PILOT SPIN
Spin Zone => Spin Zone => Topic started by: nddons on January 11, 2021, 02:42:00 PM
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Remember the leftists’ moral OUTRAGE from this SCOTUS decision that held that a corporation has First Amendment protections for political communications?
Justice Stevens’ dissent centered around corruption, or even the APPEARANCE OF CORRUPTION in elections. He also argued that corporations could unfairly influence the electoral process with vast sums of money that few individuals can match.
Most ironically, his dissent ridiculed the majority’s fears that the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (remember the McCain-Feingold Act?) could be used to censor the media.
Good times. Good times.
Now the Democrats are ALL IN on corporations censoring people and groups with whom they disagree, and are more than willing to allow these corporations to be the sole arbiter of what May and may not be censored.
What dichotomy and stunning hypocrisy.
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What dichotomy and stunning hypocrisy.
The DCP was built on and operates on hypocrisy. It's their trademark, along with racism and hatred.
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Corporations are people, my friend.
We didn't make the rules, we just play the game.
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and sometimes people cheat
(I like that line: if you cheat to win, you are still a loser)
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Corporations are people, my friend.
We didn't make the rules, we just play the game.
Glad to see how easy it is for you to ADMIT the fucking communist dem party couldn’t possibly win a fair election.
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Big Tech and some of Social Media are Utilities and should be treated as such like AT&T was.
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Big Tech and some of Social Media are Utilities and should be treated as such like AT&T was.
Exactly. And the GOP Congress could have done this four years ago, but instead sat with their thumbs up their ass.
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Big Tech and some of Social Media are Utilities and should be treated as such like AT&T was.
Nonsense. You think pilotspin.com should be treated as a utility? Or are only the ventures that offer what people want and succeed and become large should be treated as utilities? Doesn’t that make success (in terms of users) the defining characteristic of “utility”?
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Nonsense. You think pilotspin.com should be treated as a utility? Or are only the ventures that offer what people want and succeed and become large should be treated as utilities? Doesn’t that make success (in terms of users) the defining characteristic of “utility”?
When they get to the size and attain the power, and use that power to stifle and destroy competitors then they should be treated like monopolies.
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Nonsense. You think pilotspin.com should be treated as a utility? Or are only the ventures that offer what people want and succeed and become large should be treated as utilities? Doesn’t that make success (in terms of users) the defining characteristic of “utility”?
People and businesses now RELY on Big Tech LIKE a Utility, but Joe is right they are also monopolies with the size and ability to act like quasi governmental organization which can control people's lives just as if AT&T, when it existed broke into your telephone conversation and told you not to say something, then cut you off completely if you continued. Am I wrong?
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When they get to the size and attain the power, and use that power to stifle and destroy competitors then they should be treated like monopolies.
The definition of monopoly differs from that of utility. I believe anti-trust action against big tech has been under consideration for a couple years in the US and EU.
I for one do not want the government calling the shots. They aren’t exactly filled with saints looking out for my interests.
Somehow I’ve managed to get by without ever having Facebook or Twitter accounts. Google is no longer my primary search engine. I’ve recently shut down my Linked-in account (only had it because a colleague invited me years ago - it never yielded any professional advantage.) I’m closing my Youtube account in a week. I may view the occasional video there simply because they’ve accrued a lot of material, but I’ll keep my Vimeo account for now. At some point I’ll close my Google account - I hardly ever used it except to log into Youtube.
So long as big tech acted in my interests I was willing to use them. There appears to be no shortage of alternatives, though, so if others feel they have no choices I’d like to know the specifics. Otherwise I see no monopolies.
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The definition of monopoly differs from that of utility. I believe anti-trust action against big tech has been under consideration for a couple years in the US and EU.
I for one do not want the government calling the shots. They aren’t exactly filled with saints looking out for my interests.
Somehow I’ve managed to get by without ever having Facebook or Twitter accounts. Google is no longer my primary search engine. I’ve recently shut down my Linked-in account (only had it because a colleague invited me years ago - it never yielded any professional advantage.) I’m closing my Youtube account in a week. I may view the occasional video there simply because they’ve accrued a lot of material, but I’ll keep my Vimeo account for now. At some point I’ll close my Google account - I hardly ever used it except to log into Youtube.
So long as big tech acted in my interests I was willing to use them. There appears to be no shortage of alternatives, though, so if others feel they have no choices I’d like to know the specifics. Otherwise I see no monopolies.
Give Parler a look!
Oh, wait . . .
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The definition of monopoly differs from that of utility. I believe anti-trust action against big tech has been under consideration for a couple years in the US and EU.
I for one do not want the government calling the shots. They aren’t exactly filled with saints looking out for my interests.
Somehow I’ve managed to get by without ever having Facebook or Twitter accounts. Google is no longer my primary search engine. I’ve recently shut down my Linked-in account (only had it because a colleague invited me years ago - it never yielded any professional advantage.) I’m closing my Youtube account in a week. I may view the occasional video there simply because they’ve accrued a lot of material, but I’ll keep my Vimeo account for now. At some point I’ll close my Google account - I hardly ever used it except to log into Youtube.
So long as big tech acted in my interests I was willing to use them. There appears to be no shortage of alternatives, though, so if others feel they have no choices I’d like to know the specifics. Otherwise I see no monopolies.
