Suppression of liberty and free speech is against the founding ethos of America. Should we abandon that ethos, we have abandoned the very idea of America. -- "Better to die on your feet than live on your knees." ~ Emiliano Zapata -- "Live Free or Die" ~ U.S. state of New Hampshire -- "Give me liberty or give me death!" ~ Patrick Henry -- “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety…
Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security
51–60 of 235 posts
Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security
#52It's such a financially convenient line of thinking. It's absolute nonsense. Both at face value and once you dig into it. Mainstream media is feeding us constant lies which work against our interests, destroy our ability to trust institutions and the government. Big Tech is clearly the biggest threat to our democracy. Before Big Tech, we did not have such problems. This new narrative is pure self-serving propaganda,…
Before big tech, there wasn't a race to the bottom for eyeballs and journalism was well funded enough to provide quality reporting.
Yes there was. That trend started long before big tech. In the aughts there was a lot of constrination around news rooms being gutted, with less and less investigative journalism — replaced with “soft news”.
Those criticizing this and were called snobs and elitists; the market - the people - wanted soft news stories!
Interestingly the same ideological coterie that cheered news room gutting (because of a perceived ideological slant) and welcomed the soft news trend is now complaining about click-bait internet journalism.
Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security
#53It's such a financially convenient line of thinking. It's absolute nonsense. Both at face value and once you dig into it. Mainstream media is feeding us constant lies which work against our interests, destroy our ability to trust institutions and the government. Big Tech is clearly the biggest threat to our democracy. Before Big Tech, we did not have such problems. This new narrative is pure self-serving propaganda,…
Before big tech, there wasn't a race to the bottom for eyeballs and journalism was well funded enough to provide quality reporting.
This intense competition over eyeballs is driven by the monetary system. Money printing creates a supply side economy (demand-constrained, as opposed to supply-constrained).
All companies just produce as many goods and services as they can using all the financing which is available to them. The biggest challenge in a supply side economy is finding customers to buy the goods which the company produced or plans to produce. It increases competition on the customer-acquisition side and reduces competition on the production side (I.e. quality goes down). It makes it almost impossible for small companies to compete.
The money printing acts as a kind of subsidy for big corporations (and regular citizens end up paying via inflation). Companies which are not subsidized cannot compete no matter how good their products are or how efficient they are at producing them. They can never get the same profit margins as big corporations due to the lack of subsidies. Subsidies from the money printer can come in the form of government grants, overly generous government contracts or from banks in the form of very low interest loans. It's an asymmetric playing field.
Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security
#54On 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.
From your comment, you went unnecessarily political regarding the January 6, 2021 insurrection. In my view, this is why people downvoted your comment. The common narrative is that it was insurrection. It was certainly a dangerous mob driven by Trump and cronies intending to interfere with the US election proceedings without justifiable cause beyond pseudo-creedal feelings that somewhere, somehow, the election was sto…
>From your comment, you went unnecessarily political regarding the January 6, 2021 insurrection. In my view, this is why people downvoted your comment. The common narrative is that it was insurrection
That hasn't been true for months. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_United_States_Capitol_att...
Wiki used to call it insurrection but it's not that. I understand the criticism that perhaps it's because it's political, but that's the because the whole subject is political.
>It was certainly a dangerous mob driven by Trump and cronies intending to interfere with the US election proceedings without justifiable cause beyond pseudo-creedal feelings that somewhere, somehow, the election was stolen.
Dangerous seems an over reach.
Contemporary comparison you have mostly peaceful riots and actual insurrections like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Occupied_Protest
It's really important to see what's happening here. It's ultra important to be able to talk about these things.
Republicans need to address the police brutality and objectively proven racism.
Democrats need to address some things as well.
These conversations have to happen and they are going to hurt.
Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security
#55On 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.
