I wrote just one post last week and it centered around the dangers posed to society by U.S. tech giants. I specifically called out Facebook, pointing out how company executives are currently groveling to politicians in order to prevent legislation that might deem it a monopoly and curtail its power.
I explained how U.S. politicians prefer to use the power and reach of tech giants for their own ends rather than take them down a notch. Politicians aren’t at all concerned about the outsized influence of centralized tech behemoths engineering society using secret algorithms, they just want to be in control of how this power is abused.
Meanwhile, today’s biggest news is the uniform move by three U.S. tech giants to de-platform Alex Jones and his Infowars website. The main companies involved are Apple, Facebook and Google (via YouTube), as reported in The Guardian:
All but one of the major content platforms have banned the American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, as the companies raced to act in the wake of Apple’s decision to remove five podcasts by Jones and his Infowars website.
Facebook unpublished four pages run by Jones for “repeated violations of community standards”, the company said on Monday. YouTube terminated Jones’s account over him repeatedly appearing in videos despite being subject to a 90-day ban from the website, and Spotify removed the entirety of one of Jones’s podcasts for “hate content”…
Facebook’s and YouTube’s enforcement action against Jones came hours after Apple removed Jones from its podcast directory. The timing of Facebook’s announcement was unusual, with the company confirming the ban at 3am local time.
Put aside what you think of Alex Jones for a moment. If they can do this to him and not fear the repercussions, they can do it to anybody. This is about power, and these platforms together account for a massive share of content distribution in the U.S. Ultimately, this is just a particularly muscular and in your face example of what’s known as Silicon Valley’s cultural imperialism.
I know a lot of people think the answer is to get Congress to do something, as if those monumentally corrupt donor puppets have any interest in helping the public.
I get it, you want Congress to call Facebook a monopoly and break it up.
Unfortunately,here are two hard truths:1) Politicians would rather use Facebook as a weapon than reduce its power.
2) Politicians don't work for you.— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) August 6, 2018
I've been saying this for a while. The momentum isn't with the critics who would actually diminish the big tech companies' power. The momentum is with people who see the corps' concentrated influence as a tool to be used. https://t.co/FgczA4kYDj
— Jesse Walker (@notjessewalker) August 6, 2018
I’d also like to point out that Facebook’s stock was up over 4% today, completely shrugging off any potential backlash from users. Executives assume its users are all addled junkies unwilling to give up convenience and their addiction no matter what the company does. Are they right?
Speaking of which, on the same day the move against Jones was announced we learn Facebook is in talks with mega banks to get your financial information.
From The Wall Street Journal:
Facebook Inc.wants your financial data.
The social media giant has asked large U.S. banks to share detailed financial information about their customers, including card transactions and checking account balances, as part of an effort to offer new services to users.
Facebook increasingly wants to be a platform where people buy and sell goods and services, besides connecting with friends. The company over the past year asked JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup Inc. and U.S. Bancorp to discuss potential offerings it could host for bank customers on Facebook Messenger, said people familiar with the matter.
Facebook executives don’t actually care about anything besides their profits and power, so the only way you can take any individual action against the company is to delete your account. I haven’t engaged with Facebook since 2012, so permanently deleting it wasn’t a large personal sacrifice, but I did it anyway earlier today.
Stop bitching and take action.
Here's how to delete Facebook, not deactivate, but DELETE (they make it hard).https://t.co/KfgGrfVOKQ— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) August 6, 2018
Don’t wait for other people to change things for you, stop whining and take some individual responsibility. If you agree that Facebook’s primarily a nefarious narcissism-factory masquerading as a platform just delete it…before it deletes you.
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I was only on facebook for a short time when I found out they monitor you even when you are not on it and I left. Screw them!
Did you permanently delete it in the way outlined in the post? If not, I suggest you do, the executives track that stuff closely.
Never had a FB account. Several years ago, had to sit through an all-hands IT meeting at my company. The CIO berated those of us who resisted social media, questioning how we could call ourselves technology professionals if we didn’t personally keep abreast of trends. He was new to the position and I looked up his bio afterward, turns out he was an overgrown English Lit major with no real technical background, basically a stuffed shirt. That made laughing off his criticism a bit easier.
As far as politics goes, there is a delicious irony that some of those targeted by today’s tech giants have traditionally defended corporate power to the hilt, no matter how it’s used (or misused). Much like banking, the line between private/public sector is becoming increasingly blurred in tech. It’s advantageous to straddle that line to get the best of both worlds, of course, but a lot of people seem to resist the idea that any company would do such a thing.
“Politicians aren’t at all concerned about the outsized influence of centralized tech behemoths engineering society using secret algorithms, they just want to be in control of how this power is abused.”
That’s because they are Corporatists. You cannot create a fully blown Fascist State without first creating a Corporatist State. Look no further than how Mussolini engineered Italy into a Fascist State in 1930’s.
Shortly after Obama took office I realized that he was actually a Corporatist, not a “Socialist” as many people were saying and wringing their hands over.
It is true that Obama was a Fabian Socialist in his younger days.
But:
“Fascism is Fabian socialism plus the inevitable dictator.”
– John T. Flynn
I agree with you that all those who are on b*ttbook and Tw*tter should delete their accounts. I am one ahead of this. I never had an account with either and am happier for it.
Is this all a sign of the plutos’ anxiety over the positive benefits of the internet.. i.e., empowering grassroots voices and donation collecting, small business, etc. Does all this (WaPo’s NoProp article; killing net neutrality; big data; etc, ) point to one thing, i.e., their desperation to totally control our access to the internet, because it is a powerful threat to their dominance? Maybe another ‘good’ sign? (if enough voters wake up)
Nobody is going to believe me for pointing this out, but Facebook (as well as Google and Twitter) were founded by the intelligence agencies. They are funded by the government. Amazon is as well. I am not kidding. This is an open secret in Silicon Valley, and I live and work here.
Oh, and I cannot help but notice that I can log in with Google, Facebook, or Twitter just below…
Get rid of this crap.
If you are wondering why Google, Twitter, and Facebook don’t seem to care about user retention which they need to make money, it’s because that’s not how they make money. They are propaganda outlets, and you can bet they’re aren’t going out of business, until the Federal Government does.
Corporations control the government which by definition is fascism now they’re dividing the people so they can take complete power by establishing martial law .Take to the middle ground abandon extremes,and pursue the truth in all things , remember centre touches both left and right but it’s far from the extremes
I believe Tor was devised by US Navy. GPS, intranet… doesn’t most basic tech have its roots in military applications? I think what is particularly irksome is that all those development programs were paid for by tax dollars at work before being quietly sequestered by the private sector and then sold back to the same tax payers at huge premiums.
Add internet itself, and which was born as a defense against soviet nuckear attack
“This is a test of the emergency response system. This is ONLY a test.”
Ahh, that old public service announcement from analog TV days. Resurrected, as it were, for the current corporate media blitzrieg against Infowars.
But what happens when the TEST is over, and their “emergency response system” is proven successful?
Do these madmen truly imagine shutting down the internet will make people vote for their servants (politicians)?
Don’t they know we had elections before the internet? Before TV? Before electricity?