The recent now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t over allegations that former Vice President Biden’s son used his father’s influence to gain vast sums of money are — ahem — unproven but persuasive. The frantic efforts of companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter to keep those allegations out of the public eye get Larry Correia very angry:
If social media had banned Obama’s press secretary, and then stopped Diane Feinstein and Chuck Schumer from sharing articles from the New York Times, and then shut down the Obama campaign page nineteen days before his election against Mitt Romney, everyone would have lost their fucking minds. And rightfully so! Because that kind of blatant manipulation of information is evil.
If I put that into a thriller my editor would tell me it was too far fetched. Nobody would buy into such mustache twirling villainy, even if I was writing cyberpunk dystopia.
But Correia, they are private companies and you are usually against meddling in the affairs of private companies, you big hypocrite! Yeah, usually I am, but this is also something new, the likes of which mankind has never seen before, with these entities being the primary exchange of information for BILLIONS of people, so it’s kind of hard to put this thing which didn’t exist before into historical context. Facebook has no real competitors, and it has something like 2.7 billion regular users. With the flick of a switch it can stop a third of the Earth’s population from seeing whatever it doesn’t want them to see. Humanity has never had that before.
That’s real fucking power right there.
Now, unlike most people on the internet, I am not compelled to pretend to be a lawyer who just got my law degree from the University of Internet. Communications law is not my area, and I’m not going to be a Dunning-Krugerand talking about section 230 or whatever.
However, what I do know is that this is some seriously dangerous bullshit, and if we keep going down this road it is going to lead to some very bad ends. Freedom of speech functionally ceases to exist when both sides speak, but only one side is heard. If social media is a forum, then it needs to be an actual forum. If it is functionally a propaganda arm of the DNC, then so be it, but it can’t keep pretending to be something it’s not, while mindfucking the populace.
They are subpoenaing the Twitter CEO to come testify before congress but I expect that to be another utterly useless clown show where dummies ask dumb questions about something they don’t understand to some clever asshole who is just going to lie.
Like most liberty minded people, I have a reflexive dislike for government regulation of the free market. If the government can screw something up, it will. However I doubt I’ll feel that strongly about the sanctity of the free market as I’m being starved to death in a re-education gulag, after conservatives were stupid enough to let a tiny group of control freak statists have absolute power over the whole country’s speech and information.
What we’ve got right now with a handful of organizations having a monopoly over news and knowledge is stupid, getting stupider, and going to end extremely badly.
I don’t give a shit if you are liberal or conservative, the idea of some entity like Google determining what mankind is allowed to know or not know should terrify the shit out of you. Free speech becomes a meaningless concept if only approved speech is ever seen. And if you are cheering this shit on because right now it is helping your team score points against the other team, you are fool. Because once they have that power it is only a matter of time until one of your beliefs ends up on the naughty list too.
(note, that’s not an issue for Kool Aid drinking progs, because they don’t actually have any beliefs beyond GET POWER. It took them less than 24 hours to change “sexual preference” to a bad thing in the dictionary)
The only good thing about this situation is that even though Facebook and Twitter are trying to monopolize the flow of information, they are still bad at it. This week’s attempt at shutting down the New York Post‘s expose will probably go down as the biggest Streisand Effect in history. Their painfully obvious censorship will make far more people pay attention and lend credence to the report. Because after all, they wouldn’t try this hard to squish it, if there wasn’t some meat to it.
The difference between left and right is never more stark than the reaction to this information suppression. As a “conservative” I have a problem with the blatant bias. If you make a rule for one, make it for everyone. If “leaked” or “hacked” information is forbidden, then the NYT tax story should have been suppressed. But we know that they are all in for the lefties. So, I have no problem with the government coming in and slapping them down. The “bake the cake” people are happy to let Twitter and FB discriminate, as long as it is the right kind of discrimination. Just like the “pandemic” protests are bad, but Burn Loot Murder are fine, these people just don’t care if they look like biased pukes. The thing about these companies is there isn’t anything to break up. You can break up Alphabet, break out search engine, YouTube, Android, etc, but Twitter and Facebook are monolithic.
Comment by Dwayne — October 18, 2020 @ 16:12
I strongly object to the power in the hands of a small number of “Silicon Valley” plutocrats, but I also distrust the ability of the US federal government to address the issue without making things much worse (governments excel at making things worse). There are alternatives to Faecesbook and Twatter, but at the moment they are not only the default option for most people they hold enough mindshare that they are generally seen to be the only option. You have to work hard to get around their omnipresence in so many areas, and they have no incentive at all for the situation to change. Senators may bloviate and gesticulate, but short of effectively nationalizing them (which would freeze them in for a generation or more as the dominant players), they aren’t going to change.
It could be that the particular story that has the “right” so riled up wouldn’t have any traction with the voters anyway … perhaps even those planning to vote for Harris/Biden accept that he’s corrupt and that’s okay by them.
Comment by Nicholas — October 18, 2020 @ 18:39