[HN Gopher] Insurrection as a Service
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Insurrection as a Service
Author : Reedx
Score : 19 points
Date : 2021-01-13 21:13 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.piratewires.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.piratewires.com)
| rdxm wrote:
| I love how self-absorbed the tech world is.
|
| "Big Tech" Tech doesn't control things, that's frankly silly. Is
| it a cancer on our culture? In some cases absolutely
| (FB/Twitter/Insta for example).
|
| But the reality is as it always has been. Big money controls
| things. The guy really driving the bus at this point is pretty
| much Larry Fink, who sits on top of a 7.8 trillion dollar fund
| that effectively controls the markets...like all of them. (there
| are other large funds but this one is I think the largest). Matt
| Levine touches on this topic in a piece from last summer:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-25/the-go...
|
| Larry's gotta be super happy to have people distracted by this
| "Big Tech" nonsense, keeps his shadow government off the radar
| screens.
|
| And really only a very small number of people relative to the
| broader population actually care that Trump was de-platformed.
| Frankly it was long overdue. Putin lost his useful idiot (oh
| well, easy come easy go...), but The Republic, and the broader
| country appears to have flushed the toilet on a zero-value-add
| liability.
|
| It's worth noting the markets didn't miss a beat over the last
| two weeks. Go figure....
| chris_dcosta wrote:
| As technologists we have always had a responsibility beyond just
| doing the job. We don't all see it that way I know, but for
| example we choose to use encryption for reasons that should not
| even be up for discussion. We have platforms and services that
| can be used to provide some direction to society, when we as
| fellow human beings see it going awry. Sure there are those who
| will overstep the mark, but you cannot hide anymore and this is
| the reality that any would be fascist has to face.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| > The American Bill of Rights was written at the time of the
| printing press, a machine that anyone could buy, the street
| corner, on which anyone could sell a paper, a system of public
| roads and walks for distribution, and thousands of small
| businesses that comprised the "market," any one of which,
| absolutely, could refuse to sell a paper, but no one or two (or
| five in obvious collusion) were capable of censoring a single
| voice out of public existence. Today, the internet is the gateway
| through which almost our entire democracy is conducted.
|
| I can't figure out if I missed a /s somewhere in this section. Is
| the author seriously arguing that it was easier to distribute
| information in the late 1700s and early 1800s than it is now if
| you're off of the internet?
|
| Is he also arguing that FB/Twitter/Apple/Google/Amazon have a
| monopoly on the ability to communicate on the internet? HN isn't
| hosted on any of these and I'm writing this just fine.
|
| > the printing press, a machine that anyone could buy
|
| I can't find the number, but I'm honestly curious. How much did a
| printing press cost in 1796? How much was the paper for it?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I can't find the number, but I'm honestly curious. How much
| did a printing press cost in 1796?
|
| From what I can find about PS16 (the price I found was 15
| guineas) in England, so, via inflation calculators and currency
| conversion, around $2,000 (yes, the conversion had more
| details, but more than one sig fig here is definitely false
| precision.)
|
| Operating costs would probably take more digging.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| Thanks for digging that up - as mentioned, that is certainly
| more than the cost of a server, or a laser printer.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Hmm. That's not that far from the price of a server...
| netizen-9748 wrote:
| Realistically, you can serve pages from a RasPi
| manfredo wrote:
| A server is just a useless chunk of plastic, metal, and
| silicon if you don't have an ISP willing to give you an IP
| and route traffic to you. And without a domain name, you're
| only accessible to technical users. Also DDoS protection is
| increasingly becoming a necessity.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| No, they're arguing that it much _harder_ for a private entity
| (or even a group) to _block_ distribution of information in the
| late 1700s.
|
| And, I think he's arguing that FB/Twitter/Apple/Google/Amazon
| have a (near) monopoly on truly _mass_ communication on the
| internet. Sure, we 're on HN, and anyone can read it. Not many
| will, though. If you want 10 million people to read it without
| going through FB, Google, et al, I'd like to know how you're
| going to do it.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| > No, they're arguing that it much harder for a private
| entity (or even a group) to block distribution of information
| in the late 1700s.
