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U.S. Tech Giants Are Too Big, Too Powerful and Now Are Running Into Serious Trouble

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Within Google, knowledge about Dragonfly has been restricted to just a few hundred members of the internet giant’s 88,000-strong workforce, said a source with knowledge of the project. The source spoke to The Intercept on condition of anonymity, as they were not authorized to contact the media. The source said that they had moral and ethical concerns about Google’s role in the censorship, which is being planned by a handful of top executives and managers at the company with no public scrutiny.

“I’m against large companies and governments collaborating in the oppression of their people, and feel like transparency around what’s being done is in the public interest,” the source said, adding that they feared “what is done in China will become a template for many other nations.”

From The Intercept article: Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal

Today’s post will explain why I think the U.S. tech giants are in the early stages of destroying themselves. It will focus on two of the biggest names in the space, Facebook and Google. Both face serious issues that are only now truly coming to a head and rooted in two primary factors, size and politics.

Facebook is further along in the process of being in serious trouble, so let’s start there. The social media company currently has 2.2 billion active users worldwide, which amounts to well over half of all human beings online at the moment (estimated at 3-4 billion). In other words, the company already has a tremendous share of global potential users. Since everybody already knows what Facebook is, you have to assume those who aren’t using it (like me), aren’t using it for a reason. Thus, you have to ask whether or not meaningful growth in active users is remotely realistic for Facebook. I would argue not.

There are many reasons to bet against Facebook significantly growing active users in the years ahead, but the main hurdle seems to be keeping the users it already has actively engaged. Specifically, I think there are two types of users Facebook risks losing going forward. These people might not “delete Facebook” per se, but their engagement with the platform may drop meaningfully.

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Centrism is Dead (And It Never Really Existed)

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It’s a common refrain these days to hear people lament a decline of the so-called “center” in American politics. We’re supposed to look on in horror as “moderate” Republicans and Democrats become an engaged species of liberty-fighting patriots steamrolled by frothing, insane hordes of populist barbarians on their left and right flanks. They’re the voice of reason, lovers of apple pie and staunch defenders of our constitution and all that’s good and right in the US of A. We’re encouraged to run back into the blood soaked arms of establishment politicians like John McCain and Hillary Clinton — the only ones standing between us and the Donald Trumps and Bernie Sanders of the world. The center cannot hold, so we’re told.

It’s a nice story, the only problem is it’s complete and total nonsensical garbage. This mythical “center” is nothing more than a failed status quo attempting to rebrand itself in the wake of being outed as the corrupt charlatans they are. Russia, Trump and  Bernie Sanders didn’t destroy healthcare, bailout criminal bankers and invade Iraq based on fake news. No, moderate Republicans and Democrats did that. The so-called celebrated center did that.

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Are Establishment Democrats Trying to Lose?

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“My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

– Barack Obama to bank CEOs in 2009 (he sure protected them)

I’m only half kidding with the title here. No, I don’t think establishment Democrats are actually trying to lose, but I agree with the sentiment that they’d rather continue to lose to Donald Trump with someone like Hillary Clinton, than win with someone like Bernie Sanders.

The fight within the Democratic Party is very real and ultimately comes down to two groups with completely different understandings of reality. The big donor, Wall Street side of the party still wants to claim everything’s normal and fine with the exception of Donald Trump. As soon as he can be removed we can all go back to American exceptionalism; or something like that. Easy peasy. In contrast, the other side acknowledges things are very, very rotten and huge change is imperative. To summarize, one side wants to go right back to the Presidency of Barack Obama (with some added militarism), while the other is saying the status quo needs to go.

Forget for a moment what you think of leftist populist ideas, they’re at least willing to admit our country is systemically broken and corrupt, while the other blames everything on Trump and Russia. This isn’t a minor difference within a happy marriage, it’s the sort of conflict that ends in divorce. We remain in a justifiably populist moment in American history, and corporate Democrats want to fight right-populism with Hillary Clintonism. That’s never going to work.

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Here’s What Happened When Open the Books Tried to Get Details on Wyoming State Spending

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Adam Andrzejewski, CEO of OpenTheBooks, has written a interesting article at Forbes detailing what happened when the non-profit government transparency organization tried to get details about Wyoming state spending.

