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Conservatives Must Regulate Google And All of Silicon Valley Into Submission
Townhall.com ^ | August 14, 2017 | Kurt Schlichter

Posted on 08/14/2017 12:16:22 AM PDT by Kaslin

Google's fascist witch-burning of an honest engineer for refusing to bow down at the altar of politically correct lies was the final straw, an unequivocal warning to conservatives that there's a new set of rules, and that we need to play by them. First they came for the tech geeks; we’re next. That means Republicans at both the federal and the state level need to rein in the skinny-jeaned fascist social justice warriors who control Silicon Valley – and, to a growing extent, our society – through the kind of crushing regulation of these private business that we conservatives used to oppose.

They're going to hate the new rules.

Now, the old rule for us conservatives was that businesses could do pretty much whatever they pleased, with minimal regulation, if they focused on maximizing profit and thereby rained benefits down upon society in the form of wealth and job creation. It was a good system, but, like all systems, to get benefits you have to meet certain obligations. For businesses, one obligation was to generally stay out of the cultural and political octagon.

But the Woke Weenies of Silicon Valley, flush with cash, power, and unearned smugness, decided that they just couldn’t keep on the sidelines and make their money. No, they had to make change, as in, changing us. They violated the most important of the old rules – they chose a side. In the past, when a company or even an industry crossed the line, it rarely made much difference. So some insurance company was outspokenly progressive? So what? The one exception was the mainstream media/Hollywood complex – its actions were extremely annoying (and destructive), but it had the First Amendment to protect it and we conservatives had alternate channels to get our ideas across.

Not so with the Googles, the Facebooks, and the Twitters. Their antics are not necessarily protected by the First Amendment, their internet monopolies choke out alternative channels, and, unlike the line-crossers of the past, they possess enormous amounts of personal information that can be used to manipulate, intimidate, and punish political opponents – you know, us. Worse, their leaders are evangelists of cultural Marxism, so these companies don’t even have the fig leaf of objectivity that the mainstream media has (or had) to constrain them.

Yet they still expect the same laissez-faire treatment as any other business even as they try to gut us politically. They discriminate against conservatives, they actively assist leftist partisans like Felonia von Pantsuit, and they aggressively silence conservative voices within their apps. They imagine that they can adopt new rules for themselves while keeping in place the old rules that prevent us from defending ourselves because of “free enterprise” or something.

Nah.

See, what leftists do not get is that principles are part of systems. Principles do not stand alone; they are nested within a system and together they make it function smoothly. Our system isn't some cultural cafeteria where you load up your plate with the principles you like and hard pass on the principles you don't. If you decide you don’t want to play your part in the system, you shouldn’t be shocked when the other participants make the same decision. “Free enterprise” means “enterprise generally free of government control,” and it’s stunning that the Silicon Valley people we hear are so smart don’t foresee that when their “enterprise” morphs into a partisan political campaign the people on the other side of the spectrum are going to leverage their own political power in response.

There’s sometimes a moment when a system is unstable because one participant has changed the rules, but the other side hasn't yet reacted – like the period after feminism demanded total female social equality with men, but men still generally picked up the check. That imbalance cannot persist forever; eventually the people on the other side feel like suckers, so they stop playing by the old rules. That’s when the new rules arise. And that's why conservatives now need to savagely regulate companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter. We need to use our political power in Congress and red state legislatures to incentivize Silicon Valley to return to a system where its companies embrace political and cultural neutrality, or suffer crippling consequences.

Yeah, I know that heavily regulating private businesses is not “free enterprise,” but I don’t care. See, “free enterprise” is a bargain, and they didn't keep their part of it, and I see no moral obligation for us to be played for saps and forgo using our political power to protect our interests in the face of them using theirs to disembowel us. I liked the old rules better – a free enterprise system confers huge benefits – but it was the left that chose to nuke them.

