#MuhPrivateBusinessDecisions and Government-Supported Corporatist Censorship

Ace of Spades HQ ^ | 2/27/2019 | Ace of Spades

[MountainWalker]

A thread from Jeff Giesea about America's creeping acceptance of China's creepy "social credit" system, in which semi-official corporate censors "rate" people on their support of official state dogma, and those ratings then determine what apartments you can rent and at what terms and cost.

Tim Pool mentioned in a post about this general subject matter [ Update: I believe it was in this video discussing PayPal's reliance on the leftwing extremist front group the SPLC to tell them who to ban] that the creation of parallel/shadow institutions was a necessary precondition for an actual civil war, as people need access to money and credit, and they can only get that in a civil war if there are now separate Blue and Gray systems.

It's an interesting and provocative idea -- and certainly one that has a lot of support in Neocon and Foreign Liberal Internationalist thinking. Those pillars of foreign policy establishment thinking have long claimed that "countries that trade together don't go to war with each other," and have sold trade deals only partly on the economics, seeing them mostly as instruments to create and preserve peace.

Well, then: shared commerce and finance keeps America knitted together in peace too, right?

But what happens when major corporations, especially those involved in finance and the free exchange of ideas in order to further the aims of participatory democracy, decide they're going to effectively exile half the country out of the normal systems of the country?

What happens when half of America won't buy bread from the other half of America, and half of America won't issue a mortgage to half of America based on their failing a Political Test and Corporate Loyalty Oath?

What happens to the idea that peoples that trade together can't go to war with each other then?

The left is driving this nation to the brink of actual civil war, and the corporatist Neocons and #MuhPrinciples cucks are stupidly, ignorantly assisting them in doing so because they don't like how half of the country voted in a single presidential election.

Jeff Giesea ‏ @jeffgiesea

I'd like to elevate the way we talk about censorship issues. Let me offer a few quick thoughts on language and taxonomy around these issues, and how I'm currently thinking about them. /1

Let's look at different types of services engaged in this. I see four:

1. Social networks like YouTube and Twitter 2. Payment and banking services 3. Domain registrars, web hosting, and other digital utilities 4. Retail services like Amazon

/2

Let's look at the different forms of censorship. In the case of social networks, there are four types:

1. Deplatforming 2. Demonetizing 3. Shadowbanning 4. Other algorithmic manipulations (for ex search results)

For the other services, it's mostly just deplatforming. /3

As we look at different services, we may want to draw distinctions between ones that are essential for participating in contemporary democratic discourse and ones that are not. This, in my eyes, is a function of the nature of the service and of its market share. /4

We might agree that a normal retail service should be able to choose its customers (barring protected classes). If it has small market share & there are other options, this is less of a big deal. But what about a retail service with a near-monopoly on distribution like Amazon? /5

Since I'm a gay guy, let's assume I'm both an author and that I'm getting married. Well, I have options for other buying my wedding cake. My world doesn't end because Masterpiece won't bake it for me. I'm MUCH more impacted by being banned from Amazon. Yet which is protected? /6

Amazon's ability to ban books when it has a near monopoly on distribution strikes me as deeply concerning. I don't have an answer for what to do about it, but we should flag this as an open question in this age of privatized censorship. The point being: Market share matters. /7

Market share matters with payment services too: Getting kicked off PayPal is a huge deal for people who make a living online, yet it seems to be happening more and more. What does it do to our democracy when people can be banned from PayPal for their political views? /8

Regarding banking services: I'm less concerned if there's ample choice in the marketplace. But even so, unless someone's a legit terrorist or criminal, it seems wrong that someone could be banned from a bank for their political views. /9

In the case of social networks and search engines, how do we protect free and open democratic discourse when they increasingly dominate our information environment? Here's market share for desktop Google search, for example. /10

Let's take Twitter. What bothers me isn't that it has terms of service. (I respect @jack's earnestness tbh.) It's the uneven enforcement of its terms, the arbitrariness & lack of transparency around their enforcement, and lack of due process. /11 Bottom line: We're entering an era of privatized censorship, and it's not clear what a "free society" means in this context. The rise of soft, privatized totalitarianism by near-monopoly services threatens freedom & democratic discourse. We need to address these issues /12

Imagine not being able to fly, take a train, get a credit card, or register a domain because you have a dissenting POV.

If we don't address these issues now, this will lead to a privatized social credit system that will be no better than China's and in many respects worse. /13

[Ciexyz]

My conservative friends are expressing concern about China’s system of social credit coming to the US.

[dfwgator]

Media companies need to be broken up.

If I had my way a company could not own companies in multiple media industries. Too much consolidation of power over the media, which is every bit as bad as if they were controlled by the government, which in effect, they already are.

[nascarnation]

The Dems could hire Facebook or Google to administer it.
The systems are all in place.

[RushIsMyTeddyBear]

Indeed they are.