktum video. Propaganda and dog whistles can be obvious; placebo effects still work even in cases where you know it’s a placebo.

Re: The Silicon Oligarchy

#46

Post by alwayseasy »

leereeves wrote: post #21
EdwardDiego wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except wasn't that clause to stop the Executive Branch (and anyone else) from using the machinery of the state to interfere with Congress? Not really about freedom of speech, rather keeping Congress independent from outside control. A lot of former British colonies have the same principle, dating from 1688/1689: https://www.parliament.nz/en/visit-and-learn/how-parliament-...

> keeping Congress independent from outside control. Exactly what's at stake here. Keeping the government independent from outside control by those who happen to control the means of communication.

Facebook is not "the means of communication" comparable to Congress. It's a private company that can control the types of ads it runs.

Re: The Silicon Oligarchy

#47

Post by alwayseasy »

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.

"When the looting starts, the shooting starts" is a phrase by Walter E. Headley, the police chief of Miami, Florida, who said it in response to an outbreak of violent crime during the 1967 Christmas holiday season.

Donald Trump was already an adult in 1967 and even if he didn't know this was a dog-whistle for white supremacists.... Facebook doesn't have to amplify destructive ideologies just because the ones who relay it are ignorant. Otherwise everyone would invoke that excuse.

Re: The Silicon Oligarchy

#48

Post by cryptica »

I'm not convinced at all that Mark Zuckerberg likes Trump. He just did it to play "good cop bad cop".

I've seen this kind of "good cop bad cop" charade a lot recently. Not just in the news but also in real life at my last company. You have one person acting like the bad guy using extreme arguments and another person acting like the good guy using less extreme arguments (though also undesirable) - this encourages people to side with the less extreme position instead of recognizing that they are both undesirable options.

IMO the 'employee walkout' by FB was just a charade in this good cop bad cop game. In a highly divided society, this is the most effective way to persuade people to do what you want. It creates a slow but predictable decline. Within a decade, people will think of the once extreme position as being totally reasonable.

Then they will keep playing the game; it's going to get a point that the good cop will be offering people to take huge salary cuts while the bad cop will be offering to abolish salaries altogether and provide food vouchers instead. There will be some overhanging narrative that we have limited resources and each one of us should do our bit to conserve those resources.

Re: The Silicon Oligarchy

#49

Post by taneq »

leereeves wrote: post #18
aspenmayer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that what C-SPAN is for? A private company isn’t obligated to transmit anyone’s speech. Politicians can use government owned or subsidized media if they want to dictate the terms.

> A private company isn’t obligated to transmit anyone’s speech. The phone company was.[1] TV networks were.[2] And while there is still some debate about this, net neutrality would apply that obligation to ISPs. Why not Facebook and Twitter? 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_of_1934 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine

I thought they'd basically won the war on net neutrality and it was no longer any form of common carrier?

Re: The Silicon Oligarchy

#50

Post by [deleted] »

alwayseasy wrote: post #46
leereeves wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> keeping Congress independent from outside control. Exactly what's at stake here. Keeping the government independent from outside control by those who happen to control the means of communication.

Facebook is not "the means of communication" comparable to Congress. It's a private company that can control the types of ads it runs.

[deleted]
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