So what are we talking about? Well, size matters, and Silicon Valley’s giants are just too darn big. Time to chop them up like old Ma Bell. Let's apply the antitrust laws that were made for taming just these types of octopod monopolies. For example, Google and Facebook’s tentacles have slithered into every corner of the web and strangled the competition. There was a word for that back in the day – what was it? Oh, yeah. “Monopoly.” The left used to like breaking up monopolies until its leftist allies starting controlling them. But the leftists don't control the executive branch. Since Attorney General Sessions isn't busy investigating the Democrats, maybe he can get his army of lawyers busy breaking up these enormous, bloated, anti-competitive conglomerates.

Remember, no corporation should be too big to fail – or nail.

Google previewed a future of conformity and fascism when it fired that engineer for talking about things that made social justice warriors sad. It's not hard to imagine that they'll soon try and silence the rest of us. One way is by weaponizing the information they maintain on all of us from search histories, purchases, and even email, information that gives leftist hacks incredible leverage to intimidate and extort opponents. “Gee, Mr. Conservative, it’d sure be a pity if the world found out about your browser history involving brony and furry erotica….”

So we need legislation – at both the federal and individual red state levels – that will impose staggering, gut-wrenching monetary penalties for not only the active misuse of this information, but even for the mere failure to safeguard it – any failure to safeguard it. If the info gets out, Google gets slammed – hard. Call it the Citizens’ Data Protection Act – gosh, who could oppose protecting citizens’ data? – and impose huge civil and even criminal penalties for any disclosure of private information about a private citizen. Yes, that’s a strict liability standard – if a citizen's information gets out for any reason, Google pays through the nose regardless of fault. Now there’s an incentive to make sure our data is secure.

And what's also scary is their willful manipulation of the algorithms that determine what can and cannot be said and read. If you don't exist on Google, in many ways, you really don't exist at all. Well, that's intolerable. Our free society conducts its business on the Internet, and if one unaccountable, partisan group can decide what topics can and cannot be discussed, we no longer have a free society. We'd have a fascist one, and fascists are bad even if those fascists swill kombucha tea, bike to work at a Mountain View campus, and spew ridiculous mottos like “Don't be evil.”

So how about the Algorithm Transparency Act, a law that bans these big Internet companies from putting their fingers on the scale of discourse and requires them to make available online all of their operating algorithms? Yep, that would give competitors a peek at their intellectual property, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make for transparency. And “transparency” means allowing an army of Davids to dig through Facebook and Google’s code, finding out why things the tech leftists don't want you to know are getting buried, and then feeding that info to trial lawyers.

Oh yeah, that’s the other part of the equation. We need to empower individuals and/or consumer advocates to bring lawsuits seeking huge damages for the manipulation of information designed to silence or stifle disfavored points of view. And the great part is that enforcing it doesn't need to be a government thing. We can model it on the Americans with Disabilities Act – that’s the law that makes it so you can play a soccer game in a public toilet stall.

See, the government doesn't enforce disability accommodation laws; private citizens and their lawyers do, for money. When somebody finds a ramp with an angle that isn't perfect for people on Rascals, or a urinal that's too high for dwarves, they file a lawsuit to collect substantial penalties and, more importantly, grossly inflated legal fees. That's key – suing citizens must be able to recover their attorney’s fees from the tech companies. Let’s unleash the power of ambulance chasers on Silicon Valley’s tyrants!

Of course, the big tech corporations would immediately complain because everything they do would be scrutinized and they would constantly be under observation for any deviation. Great. Then they would know how conservatives in Silicon Valley feel.

Not exactly old school conservatism, right? Well, it’s not exactly old school America. Too bad. We liked the old system, but you tech twerps decided to change it. So be it. Too bad that, for some reason, you thought we wouldn’t change too.

Like I always say, you're going to hate the new rules.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: google; goolag; justwhattheywant; netneutrality; ohok; picklerick; siliconvalley
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1 posted on 08/14/2017 12:16:22 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

Google has been completely biased for years. I remember searching for info on Obama and the first and often second page results would be all ‘debunking’ links. Was impossible to do opposition research using the site and that’s where most people go.

Very Orwellian. Control access to information via the gateways and doesn’t matter what conservatives say it’ll never get read.

Now YouTube ‘demonitized’ the Trump ladies videos this week and just shut down a conservative for merely discussing radial Islam.

