Category: Uncategorized

Gab Ends the Cult of Free

Andrew Torba makes a wise and long-overdue business decision, which I support 100 percent:

Starting in March, media uploads on Gab will be a privilege reserved for GabPRO, Verified, Donor, and Investor users. We will no longer be supporting free media uploads and hosting huge amounts of data for free. Let me explain why.

As you all know Gab has to maintain our own in-house infrastructure because we have been banned from all cloud hosting providers. Over the past year we’ve had so much data uploaded, largely from free users, that we have to purchase more storage and spend our precious and limited engineering resources trying to expand our infrastructure storage. We’ve also faced an onslaught of bot accounts over the past few months that we believe are purposely uploading tons of media files on purpose to flood our storage space.

Finally, there are many real users who have been here for years and posted tens of thousands of times and have 10-100GB+ of media stored on Gab’s drives for free. Add those all up and it becomes extremely costly to maintain.

We can’t do it anymore. Every user will be able to speak freely with words, but if you want the privilege of Gab hosting and an endless stream of large images and videos you’ll need to help support the service. It’s just that simple. PRO, Verified, Donor, and Investor users will notice no change when this happens, things will continue as normal for you. Everyone else will need to upgrade to PRO to unlock the privilege of posting media files on Gab.

Freeloaders have nothing to offer a community except drama, expense, and trouble. Their uselessness is highlighted by their reaction to the news that they won’t be able to make use of Gab’s infrastructure any longer for their own purposes, which in many cases are directly in opposition to Torba’s own objectives.

One of the reasons this community is strong is that everyone has an amount of skin in the game. Everyone is willing to contribute time, energy, and resources toward our collective vision, toward advancing the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. And any resources that are diverted to those who are unwilling to even contribute the modern equivalent of the widow’s mite are almost certainly wasted.

It’s not about greed. Right now, UATV is operating without having a single subscriber, advertiser, or revenue stream. And that’s fine, because it’s part of the mission and it’s important to the community that it carry on without interruption. It never occurred to a single member of the team to reduce access or temporarily shut things down until subscriptions are opened again in March. We aren’t even going to bother with a crowdfund or anything else, because we never operate anywhere close to the edge.

But you can’t run an operation without resources, and you have to be wise about where you devote those resources. Spending them on people who are unwilling to make even the smallest commitment to the operation is a fool’s game, which is why I have been predicting the end of the cult of free for some time now, and why we never set up any operation on that model.

In fact, Torba will probably see a bonus effect of eradicating the larger part of the trolls and paid propagandists, because the former won’t pay to play and he just increased the cost of doing business for the latter. So, it’s a very smart decision on his part.

If you care more about a Macchiato Grande from Starbucks than supporting the platform on which you spend hours every day, you don’t deserve to have access to it.

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“You Are the Winners”

Scott Adams finally and unambiguously concludes that even the fanciest analytics are trumped by a heuristic based on instinctive distrust.

“The anti-vaxxers are clearly the winners at this point, and I think it will stay that way. And I don’t want to put any shade on that whatsoever. They came out the best. They have the winning position. The unvaccinated have an advantage. Because they feel better. The thing they’re not worrying about is what I have to worry about. I wonder if that vaccination five years from now.

“Because really, I think the antivaxxers were just really distrustful of big companies and big government. That’s never wrong! It’s never wrong to distrust government. It’s never wrong to distrust big companies. So if you just took the position let’s just distrust everything the government did, well, you won!

“You won, you won completely – I did not end up in the right place. Agreed? You would all agree with that, right? I did not end up in the right place. The right place would be natural immunity, no vaccination. You should take that as a victory, and I should take defeat. We could agree on that, right? That my position is now the weakest, and your position has gone from the weakest to the strongest, and we can just say that’s true. The people who didn’t get vaxxed are absolutely in the winning position.

“You win. You win! You are the winners. You are the winners. Let me say that part with no ambiguity. You won. You won. All of my fancy analytics got me to a bad place. All of your heuristics – don’t trust these guys, it’s obvious – totally worked.”
– Scott Adams

It doesn’t really feel like winning, to be honest. But give Scott credit, as unlike most vaccinated individuals, he is willing to come out publicly and declare that he made the wrong decision, explain that the various bases for that decision were unreliable, and admit that he will have to live the rest of his life under the shadow of the possible adverse effects of that decision.

