[HN Gopher] Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vita...
___________________________________________________________________
Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national
security
Author : 2a0c40
Score : 152 points
Date : 2022-04-21 12:32 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (greenwald.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (greenwald.substack.com)
| chasil wrote:
| 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...
| aweiland wrote:
| 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."
| pessimizer wrote:
| > He went off the deep end a long time ago and went into
| crazy town.
|
| Stop saying this about journalists who you used to agree
| with, but now disagree with.
| aweiland wrote:
| Turley isn't a journalist. He's a law professor. It's an
| opinion piece.
|
| And I never said I agreed with him in the past. Just
| commenting on how he changed over time.
| stuxnet wrote:
| 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".
| aweiland wrote:
| Turley isn't a journalist either. The link is to an opinion
| piece. I'm commenting on someone's opinion which, IMO, is
| rather suspect.
| TheGigaChad wrote:
| lvl102 wrote:
| There is a reason why the agencies won't strike down on tech
| monopolies. And rest assured, they never will.
| willis936 wrote:
| It's Hanlon's razor, isn't it?
| salawat wrote:
| Hanlon's Razor is qiite rusty compared to Occam's, and it's
| self-evidentness is massively in question. It's more a crutch
| leaned on to lubricate interaction between executive decision
| makers than anything else.
|
| Unfortunately, I've seen it cut the user more than the
| situation in my lifetime.
| pessimizer wrote:
| We could cut the prison population by 90% if poor people
| got the benefit of Hanlon's Razor.
| vernie wrote:
| Times are tough after your golden goose dies.
| adventured wrote:
| > Times are tough after your golden goose dies.
|
| Which golden goose has died or is going to? Tech profits are
| through the roof and have never been better, while growth
| continues unabated. The only thing big tech is facing are
| speeding fines and regional _constraints on growth_ , which it
| can trivially afford (it has been a decade of the same talk
| while big tech has gotten massively bigger).
|
| Operating income: Apple $117 billion, Microsoft $78b, Google
| $78b, Facebook $46b, Amazon $25b, Intel $22b, Cisco $14b,
| Oracle $11b, Qualcomm $11b, Nvidia $10b, Micron $10b, Broadcom
| $10b, Texas Instruments $9b, Applied Materials $8b, Adobe $6b,
| Netflix $6b
|
| For reference ASML is at $7b and SAP is at $5b.
|
| The US tech golden goose is going to get bigger and richer yet.
| It should only take you a few moments to estimate reasonably
| where eg Microsoft is going this decade (~$140+ billion in
| operating income, probably the size of all of Europe's tech
| companies op income combined in one company).
| vernie wrote:
| I'm talking about Greenwald and Snowden.
| refurb wrote:
| Did you have a rationale argument against the points he
| raises? Or just trying to smear him?
| [deleted]
| bavell wrote:
| Seems like just another low-effort dig at greenwald? He's
| got haters for sure but they never seem to have
| substantive arguments... or at least none that I've seen.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Greenwald reply guys are probably the second vilest on
| the internet after Ilhan Omar reply guys.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| vernie wrote:
| Must be cozy living in a bubble that small.
| bigbacaloa wrote:
| Headline basically summarizes the most basic tenet of classical
| fascism.
| cryptica wrote:
| It'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, a figment of the
| imagination of corporate-funded lobbyists.
|
| Free-market capitalism with freedom of speech is the recipe for
| economic prosperity. Has been for hundreds of years.
|
| Some people will point to China as an attempt to show a counter-
| example ("Look at China, they're totalitarian and their economy
| has been booming.") but they conveniently forget the fact that
| China's growth has been happening during a time of general
| loosening of policies. The past 20 years in China have overall
| been characterized by an increasing tolerance for free-market
| capitalism and more freedom of speech compared to what it was
| before.
|
| China came out of an extreme form of communism. Of course, any
| loosening would yield huge improvements! Also, they have over 1
| billion people, of course any small improvement to even a small
| fraction of their population would have an impact globally.
|
| The problem with the US and the west is not freedom of speech or
| the free market, it's our debt-based monetary system which is now
| based on soft money. The decline started in 1971 when USD became
| detached from the gold standard. It's no longer backed by
| anything; also, the growth in the currency supply has become
| unconstrained and the distribution mechanisms for all newly
| issued currency have been partially hijacked to serve corporate
| interests. The effects of this were not felt immediately. It's
| only in recent years that the negative effects of our soft-money
| system have become difficult to ignore.
|
| The important thing to note is that no fiat system has ever
| survived more than a few hundred years. A monetary system which
| is founded on the endless debasement of its own currency is
| doomed to fail sooner or later. There has been hundreds of such
| monetary systems over thousands of years; not one which remains
| to this day. It has never worked and will never work in the long
| run. They're just pyramid schemes.
| Aunche wrote:
| >The problem with the US and the west is not freedom of speech
| or the free market, it's our debt-based monetary system which
| is now based on soft money. The decline started in 1971 when
| USD became detached from the gold standard.
|
| You have it backwards. We didn't end Bretton Woods because the
| government wanted to print money. The government was printing
| money, so they had to end Bretton Woods or else hyperinflation
| would occur. Right after WWII, Europe and Japan were desperate
| for capital to rebuild, so they were willing to exchange
| physical gold with made up paper, so it was free money while it
| lasted. If there were any real interest in maintaining a fiscal
| responsibility, they would have allowed investors to buy gold
| at the same price.
| cryptica wrote:
| The Bretton Woods system never fully ended in reality.
| Bretton Woods just ensured that all foreign fiat currencies
| would be pegged to the US dollar which at the time was pegged
| to gold. It was intended as a mechanism to allow all global
| currencies to be indirectly pegged to gold via the USD.
|
| When Nixon abandoned the gold standard in 1971, the fiat
| currencies of all countries around the world were still
| pegged to the USD. This aspect of the Bretton Woods agreement
| remained in place... The USD started losing value but this
| did not cause the USD to hyperinflate relative to other
| currencies because all countries were still trying to
| maintain a stable exchange rate relative to the USD. It
| became currency manipulation on a global scale. Economies
| became increasingly detached from real value.
|
| You should watch 'Hidden Secrets of Money' - One of the
| episodes does a really good job at explaining how this
| occurred.
| Aunche wrote:
| >The Bretton Woods system never fully ended in reality
|
| Sure, we still have the IMF, but I'm specifically referring
| to part referring to the "gold standard". Again, it wasn't
| really a gold standard because the deal only extended to
| governments that happened to be desperate for capital.
| Regular people couldn't even own significant quantities of
| gold at the time.
|
| >the fiat currencies of all countries around the world were
| still pegged to the USD.
|
| This isn't true. Otherwise, exchange rates wouldn't be
| changing every second. Countries were allowed to choose how
| their currency was exchanged, and most of the major players
| allowed their currency to float freely.
|
| >USD to hyperinflate relative to other currencies because
| all countries were still trying to maintain a stable
| exchange rate relative to the USD.
|
| The USD never hyperinflated at all. I think the gist of
| what you're saying is true, like how Japan started to
| devalue its currency after the Yen started increasing in
| value. However, this precisely shows the problem with
| deflation. If your money grows just by sitting on it, there
| is little reason to invest in businesses, and it may be
| profitable to even downsize your business.
|
| >You should watch 'Hidden Secrets of Money'
|
| That was produced by the founder of goldsilver.com, so it's
| hardly an unbiased source. His business gains from sowing
| distrust in the financial system. I didn't watch this
| particular series, but I'm familiar with their arguments
| after I started investing in precious metals. I don't think
| their history is wrong, but IMO, they miss the entire point
| of money. Money isn't meant to be stored because it doesn't
| do any work. Money is something made up to facilitate trade
| as easily as possible. That's why it never makes any sense
| to artificially place constraints on it (e.g. pegging it to
| gold). This doesn't mean that we should abuse this freedom
| to print money on a whim either, but that's a completely
| separate problem.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Before big tech, there wasn't a race to the bottom for eyeballs
| and journalism was well funded enough to provide quality
| reporting.
| spamizbad wrote:
| 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.
| aaronsimpson wrote:
| But these points completely undermine the original OP - how
| can you blame media companies for pushing things that are
| "against our interests" when market forces overwhelmingly
| demonstrate that it's what we want?
