Posted on 08/12/2018 6:12:59 AM PDT by Enlightened1
That’s fine.
Just realize that you cant dress up this solution as anything other than what it is, and after it is done, then there is no going back, and the state will now have the ability to “break up” companies because they got really popular (through no malicious actions), and people are too stupid and lazy to diversify. If this happens then Apple would have to have spun-off the iPod or iPhone, for example.
The old trusts of the last century were companies that dealt with physical goods like petroleum and food, of which there was a finite supply. Ma Bell wasn’t even censoring what people said on the phone (the AT&T breakup in hindsight was done almost on a technicality, not so much that they controlled all the telephone companies).
Here we are dealing with social media companies. On the surface, it is just laughable that the people of this nation are even using the term monopolies, and trusts in this manner when it comes to them. There products are not physical, are given away, not necessary for the manufacture of other products or to power anything, and whose features are easily copied a million different ways to facilitate the same ends.
They just are too popular or addicting. And people are too lazy to use anything else. It’s like calling Disney’s animated feature film department back in the 90s a monopoly because no one really watched animated movies put out by another company, and thus Disney needed to be broken up.
One could also look at the browser wars on the 2000s to show that a digital product has no more of a stranglehold on the market than the general public allows it. At one time no one thought Firefox had a chance. Microsoft was actually in real danger of a breakup over this because Internet Explorer was virtually commanding web standards with 90%+ of the market, but it proved to be unnecessary because we got alternatives, and people were lobbied to use them.
So I’m just saying there will need to be a far more mature case to be brought because some of this stuff is so bad that it will get laughed out of court. I do think their quasi-collusionary action against Alex Jones is the thing to focus on. That these companies are acting almost as a situational single-entity with no transparency. That also are hiding behind AI systems to do their dirty work, and having these actions triggered by political entities with connections to elected officials.
Proving that may just trigger a 1st amendment issue whereas these companies can just hide behind the right to do business with whomever they want.
The key will be to make the price for these companies be too big to pay compared to whatever they are getting from these political groups. Make it hurt, and they will cut ties to save their butts.
Adam Smith is not noted as a conspiracy theorist. But . . .Journalism prefers to report bad news about society and, to that extent, insinuate cynicism towards society and naiveté towards government. The combination of those two complementary dispositions matches up perfectly with socialist ideology.People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776)Journalists meet together all the time. That is, not only do they read each other’s stuff, but the Associated Press “wire” constitutes a continuous virtual meeting of all major journalism outlets. It has been going on since before the Civil War, and it is not about “merriment and diversion,” but precisely about business.You have to be "naive as a babe to believe” that in all that time they never discovered any way to promote their own interests at the expense of the public interest. What is the public interest most at risk from such intimate, long-term interaction among journalists? Adam Smith suggests a possibility to be taken seriously:
The natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough. The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing.If journalists are able to come to a consensus politically among themselves, they can promote their agreed-upon preference even if the public interest is opposed to theirs. And the single most logical result would be the claim that journalists have no distinct interests separate from the public interest.The man whom we believe is necessarily, in the things concerning which we believe him, our leader and director, and we look up to him with a certain degree of esteem and respect. But as from admiring other people we come to wish to be admired ourselves; so from being led and directed by other people we learn to wish to become ourselves leaders and directors . . .
The desire of being believed, the desire of persuading, of leading and directing other people, seems to be one of the strongest of all our natural desires. - Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
But that is a testable proposition. Do journalists prefer to report good news, or bad? And about whom? We know (If it bleeds, it leads) that journalists prefer - are taught to prefer - bad news. It attracts and holds attention, making journalism seem important. But about whom does journalism by preference report bad news? There is a certain predilection to conflate “society” and “government” as if they were the same thing, but Thomas Paine argued very strongly against that assumption:
SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins.Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness;the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices.
The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil . . . - Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)
Some questions that could use answers:
1) How much money do social media companies make from government agencies access to their data?
2) How much influence does this money effectively give those agencies over the policies of the social media company?
3) Has the Deep State been using their influence for political purposes, to oppose certain voices and support other voices in the social media environment?
I went to google to look up the link to an article that I had found just two days ago- I had found it using google by the way.
Today when I again searched for the same article nothing I recognized popped up. So I added another search term. The article I was looking for still wasn’t there. So I added another search term. Nothing.
Hmm. Very suspicious.