This is very important, not for the satisfaction of his critics, but for Scott himself, because now he knows he has to embark upon an early-detection regime for cancer and be careful to avoid activities that will elevate his heart rate to now-dangerous levels. And it’s also important for his fellow vaccinated, because perhaps failing this test will give them the wherewithal to pass the next one.

Because the next one is definitely coming, sooner or later.

The fundamental failure in Scott’s syllogism was the assumption that lay beneath his logic. He assumed, incorrectly, that scientistry and scientage could be trusted. This is quite common in those who fail to distinguish between the three aspects of science and don’t understand that scientistry is not only not scientody, but these days, does not necessarily have any connection to scientody at all. And given the massive twin crises of reproducibility and corruption in scientistry, the fact is that the anti-vaxx position was always the strongest position all along, even from a secular materialist perspective.

The heuristic was even more clear, and even more obvious, for the Christian. Never, ever, trust the wicked. Not offering tickets, not riding a black horse, not wearing a white coat.

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The Intrinsic Danger of the Truth

Clown World wants its mindless subjects to believe that the people who keep correctly warning them about the lies and false histories of Clown World are an emerging threat vector:

In a world increasingly dominated by sensationalism and misinformation, conspiracy theories have found fertile ground to flourish. Dismissed by many as the ramblings of a paranoid few, these theories have long been relegated to the fringes of society. But the experts now warn that they are witnessing the emergence of a new threat vector: conspiracy theorists being proven right.

The exposure of government surveillance programs like PRISM, the revelations surrounding the secret experiments of MKUltra, and the acknowledgement of covert military operations like Operation Gladio, have all served as a sobering reminder that conspiracy theories are not always baseless. Darker still, we’ve even learned that the US government experimented with syphilis on Black folks and were the ultimate cause of the high rate of STDs among non-white populations.

More recently, the lab leak theory regarding the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic has yet again sparked totally unnuanced “conspiracy theorists were right” discourse. While initially the lab leak theory was clamped down on for being a dangerous conspiracy theory, the hypothesis has — more or less by random chance — been the one to recently gain traction in expert opinions.

And while the true origins of the virus remain unclear, the fact that a modern conspiracy theory could potentially hold elements of truth has raised alarm bells among guardians of democracy like journalists and experts.

The specter of true conspiracy theories heralds profoundly dangerous implications for our ability to function as an open, inclusive, and equitable democratic society. As once-dismissed theories find validation, shadows of doubt are cast upon the credibility of the mainstream institutions and experts who set out to protect us to begin with.

The satanic nature of Clown World can always be identified by its invariable inversion of the truth. When Christians who hope to convince people to accept salvation from Hell are accused of doing so out of hate, when anti-vaxxers who try to convince people to avoid being injected with harmful substances are accused of doing so out of selfishness, and when those who speak the truth are accused of misleading people and spreading misinformation, it is very clear that wickedness is at work.

Furthermore if the truth casts doubt on the credibility of mainstream institutions and experts, then everyone is correct to reject those unreliable institutions and experts, and more importantly, ask questions concerning the nature of that unreliability.

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NYT Confirms Putin’s Accusations

Zerohedge summarizes the genuinely shocking expose by The New York Times concerning 12 secret US military basis inside Ukraine near the Russian border that have been there since 2016:

On Sunday The New York Times published an explosive and very belated full admission that US intelligence has not only been instrumental in Ukraine wartime decision-making, but has established and financed high tech command-and-control spy centers, and was doing so long prior to the Feb. 24 Russian invasion of two years ago.

Among the biggest revelations is that the program was established a decade ago and spans three different American presidents. The Times says the CIA program to modernize Ukraine’s intelligence services has “transformed” the former Soviet state and its capabilities into “Washington’s most important intelligence partners against the Kremlin today.”

This has included the agency having secretly trained and equipped Ukrainian intelligence officers spanning back to just after the 2014 Maidan coup events, as well constructing a network of 12 secret bases along the Russian border—work which began eight years ago. These intelligence bases, from which Russian commanders’ communications can be swept up and Russian spy satellites monitored, are being used launch and track cross-border drone and missile attacks on Russian territory.

This means that with the disclosure of the longtime “closely guarded secret” the world just got a big step closer to WW3, given it means the CIA is largely responsible for the effectiveness of the recent spate of attacks which have included direct drone hits on key oil refineries and energy infrastructure.

“Without them [the CIA and elite commandoes it’s trained], there would have been no way for us to resist the Russians, or to beat them,” according to Ivan Bakanov, former head of the SBU, which is Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency.