|
| If the media is showing these "alarmist" or "biased"
| stories, it's because it's what people want. People don't
| want honest journalism, otherwise C-SPAN would be the most
| popular outlet in America.
|
| If you don't want media showing you clickbait and garbage,
| don't click on it. Simple as that.
| cryptica wrote:
| 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.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I agree. There were always of course "tabloids" but we all
| knew what they were and we knew wrasslin' was fake.
| jf22 wrote:
| What interest have they lied about and how has that impacted
| you?
|
| I'm not trying to be snarky, I have a genuine interest in your
| perspective.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| > Free-market capitalism with freedom of speech is the recipe
| for economic prosperity. Has been for hundreds of years.
|
| Economic prosperity for a handful of wealthy Brits you mean?
| Regulated capitalism created the middle class, free market
| capitalism is doing its damnedest to undo that outcome.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > Mainstream media is feeding us constant lies...
|
| No one reporting that apparently.
|
| I agree with some of your points but accusations like that
| without any room for nuance do not resonate with me.
|
| > The problem with the US and the west is not freedom of speech
| or the free market, it's our debt-based monetary system which
| is now based on soft money.
|
| And I've seen convincing arguments claiming the exact opposite:
| that debt has allowed large enterprises, investments that have
| gone on to create untold capital. I'm still on the fence.
|
| > The decline started in 1971...
|
| I have seen the "WTF Happened in 1971?" web site.
| cryptica wrote:
| > No one reporting that apparently.
|
| Just some things that the mainstream media lied about:
|
| - The NIH having funded gain of function research in Wuhan
| Labs.
|
| - The mortality rate of COVID19 (they ignored obvious issues
| with data collection and flawed incentives which over-counted
| deaths and under-counted cases).
|
| - The effectiveness of COVID19 vaccines (several outlets
| initially said that 1 dose would be enough to get 90%
| protection, now they're saying we need 4).
|
| - Covering up the 2008 and 2020 bailouts of the stock market
| - These are considered crimes in the eyes of many people but
| mainstream media has been silent on the subject.
|
| - The existence of Hunter Biden's laptop containing
| compromising data.
|
| You can look up all of these things. It's only a tiny
| fraction of all the lies they told.
| aaronsimpson wrote:
| What sort of complete moron would consider the 2008 bank
| bailout (what I assume you're referring to) as a crime? How
| is TARP and the repurchasing of toxic bank assets for the
| stabilization of the US/global financial system, which was
| fully paid back to the taxpayer with interest, a crime?
| Unless you think we should've just let the financial system
| melt into oblivion?
|
| It's this populist rhetoric of people being mad at shit
| they don't know anything about.
| euroderf wrote:
| It is more important to feel good than to think good !
| bavell wrote:
| I don't consider the 2008 bailout a "crime" per se but it
| was definitely a govt handout and did not punish the bad
| actors who caused the issues in the first place.
|
| It's interesting to me that you ignored the rest of the
| lies that were pointed out and focused only on one bullet
| to make your point. You seem to think people are mad when
| they shouldn't be? Is constantly being gaslit by cable
| news (just to give one example) acceptable to you?
| vvvzxd wrote:
| half of the article is paywalled, given that no one on hn
| actually reads the article i suspect its not an issue here
| dathinab wrote:
| no, what bs
|
| that is except if the US want's to become a fascist authoritarian
| state then yes it could be vital for that.
| a9h74j wrote:
| > By contrast, by maintaining all power in the hands of the small
| coterie of tech monopolies which control the internet and which
| have long proven their loyalty to the U.S. security state, the
| ability of the U.S. national security state to maintain a closed
| propaganda system around questions of war and militarism is
| guaranteed.
|
| > The cynical exploitation could hardly be more overt: if you
| hate Putin the way any loyal and patriotic American should, then
| you must devote yourself to full preservation of the power of
| Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon.
| incomingpain wrote:
| 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.
| eganist wrote:
| Found: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31057193
|
| Thanks, vouched even though I'm not sure your claim about
| "every major player" being out is correct (https://money.cnn.co
| m/quote/shareholders/shareholders.html?s...). Still, easier to
| have that conversation elsewhere now that there's a general
| public conversation about it, so it's harder to hand-wave it
| away as conspiratorial.
| incomingpain wrote:
| >Thanks, vouched even though I'm not sure your claim about
| "every major player" being out is correct (https://money.cnn.
| com/quote/shareholders/shareholders.html?s...). Still, easier
| to have that conversation elsewhere now that there's a
| general public conversation about it, so it's harder to hand-
| wave it away as conspiratorial.
|
| Institutions like Blackrock or Vanguard don't get to vote,
| they may at most provide a proxy vote at cost.
|
| The typical 'conspiracy' around those 2 is that their
| management can threaten entities like twitter with delisting.
| Twitter is then removed from their holdings at tremendous
| cost. So they have kind of a little threat and they get some
| say to do stuff like climate change and diversity stuff.
| Ultimately the orgs still take this upon themselves. It's an
| easy thing to bluff against.
|
| Yes maybe some of these institutions have some players
| involved but I dont see it.
|
| Twitter looks tremendously undefended.
| spamizbad wrote:
| 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. The way to
| combat this is through better civic and media literacy.
| yonaguska wrote:
| Former Intel people are a necessary tool of the current Intel
| community. I forget which project veritas recording caught
| this- but a journalist was caught stating that they get their
| information from former Intel people that talk to current
| Intel officials to get around rules preventing current Intel
| officials from leaking information to journalists, we have a
| problem. And we've had a serious problem as this behavior is
| not just the activity of rogue officials that only leak true
| information. I would argue that it's also likely that Intel
| officials are doing this with the blessing of their
| organizations in order to shape public opinion. And they
| aren't always leaking the truth. Remember when 50 Intel
| officials signed a weasely letter stating that the laptop
| from hell was simply Russian Disinformation? Or in the case
| of the Durham investigation, we are seeing an increasingly
| obvious pattern that Intel agencies were involved in creating
| fake controversy over Russia and Trump in order to remove him
| from power?
|
| You call it brand building, I call it destroying democracy.
| [deleted]
| incomingpain wrote:
| >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?
| thorRay8383 wrote:
| spamizbad wrote:
| I don't think so, but to indulge my own cranky theories:
| Perhaps Elon Musk's takeover attempt was done at the behest
| of the US government to take control of the platform under
| the cover of "censorship". Musk himself indicated he wanted
| to make the platform more miserable for the "extremes" on
| both the left and right (both perceived as being anti-
| government) - leaving you with the establishment consensus
| unharmed in the middle.
| incomingpain wrote:
| That's a cool idea. Largely speaking you can see Elon's
| point of view.
|
| He was on Babylon Bee's show.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvGnw1sHh9M 2.4 million
| views in last 3 months. In this video they in detail
| discuss the problem with political banning.
|
| 2 months later, Babylon Bee got banned off twitter for a
| joke. Clear political banning and violation of section
| 230.
| weeblewobble wrote:
| For the record Babylon Bee is not banned, they can unlock
| their account any time by deleting a Tweet that jokingly
| gives a "man of the year award" to a real individual
| transwoman by name.
| jaywalk wrote:
| "They're not banned! They are free to continue tweeting
| as soon as they abandon their principles and bow down to
| Twitter's arbitrary rules!"
| weeblewobble wrote:
| It's not an arbitrary rule, it's spelled out in their
| Terms of Servoce
| jaywalk wrote:
| The fact that it's in the ToS doesn't mean it's not
| arbitrary.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| So _they_ aren 't banned, just the one tweet is. Sounds
| good, but the reality is that unless and until they
| recant that one tweet, then they _are_ banned.
| weeblewobble wrote:
| They don't really have to recant it, just delete it. It's
| a pretty mean tweet anyway, not sure why its worth
| defending
| spamizbad wrote:
| Babylon Bee doesn't threaten the national security
| establishment. The "Far left" and "Far right" - yes.
|
| The idea is you won't get banned for making jokes about
| trans stuff, but you'll instead get banned for saying
| something bad about US global hegemony. It's not a
| culture war issue so nobody is going to care that you got
| censored.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Former intelligence people churn out all sorts of goofy
| takes in an attempt to build their brand.
|
| Former intelligence people churn out all sorts of goofy takes
| because they're paid to, and after those goofy takes have
| been blasted by every corporate media outlet 24 hours a day
| for a month or two, they transform from goofy takes into
| orthodoxies that you could be fired for denying.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| We used to fund distributed disruptive technologies to subvert
| Soviet censorship. Chinese censorship was seen as proof of our
| superior freedom 20 years ago. Now it is viewed with envy by
| those in power. What moral high ground do we hold now?
| adventured wrote:
| > What moral high ground do we hold now?
|
| Vast amounts of ground, fortunately. How about the fact that
| we can have these conversations fully uncensored? That little
| thing known as freedom of speech, which is still
| overwhelmingly alive and well. I enjoy its use, aggressively,
| on a daily basis without persecution and have for decades
| uninterrupted.