So I switched to duckduckgo.com as the search engine. The article I was looking for was at the top of the list on the first page.
This surely means that Google has started censoring returns from the website that I was looking for. A long established immigration control website, one despised by the SPLC and their fellow travelers which has to include google. The book burners now wear Google t shirts.
“The private individuals who run sites such as Google, Twitter, Reddit, Youtube, Facebook, etc. can basically decide what is allowed to be said on the internet.”
Absolutely right. I caught Google shadowbanning returns from a website that I was hunting for just this morning.
This is a dangerous business.
I finally found what I was looking for using duckduckgo, so AFAIK duckduckgo isn’t involved in censoring ideas. Google is.
<><>1) How many tax dollars do social media companies suck-up from giving government agencies access to their data?
<><> 2) How much influence does this give US govt agencies over the policies of the social media company?
<><> 3) Has the Deep State been using its influence for political purposes?
<><> Has the Deep State used its power to (a) oppose certain voices, and, (b) to support other voices in the social media environment?
Call President Trump: Comments: 202-456-1111 Switchboard: 202-456-1414
US CONGRESS SWITCHBOARD: (202) 224-3121
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Comment Line: 202-353-1555
Switchboard: 202-514-2000
My late father’s job at Southern Bell was tapping telephones at the frame back when rotary phones were still the norm. They had many people on that team and three shifts a day, they were that busy. Telegraph, telephone, radiophone and all the rest have been in bed with the government since their inception.
Nauseating.
Being a retired Marine they loved him there. Big shots would drop-in occasionally just to say “hi” and chat.
Not just tax dollars. There can be lots of benefits from being on the good side of the Deep State.
For somebody with multi-billion-dollar investment portfolios, how valuable would it be to, discretely, get even a few hours advance notice of important world events?
How valuable would it be to have assurances that the DOJ would have no interest in your various personal activities, and would actively suppress interest from local law enforcement?
How valuable would it be to have assurances that complaints about your company to EEOC and other agencies, about harassment, hiring and promotion decisions, etc, would be given no interest by any government employee?
The Deep State has many ways to reward friends, which do not involve visible payments from official government budgets.
“Not just tax dollars. There can be lots of benefits from being on the good side of the Deep State.”
Obama appointed Google’s Deputy General Counsel Michelle Kwok Lee the head of the Patent Office. The Obama White House served the interests of Big Tech. And vice versa.
Nice catch.......that all needs to b factored in.
If you were a billionaire who was getting various benefits from certain people in the Deep State, how unhappy would you be if your profitable contacts faced being replaced by Trump?
NYT is publicly traded. They aren’t under any obligation to present both sides of anything. Neither is FB, except in the minds of fervid nanny staters.
But only a faux conservative would even begin to be alright with telling the owner of a company in the media segment what they can or can’t do with their business. What FB, the NYT, CNN, FB or Fox covers or buries is in no way the concern of government in the minds of anyone who isn’t a raging socialist jackboot licker.
It sounds like ‘whaa whaa whaa’ from our side ‘Those big old mean old social media companies are not being nice to us, whaa whaa whaa’ Disgusting.
Those are NEWS orgs, not an internet platform wealthier than Spain, with more members than Christianity and worth multiple times what ALL of the railroads, banks and tech companies we've "anti-trusted" in the history of anti-trust.
It's not a matter of if we can, under the law, treat Facebook to anti-trust law because we can. Mark Suck-borg is not "the press" and Facebook|Free Republic have nothing in common. Free Republic can't wipe out an entire business - or business sector - with a line of software. JimRob can't pull the plug on someone's campaign. John Robinson didn't collude with Google and YouTube to ruin people.
Stop calling forum goers who are among the most Free Market in the country, "fervid nanny staters, raging socialist jackboot lickers," ...stuff like that. Makes you sound douchey... like a douchebag. Or maybe a douche-hose...or nozzle or something.
I get it. You are scared of those big, bad nerds.
An aside, I’d never been to an Apple Store.
My dad inherited an IPAD from his brother and the battery started to fail. The girl on the phone said they would change the battery for 30 bucks. So I have an appointment, might as well not have, it was still a doctor’s office type of wait, 40+ minutes in this weird non-professional setting, only to have the “genius” spent 5-10 more minutes to tell me the warranty expired and they won’t service it but I can get another for 249 dollars. That binty on the phone was either incompetent or lied to get me in the store so maybe I’d buy something, she had the serial number of the damn thing.
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