A main source of the NYT revelations—disclosures which might come as no surprise to those never willing to so easily swallow the mainstream ‘official’ narrative of events—is identified as a top intelligence commander named Gen. Serhii Dvoretskiy.

Clearly, Kiev and Washington now want world to know of the deep intelligence relationship they tried to conceal for over the past decade. It is perhaps a kind of warning to Moscow at a moment Ukraine’s forces are in retreat: the US is fighting hand in glove with the Ukrainians. And yet the revelations contained in the NY Times report also confirm what President Putin has precisely accused Washington of all along.

The Russians obviously know about these bases since they presumably have had control of them for most of the last two years. So, why is Washington suddenly admitting to them now? Are the neoclowns attempting to establish some basis for arguing that since the USA has been actively waging war on Russia for a long time, more aid and even direct military support for Ukraine is justified?

At some point, the anti-Russian Narrative is going to collapse, as one lie after another is exposed, and it eventually turns out that the Russians were doing nothing but telling the truth about The Empire of Lies and its activities in Ukraine all along.

It also documents how the CIA not only kept President Trump in the dark with regards to its anti-Russian activities, but consistently undermined him and his policies.

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A Long Run Ends

Peter King, the longtime NFL reporter, lays down his pen.

I had this thought a couple of weeks ago, during Super Bowl week in Las Vegas: I’d really like to watch the Super Bowl on TV. You always want what you don’t have, right? I’ve been to 40 Super Bowls in a row, and every year when people talk about the commercials or the mistakes made by the TV crew or the hubbub surrounding the game, mostly I have no idea what they’re talking about, because from age 27 to age 66 (now), I’ve been in the stadium for the games, and worked the locker rooms and coaches’ offices afterward.

Who’s complaining? Not me. I’m the luckiest man on the face of the earth. To be a long-termer in an increasingly short-term business, to write this column for 27 years and to be a sportswriter for 44, well, that’s something I’ll always be grateful for. Truly, I’ve loved it all.

I’m retiring*. I use an asterisk because I truly don’t know what the future holds for me. I probably will work at something, but as I write this I have no idea what it will be. Maybe it will be something in the media world, but just not Football Morning in America (nee Monday Morning Quarterback).

Mr. King had a good run. He had a very good run. His panoply of relationships with coaches, athletes, league officials, and his fans, almost invariably positive, gave him a tremendous variety of scoops over the years, and his insatiable curiosity provided him with an eye for detail that no other sportswriter could imitate.

A fan could effectively follow the events transpiring in the league from week to week without ever even watching a game because his columns were so long and comprehensive. And with his retirement comes an end to the era of the four sports columnists I always regarded as the Big Four, Sid Hartman, Dr. Z, Don Banks, and Peter King.

His column will be missed, although I hope one day they will be bound together in what will necessarily have to be a multi-volume set for the benefit of future readers.

UPDATE: You know a man is a fundamentally decent man when those closest to him, who know him better than anyone else, are more than willing to praise him without reservation.

In taking all of these lessons and favors from Peter over the years, I’ve asked many times what I could do to repay him. His answer was always the same: He only wanted me to help someone else the way he was helping all of us. And that was always while he too kept helping, empowering, and more than anything, trusting all of us.

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False Metrics, False Conclusions

As has been repeatedly pointed out by Owen and others, the more one lies, the more one loses the ability to recognize the truth even when it is staring one right in the face. The idea that China’s economy is collapsing, and therefore the Chinese Communist Party is on the verge of succumbing to a populist color revolution that will produce a neoliberal democratic government subservient to Clown World, has been floated persistently ever since Xi Jinping cancelled the planned “Jump to China” in 2015. A recent Washington Post article is only the latest example of this economic illiteracy:

Economists have started revising their predictions on when China might overtake the U.S. economically — and if it ever will. Despite Mr. Xi lifting the world’s most draconian covid-19 restrictions at the end of 2022, construction in China has slowed, manufacturing prices have declined and consumer spending has flattened. China’s stock market has lost $6 trillion in value in three years. A dozen cities and provinces have been told to halt construction of infrastructure projects — cutting into their main source of revenue.

The biggest economic threat has come from the slowdown in the property market. Building has slowed, and more than 50 major developers are either out of cash or have defaulted. Fears abound of insolvencies leaving millions of unfinished housing projects… China recorded a respectable 5.2 percent economic growth rate last year, but the real rate is lower when adjusted for falling prices. Rather than being an economic juggernaut, China seems likely to be entering a period of deflation, the sorts of conditions that led to Japan’s “lost decade.”