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| We can have this conversation now, but vigilance is good.
| adventured wrote:
| Certainly. Nothing in my comment suggests otherwise in
| the least.
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| So much on this site and online more generally comes
| across as criticism. It wasn't meant as such. I just
| thought it should be minded.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Except that freedom of speech does not protect us from
| intolerance, as Karl Popper observed. For example, private
| entities are not required to uphold freedom of speech.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Funny enough, in Germany - which is definitely more
| restricted, and for good reason, on the US understanding
| of "free speech" - Facebook and Twitter are routinely
| seen as public discourse forums and have to unban users
| as long as what they post isn't against the law [1].
|
| [1] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/muenchen-urteil-
| faceboo...
| politician wrote:
| Good news- We aren't required to tolerate institutions
| that don't uphold freedom of speech.
| refurb wrote:
| It's funny when Popper is brought up in this way because
| his conclusion was that the only reasonable censorship of
| intolerance was that which poses a threat of immediate
| physical harm. So basically how the US treats freedom of
| speech today.
|
| He certainly wouldn't be supportive of censoring racist
| commentary that didn't incite immediate physical
| violence.
| dangus wrote:
| The article is about the benefits that the US intelligence
| agencies get from the censorship power of a centralized
| monopoly of tech companies.
|
| For example, if your main form of communication online is
| through companies owned by Meta, it's very easy to
| effectively censor a point of view or group of people
| through deplatforming, but if there are dozens of platforms
| that becomes more difficult.
|
| While more authoritarian countries rely on direct
| censorship, the US instead promotes the viewpoints they
| want people to subscribe to: positive reinforcement. You
| can see this with the government's involvement with the
| entertainment industry, or with the military paying sports
| leagues to promote patriotic displays.
|
| Tech companies being private entities means that they can
| censor or at least stop the viral effects of social media
| on ideas that don't fit the mold.
|
| There's a lot you can do to shape public opinion without
| violating the first amendment.
|
| It's kind of similar to the way local news stations will
| run "stories" that amount to advertisements for various
| products or local businesses. Or you might see a funny meme
| on Reddit where the joke mostly has to do with a company.
|
| Not to say that there aren't valid reasons to do stuff like
| this...there's plenty of harmful speech out there that
| makes the world a worse place. Hateful, violent, or
| misleading speech is a legitimate problem. For example,
| there's a report that claims most anti-vaccination online
| content comes from just 12 sources. [1]
|
| It seems a little bit alarming that such a small group can
| amplify speech in a way that has cost perhaps thousands of
| lives.
|
| [1] [PDF] https://f4d9b9d3-3d32-4f3a-afa6-49f8bf05279a.usrf
| iles.com/ug...
| incomingpain wrote:
| >We used to fund distributed disruptive technologies to
| subvert Soviet censorship. Chinese censorship was seen as
| proof of our superior freedom 20 years ago. Now it is viewed
| with envy by those in power. What moral high ground do we
| hold now?
|
| The bigger point to discuss. If twitter is under control of
| the US government. I have no idea if it is or not, it just
| seems to be the case.
|
| You dont get to make the comment 'twitter is private, free
| speech only applies to government' because twitter ==
| government.
|
| The other consideration I had. What if the us government
| doesnt explicitly own twitter. They simply dont realize the
| us government has hacked access to moderate and censor things
| in a clandestine way? Now it's an even more complicated
| subject but wouldn't justify the stock market situation that
| brings me to the point.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >You dont get to make the comment 'twitter is private, free
| speech only applies to government' because twitter ==
| government.
|
| it's true, twitter == government but not twitter ===
| government. Meaning that the conversion happens in the
| underlying JIT engine where government hacks twitter to do
| what it wants.
|
| So the idea is that you could make a first amendment
| complaint against the government for hacking twitter if it
| infringed your free speech with that hack, but you could
| not say twitter cannot just turn off my account because
| while twitter == government it does not === government.
| incomingpain wrote:
| I get the complication of the position. Occams razor puts
| me back to the plain option that twitter is simply
| controlled by us gov.
| nemothekid wrote:
| I don't understand how "Twitter is controlled by the
| government" is the simplest explanation. Do you actually
| use Twitter?
|
| I feel like Twitter had an outsized representation along
| social media giants. It's one of the smallest by MAU; and
| has a history of management problems. Isn't occans razor
| here that is just a poorly run company?
| incomingpain wrote:
| >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. Absolutely no way should have my account been
| treated this way.
|
| >I feel like Twitter had an outsized representation along
| social media giants. It's one of the smallest by MAU; and
| has a history of management problems. Isn't occans razor
| here that is just a poorly run company?
|
| If you're listed on the S&P500, you can't say that's
| poorly run. Poorly run would never have gotten there.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _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
| headlines. Twitter has the _least_ amount of moderation
| of all the social media giants. Try posting porn on
| Facebook and seeing how long that lasts.
|
| When you say your tweet was censored, you mean it's no
| longer on your timeline? If your tweet was deleted
| Twitter would have sent you an email about it. If you are
| complaining that that you can't see it in the user's
| replies, well any large twitter user is going to have
| many replies, and a message from a new account will
| likely not make the top of the fold.
|
| > _If you 're listed on the S&P500, you can't say that's
| poorly run. Poorly run would never have gotten there._
|
| Enron??? The many dot coms?? Lehman Brothers?? There
| hasn't been a major stock market correction in nearly 15
| years; there are plenty of companies out there that are
| swimming naked. Twitter management is no stranger to
| public executive issues with it's board + CEO.
| incomingpain wrote:
| 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.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| 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?)
| dgb23 wrote:
| 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.
| notacoward wrote:
| 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 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.
| incomingpain wrote:
| >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.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _The S &P500 is full of zombies? Is this seriously
| happening? wow. I haven't seen anyone talking about this.
| What the hell happened?_
|
| People _have_ been talking about it[1]; it 's just that
| Elon hasn't so it doesn't end up in the media hype cycle.
| The S&P 500 is really just the 5 big megacap stocks.
|
| That's what makes this Twitter so _weird_ , as a company
| it's relatively unremarkable; it's not larger than
| Snapchat both in terms of marketcap and MAU, but in the
| media you would think it's the primary competitor to
| Meta.
|
| Twitter gets _a lot_ of flack about censorship and free
| speech; but it 's by far the most libertarian platform -
| it still has a chronological timeline! If you had
| followed Donald Trump on Twitter, you would see all his
| tweets whenever he tweeted them. If you followed him on
| Facebook, Facebook would hide most of his posts on your
| feed! And yet Twitter is the boogeyman, the enemy of free
| speech.
|
| Twitter the company, and Twitter the boogeyman are two
| seperate entities. If you read about Twitter from NYT
| headlines, maybe it makes sense they are government
| controlled. If you actually spend time on the platform
| you will find a platform that largely hasn't changed in
| the past 10 years, but still trying to wrangle it's
| political influence since the Arab spring days.
|
| [1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/10/investing/sp-500-tech-
| stocks/...
| incomingpain wrote:
| >People have been talking about it[1]; it's just that
| Elon hasn't so it doesn't end up in the media hype cycle.
| The S&P 500 is really just the 5 big megacap stocks.
|
| This isn't it. I follow financial news, primarily
| financial post and economist, I havent seen anyone talk
| about this at all. It's crazy that I even thought to
| check on this. Obviously twitter being undefended was
| quite unusual, why would they all be this way?