Here’s what we learned from the piece, Wyoming State Auditor Charged Us $8,000 And We’ll Finally Receive The State Checkbook By 2048:

On February 18, 2018, State Auditor Cynthia Cloud made us refile our open records request for the Wyoming state checkbook and then charged us $8,000 in fees. But production has been slow – and at this pace, we’ll receive all the records by 2048.

Why would it take 30 years to produce just five years of state spending?

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I’m Not Right, Left or Center – I’m a Free Thinking Human

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It’s not often my work’s mentioned in mainstream publications, but it’s always instructive when it happens. Such an instance occurred earlier this week in the form of a nonsensical BuzzFeed piece.

The article was originality titled, “Here’s How A Bunch Of Syrians Trolled The Far Right Into Freaking Out Over A Twitter Poll,” but was quickly changed to “Fox & Friends Tried To Poll People About Whether The US Should Intervene In Syria And It Didn’t Go Well.”

I immediately pointed out the ridiculousness over Twitter about being included in an article with a title implying I’m “far right,” but there’s no way to know if this influenced the alteration. Either way, the piece gives me a perfect excuse to once again highlight some very important points regarding the dangers and counter-productiveness of excessive political tribalism.

Besides the idiotic original title, the other noteworthy aspect of the article was how the author described yours truly. Here’s what she wrote:

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Liberty Links 3/25/18 – CBS Interview With Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman Was Crime Against Journalism

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If you appreciate my work and want to contribute to independent media, consider becoming a monthly Patron, or visit the Support Page. Event Note: I’ll be part of an excellent Bitcoin panel in Denver on April 25th. If you’re in the area or want to be, it’d be great to meet some of you. Top Links The CBS Interview With … Read more

The Only Reason We’re Examining Facebook’s Sleazy Behavior Is Because Trump Won

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Trust me, there’s nobody more thrilled to see Facebook’s unethical and abusive practices finally getting the attention they deserve from mass media and members of the public who simply didn’t want to hear about it previously. I’ve written multiple articles over the years warning people about the platform (links at the end), but these mostly fell on deaf ears.

That’s just the way things go. All sorts of horrible behaviors can continue for a very long time before the corporate media and general public come around to caring. You typically need some sort of external event to change mass psychology. In this case, that event was Trump winning the election.

The more I read about the recent Facebook scandal, it’s clear this sort of thing’s been going on for a very long time. The major difference is this time the data mining was used by campaign consultants of the person who wasn’t supposed to win. Donald Trump.

To get a sense of what I mean, let’s take a look at some excerpts from a deeply troubling article recently published at the Guardian, ‘Utterly Horrifying’: Ex-Facebook Insider Says Covert Data Harvesting Was Routine:

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Liberty Links 3/18/18 – U.S. Government Planned False Flag Attacks, JFK Documents Show

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If you appreciate my work and want to contribute to independent media, consider becoming a monthly Patron, or visit the Support Page. Event Note: I’ll be part of an excellent Bitcoin panel in Denver on April 25th. If you’re in the area or want to be, it’d be great to meet some of you. Top Links U.S. Government Planned False … Read more

As Trump Moves Toward War, “The Resistance” Refuses to Resist

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Tuesday’s post, It’s Impossible to Overstate How Terrible Mike Pompeo Is, laid out the view that Trump’s firing of Rex Tillerson represents a major shift toward war footing for the Trump administration, with Iran the specific target. This pivot was easily predictable, and I wrote numerous articles doing just that during 2017. Nevertheless, forecasting it and then seeing the disastrous pieces being moved into place are two different things.

Trump’s push to install Mike Pompeo as U.S. Secretary of State is a crystal clear indication that he’s begun the process of building his war cabinet. The next steps, likely to begin over the course of 2018, is to walk away from the Iran deal. I suspect relentless war propaganda to be unleashed simultaneously as the neocon/neoliberal/mass media war-monger alliance plays its well established role in selling the American public on another pointless and destructive war.

My prior post discussed Pompeo in detail, so I don’t want to be repetitive, but to revisit: Pompeo has contempt for the First Amendment, referred to torturers as patriots, wants Edward Snowden executed and is an extreme warhawk when it comes to Iran. In other words, he’s your typical neocon lunatic who’s just a bit more rough around the edges publicly. He represents the exact opposite sort of foreign policy to what so many Trump voters thought they were getting.

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