Xi is Taking China’s Economy, WASHINGTON POST, 21 February 2024

Translation into Sane Economics: China is doing exactly what the USA should have done back in 2008 or sooner. It is clearing the bad debt out of its economy, refusing to prop up bankrupt corporations, and preventing further malinvestment from taking place.

This isn’t merely feel-good propaganda for neoclowns in Washington, it’s economic illiteracy and evidence that the Washington Post can’t even get its neo-Samuelsonian economics right. Note that the real economic growth rate is not LOWER than 5.2 percent when adjusted for falling prices, it is HIGHER. Growth rates measure GDP, which are priced in currency. So when prices increase, the real GDP and the real growth rate are lower. When prices fall, the real GDP and the real growth rate are higher.

Remember, modern neo-Samuelsonian economics do not take debt into account, not even when the vast majority of the money supply is comprised of credit-money rather than gold or paper money. Which is why, in Clown World economics, borrowing and spending money that is created out of thin air counts as economic growth, and writing off bad debt counts as economic contraction.

Just as trade wars are GDP-beneficial for nations with trade deficits, deflation is real growth rate-beneficial for nations with credit money. Russia Today knows better too:

If there’s one thoroughly unoriginal strand of thought on China present in the mainstream media today, it is the idea that China’s economy has been wrecked, and that Xi Jinping’s policies are to blame. Such commentary, pushed by every major mainstream outlet on a weekly basis, frequently promotes a narrative of the “end” of China’s rise, often talks about “decline” and squarely places responsibility on Xi Jinping, who supposedly ended the dynamic of an open and prosperous China for increasingly centralized, authoritarian rule and a return to communist fundamentals.

Such an article was pushed this week by the editorial board of the Washington Post, in a piece titled “Xi is tanking China’s economy. That’s bad for the US”. The article was hardly original in its premise, stating the above argument pretty much word for word…

First, what is always, always ignored is that Xi Jinping deliberately set about changing the structure of China’s economy in order to end a growth boom based solely on real estate and debt. The newspapers love to waffle on about the “real estate crisis” and Evergrande, but can you imagine how big the problem would have been had previous policies been continued and China pushed for obscene 10% growth targets based on an explosion of debt? Xi Jinping ended this and initiated a process of deleveraging which deliberately slowed down China’s economic growth to around 6% when he came to power. Why? Because debt is not a sustainable mechanism and his policy has been literally to push the real estate industry into a managed recession, even if that has short-term repercussions.

Secondly, Xi Jinping’s policy has been to reinvent China’s economy to meet upcoming challenges by transforming it from a low end, export, real estate boom economy, into a high-end technological powerhouse. Instead of investing aimlessly in local government real estate booms, China has redirected state money to building up high-value industries including renewable energy, computing, semiconductors, automobiles, aviation, among other things. It is primarily this bid to become the global technological leader (by default of size) that has triggered the backlash from the US on an economic level and thus the bid to try and cripple China’s technological advance through export controls, which in fact show little evidence of working.

Xi isn’t destroying China’s economy – he’s changing it, RUSSIA TODAY, 26 February 2024

Just as everything looks like a nail to the man whose only tool is a hammer, the Neo-Samuelsonians of Clown World do not understand any economic policy that does not rely upon expanding the money supply and increasing GDP through the issuance of more debt. Which, of course, is why they neither see nor understand that China’s economy is neither contracting nor collapsing, it is rather being cleansed of bad debt and reconfigured into a more realistic economy capable of providing genuine economic growth as measured in production, real goods, and manufacturing capacity rather than in money, fake services, and ever-increasing credit.

China is not following the Japanese example; to the contrary, it is doing the precise opposite and refusing to prop up its zombie banks and overleveraged corporations. The fact that Xi Jinping has the wits and the courage to do what neither Ben Bernanke nor any US President has had the wisdom to do should not concern the neoclowns. It should absolutely terrify them, because it means that Clown World will have absolutely no chance whatsoever to even begin to make up its massive steel-production and manufacturing-capacity disadvantages vis-a-vis China.

Remember, the economists who are telling you that China’s economy is collapsing are the same economists who told you Western sanctions were going to cripple the Russian economy. Their axioms are incorrect, their metrics are false, and therefore, their conclusions are guaranteed to be wrong.