|
| In fact when I look at Microsoft and Apple... holy shit I
| haven't seen the problem that bad.
|
| Meta isn't bad, but then again 500 billion market cap and
| pe ratio of 13? wtf? different problem altogether. People
| are clearly predicting huge crash on meta. No idea if
| that's coming.
|
| Amazon isn't bad at all. Bezos is defending just as Musk
| is defending Tesla. I probably should go through all the
| S&p. I wonder if other stock markets are seeing this. UK
| and Canada obviously arent.
|
| >Twitter the company, and Twitter the boogeyman are two
| seperate entities. If you read about Twitter from NYT
| headlines, maybe it makes sense they are government
| controlled. If you actually spend time on the platform
| you will find a platform that largely hasn't changed in
| the past 10 years, but still trying to wrangle it's
| political influence since the Arab spring days.
|
| No that's not the problem. I dont think that the us gov
| is controlling anymore. When I checked tsx60 and ftse1000
| there's no examples for at least the ones I checked. I
| admittedly didnt check them all.
|
| I have never seen this before, it's not natural. I don't
| know what the terminology would be. Zombie is the wrong
| word. Of all my positions, Tyson is the only 1 that is
| bad like this; though I'm not exposed to the USA that
| much.
|
| Arab spring days? Yes.
|
| I expect it may even start the same way. Will it be a
| Nicholas McCrary?
|
| Will it be food scarcity? Biden publicly said this will
| be the case.
|
| Elon is way ahead of me in understanding the situation.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| > it's true, twitter == government but not twitter ===
| government.
|
| Let's not start coding political documents in JavaScript
| now. (Insert additional joke about the interpreter engine
| running on 9 robed meat processors).
| tomrod wrote:
| 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 stolen.
| incomingpain wrote:
| >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/wi
| ki/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.
| notacoward wrote:
| > 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.
| incomingpain wrote:
| I withdraw my position about US government and twitter.
|
| >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.
|
| I think I saw this on twitter. I'm not going to argue
| over this one. Even the wikipage extensively uses the
| word insurrection still.
|
| This is a super non-issue. In fact, the differing
| reactions and hard line take on these contemporary
| political protests is all that matters.
|
| I could also point out, but it won't help: https://en.wik
| ipedia.org/wiki/Republican_efforts_to_restrict...
|
| Elon isn't too late. Seemingly he's ahead of me on this
| one. I didn't realize how bad it is.
|
| I just hope Canada and Mexico stay out of this.
| tomrod wrote:
| > 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.
|
| \o layperson here. My observation of January 6 was the
| people being punished were part of a hapless, mindless
| mob who believed the lies of kakistocrats playing on
| their economic insecurities and political loyalties.
| superturkey650 wrote:
| Besides that, the subtitle of the article on Wikipedia is
| literally " Violent insurrection after the 2020
| presidential election".
| phkahler wrote:
| 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!
| tomrod wrote:
| > Yeah, one group of "protestors" can take over a small
| section of a city, push the authorities out, loot and riot.
|
| If you read my prior comment, you'll note a distinct lack
| of discussion regarding this unrelated topic.
|
| > But another "protest" gets a little out of hand and it's
| an attempt to overthrow the government.
|
| Correct. The mob that actually performed the violent
| protest may not have come to the Capitol that day to
| overthrow the government, but the people spurring them on
| had other designs. Calling for the murder of the government
| official performing their duty is a key tell for that; to
| my understanding there is further evidence beyond
| incendiary and violent rhetoric.
|
| But please, let's stay on topic instead of deflecting to
| the ills of Antifa and her counter-agitators. That
| conversation just reinforces the backfire effect since the
| trivial triggering conversation challenges deeply held
| worldviews.[0]
|
| [0] https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe_clean
| vvvzxd wrote:
| >The common narrative is that it was insurrection.
|
| how many people from Jan 6 have been charged with
| insurrection?
| bavell wrote:
| LOL no sane person thought the country was going to be taken
| over by some grandmas and goofy morons...
| tomrod wrote:
| 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.
| bavell wrote:
| 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.
| tomrod wrote:
| Ah yes, "it could never happen here."
|
| But if they're in nominal control of the military, and
| have 40% of the country expressing a modicum of sympathy,
| then you let loose a pretty dangerous situation.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| 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.
| jmyeet wrote:
| So there are 3 ways the government could influence Big Tech:
|
| 1. Infiltration. An agent or asset could be in a position of
| power to enact desired policies and changes, provide a backdoor
| or whatever;
|
| 2. Jurisdiction. The platform falls under US jurisdiction so is
| subject to various forms of law enforcement, secret or otherwise.
| National Security Letters, FISA warrants, pen registers, that
| sort of thing; and
|
| 3. Propaganda. US companies reflect the cultural and political
| values of their founders, board and management as will as the
| will of stockholders. For some issues there is a political divide
| but for many issues there isn't, most notably when it comes to US
| foreign policy where Democrats and Republicans are basically
| indistinguishable.
|
| The prevailing foreign policy view is that the US is good and a
| benign hegemony and a civilizing and democratizing force. The
| current foreign policy bent also favours interventionism and has
| since World War Two.
|
| You see this at the huge backlash you get, even here among
| relatively educated and informed commenters, when you dare to
| suggest that the US bears some responsibility for Ukraine's
| predicament even though Russia is of course wholly responsible
| for an unjustifiable invasion.
|
| It's a real lesson in the power of US propaganda and how
| ingrained the benign hegemony meme (and it is a meme) is.
|
| My theory is the first 2 points I listed above don't matter.
| They're of almost no importance. What really matters is the
| ability of the US media (and I include social media companies in
| this umbrella) to project US propaganda and to normalize the US-
| centric view of the world.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| 4. Coercion and Corruption. The government tells Big Tech
| "You're going to do $GOVERNMENT_THING, as well as fund our next
| campaigns. Cooperate and we'll make you even more wealthy and
| powerful; refuse and we'll bury you." This is a nefarious
| combination of all 3 of your points, and I suspect the most
| common.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| > You see this at the huge backlash you get, even here among
| relatively educated and informed commenters, when you dare to
| suggest that the US bears some responsibility for Ukraine's
| predicament even though Russia is of course wholly responsible
| for an unjustifiable invasion.
|
| Only 1 country is killing Ukrainians: Russia. There's no US
| troops massacring and raping Ukrainians... The only thing the
| US is responsible for is that they could have maybe threatened
| Russia enough to not invade.
|
| Anyhow, I've been sceptical of US hegemony at times however one
| thing is clear: the world is far better with the US as the
| dominant power than it would be if Russia or China were
| dominant. At least the US allows its citizens and those of its
| 'protectorates' (or whatever you want to call US
| allies/countries it protects) a large degree of personal
| freedom.
| BuckRogers wrote:
| The lines are clearer than ever for the 21st century. This
| century has been kicked off with the world struggle between
| democracy and totalitarianism.
|
| People have a choice. Choose the US/Europe/Japan/South
| Korea/Taiwan, or, the mideast/Russia/China. Many people voted
| with their feet, migrating to the former nations. Those
| people have no room to speak as they already voted.
|
| I'm missing some players of course, but generally speaking we
| in the Free World are definitely at a disadvantage and
| outnumbered by the hordes of people who desire strongmen and
| dictators. Most of the world actually does not want or trust
| themselves with self-determination through representative
| government. Russia is one of the few examples in Europe where
| the people want freedom, but don't really know what it is and
| are scared of the idea that they'll have to become active
| players in a non-farcical representative democracy.
|
| The middle east similarly never asked for democracy. They
| largely see no use for it. Most of Asia is the same. The
| typical Chinese person prefers the greatness of China as a
| nationalistic power, rather than the greatness of their
| institutions progressing the freedom of mankind. Which is how
| most of us in Europe and North America view our true
| strengths as.
|
| Of course, overt nationalism will lead to servitude,
| especially for Russia. They'll be losing Chechnya soon, and
| become a vassal state to China. Far lower than their previous
| state in the world. This is a nation that once slammed their
| foreheads on the ground in honor of their Turkish masters,
| now they are taking off their shoes for the Chinese. Their
| alternative choice was to ditch Putin, and join with the
| American, European and Asian democracies. Contrary to popular
| belief, we welcomed them. But Putin looks at old maps of the
| Russian Empire and honestly thought it was possible again.
