Tag: technology

The God-Emperor is going to show them the difference between influence and power:

President Donald Trump doubled down on threats against Facebook, Twitter and Google Tuesday afternoon, saying the social platforms are “treading on very, very troubled territory and they have to be careful.”

“Google has really taken advantage of a lot of people and I think that’s a very serious thing and it’s a very serious charge,” Trump told reporters after a meeting with the president of FIFA. “They better be careful because they can’t do that to people.”

A Twitter spokesperson, when asked to respond to Trump’s comments, pointed to previous statements and congressional testimony denying any form of conservative bias on the platform. A spokesperson for Facebook did not immediately return request for comment.

Trump earlier Tuesday accused Google of altering search results to prioritize negative coverage and left-leaning outlets and warned that the issue “will be addressed.”

Trump said in a tweet that the tech giant’s search engine had “rigged” news story results to show mostly “bad” stories about him and other conservatives.

All he really has to do is strip them of their protections against liability for content. Since they are clearly not content-neutral operations, they have no right to limitations on their liability.

Words that could be engraved on the Conservative Movement’s tombstone:

Many on the left and the right gave a loud cheer last week when Alex Jones was banished from Facebook. Twitter later suspended him. While it is not surprising to see the jackals on the left cheer at the burning of books, one would hope folks on the right would look in the mirror and realize their time is coming soon. The leftists will not stop (and did not stop) at nutty Alex Jones, because they do not think you are much different from him. You rightly think your belief in immigration enforcement is much different than his disgusting conspiracy theory about Sandy Hook. But you must understand the left thinks you are both equally vile. They just knew Jones was the weak member of the herd. They could pick him off as a test run. Next they’re coming for you.

But we didn’t get a unified message of support from the pinky-out people on the right. We were scolded for defending Jones. They sang so sweetly into the left’s ears: “Alex Jones is icky. And there is no slippery slope. And you should frankly be censored anyway, if you don’t at least have a Master’s degree.”

The same people who ceded control of public education, the federal bureaucracy, the media, movies, and music to the left have once again found another hill not worth dying on. “It’s only social media,” they say. Yeah, fear not. Around 2.5 billion people use Facebook and Twitter. What’s the worst that can happen if we just let the left have them?

In fairness, conservatives have not defended the national economy, the national borders, or even the ladies rooms. So, it’s really not surprising that they aren’t willing to defend Alex Jones.

This is why the Alternative Right is inevitable. It is the only real resistance to the Left. Conservatives have turned out to be as Fake Right as Richard Spencer and Jason Kessler. When Jonah Goldberg talked about “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”, he was projecting on behalf of conservatives, although I suppose “beer-drinking surrender monkeys” would be a more accurate description.

An aside worth noting. The Masters of the Universe (California edition) have never understood that they are not geniuses, they are not even particularly intelligent, they are merely lucky enough to be in a privileged, parasitical position created by Federal government intervention in the economy.

Musk has indeed prioritized volume production, and his failure is due to his arrogance. This arrogance is typical of Silicon Valley as a class. They assume they know better than any other industry, failing to realize their success is due to monopoly and lack of regulation (welcome to the auto industry boys!).

(nods) On a much smaller scale, it’s fascinating to see how people keep trying to launch new publishing companies on the basis of one or more successful books, then crashing and burning because they don’t understand that assembling the right infrastructure is considerably more important than the product.

This is related to why Castalia House is not even looking to sign new fiction authors anymore. Because, for the most part, the authors don’t realize that they are not self-publishing, they are simply signing up to publish with Amazon. And due to its algorithms, Amazon, not the book-buying public, will select the winners. Even worse, it will arbitrarily change its publishing deals whenever it sees fit to do so.

What we find ourselves in now is a strategic restructuring period. This is going to be challenging for everyone, and it is those who understand the challenges and innovate who will become the dominant parties once this all plays out.

Soros and David Brock appear to be behind the recent social media takedowns:

A confidential, 49-page memo for defeating Trump by working with the major social-media platforms to eliminate “right wing propaganda and fake news” was presented in January 2017  by Media Matters founder David Brock at a retreat in Florida with about 100 donors, the Washington Free Beacon reported at the time.

On Monday, the Gateway Pundit blog noted the memo’s relationship with recent moves by Silicon Valley tech giants to “shadow ban” conservative political candidates and pundits and remove content.