Unlike the USA, China is dumping its bad debt.

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The Great Bifurcation Widens

Both China and India are making it very clear that they will not stop doing business with Russia, and more importantly, that they are neither impressed nor dissuaded by the additional sanctions being imposed upon them by the EU, the UK, and the USA.

The EU last week agreed on a new package of sanctions against Russia that for the first time targets Chinese and Indian companies accused of “supporting Moscow’s war efforts,” the Financial Times reported on Thursday.

The measures of the EU, which will be its 13th package of sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s military operation against Ukraine, were followed by the UK and the US. Britain announced a new package of sanctions against Russia that includes three electronics companies in China, Reuters reported on Friday.

Then, the Biden administration announced on Friday more than 500 new sanctions against targets in Russia, which reportedly include measures against Russia’s main card payment system, financial and military institutions and entities outside of Russia…

When it comes to the Ukraine crisis, China’s position has always been consistent. China is not a party directly involved, and it did not choose to be a bystander or add fuel to the fire. China will continue to play a constructive role in bringing an early end to the conflict and restoring peace in Ukraine.

There is nothing to criticize regarding the pursuit of peace, and it is believed that this thinking is shared by many other emerging countries.

Fundamentally speaking, Western sanctions against Russia are actually illegal and unilateral actions, which have not been approved by the UN. The US and its European allies, regardless of how powerful they are, do not represent the entire international community. It makes no sense for them to escalate sanctions and exert pressure on other countries by targeting normal economic exchanges between Russia and other countries.

What Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said recently on the sidelines of the Munich conference may just show the view of all those who have not participated in Western sanctions against Russia.

Jaishankar said, “If I am smart enough to have multiple options, you should be admiring me.” He said that India should not be criticized for having multiple options and reaffirmed its stand and commitment to buying Russian oil.

The world is not ruled by the US and its European allies only. Their goal of containing Russia is their own business, and they have no right to demand other countries sacrifice their development opportunities to serve Western strategies. When it comes to how to deal with Russia, emerging economies should have the right to consider and choose from their own interests.

What has happened over the past two years has proved that unilateral sanctions and extreme pressure have not only done great harm to the global economy, but have also disrupted the international order the West has been trying to maintain.

Including Chinese, Indian firms in Russia sanctions unreasonable, GLOBAL TIMES, 25 February 2024

It’s going to be a difficult year for everyone in the West, and things are going to continue to get more difficult as the flow of free money continues to dwindle away to nothing and the ability of the Fed to export inflation to the rest of the world disappears as the majority of the global population exits Clown World’s economy.

But with these harder times comes opportunity, as those organizations that are not built on debt and have genuine success based on genuine customers will have the opportunity to grow steadily as their competitors continue to fail. Just to give one example, think about how many alternatives to this blog have vanished over time, while the traffic here is steady and offshoots such as Sigma Game are already averaging 7,500 views per day in its first month.

Just as success isn’t distributed evenly during credit bubbles, failure isn’t distributed evenly during economic contractions. The key is to focus ruthlessly on your core market, be persistent in your performance, and constantly strive to improve your quality while your competitors are cutting corners and trying to raise their margins to make up for their declining sales.

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The Age of Paradox

Simplicius observes the way technology has created a paradox that currently provides a significant advantage for the side with the ability to “be in the most places at once” rather than the traditional principle of “getting there first with the most”.

It is the age of paradox in warfare: where de rigueur total dispersion of forces appears to make high casualty densities obsolete, yet the entire length of the battlefield is overwatched by the most unprecedentedly powerful and accurate systems in history, like Iskanders, Kinzhals, Zircons, HIMARs, etc., which allow the carrying out of near-instantaneous kill-chains—from detection to transmit/distribution, to fire order within moments.

This is why the only way to fight and advance has come down to dispersing your strategic operations over the widest possible scale, so that the end goal becomes the totality of victory rather than specific operational objectives like: “Capture this area of cities.” Such a task requires the concentration of forces, from divisions, brigades, battalions, whose every staging action is monitored with almost total transparency by the enemy.

This ‘war of the future’ will be won by the most flexible, resilient, and adaptable force—the force which can pull punches, use feints, and reorientations all along the entire combat line in the most expedient manner. Russia is showing this today by utilizing a confounding rotation of active fronts to not only unbalance the AFU, but to stress their mobility and logistics to the extreme. When you have the advantage in logistical infrastructure and facility, you can ‘daze’ your opponent by conducting small operations across a scattered range of fronts, causing them great stress in trying to keep up.