| Being a farce democracy, there was no institutional
| resistance to stop him. He's only destroying Russia.
|
| The Russian people are also ultimately responsible here. They
| chose to cower to Putin. I'm sympathetic to them to a degree,
| these are a people that haven't and don't dare to speak their
| views outside of their kitchen table. Yet inaction is an
| action. They can still stop this. But they have to storm the
| Kremlin and take him out ASAP. It won't happen. We have a
| newly confirmed genocidal state in the world to contend with.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| > I'm missing some players of course, but generally
| speaking we in the Free World are definitely at a
| disadvantage and outnumbered by the hordes of people who
| desire strongmen and dictators.
|
| Dunno if I agree with this particular line (but I do agree
| with most of your post). India is a democracy, there's many
| quite populous democracies and many who live under
| dictatorships do desire personal freedom on several levels
| even if there's not necessarily democratic institutions in
| their countries at present.
| BuckRogers wrote:
| There are those that desire their nation to be a part of
| the Free World, within nations that aren't currently. Of
| course. I didn't mean they're all doomed. Freedom
| fighters for democracy exist everywhere. There's many
| Russians like Navalny that desire this. He's an example
| of a Russian patriot, rather than just a nationalist. Had
| the Russians stood with him in a real way all of these
| years, tens of thousands of Russian lives and Ukrainian
| lives would've been saved.
|
| We can't help them. They're a nuclear power. External
| help with Russian liberation is not possible. It's on
| them, and I understand how difficult it is. Freedom
| fighting is not in most Russian's DNA. But they're human,
| and even after 70 years of Soviet repression, it's still
| there. I want to have faith.
|
| India is worth keeping an eye on. They are a member of
| the Pacific equivalent of NATO, the Quadrilateral
| Security Dialogue, but it will be interesting to see how
| devoted they are to a transparent and healthy democracy
| as opposed to just looking to counter China as a rival.
| kcatskcolbdi wrote:
| > The Russian people are also ultimately responsible here.
|
| I would be interested to learn about what steps you've
| taken to curb the abuses of your government. Surely your
| own government is not without fault, and through your logic
| you are responsible for all their transgressions.
| BuckRogers wrote:
| That's a Soviet response right there. Everything must be
| examined objectively. It doesn't matter if someone else
| committed a crime or has a fault, that doesn't justify
| crimes of our own.
|
| I'm happy to put myself on the defensive though. Self-
| examination is a path to enlightenment. I am guilty of
| many things in life. Some of which I have been punished
| and others which I never will be. In the portions of the
| Americas, Asia, and Europe that are healthy democracies,
| simple political engagement can suffice. Many things
| others would characterize as "abuses" were actually proxy
| wars against totalitarian regimes. If the entire world
| were healthy democracies, it would be a far more peaceful
| place due to having checks and balances on power. As
| opposed to dictators.
|
| But that has no relevance here, when there's an active
| genocide occurring in Ukraine. I'm not part or parcel to
| that. Others are though.
| hni wrote:
| > The middle east similarly never asked for democracy.
|
| Oh boy... a blanket statement if ever I saw one: https://en
| .wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
| rufusroflpunch wrote:
| This viewpoint is simplistic to the point of absurdity.
| Supermancho wrote:
| I assume you are refrring to the laughable statement:
|
| > The only thing the US is responsible for is that they
| could have maybe threatened Russia enough to not invade.
|
| as if that wasnt a factor (by proxy via NATO) initiating
| Russian aggression.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| > as if that wasnt a factor (by proxy via NATO)
| initiating Russian aggression.
|
| This is basically the "she wore a short dress" defense...
|
| The only country that initiated Russian aggression is
| Russia.
| geranim0 wrote:
| Sometimes I wonder if these types of comments are state
| sponsored
| loudmax wrote:
| I don't know how active the IRA is on HN, but there
| absolutely are state sponsored comments like those on the
| internet.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| And your comment is useless and adds nothing.
| mikevm wrote:
| > You see this at the huge backlash you get, even here among
| relatively educated and informed commenters, when you dare to
| suggest that the US bears some responsibility for Ukraine's
| predicament even though Russia is of course wholly responsible
| for an unjustifiable invasion.
|
| Here's the thing, the people who keep saying that US bears
| responsibility for Ukraine's predicament are wrong. I'm Russian
| so I follow various sources (both Russian and Ukrainian) in the
| original languages. Putin has had his eyes on Ukraine at least
| since he came into power 20 years ago. In 2014 Igor Girkin
| (among others) was sent clandestinely to take over Crimea and
| start the war in the Donbas. Girkin is a monarchist and
| believes in "the Greater Russia". He believes that Russians and
| Ukrainians are the same people (an opinion Putin shares and has
| publicly proclaimed before the war).
|
| The FSB has a whole department (the 5th service) devoted to
| subversion of Ukraine, including payment/bribes of billions of
| dollars to various gov't and media officials (one of whom,
| Viktor Medvedchuk, was captured by the SBU recently while
| attempting to flee house arrest).
|
| Blaming this conflict on NATO and the US is part of Kremlin
| propaganda, including their "de-nazification" claims. If
| anything, this conflict has shown just how important NATO is in
| keeping people like Putin in check, as he would've gladly
| continued to the Baltic states and maybe others if his
| Ukrainian campaign succeeded (in fact, some Russian politicians
| have publicly stated this on national Russian TV recently).
| jmyeet wrote:
| We can agree the whole "denazification" argument is complete
| BS. That's propaganda for domestic consumption.
|
| As for Putin having eyes on Ukraine, let me argue it this
| way: NATO was never going to allow Ukraine to join. Germany,
| in particular, was always going to veto it. So even if you
| think that Putin had his eyes on Ukraine, NATO was never
| going to be a solution.
|
| So what do you do? You get Ukraine to adopt a policy of
| neutrality similar to Finland, Sweden or Switzerland. You
| build your entire military around being a defensive army to
| make the cost of invasion so high as to dissuade anyone from
| trying. To be fair, Ukraine's military has exceeded all
| expectations here but the invasion was (IMHO) always doomed
| (at least for the entire country). It's simply too big and
| too populated. Russia simply can't maintain control of it.
|
| Russia may well have invaded anyway but then we're in exactly
| the same situation we are now so what have we lost?
| mikevm wrote:
| > So what do you do? You get Ukraine to adopt a policy of
| neutrality similar to Finland, Sweden or Switzerland.
|
| This is all dandy, but how can you do that when Putin
| breaks previous obligations by invading Crimea and the
| Donbas?
|
| See https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-parliament-abandons-
| neutrali...
|
| Putin wants Ukraine either to be part of Russia, or as a
| vassal/subservient state. You don't even realize how
| compromised Ukraine was by the FSB. Politicians, media
| figures, etc... all on the bankroll of the FSB to the tune
| of billions of dollars. In a way, this war has allowed
| these rats to be exposed and has unified the Ukrainians
| even more so as a people. Neutrality would've just
| prolonged the suffering and allowed Putin to destabilize
| Ukraine even further.
|
| There's also some interesting discussion here:
| https://www.russiamatters.org/analysis/nato-or-bust-why-
| do-u...
|
| > However, the motives behind Russia's actions toward
| Ukraine could extend far beyond traditional security
| interests. Unlike Ukraine, neither Austria nor Finland was
| viewed by Moscow as part of "the same historical and
| spiritual place" as Russia, as part of "a single whole."
| Hence, it was easier for the Kremlin to accept their
| statehood, including their right to integrate with Europe
| politically and economically. It is unlikely that Moscow
| would ever acquiesce to the same latitude in Ukraine's
| foreign policy. As Russian President Vladimir Putin has
| stressed, "true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in
| partnership with Russia." Without a common understanding of
| what neutrality means, Russia would then be even more
| likely to interfere in Ukraine as long as it interprets any
| of its foreign policy actions as hostile. Furthermore, in
| the absence of outside security guarantees or military
| cooperation with the West, Ukraine could be perceived as
| sufficiently weak to be coerced to Russia's liking.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| This friend speaks my mind.
| throwaway412112 wrote:
| What about the opposite direction of influence?