|
| I think this is a argument is incorrect. You can still print
| flyers and hand them out (or even mass mail them!) and none
| of that cabal can get close to stopping you, this argument
| assumes/pretends that the internet eliminated all other forms
| of communication, it didn't. Those methods still exist and
| have a larger reach than they had then. Communication is more
| resilient than it was in the 1700s, not less.
|
| > I'd like to know how you're going to do it.
|
| I'd make it look like an email chain and forward it to my
| grandma.
| edbob wrote:
| In the 1700's, people would actually read your flyers. It
| was relatively hot tech at the time, basically the
| equivalent of posting on Facebook or Twitter. You can still
| print flyers, but essentially no one is going to read them
| when there are dozens of more engaging mediums readily
| available.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| I'd say the internet has obsoleted earlier forms of
| communication. Twitter and the use of the phone keyboard as
| many people's main input device has mainstreamed a
| discourse of extremely short communications, "snackable
| content" has diminished appetite for longer writing (which
| is often referred to as a daunting "Long Read" even if it
| is merely the length of an ordinary magazine article from a
| few decades ago).
|
| If you examine some of the late-18th-century pamphlets
| created by social agitators and revolutionaries, they were
| often extremely dense text with elaborate argumentation.
| That kind of writing would not have the same impact on the
| public today; most of the people given such a pamphlet
| would bristle at having to read all that.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| While I understand what you are saying, there was never a
| guarantee people would want to read what you wrote, just
| that you could write it.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| For an 18th-century pamphlet writer, there was something
| of a guarantee that at least the people sympathetic to
| his cause would read the pamphlet. Today, even few among
| the target audience would read such writing, simply
| because internet communications have made it seem "too
| long".
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I'd say the internet has obsoleted earlier forms of
| communication.
|
| Well, given that I've seen Devin Nunes on Fox News
| arguing about how it is now impossible for Republicans to
| communicate, you aren't alone.
|
| On the other hand, it clearly is possible to get messages
| out other than via venues controlled by the tech firms at
| issue.
| filoeleven wrote:
| Yes, word-of-mouth still exists and is more robust than
| ever.
|
| Blocked by Twitter? The link to to your diatribe can still
| be shared there. If that link gets blocked? That's more
| unlikely, but you can add another step of indirection and
| you're effectively unblockable, especially if any news site
| links to the original.
| DenisM wrote:
| > Is the author seriously arguing that it was easier to
| distribute information in the late 1700s and early 1800s than
| it is now if you're off of the internet
|
| No. He is arguing that 200 years ago distribution was about
| equally hard for everyone, but today it's very easy for those
| approved by the IT moguls, and still hard for everyone else.
|
| > Is he also arguing that FB/Twitter/Apple/Google/Amazon have a
| monopoly on the ability to communicate on the internet
|
| Google and Apple have absolute 100% lock on app distribution.
| FB & Twitter together have pretty much 100% lock on "like and
| share" media, which accounts for, say, 90% of all news
| discovery. Of course you can still stand on the corner and hand
| out printed pamphlets, but there is significant difference in
| reach that is affected by having favors with the IT moguls and
| not by the appeal of the message itself.
|
| I wonder whether you really didn't understand this or simply
| expressed your disagreement as a question?
| eightysixfour wrote:
| > I wonder whether you really didn't understand this or
| simply expressed your disagreement as a question?
|
| No, it was an honest question, because I'm having this
| conversation with you without any of those services impacting
| me.
|
| My opinion as a whole is simple, the internet is an
| additional medium of information sharing. We have more means
| of communicating our ideas (even without the internet) for
| cheaper than we have in the entire history of humanity.
|
| Never in history have the mediums of communication of the day
| been required to communicate what you ask them to. Sure, you
| could print a pamphlet, but I guarantee you'd rather have it
| in the Boston Gazette.
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(page generated 2021-01-13 23:02 UTC)