In the Avdeevka battle, we saw Ukraine being forced to pull significant amounts of elite units from several fronts like Zaporozhye and Bakhmut to reinforce the crumbling Avdeevka lines. When that finished, Russia launched a Zaporozhye attack, overrunning depleted AFU positions there as a result, with AFU unable to reinstate reserves fast enough. The same goes for the Kupyansk and Kremennaya regions: reports spoke of AFU’s desperate troop pulls from Kupyansk to bolster defenses in northwest Bakhmut, where Russia has likewise started a series of attacks.

It’s like pricking a spinning drunk with a needle from every side—he hardly knows where he’s being hit, nor has time to orient himself correctly. Lacking logistical mobility—in the form of physical haulers like HETs, transports, etc.—Ukraine gets the worst of it in being forced to constantly run around plugging leaks in the flooding deck.

Taking into account everything I said above and in the rest of the paid article regarding Ukraine’s NATO ISR overmatch plus the prevalence of drones in general and how they’ve vastly limited maneuver warfare, we know that the only way to truly win is to stretch your enemy on every front and defeat him in detail while bringing to bear your greater logistical and economic resources…

The concluding point is that it’s not about capturing particular towns or regions, the real work being done is internally—the AFU is being gutted and hollowed out. This is why it’s so difficult for blinkered pro-UA observers to understand the true underlying dynamic of the conflict. They judge the war algorithmically: Russia has only captured a few kilometers so that means Russia is not succeeding. But they fail to take into account the intangibles, that the very moral and mechanical fiber of the AFU is coming apart at the seams.

It’s intriguing to note that the principle described by Simplicius appears to be a fractal one, as the BRICSIA alliance is observably stretching Clown World on every front, and, for the most part, defeating it in detail while bringing to bear its greater logistical and economic resources and exploiting Clown World’s logistical weaknesses in order to destroy the neo-liberal world order and win World War III without going nuclear.

We know Clown World is crumbling in every sense, militarily, economically, philosophically, spiritually, morally, and most of all, in morale terms. It is increasingly – and observably – desperate and insane. And it is more dangerous than ever because it, and all its servants, are correctly afraid, and so they are tightening their grip and lashing out on every side, in every polity Clown World controls. If its global ambitions weren’t so ambitious and its rule weren’t so illegitimate and unpopular, it would be cutting its losses and retreating to a defensible core, but it can’t because no such core exists.

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Big Tech Discovers Consequences

The servants of Clown World are going to find themselves in a lot of legal jeopardy in the coming years as they gradually discover that they don’t have the free pass to break the law with the BRICSIA nations that they have historically possessed in the skinsuit West:

Indian users took to X (formerly Twitter) to draw the government’s attention to Gemini’s response to a question on whether Modi is a “fascist.” The tool replied that the prime minister’s policies have been “characterized as fascist” by experts due to the BJP’s “Hindu nationalist ideology, crackdown on dissent, and its use of violence on religious minorities.”

In contrast, the tool adopted a milder tone when asked the same questions about former US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky.

Reacting to the X post, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, India’s minister of state for electronic and information technology, claimed that Gemini violated the Information Technology Act and several provisions of the criminal code.

“These are direct violations of Rule 3(1)(b) of Intermediary Rules (IT rules) of the IT act and violations of several provisions of the Criminal code.“

“We’ve worked quickly to address this issue,” Google said in a statement amid the backlash, adding that Gemini is “built as a creativity and productivity tool” and may not “always be reliable.” In response, Chandrasekhar made it clear that invoking the ‘unreliability’ of AI models does not exempt tech platforms from the law. He also warned that India’s digital citizens are “not to be experimented on with unreliable platforms and algorithms.”

It’s a fascinating defense. “Sure, we openly and very publicly broke the law, but that’s okay because our tools are unreliable.” How is that any sort of legally-acceptable excuse? Russia and China have already demonstrated the way in which national sovereignty trumps corporate unaccountability, now it is time for the rest of the world to follow suit.

It would be good to see these multinational corporations being held to the same standards that young men posting memes on Twitter are held. If corporations are legal persons, why are they not held accountable to the law in precisely the same way as other people? The state can’t imprison a corporation, but the state could certainly imprison the executives responsible or revoke a corporation’s charter for the appropriate period of time.

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