The Free Beacon obtained a copy of the memo, “Democracy Matters: Strategic Plan for Action,” by attending the retreat.

The memo spells out a four-year agenda that deployed Media Matters along with American Bridge, Shareblue and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) to attack Trump and Republicans. The strategies are impeachment, expanding Media Matters’ mission to combat “government misinformation,” ensuring Democratic control of the Senate in the 2018 midterm elections, filing lawsuits against the Trump administration, monetizing political advocacy, using a “digital attacker” to delegitimize Trump’s presidency and damage Republicans, and partnering with Facebook to combat “fake news.”

Quashing ‘fake news’ with ‘mathematical precision’

The Free Beacon in its January 2017 story said Brock sought to raise $40 million in 2017 for his organizations.

The document claims Media Matters and far-left groups have “access to raw data from Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites” so they can “systemically monitor and analyze this unfiltered data.”

“The earlier we can identify a fake news story, the more effectively we can quash it,” the memo states. “With this new technology at our fingertips, researchers monitoring news in real time will be able to identify the origins of a lie with mathematical precision, creating an early warning system for fake news and disinformation.”

Media Matters met with Facebook, which boasts some 2 billion members worldwide, to discuss how to crack down on fake news, according to the memo.

The social media giant was provided with “a detailed map of the constellation of right-wing Facebook pages that had been the biggest purveyors of fake news.”

Brock’s memo also says Media Matters gave Google “the information necessary to identify 40 of the worst fake new sites” so they could be banned from Google’s advertising network.

The Gateway Pundit pointed out that in 2016, Google carried out that plan on the Gateway Pundit blog and other conservative sites, including Breitbart, the Drudge Report, Infowars, Zero Hedge and Conservative Treehouse.

Facebook, meanwhile has changed its newsfeed algorithm, ostensibly to combat “fake news,” causing a precipitous decline in traffic for many conservative sites.

Relying on the left-wing big social platforms is inherently fragile. Get off Twitter and Facebook, get on Oneway for public stuff and Idka for private groups. Edit Infogalactic instead of Wikipedia. Getting anti-fragile is the key to future success. I’d rather have 10k followers on BitChute than 100k on YouTube, but a 20k email list would be better than either.

The God-Emperor will not stand idly by as his most loyal supporters are silenced, one by one:

President Trump on Saturday issued a tweet-storm following the removal of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his InfoWars shows from most major social media platforms earlier this month.

“Social Media is totally discriminating against Republican/Conservative voices,” the president wrote in the first of several tweets. “Speaking loudly and clearly for the Trump Administration, we won’t let that happen.”

The president did not indicate what steps his administration might take to prevent private companies from setting up and enforcing terms of service that have allowed them to discipline or shut down accounts for reported abuses.

Fortunately, we are informed that despite being Leftist, Twitter, at least, does not act on the basis of beliefs or political ideology.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said on Saturday that he “fully admit[s]” Twitter employees share a largely left-leaning bias after facing accusations that conservatives are discriminated against on the social media platform. In an interview that aired Saturday on CNN, Dorsey said his company has a responsibility to be open about its political viewpoints, but to operate without bias when applying content policies to users.

“We need to constantly show that we are not adding our own bias, which I fully admit is…is more left-leaning,” Dorsey says. “But the real question behind the question is, are we doing something according to political ideology or viewpoints? And we are not. Period,” he added.

Dorsey went on to insist that his company only polices behavior on the platform, not content.

Well, that’s certainly nice to know, Jack. So when can I expect my Twitter account to be restored?

I’m sorry, but I simply can’t find the energy to pretend to be either surprised or outraged when SJWs do what SJWs do whenever they have amenable authorities to whom they can appeal. It isn’t as if we haven’t been amply warned, after all. Stefan Molyneux is the latest target:

Within 24 hours, my @YouTube channel has received two community guidelines strikes – likely as a result of a mass flagging campaign – and is now on the verge of total deletion. Please respectfully contact @TeamYouTube and alert them to this injustice.

Team YouTube is not concerned with justice. Team YouTube is concerned with victory. This is why the Right has to build its own platforms. The bigger and more successful you are, the more the Left wants you off their platforms, regardless of what you have done or not done. No amount of rhetoric and emotional pleading is going to dissuade them.

Almost immediately after returning from a speaking tour of Australia and New Zealand, and after getting my final all-clear cancer checkup, the YouTube strikes against Freedomain Radio – the world’s most popular philosophy show – began.