From your comment, you went unnecessarily political regarding the January 6, 2021 insurrection. In my view, this is why people downvoted your comment. The common narrative is that it was insurrection. It was certainly a dangerous mob driven by Trump and cronies intending to interfere with the US election proceedings without justifiable cause beyond pseudo-creedal feelings that somewhere, somehow, the election was sto…
Yeah, one group of "protestors" can take over a small section of a city, push the authorities out, loot and riot. But another "protest" gets a little out of hand and it's an attempt to overthrow the government.
Trump lost, can nobody see that continuing to talk about him is counterproductive? On both sides!
Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security
#56On 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.
Former intelligence people churn out all sorts of goofy takes in an attempt to build their brand. They’re also all over the spectrum depending on what audience they’re chasing. Not that much difference than any other media influencer or substack author. It's ultimately a free speech issue. You can't demand people to self-censor because their previous employment places unjustified credibility their nonsensical views.…
>Former intelligence people churn out all sorts of goofy takes in an attempt to build their brand. They’re also all over the spectrum depending on what audience they’re chasing.
You're right but is this one a goofy take? Or is there a real something here?
Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security
#57I think Greenwald's characterization of the letter's contents is a bit disingenuous. The letter makes the claim that recently proposed legislation that would enforce non-discriminatory access would do so in a way that would include foreign adversaries.
Greenwald takes that and elevates the claim to, "Any attempts to restrict Big Tech's monopolistic power would therefore undermine the U.S. fight against Moscow."
The letter makes no such claim. This amounts to a straw man.
Greenwald goes on to rail at the signees for the letter claiming that Hunter Biden's laptop had the hallmarks of Russian disinformation, but while the NYT recently apparently confirmed the genuine nature of Biden's laptop, that letter was still well-founded at the time. A thing can be genuine and have the hallmarks of developed disinformation.
I think Greenwald is being intellectually dishonest.
Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not biased to moderate something like "vaccines cause autism". It's been legally and scientifically established as outright misinformation. The genesis of that theory was a disgraced researcher who pushed fraudulent claims with misrepresented data. The paper was retracted for "scientific misconduct". And yet now moderating false claims that have a detrimental effect on public health outcomes is seen as a "leftis…
> It's not biased to moderate something like "vaccines cause autism". It is biased. As is any and all moderation, inherently. Biased toward science. A bias toward the rational is a positive, healthy bias. Rather than cowering about bias, Twitter should very openly and very aggressively stake out a clear and biased position; ie, this is our ground: we're pro science, pro vaccines, and we're going to hold that ground,…
I dont mind this position. Ultimately it needs to be open and free to discuss. By saying this is offlimits, the cat and mouse game begins and we invent new words that will generally be understood in their place.
Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
From your comment, you went unnecessarily political regarding the January 6, 2021 insurrection. In my view, this is why people downvoted your comment. The common narrative is that it was insurrection. It was certainly a dangerous mob driven by Trump and cronies intending to interfere with the US election proceedings without justifiable cause beyond pseudo-creedal feelings that somewhere, somehow, the election was sto…
>From your comment, you went unnecessarily political regarding the January 6, 2021 insurrection. In my view, this is why people downvoted your comment. The common narrative is that it was insurrection That hasn't been true for months. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_United_States_Capitol_att... Wiki used to call it insurrection but it's not that. I understand the criticism that perhaps it's because it's political,…
> Wiki used to call it insurrection but it's not that.
They don't call it insurrection only because "seditious conspiracy" is the more legally accurate term, and the charge on which convictions have already been obtained. But ask a layperson to describe the difference and you'll get nothing. Even the US house and senate voted on impeachment for "incitement of insurrection" despite the legal distinction. Saying that it's "not insurrection[legal]" might be true, but HN is not a court and saying "not insurrection[common]" here is false.
Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security
#60Earlier 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.
Controlled how? I ask because I'm pretty sure real (non-US government) people post to Twitter and get real retweets. How is the US government controlling it? I imagine this would have blown wide open a long time ago if true. (Also Occam's Razor?)
Social control and power is never complete and absolute. Even very direct coercion can often be ignored, worked around or endured except for very extreme cases.