Nonsense. You think pilotspin.com should be treated as a utility? Or are only the ventures that offer what people want and succeed and become large should be treated as utilities? Doesn’t that make success (in terms of users) the defining characteristic of “utility”?
Remember renting a phone that hangs on the kitchen wall? Buying a phone didn’t exist. If you didn’t want to make calls on Ma Bell, you could always walk to someone’s house and talk. But if you wanted to use their wires, you had to pay up, like it or not.
Social media has become the Ma Bell of our age. They are shutting out the competition by being the sole owner of the “lines” while colluding between themselves to shut out and shut down competition. And in doing so, they are shutting down a means of communication just as Ma Bell could do, but didn’t.
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Give Parler a look!
Oh, wait . . .
Big tech probably did what it did once the Democrats secured the Senate. They likely felt now had nothing to fear from the Republicans, but plenty to fear from the Democrats (for those who aren’t already Democrats.) A few may have been fearing or pressured ala “Operation Choke Point.” Allegedly an operation that was shut down, but anyone paying attention would have seen the same thing happen very recently to pornhub by Visa and Mastercard. Fascist government manipulation of private enterprises by indirect pressure.
I’ll copy and paste a comment to this article: https://reason.com/video/2021/01/12/how-to-respond-to-the-great-deplatforming-of-2021/#comments (https://reason.com/video/2021/01/12/how-to-respond-to-the-great-deplatforming-of-2021/#comments)
This originates in operation choke point.
This was an Obama administration effort to eliminate businesses that they did not like. They used the regulatory power of the state to go after banks, payment processors, credit companies, etc who did business with disfavored businesses. Gun manufacturers, gun retailers, check cashing organizations, strippers, porno actresses…. All were on the disfavored list.
This program was an atrocious violation of civil liberties, but they got away with it. The program ended, but the message was sent. Shortly after operation chokepoint, completely independently of anything that the president had been doing, progressive organizations began demanding that payment processors not deal with their disfavored groups.
this is expanded over the years as they have met with more and more successes.
The initial huge test run was the Alex Jones deplatforming. I mean, nobody likes that crazy guy, Right? So they did a coordinated hit on five different right-wing personalities, headlined by Alex Jones. At least, I guess that guy’s right-wing.
In any event, they came after him on every platform, kicking him off of all social media, YouTube, and going after his payment processors, his banks, his hosting companies, even the ISPs who provided connectivity.
He had to go out and reinvent all of it himself. He had to cobble together networks of businesses that would provide services. But apparently he is popular enough that he weathered the storm. He now has an empire that is impervious to the progressive onslaught.
Civil rights attorney Robert Barnes says that people should look to Alex Jones for the example of how to survive in this new world. He says that he has paved the way, and people can simply follow his path.
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Remember renting a phone that hangs on the kitchen wall? Buying a phone didn’t exist. If you didn’t want to make calls on Ma Bell, you could always walk to someone’s house and talk. But if you wanted to use their wires, you had to pay up, like it or not.
Social media has become the Ma Bell of our age. They are shutting out the competition by being the sole owner of the “lines” while colluding between themselves to shut out and shut down competition. And in doing so, they are shutting down a means of communication just as Ma Bell could do, but didn’t.
I know the origins of AT&T - it was a government granted and protected monopoly, thanks to the Kingsbury Commitment which had the effect of destroying competition. In fact in 1918 the entire telephone system was temporarily nationalized for security reasons.
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I know the origins of AT&T - it was a government granted and protected monopoly, thanks to the Kingsbury Commitment which had the effect of destroying competition. In fact in 1918 the entire telephone system was temporarily nationalized for security reasons.
And it was broken up because it got too powerful and anti-competitive. So that’s my point.
To add, Big Corporations are colluding with federal government politicians to silence conservatives talking to other conservatives. If that doesn’t violate the First Amendment, I don’t know what does.
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And it was broken up because it got too powerful and anti-competitive. So that’s my point.
To add, Big Corporations are colluding with federal government politicians to silence conservatives talking to other conservatives. If that doesn’t violate the First Amendment, I don’t know what does.
I agree that government + big business = fascism. But it seems odd to want to add more power to the government half of that equation. That’s the side that has been granted lethal force to enforce its rules. It seems likely that political pressure was applied to the big tech industry. Why would they want to piss off a lot of customers? Even Facebook once wanted to avoid being the arbiter of truth - any such action is an added expense of no value to stockholders and would piss off a lot of customers. But they eventually knuckled under. That the pissed off customers are too dense or too lazy to move elsewhere is no ones fault but their own.
As an example of indirect government pressure, here’s an article on how Pornhub was recently attacked by the government by pressuring Visa and Mastercard (warning for the sensitive - the article was written by a libertarian sex worker):
https://reason.com/2020/12/10/visa-and-mastercard-submit-to-politicians-trying-to-put-the-squeeze-on-pornhub/ (https://reason.com/2020/12/10/visa-and-mastercard-submit-to-politicians-trying-to-put-the-squeeze-on-pornhub/)
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Another example is Comcast. The cable, media and internet provider giant. CEO Brian Robert's is a Biden financier and bundler. He was for Obama and Hillary too. Comcast held Biden's campaign kick off fund raiser for this Presidential run. Collusion? Nah. ::)
Comcast also owns NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, etc.