Apparently, I had “violated community standards” by publishing a short video last year entitled “The Death of White Males,” which discussed the decline in life expectancy for white males, in part due to the opioid crisis.

The next day, Wednesday, I awoke to another strike, this time for a discussion I had with UK journalist Katie Hopkins. Now, as I write this, two other Freedomain Radio videos have been set to ‘Private’ by YouTube and locked. One was called “What Pisses Me Off About the YouTube Child Sex Scandal,” and the other was a chat I had with Tom Golden, a psychotherapist and the author of “Helping Mothers be Closer to Their Sons: Understanding the Unique World of Boys” and “The Way Men Heal.”

I have poured 12 years of my life into my YouTube channel, with thousands of videos, hundreds of thousands of subscribers, and hundreds of millions of views. In particular, I am proud of promoting Peaceful Parenting, convincing countless parents to stop hitting their children, and start negotiating instead.

As it stands, I am unable to publish to YouTube for two weeks. Today my channel hangs by a thread and could be destroyed at any moment. Whether it survives is not up to me, since I have always striven to tell the truth. The future of philosophy is now up to YouTube, and it is up to you.

You can help me, Freedomain Radio, philosophy and the world by letting YouTube know what you think. Please do so firmly, politely and respectfully by contacting @TeamYouTube.

This is a time for community action. YouTube is making a terrible mistake, but it’s not too late to save philosophy. Please act now – tomorrow may be too late.

If the future of philosophy is up to YouTube, then philosophy is dead. Cerno is right.

Big channels with massive videos are under target. It never stops with Alex and it won’t stop with Stefan. People are going to start flagging left wing channels, too. The new form of communication in America isn’t sharing ideas, it’s spending time shutting down others.

Warning the Left about consequences never being the same has never worked. The answer is the same as it was in 2015: build your own platforms and keep the SJWs out. That’s why the Darkstream and Voxiversity are both available on BitChute.

This is why the big guns of the Right should have been participating in building up the alternative institutions rather than focusing on expanding their reach on compromised platforms.

It’s beyond ironic that Americans are supposed to be alarmed by China’s global reach:

China is compiling a global registry of its ethnic minorities who have fled persecution, threatening to detain the families of those who don’t comply. The message: Nowhere is safe.

A major human rights crisis is unfolding in northwestern China, according to the United Nations, which said last week that there were credible reports that the Chinese government is holding one million or more ethnic minorities in secretive detention camps.

Yet even for those who have escaped China, surveillance and intimidation have followed. As part of a massive campaign to monitor and intimidate its ethnic minorities no matter where they are, Chinese authorities are creating a global registry of Uighurs who live outside of China, threatening to detain their relatives if they do not provide personal and identifying information to Chinese police. This campaign is now reaching even Uighurs who live in the United States.

A few months ago, Barna, who lives in a major U.S. city and requested that her real name not be revealed, received an odd message from her mother, who lives in China. Barna’s mother asked her to send her U.S. car license plate number, her phone number, her U.S. bank card number, and a photo of her ID card. Barna’s mother said that China is creating a new ID card system that includes all Chinese, even those who are abroad.

Unlike the USA, China doesn’t tax its non-resident citizens. Unlike the USA, China doesn’t have multiple global surveillance systems coordinated with four other countries spying on its citizens. Unlike the USA, China isn’t threatening its nationals with foreign bank accounts with fines and criminal penalties. Unlike the USA, China is limiting its renditions to its own nationals. And unlike the USA, China isn’t assassinating its own citizens around the world with drone strikes.

So, pardon me if I am neither surprised nor panicked by the news that China is beginning to engage in some of the same international activities as its global rival. It’s particularly ironic when people post their concerns about Huawei technology being used to spy on its users, as they log into Facebook on their Google-powered smartphone.

I’m not surprised that the well-publicized social media bans aren’t harming Alex Jones. The truth is that social media doesn’t actually matter all that much for those who already have a strong base of supporters. It’s the content that matters much more than the medium.

Some of the nation’s largest technology and social media companies have tried to stop Alex Jones and his conspiracy theories. But in a digital world, their attempts seem to have barely slowed him down.

After YouTube, Facebook and others this week removed content by Jones and his website, the InfoWars leader, talk show host and Austin resident fired back, accusing the companies of censorship and urging his audience to fight back against what he called an “unprecedented attack.”