|
| Its much more interesting i think because in the end, its a
| game of who remains in power, the public domain (government,
| theoretically) or the private domain (large Corp). The Chinese
| CP decived to crack down on to-big-to-fail, where as we in the
| west ...
| car_analogy wrote:
| > The prevailing foreign policy view is that the US is good and
| a benign hegemony and a civilizing and democratizing force.
|
| No, that's just how it's sold to the public. E.g. I guarantee
| nobody had civilizing and democratizing in mind when the US
| occupying force in Iraq issued order 81:
|
| _the people in Iraq are now prohibited from saving newly
| designed seeds (not the traditional ones) and may only plant
| seeds for their food from licensed, authorized U.S.
| distributors._ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Orders
| syrrim wrote:
| To say that the US is in any way responsible for Ukraine is to
| deny ukraine agency. They are caught between a lion and a bear.
| They could reject the aid of the lion, but that would throw
| them into the hands of the bear. They choose to accept US help
| in their defense, but that makes them vulnerable to US
| invasion. This is a choice they made, and they bare the
| consequences. The US in offering that help might have sought to
| anger russia, but they left it to the ukrainians to decide
| whether to follow through.
|
| Fundamentally, russia had no interest in allowing ukraine to be
| an independent country. US aid forestalled an invasion, and
| made the ultimate invasion a fairer fight, but it wasn't the
| cause of it.
| jmyeet wrote:
| > To say that the US is in any way responsible for Ukraine is
| to deny ukraine agency
|
| No, it doesn't. This war has highlighted just how simplistic
| people are in that someone has to be the bad guy and someone
| has to be the good guy (hint: the US is always the good guy).
| Any suggestion that more than one party can bear
| responsibility or blame invites histrionics about victim-
| blaming.
|
| The US friend zoned Ukraine, basically. The US knew it was
| never going to happen. Sure, Ukraine should figure that out
| (which they didn't seem to) but there's enough blame to go
| around.
| BuckRogers wrote:
| There was blame to go around, until Russia invaded Ukraine
| today and in 2014. Now it's all on them. Otherwise you're
| saying the woman with the short skirt asked or deserved to
| be raped and murdered. Which is never true.
|
| Mistakes were made, but none of them justify the genocide
| in Ukraine. Nothing even justified an invasion at all.
|
| If you can't see true evil and who the bad guy is, you're
| definitely part of the problem. I hope no women in your
| family are raped by men with logic similar to your own,
| because you'll be blaming them.
| justinpowers wrote:
| This is a misleading and, frankly, rather disgusting
| analogy.
|
| The sovereignty of an individual, especially over one's
| own body, and the sovereignty of a nation are not even
| near equivalents.
|
| And yes, I know that at this time the sovereignty of
| individual Ukrainians, men and women, is being horribly
| violated. But this did not need to happen even if the
| sovereignty of the nation itself was violated. It's a
| separate matter for which Russians, especially individual
| soldiers and their commanders, bear direct blame for.
| They could have chosen another, less disgusting, far less
| inhumane means to gain control of Ukraine.
|
| As well, despite the clear propaganda behind it, Russia
| can at least claim that they felt threatened by Ukraine's
| chummy relationship with the narcissistic and
| occasionally-aggressive Uncle Sam. This entirely breaks
| your analogy as rape is never a defensive maneuver no
| matter how one might twist it.
| BuckRogers wrote:
| Sovereignty of a nation is built on the sovereign
| individuals. Only a free man can build a free nation. It
| bubbles up, rather than comes from top down.
|
| I'm an "actions, not words" type of guy. Putin claims
| many things in this world, they're threatened etc. We all
| know it's a lie. You must watch Russia's actions, not
| their words. How many times have we learned this? Watch
| what they've done, not what they say.
|
| You're right, rape is never defensive. Instead what
| happened here is that Russia has raped Ukraine, and
| claimed she was going to attack him. That's the reality
| of it, and it's the only twisted logic on display.
|
| She was also supposedly a Nazi. I'd bet good coin there's
| more actual Neo-Nazis in Russia than Ukraine though, just
| based on sheer population alone.
|
| Not that Nazism actually gives Putin any pause.[0]
|
| [0]https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-
| news/2022/04/08/russia-sen...
| trinsic2 wrote:
| Thank you for speaking what I was going to say. The idea
| that people are subject to government agenda's is wholly
| inaccurate. Governments are made up of people to protect
| the interests of individuals, not the other way around.
| pavlov wrote:
| Rape can be defensive in the rapist's mind. "My wife
| smiled at someone else. I need to defend my property and
| teach her a lesson."
|
| And this is the same kind of twisted logic that drives
| the Russian invasion.
| justinpowers wrote:
| That seems more retributive than defensive despite the
| cliche of "defending one's honor". The phrase assumes the
| rightfulness of the aggressor's actions. Begs the
| question.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| >This war has highlighted just how simplistic people are in
| that someone has to be the bad guy and someone has to be
| the good guy
|
| Everyone who has ever said this has gone on to say that the
| US is the bad guy. And you're always arguing against people
| who say "Yes, the US is a bully, but that's not important
| right now."
| jmyeet wrote:
| To be fair, the US is almost always the bad guy.
|
| I don't say this flippantly. Look at the governments the
| US has overthrown, rebels supported, natural resources
| stolen, corrupt leaders supported and arms supplied to
| those committing genocide (eg Saudi Arabia in Yemen).
| curuinor wrote:
| surely america's the eagle, and the brits are lions? heraldry
| is ancient and the US has got some, surprisingly enough
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| I think Russia has more claim to the eagle for heraldry
| purposes, although maybe two-headed eagles don't count as
| the same species.
| [deleted]
| pessimizer wrote:
| > To say that the US is in any way responsible for Ukraine is
| to deny ukraine agency. They are caught between a lion and a
| bear.
|
| But somehow you're excusing the lion.
| spaced-out wrote:
| Because, in this instance, the lion is not the one that
| launched an invasion. Particularly egregious, launching a
| pre-emptive war based on a flimsy premise of what Ukraine
| might do in the future.
| alphabetting wrote:
| None of their arguments are that convincing to me but I do think
| there's something to the broader argument in a US/China lens. The
| Chinese govt is backing up the dumptruck investing into AI while
| good ole boys in DC are passing around billion dollar contracts
| on fighter jets. Google and Facebook are leading the west in AI
| innovation in my opinion. If AGI is possible, it would really
| suck for the world if China got there first.
|
| Imagine how different the world would be if China beat us to the
| internet and the Great Firewall was the world standard, but with
| AGI it will probably be able to rapidly become more advanced and
| prevent others from coming close to it.
|
| If the US were to get serious in AI investment I wouldn't care
| about breaking up big tech but that doesn't seem to be the case
| at all.
| gengiskush wrote:
| These people are Authoritarians in disguise. The war is on the
| little guy now.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| National security is the sum total of the individual earned
| securities of each citizen, including economic, political,
| social, health, cultural, military and _all sorts of security_
| that pertain to the identity we call a nation.
|
| What these guys are talking about is something else. They are
| talking about the security of the security services, their own
| self interests and the status quo of enmeshed relations between
| three letter agencies and a few captured tech giants.
|
| On the contrary, the exact opposite is true. National security is
| best served by a diverse, pluralistic, open, heterogeneous tech
| industry. There is no reason intelligence needs cannot function
| properly with such an ecosystem, but it would have to do so
| through the Rule of Law, and systems of warrants that the
| incumbents have sought to bypass this last 20 years.
| throwaway_1928 wrote:
| The national security argument is a red herring. It is in the
| interest of monopolies to keep their monopolies going. And they
| have all the money and lobbyists in the world to make it
| happen.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > they have all the money and lobbyists in the world to make
| it happen
|
| But not the wisdom.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Splitting Apple/Google/Facebook/Amazon into 40 smaller tech
| companies would result in larger tech companies from elsewhere
| - mostly China - eating American tech industry's lunch on the
| world stage.
|
| Large companies have massive resources which are a competitive
| advantage. Having these titanic companies headquartered in the
| US, beholden to American laws, employing Americans, being a
| symbol of American prowess abroad and listed on American stock
| exchanges is in American interests on multiple tangible &
| intangible levels; including allowing American engineers to
| command ridiculous salaries and granting the government a lot
| of soft-power.
|
| The recent sanctions on Russia (and previously Huawei/ZTE)
| shows howuch that soft-power is worth
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| You are talking about power. I am talking about security.
| They are related, but different.
| colpabar wrote:
| I have to ask - by "diverse", do you mean "different people
| from different backgrounds who have different viewpoints"? Or
| do you mean "people who all think the same way but have
| different skin colors"?
