Tag: technology

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.

I’ll bet they’re celebrating landing this contract:

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) (BSE: 532540, NSE: TCS), a leading global IT services, consulting and business solutions organization, and the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services (DWS) are celebrating the launch of a new Unemployment Insurance system this week – WYUI – for the State of Wyoming. The WYUI solution is a fully modernized Unemployment Insurance system that will improve the way claimants interact with the state with a more user-friendly interface and expanded self-service capabilities.

TCS’ WYUI solution is a robust, scalable and repeatable platform with the ability to integrate and control multiple functional requirements, including online claims processing, payments, adjudication, and appeals. The WYUI implementation is also one of the first in the United States to be developed, tested and implemented in Microsoft Azure in such a short time frame, and within budget. Hosting the new system on Azure makes it more scalable than the previous system, and as the data housed in the system continues to grow, the system itself can be expanded.

TCS has already enabled several U.S. states to modernize their systems to support Unemployment Insurance programs, including Mississippi and Maine, as part of the ReEmployUSA Consortium. By partnering with Wyoming’s DWS, TCS has replaced a 34-year-old benefits and appeal legacy system with a modernized system, within a span of less than 20 months.

About Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS)
Tata Consultancy Services is an IT services, consulting and business solutions organization that has been partnering with many of the world’s largest businesses in their transformation journeys for the last fifty years. TCS offers a consulting-led, cognitive powered, integrated portfolio of IT, Business & Technology Services, and engineering. This is delivered through its unique Location Independent Agile delivery model, recognized as a benchmark of excellence in software development. A part of the Tata group, India’s largest multinational business group, TCS has more than 400,000 of the world’s best-trained consultants in 46 countries.

What a truly virtuous cycle! Put American workers out of work, then get paid to process the transfer payments between the state government and the unemployed workers. Imagine how much money can be transferred to Indiasaved by replacing the entire Social Security Administration with Tata Consultancy Services!

Something BIG is about to drop.
Q

Facebook plunges more than 24 percent on revenue miss and projected slowdown

The tech-heavy Nasdaq was set for a big down day Thursday after disappointing quarterly results from Facebook sent the social media giant hurtling toward its biggest share price decline ever and on track to lose more than $125 billion in market value.

The Invesco QQQ Trust, which tracks the Nasdaq 100 index and can give traders a good idea of how the Nasdaq stocks will trade, was down more than 2 percent at one point in after-hours trading Wednesday. At last count, the ETF was off by about 1.5 percent. Nasdaq futures opened lower Wednesday evening, off by about 0.8 percent. Facebook lost more than a fifth of its value after hours.

Mark Zuckerberg tries to use China as an excuse to avoid antitrust law:

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has hit back at the idea Facebook has become too big and should be broken up into smaller companies. The 34-year-old spent two days testifying about his company and answering questions – something he suggested an overseas company the size of Facebook would be less inclined to do.

‘I think you can bet that, if the government here is worried about…  whether it’s election interference or terrorism… I don’t think Chinese companies are going to want to cooperate as much and aid the national interest there,’ he said.

Zuckerberg also spoke out against the US constraining its own companies, noting it would only give way to overseas – specifically Chinese – competitors.

‘If we adopt a stance which is that, we’re going to, as a country, decide to clip the wings of these companies and make it so it’s harder for them to operate in different places or they have to be smaller, then there are plenty of other companies out there willing and able to take the place of the work that we’re doing,’ he said.

‘And they do not share the values that we have.’

Neither do white Christian Americans, Mark. So break Facebook up already. I’d vastly prefer civilized Chinese rule, which has a long track record of societal success, to rule by the techno-parasites of the neoliberal world order, who have already demonstrated their complete lack of ability to even grasp the basic concept of societal sustainability.

A notorious SJW explains why he won’t be attending a technology conference.

I’m not going to get into the specific policies carried out by the prevailing administration in the United States, including their targeting of transgender people, queer people, people of color, and health and reproductive rights. You can google that.

But the inclusion of this language, making political affiliation a protected class, leads me to believe that alt-right technologists would be as welcome at the conference as I would be. Including alt-right technologists who display on their clothing, for example, neo-Nazi insignia. Or t-shirts printed with anti-trans or anti-Black slogans. These could easily be interpreted as protected political speech.

To be clear, the code of conduct as it was written in 2016 already prohibited harassment of all kinds, including harassment of a political nature. But the 2017 language makes political affiliation a protected class, which means by my reading (and the Wikipedia definition) that people of specific political affiliations qualify for special protection by the authorities in charge of the event. This is a subtle but important distinction. This is an elevation of political affiliation– an actively chosen belief system– to the same level as race or gender or sexual orientation, which are not chosen traits.

You can’t make marginalized people– who are enumerated as a protected class– feel safe, and simultaneously make members of political groups who stand violently opposed to us feel welcome. And it doesn’t matter if these people act nicely in public. The very act of placing these two groups on equal footing puts marginalized people directly in harm’s way. And how would conflicts between these protected groups be handled?

See, his rights have to be protected, because if you have rights, that would harm him. And if he can’t get special treatment, he’s staying home. Which is not a bad thing, considering that he was Patient Zero for the Code of Conduct infestation in open source.

Take note, conference organizers. This is how you get rid of them without a fuss. All you have to do is make political affiliation a protected class.

Or rather, “suspends her account”. Of course, “suspension” is Twitter-speak for banning.

Hello Spacebunny Day,

Your account, Spacebunnyday has been suspended for violating the Twitter Rules.

Specifically, for:

Violating our rules against abusive behavior.
You may not engage in the targeted harassment of someone, or incite other people to do so. We consider abusive behavior an attempt to harass, intimidate, or silence someone else’s voice.

Note that if you attempt to evade a permanent suspension by creating new accounts, we will suspend your new accounts.

Her thoughtcrime was to tell a very stupid woman who had been harassing her that she was stupid. Strange, I don’t remember anyone ever being permanently suspended for telling me that.