Need to break up Google like the feds broke up AT&T.


2 posted on 08/14/2017 12:28:46 AM PDT by TigerClaws
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To: TigerClaws

Yes


3 posted on 08/14/2017 12:30:35 AM PDT by wardaddy (Virtue signalers should be shot...conservative ones racked and hanged then fed to dogs)
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To: Kaslin

They will just buy off the Republicans, nothing is going to happen.


4 posted on 08/14/2017 12:57:55 AM PDT by heights
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To: Kaslin

At some point don’t the internet backbone companies become similar to utilities?


5 posted on 08/14/2017 1:34:36 AM PDT by reed13k
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To: Kaslin

I agree. Regulate them or break them up. They have far too much power.


6 posted on 08/14/2017 1:43:13 AM PDT by JohnyBoy
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To: Kaslin

PING. Great perspective on breaking up the Internet Big Brother organizations.


7 posted on 08/14/2017 2:55:07 AM PDT by poconopundit (CNN is... Corruption News Neglected)
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To: Kaslin
Conservatives Must Regulate Google And All of Silicon Valley Into Submission

Yes!!!

Be cause we ALL know that they will then FOLLOW those; ahem; regulations.

8 posted on 08/14/2017 3:11:12 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: poconopundit

 



 
Eerily familiar...
 
 

Party ownership of the print media
made it easy to manipulate public opinion,
and the film and radio carried the process further.


 



16. Ministry Of Truth

.......

The Ministry of Truth, Winston's place of work, contained, it was said, three thousand rooms above ground level, and corresponding ramifications below.

The Ministry of Truth concerned itself with Lies. Party ownership of the print media made it easy to manipulate public opinion, and the film and radio carried the process further.

The primary job of the Ministry of Truth was to supply the citizens of Oceania with newspapers, films, textbooks, telescreen programmes, plays, novels - with every conceivable kind of information, instruction, or entertainment, from a statue to a slogan, from a lyric poem to a biological treatise, and from a child's spelling-book to a Newspeak dictionary.

Winston worked in the RECORDS DEPARTMENT (a single branch of the Ministry of Truth) editing and writing for The Times. He dictated into a machine called a speakwrite. Winston would receive articles or news-items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, in Newspeak, rectify. If, for example, the Ministry of Plenty forecast a surplus, and in reality the result was grossly less, Winston's job was to change previous versions so the old version would agree with the new one. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs - to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance.

When his day's work started, Winston pulled the speakwrite towards him, blew the dust from its mouthpiece, and put on his spectacles. He dialed 'back numbers' on the telescreen and called for the appropriate issues of The Times, which slid out of the pneumatic tube after only a few minutes' delay. The messages he had received referred to articles or news-items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to rectify.

In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages; to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and on the side wall, within easy reach of Winston's arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.

As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of The Times and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.

What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of The Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead.

In the cubicle next to him the little woman with sandy hair toiled day in day out, simply at tracking down and deleting from the Press the names of people who had been vaporized and were therefore considered never to have existed. And this hall, with its fifty workers or thereabouts, was only one-sub-section, a single cell, as it were, in the huge complexity of the Records Department. Beyond, above, below, were other swarms of workers engaged in an unimaginable multitude of jobs.

There were huge printing-shops and their sub editors, their typography experts, and their elaborately equipped studios for the faking of photographs. There was the tele-programmes section with its engineers, its producers and its teams of actors specially chosen for their skill in imitating voices; clerks whose job was simply to draw up lists of books and periodicals which were due for recall; vast repositories where the corrected documents were stored; and the hidden furnaces where the original copies were destroyed.

And somewhere or other, quite anonymous, there were the directing brains who co-ordinated the whole effort and laid down the lines of policy which made it necessary that this fragment of the past should be preserved, that one falsified, and the other rubbed out of existence.

 
 


9 posted on 08/14/2017 3:14:51 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Kaslin

Look for Google to be on thin ice with the Trump White House.


10 posted on 08/14/2017 3:16:01 AM PDT by Biggirl ("One Lord, one faith, one baptism" - Ephesians 4:5)
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To: Elsie
"The telescreen recieved and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it;
moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard.
 