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > I have to ask - by "diverse", do you mean "different people
| from different backgrounds who have different viewpoints"?
|
| Yes, people and institutions, and technologies.
|
| What gives security is something like "hybrid vigour"
| obtained by the whole system because it has evolutionary
| resilience (it's survivable, at least in part, to the
| greatest range of possible threats)
|
| Parts of a resilient system can even be in moderate tension
| as they keep a check on each other.
|
| For examples; it would be stronger to have both centralised
| and distributed philosophies represented; it would be good to
| have a mixture of public and private funding models in
| operation; small and large entities capable of agile
| innovation, and reliable scale.
|
| That makes it hard for a malevolent or erroneous force to
| infiltrate and take out the whole barrel of apples.
|
| Of course, diversity of gender, religion, race, age,
| political leaning and wealth tend to make a more interesting
| and vibrant workplace, but that's not primarily what I am
| saying.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| Greater variation in a population makes it more robust to
| adverse events
| edgyquant wrote:
| Diverse means the people come from different backgrounds.
| kornhole wrote:
| Frances Haugen, the supposed Facebook whistleblower, slipped up
| in her 60 minutes interview and revealed that she works for US
| intelligence. The effort she was employed to advance is
| acceptance of more censorship of Meta and the like. Conspicuously
| absent from the publicly promoted discussion was any mention of
| the free alternatives such as the fediverse. 'The Social Dilemma'
| movie had similar objectives and narrative framing.
|
| I anticipate that self-hosters, linux users, and people who are
| not Facebooked will be further castigated as radicals and worse
| in the future.
|
| Also note the irony that Substack contains Google and Amazon
| trackers.
| refurb wrote:
| She disappeared pretty damn quickly huh?
| paulpauper wrote:
| that story was such a big deal half a year ago to vanishing
| completely from people's attention
| kornhole wrote:
| It left something in their memories that we need to fix
| Facebook with more censorship. Now the reason is to protect
| us from Russian misinformation.
| pfraze wrote:
| Source?
| kornhole wrote:
| It was somewhere in the interview where she mentioned about
| how careful she was at copying FB files because of her
| previous experience working in intelligence. I am sorry I
| don't feel like listening to the whole thing again to give
| you the specific time marker. https://youtu.be/_Lx5VmAdZSI
| jjulius wrote:
| >... 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/14967889580842803
| 20
| kornhole wrote:
| 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.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| logical possibility? Sure. Logic conclusion, I don't
| think so.
| acheron wrote:
| I see you would be open to my information about how the
| lizard people run the world. Of course I cannot prove it
| but my statement is merely a logical conclusion.
| kornhole wrote:
| You just need to put on the special glasses right? They
| Live is a great movie. "I came here to kick ass and chew
| gum, and I'm all out of chewing gum." is one of my
| favorite lines from it.
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| 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, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
|
| ~ Benjamin Franklin
|
| --
|
| "True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than
| anywhere else."
|
| ~ Clarence Darrow
| pessimizer wrote:
| "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect
| a man falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a
| panic..."
|
| ~ Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. writing for a unanimous
| Supreme Court about why antiwar pamphleteers should be jailed.
|
| --
|
| "We think ... that [black people] are not included, and were
| not intended to be included, under the word "citizens" in the
| Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and
| privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to
| citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at
| that time [of America's founding] considered as a subordinate
| and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the
| dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained
| subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but
| such as those who held the power and the Government might
| choose to grant them."
|
| ~ Chief justice Roger Taney, for the Supreme Court majority in
| _Dred Scott vs. Sandford_
| droffel wrote:
| > "The most stringent protection of free speech would not
| protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing
| a panic..."
|
| The decision for the first quote you used was overturned
| afterward, over 50 years ago now. It's misrepresentative of
| the current state of the law and you shouldn't use it as an
| example.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-
| tim...
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| Fighting for liberty and freedom is an idea so divorced from
| contemporary society that the age of the founding fathers might
| as well be mythology.
|
| We already have a sizeable portion of the population that wants
| people that don't agree with them to be silenced. And as long
| as they can all still buy their cattle feed at Wal-Mart,
| nothing is going to change for the better.
| tomrod wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| "The whiskey tax was repealed in the early 1800s during the
| Jefferson administration. Historian Carol Berkin argues that
| the episode, in the long run, strengthened US nationalism
| because the people appreciated how well Washington handled
| the rebels without resorting to tyranny."
|
| Let's hope the government maintains it's historical position
| of not resorting to tyranny and the country grows stronger as
| a result.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Urm... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army
|
| The Bonus Army was a group of 43,000 demonstrators - made
| up of 17,000 veterans of the United States in World War I,
| together with their families and affiliated groups - who
| gathered in Washington, D.C. in mid-1932 to demand early
| cash redemption of their service bonus certificates.
|
| On July 28, 1932, U.S. Attorney General William D. Mitchell
| ordered the veterans removed from all government property.
| Washington police met with resistance, shot at the
| protestors, and 2 veterans were wounded and later died.
| President Herbert Hoover then ordered the U.S. Army to
| clear the marchers' campsite. Army Chief of Staff General
| Douglas MacArthur commanded a contingent of infantry and
| cavalry, supported by six tanks. The Bonus Army marchers
| with their wives and children were driven out, and their
| shelters and belongings burned.
| the_optimist wrote:
| What is this talk about "the algorithm," as in Musk saying "they
| should open source the algorithm." Is this the traffic boosting
| and suppression mechanism?
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| People speak of "the algorithm" as if it were an animal spirit
| or American god to appease and to implore. I suppose this is
| our zeitgeist.
| tupac_speedrap wrote:
| It basically is at this point. Every time one of these
| companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter...etc get caught
| doing something dodgy they just say it was the algorithm's
| fault and call it a day. Like when Facebook was selling ads
| to anti-semites or Google just banning people from their
| services for undisclosed reasons.
| [deleted]
| incomingpain wrote:
| >What is this talk about "the algorithm," as in Musk saying
| "they should open source the algorithm." Is this the traffic
| boosting and suppression mechanism?
|
| If for example you make a post that says "Vaccines cause
| autism". They dont have enough humans to moderate this. They
| write an algorithm that generally sees that and you get
| shadowbanned or equivalent.
|
| What are all the subjects in which you may not talk about on
| twitter? Its not public knowledge. Open sourcing it means
| people can see the true bias.
| Tehchops wrote:
| 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 "leftist
| government conspiracy".
| moistofreason wrote:
| Ok, but where is the line drawn and who decides where it is
| drawn? The point of Musk advocating to open source the
| algorithm is to provide transparency on this.
|
| E.g. not all issues are as cut and dry as your example.
| brimble wrote:
| If social media were about private communication among
| circles of friends and family, this wouldn't be an issue.
| Instead it's also some kind of broadcast medium with an
| opaque curation/boosting system. That's the part that
| causes most of the trouble, and IMO the fix is to treat
| tech companies that operate that way as responsible for
| what they publish, when it's not private communication.
|
| "But that will make them to stop that part of their
| business entirely, or make it way more expensive and force
| them to take an actual editorial stance! And their viral-
| ness will suffer a ton!"
|
| Yes, exactly, that's the point.
|
| They've created this medium, then they decide what to push
| with it. They should be responsible for that, or else back
| away from how they're currently operating.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > It's not biased to moderate something like "vaccines
| cause autism".
|
| Would you support this sort of unbiased moderation being
| expanded to telephone calls?
| adventured wrote:
| > 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, period
| (whether anyone else likes it or not, and our algorithms
| will bias this way accordingly).
| incomingpain wrote:
| 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.
| Tehchops wrote:
| Well sure, but in the context of this discussion "bias"
| implies political.
| incomingpain wrote:
| >It's not biased to moderate something like "vaccines cause
| autism".