Meanwhile, Jones’ website and other online platforms have remained popular destinations.

InfoWars continues to see more than 1 million page visits per day and has trended upward this month, according to Amazon’s Alexa website traffic report, which also said InfoWars averages more than 25 million page views per month.

Being banned from Twitter last year and having links to my blog blocked by Twitter and Facebook haven’t had any serious effect on my blog either. Last year at this time, the monthly traffic average for VP alone was 2,500,791. Now it is 2,604,358, which represents 4.1 percent annual growth.

Given the massive Twitter audiences that Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec have developed – I had 33k when I was banned – it’s likely that the bans have somewhat slowed the growth of the blog and Voxiversity. But they obviously haven’t stopped it, which I suspect is one reason why the tech media giants have only engaged in fairly limited banning in response to the demands of their SJWs, who would prefer to ban everyone who is a Republican, who ever voted for a Republican, or is to the Right of Che Guevara.

These bans are a very delicate balancing game for the social media giants. They already know we have built a few alternative platforms and have the ability to build more. And they are very well aware that there is a tipping point somewhere at which too many bans will trigger a snowball effect that will more than decimate their user bases. After all, both Facebook and Twitter are already in decline.

CNBC describes the drop at Facebook as “severe” and goes on to round out its list this way: “The five websites receiving the most traffic in the US in the last several years have been Google, Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo and Amazon, in that order. However, Facebook has seen a severe decline in monthly page visits, from 8.5 billion to 4.7 billion in the last two years, according to the study. Although Facebook’s app traffic has grown, it is not enough to make up for that loss, the study said.”

Twitter isn’t content with losing money and hemorrhaging users, so they’re going to drive even more people away just to prove that no one, not Facebook, not Apple, not YouTube, not Spotify, can speech-police more enthusiastically than Twitter does:

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on Wednesday signaled a coming change to his company’s speech policies, following pressure from his own employees

• Some Twitter employees are unhappy that Twitter has yet to join Facebook, Spotify, Apple and YouTube in banning right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones
• Twitter is planning to accelerate a crackdown on “hate speech” and is looking to evaluate whether to punish users for “off-platform behavior,” according to a company-wide email sent on Wednesday
• Twitter is planning to accelerate changes to the company’s speech policies after a backlash from its own employees who want the company to ban right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, responding to a critical tweet from a Twitter engineer, said Wednesday he is “not happy” with Twitter’s current policies, which he said need to “evolve.”

Twitter vice president Del Harvey also sent a company-wide email Wednesday pledging to accelerate Twitter’s efforts to crack down on “dehumanizing hate speech,” in the wake of internal “conversations” about Jones.

Harvey noted that Twitter also plans to evaluate whether the company needs to better police “off-platform behavior.”

It’s clearly time to revive the blasphemy laws, many of which are still on the books. Now, here’s the interesting thing about Twitter’s rules and policies. According to their own policies, they should start banning their own employees for abusive behavior in their attempt to silence Alex Jones.

Forget the thought policing. Forget the Infowars ban. Facebook is going to get a LOT worse very soon.

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 JPM 0.03{00e165f4fa25eece8620911fb25595762b8a82f0e9f17ab7d11d67b2fdd0d1a9} & Co., Wells Fargo WFC 0.10{00e165f4fa25eece8620911fb25595762b8a82f0e9f17ab7d11d67b2fdd0d1a9} & Co., Citigroup Inc. C 0.01{00e165f4fa25eece8620911fb25595762b8a82f0e9f17ab7d11d67b2fdd0d1a9} and U.S. Bancorp USB 0.04{00e165f4fa25eece8620911fb25595762b8a82f0e9f17ab7d11d67b2fdd0d1a9} to discuss potential offerings it could host for bank customers on Facebook Messenger, said people familiar with the matter.

At this point, if you’re still on Facebook, you’re not merely putting your children’s privacy at risk and aiding and abetting your would-be destroyer, you’re downright stupid. I’ve never been banned from Facebook, I used it sparingly at best, and I got rid of my account anyhow. The ability to indirectly exchange pictures with your extended family or cyberstalk your high school boyfriend just isn’t worth it.

If you need to have group communications, get on Idka. If you want more conventional social media, try Oneway. Or go radio dark if that suits you. But regardless, at the very least, deactivate your Facebook account and encourage your friends and family to do the same. It’s not going to get better.