There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment.
How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork.
It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever the wanted to.
 
You had to live- did live, from habit that became instinct- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

-1984, Book 1, Chapter One, George Orwell



https://youtu.be/RBs21CFBALI

11 posted on 08/14/2017 3:26:33 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Kaslin

Or we can be the capitalists we pretend and incentavize new competitors?

I know that sounds sooooooooo wacky, right!?


12 posted on 08/14/2017 3:29:35 AM PDT by VanDeKoik (.)
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To: TigerClaws

As a conservative I am sort of against the concept of siccing gummint on folks. The 4chan kids have a good idea. They have some software they use against google that “clicks” on all the ads on a page many multiples of times simultaneously. This corrupts their data and as the advertisers realize the value of their product isn’t what they claim it is the value of Google goes down. If you ask me that is a pretty “free market” way of fighting back.

As far as I am concerned, the old fashioned way should work. Just don’t use google products.


13 posted on 08/14/2017 3:40:11 AM PDT by wastoute (Government cannot redistribute wealth. Government can only redistribute poverty.)
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To: VanDeKoik

Exactly. We need conservative alternatives to YouTube and Google.


14 posted on 08/14/2017 3:41:38 AM PDT by wastoute (Government cannot redistribute wealth. Government can only redistribute poverty.)
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To: TigerClaws; V K Lee

Totally agree that these monopolies need to be regulated.

I think this will be a priority during Trump’s second term in office.

Meanwhile, new TV networks are being built that will compete with the fake news and will allow the voices to be heard on the Self-Reliant Right.

Watch this guy Bill Mitchell. His daily one-hour conversations with top-flight political experts are fun, informative, and pulling 50,000 to 70,000 plays a night on periscope.

This month his team is opening a TV studio in Palm Beach, close to the Southern White House.

And they are also planning a sports commentary show, girl talk show, etc. They are also organizing rallies. Just held their first one called MAGA Dixie Meetup in Atlanta this weekend (where Roger Stone attended and gave a short talk).

The cool thing about Mitchell is he’s not a pol. He’s a highly successful head hunter who really understands Trump’s genius and uses his incredible tweets to fight for We The People and the Trump agenda.


15 posted on 08/14/2017 3:45:04 AM PDT by poconopundit (CNN is... Corruption News Neglected)
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To: Kaslin
Yeah, I know that heavily regulating private businesses is not “free enterprise,” but I don’t care.

Indded, nobody cares how a weapon is wielded when they're the ones wielding it. And then it gets passed to the other side. And there is much wailing and gnashing of teetth. Too late, as the principle has been ceded.

16 posted on 08/14/2017 3:52:12 AM PDT by Wolfie
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To: Elsie

Nice one, Elsie.

George Orwell was quite the prophet.

The leadership of these Silicon Valley companies is where the power lies. The venture capitalists who build these silicon monopolies are careful what kind of leader they back.

And the kind they like is someone ruthless who will stop at nothing to grow the enterprise. If you carve away the brain layers of these captains of the internet you’ll find there’s nothing there. No soul, no moral compass, no Higher Power.


17 posted on 08/14/2017 4:03:00 AM PDT by poconopundit (CNN is... Corruption News Neglected)
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To: poconopundit

PP, have seen some of Bill’s shows on You Tube via Roku. Impressed with what was heard Dr. Gina was a guest that evening.


18 posted on 08/14/2017 4:20:33 AM PDT by V K Lee (DJT: "Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war. ")
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To: V K Lee

Great, love Dr. Gina.


19 posted on 08/14/2017 4:28:21 AM PDT by poconopundit (CNN is... Corruption News Neglected)
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To: VanDeKoik
Or we can be the capitalists we pretend and incentavize new competitors?

Naaah.

It's way much more fun to become what we hate what we say we hate and use the power of the state to attack our political opponents.

20 posted on 08/14/2017 4:41:01 AM PDT by Eric Pode of Croydon (I'm an unreconstructed Free Trader and I do not give a damn.)
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