|
| I surrender. I agree, we absolutely should be doing
| something. The point elon is planning with the open
| sourcing is to simply make it public. I figure most
| political folks wont really argue over the autism thing.
|
| >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".
|
| Here is the interesting thing. Do we fix the conversation
| by banning people from talking about it?
|
| When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a
| liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he
| might say. -George R. R. Martin
|
| Or would it be better to allow people to talk about it and
| just post a warning that it's discredited and link?
|
| >And yet now moderating false claims that have a
| detrimental effect on public health outcomes is seen as a
| "leftist government conspiracy".
|
| I chose vaccines cause autism because it's a great example
| of something that is harmful to society. Something that
| might be worth censoring but when you block or even
| secretly shadowban this subject. It even makes me want to
| know more. Sure looks like conspiracy to me.
|
| But I also kind of point to NYTimes and incoming CNN ceo
| who are telling their journalists to break out of their
| twitter echo chambers.
|
| twitter censors far more than this subject. The
| anticonservative bias that twitter creates also ends up
| forming echo chambers for the left. Who then dont see
| criticism of their work. The consequence that NYTimes for
| example sees is that they stop reporting properly, they
| report on their echo chamber. They then fundamentally break
| journalism ethics rules.
| _bohm wrote:
| The algorithm that chooses what tweets populate the feed, I
| believe.
| moistofreason wrote:
| And search suggestions, search results, follow/friend
| suggestions, push notifications, up next on YouTube or IG
| stories. See the work of Robert Epstein
| helen___keller wrote:
| 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.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| 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.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| This is an issue with bipartisan support. TFA itself mentions
| legislation with backing from both parties.
| Yoric wrote:
| Didn't the Trump admin basically suggest this? Except the Great
| Firewall included most Western countries.
|
| I forgot how it was called. Something like "Safe Internet"?
| octopoc wrote:
| Are you thinking of the "Clean Network" initiative? It wasn't
| a Great Firewall, it was about not using Chinese telecom
| equipment for the internet.
| blibble wrote:
| sounds like a good reason for the 95% of the world that isn't the
| United States to try their best to break them up?
| kornhole wrote:
| The site linked of the letter appears down or blocked.
| https://punchbowl.news/wp-content/uploads/Open-Letter-Cyber-...
|
| This seems suspicious.
| throwawaymanbot wrote:
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| Greenwald is a total grifter and you shouldn't take anything he
| puts out seriously.
| bavell wrote:
| > _______ is a total grifter and you shouldn't take anything he
| puts out seriously.
|
| Works for pretty much everyone, not much of a critique.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| Found the Biden supporter
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| Found the Peter Thiel astroturfer.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| 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 quote Sheldon Wolin who thought of the
| American system as 'inverted totalitarian'
|
| _" Inverted totalitarianism reverses things. It is all politics
| all of the time but politics largely untempered by the political.
| Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is
| a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party,
| interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media
| concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of
| national elections when the attention of the nation is required
| to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between
| alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to
| finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-
| financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly
| seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of
| representative government and public administration by a sea of
| cash"_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| 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.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Why would they care about Western opinions if they already
| have absolute authoritarian power and believe in nothing? Are
| they demons?
| lambdasquirrel wrote:
| I don't think China's doing it out of the good of their heart,
| or because they're less monopolistic. They strike me as being
| 1. smarter about it and 2. already having whatever control they
| want, through implicit means.
|
| Somehow, I think that the CPC knows that the Chinese internet
| companies won't run without Alibaba, _but_ I also think they
| know a lot of the Chinese engineers who work for Alibaba don 't
| really have too many other places to go. So important players
| like Alibaba will probably stand regardless of the level of
| crackdowns they have taken. For the sake of competitiveness -
| and to keep Jack Ma erstwhiles in line - some random flogging
| may be in order. I think China is also concerned about the
| brain drain caused by having a tech sector that's too
| economically prosperous compared to the rest of the economy.
| (How they acted on that is another thing).
|
| The U.S., meanwhile, evidently doesn't care very much about the
| long-term health of its tech economy.
|
| I'm really uncomfortable about the situation that this
| presents. In the U.S., Apple has _usually_ pushed against the
| establishment making it easier to crack their phones. And there
| are worse social networks than FB and Twitter. There are better
| ones too, but if I find myself wanting to defend Apple against
| the government (even though I 'm sure they're taking their
| stance out of selfish reasons), then the overall situation
| seems like it is inherently balanced against U.S.
| competitiveness in tech.
| archontes wrote:
| I 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.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > that letter was still well-founded at the time.
|
| You should be explaining this claim rather than speculating
| about "hallmarks."
| archontes wrote:
| Well, I prefer not to speculate, but let's assume for a
| moment that the intelligence community knows some things
| before the general population does.
|
| I don't think it would be unreasonable to speculate that they
| knew then what a portion of the general population knows now,
| namely that a vast disinformation network was disseminating
| information on behalf of Steve Bannon. This has been analyzed
| and reported on by social media analysis firm Graphika.
|
| So combine an outlandish story of an abandoned laptop making
| its way to Rudy Giuliani with the outlandish and serially
| repeated claims of child pornography and push it out with a
| known disinformation network, and it has all the hallmarks of
| a disinformation campaign.
|
| But that's just what I see that leads me to conclude that
| it's reasonable. Don't expect me to actually explain the
| intelligence community's behavior.
|
| I suppose I'll also speak to the fact that someone from among
| the intelligence community vs. Trump's ilk deserves more of
| the benefit of the doubt. Given Trump and his ilk's long and
| trivially verifiable history of being brazen liars, I find it
| exceedingly easy to give the benefit of the doubt to the
| intelligence community.
| refurb wrote:
| _"that letter was still well-founded at the time"_
|
| They had zero proof it was Russian disinformation.
|
| They just made that up despite indications the laptop was in
| fact authentic.
|
| And they did that right before a Presidential election.
|
| That doesn't concern you? You feel that the letter was "well
| founded"? Founded on what? A politically convenient guess?
| archontes wrote:
| Without knowing what information they had at the time, I will
| say we now know that there was plenty of disinformation about
| it being manufactured and spread.
|
| https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/04/hunter-biden-
| la...
|
| Perhaps the most concerning thing is that a group of such
| blatantly unscrupulous people has actual political support in
| the US.
|
| I feel the need to draw a parallel to Trump's refusal of
| military aid to Ukraine contingent upon them manufacturing an
| investigation of Hunter Biden, over which he was impeached.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Mother Jones has the hallmarks of a media outlet deeply
| connected with US intelligence.
| archontes wrote:
| I'm not sure what your point is. Is it that you suspect
| that they are not accurately relating the contents of
| Guo's whatsapp message?
|
| If I were a betting man, I'd happily bet that they're
| reporting accurately, and that Bannon and Wengui were, as
| usual, being unscrupulous. It's not hard to see that
| claims of serial bullshit-peddlers that contain all the
| same bullshit as they always contain is bullshit. How
| much pattern recognition do you need?
|
| Not only that, but the laptop turns out to be verifiable,
| and it goes to the FBI, which investigates. As normal. I
| fail to see the outrageous part.
| aaronsimpson wrote:
| It's been Greenwald's MO for a long time now. Take completely
| uncontroversial statement -> twist it using just the right
| amount of slippery slope or change/omit one key detail -> make
| it seem inflammatory and controversial. There's nothing wrong
| with criticizing the negatives of Big Tech, but Glenn's turned
| his "anti-establishment" beat into an obsession with being
| anti-{whatever the current thing is}.
| programmarchy wrote:
| If we're relying on Big Tech for our national security, then we
| are truly screwed.
| TMWNN wrote:
| Harry Truman said in 1945 about the atomic bomb, "We thank God
| that it has come to us, instead of to our enemies". I feel the
| same way about FAANG and Silicon Valley as a whole (and Wall
| Street, and Hollywood, and SpaceX/Tesla, and the Ivy League),
| that they are in the United States.
|
| That doesn't mean I approve of everything they do. That doesn't
| mean I can't or won't decry their putting thumbs on scales toward
| a certain type of _bien-pensant_ ideology. That does mean that,
| overall, I am very, very glad that they are American instead of
| Russian, Chinese, or even British, French, or German.
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