Posted on 04/25/2020 3:55:33 AM PDT by Kaslin
There is a great debate going on in America about the power of big tech over our lives. One issue is whether they are going too far when they sell personal data collected by the company. Another issue is when they moderate content in a way that is perceived as discriminatory against conservatives. These are important issues and recent events show that these companies’ hands are not clean when it comes to privacy and censorship.
Social media companies like Twitter and Facebook fill a networking and communications need felt by Americans, and because of their success, they have been handsomely rewarded. Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg are billionaires many times over. They deserve the great wealth for creating a networking product that people gravitated towards, yet they have failed us recently in the areas of censorship and privacy.
We are many years past the creation of Twitter and Facebook when these companies operated with good intentions. Both of these companies have experienced significant mission creep from being a place for open discussion to something completely different. I use Twitter and Facebook and don’t have any animus towards these two companies, yet it is clear to me that these companies have changed dramatically over the years.
Sadly, these social media giants have been acting like bit tyrants these days by tossing aside privacy protections and promising to become content referees. Privacy is sacrosanct in America and some of these social media companies gather up as much information as they can about users for the sole purpose of selling the data to the highest bidder. That is not wrong per se, but it is wrong to violate existing law.
This past week, Facebook was held by a District Court for the District of Columbia to have violated users’ privacy rights. Eight years ago, the Federal Trade Commission and Facebook settled a claim that Facebook had violated privacy and information sharing law. The Court held that “Facebook did not keep its word, and over the next months and years it violated both the FTC Act and the order in many ways.” Facebook was found to be willfully violating privacy law and the Court used the term “unscrupulous” to describe their use and abuse of private data.
The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights to recognize all Americans’ right to keep personal information private. When citizens entrust private information to companies like Facebook, they trust that the company will follow privacy law. A company willfully violating the law shows that this company thinks it is above the law. As much as I like Facebook, this decision entered this past week shows that Facebook still has a privacy problem.
Twitter is experiencing a whole different problem. It appears that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey may have delusions of grandeur. Dorsey said to Desus & Mero, of Showtime fame, on a livestream that was streamed on YouTube on April 22, 2020, in response to a question about President Trump, “I think you are speaking to Trump and misleading information. That is where I think labelling will come in really handy.” Dorsey is wrong to think that Twitter users trust him to editorialize the Twitter feed of a world leader, because that will lead Twitter to the logical conclusion that they should moderate all political content.
We live in an age where we can use the power of the purse (and wallet) to punish companies when we don’t like what they are doing. I use Parler and Gab, in concert with Twitter, because I don’t like Twitter’s censorship of conservative content. For some, Twitter, Facebook and Google have become unavoidable. One way to make them change is to use economic power to change them and to find alternatives if they refuse to change to fill that void.
The actions of Facebook and statement by the Twitter CEO should send a chill down the spine of conservatives and libertarians, because it shows that these companies are not acting in good faith. They have gone from being companies with the intention of filling a networking and communications void to ones that are playing fast and loose with privacy and free speech.
I left facebook in a grand style of insulting Zuckerberg, and they banned me. Which is what I wanted rather than closing my account. Never joined instagram or twitter. So their “tyranny” doesn’t affect me.
If these platforms are tyranical, then the “users” should leave. It’s tough to have a business when you don’t have customers.
I exited fakebook, linkdin, and never participated in the rest. There is no reason to go there, ever.
I still have a fakebook account. Mainly to keep in touch with family members and friends that are not particularly active politically. If there is content I don’t want to see, I just unfollow them.
That having been said, I DO NOT discuss anything politically there. I have found that I disagree with most sheeple and do not want to invest much time in trying to educate them.
I belong to several groups mainly having to do with guitars.
I have never joined linkdin and have no intention to.
If these platforms censor political speech, hit them with FEC regs and make them accountable for their campaign contributions.
O’Sullivan’s First Law.
An eternal truth.
By John O’Sullivan EDITOR’S NOTE: This appeared in the October 27, 1989, issue of National Review.Robert Michels — as any reader of James Burnham's finest book, The Machiavellians, knows was the author of the Iron Law of Oligarchy. This states that in any organization the permanent officials will gradually obtain such influence that its day-to-day program will increasingly reflect their interests rather than its own stated philosophy. To take a homely example, congressmen from egalitarian parties somehow end up voting for higher pay and generous expenses for congressmen. We can also catch an ironic echo of Michels's law in Stalin's title of General Secretary, as well as in the fact that powerful mandarins in the British government creep about under such deceptive pseudonyms as "Permanent Under-Secretary.” . . .All of which is by way of introducing a new law of my own . . .
I cite as supporting evidence the ACLU, the Ford Foundation, and the Episcopal Church. The reason is, of course, that people who staff such bodies tend to be the sort who don't like private profit, business, making money, the current organization of society, and, by extension, the Western world. At which point Michels's Iron Law of Oligarchy takes over — and the rest follows.
- O'Sullivan's First Law:
- All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.
I have never been on Twitter, and only briefly was on Facebook until I realized how bad their security was. That was before they started trying to be part of the Deep State.
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