The social network is too big and broken to properly function, and these “fixes” will only create more problems
ou may have seen a story this week detailing how Facebook shut down a series of accounts. As noted by Politico, Facebook claimed these accounts “sought to inflame social and political tensions in the United States, and said their activity was similar — and in some cases connected — to that of Russian accounts during the 2016 election.”Similar? What does “similar” mean?
The death-pit for civil liberties is usually found in a combination of fringe/unpopular people or ideas and a national security emergency.
This is where we are with this unsettling new confab of Facebook, Congress and the Trump administration.
Read this jarring quote from Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) about the shutting down of the “inauthentic” accounts:
“Today’s disclosure is further evidence that the Kremlin continues to exploit platforms like Facebook to sow division and spread disinformation… I also expect Facebook, along with other platform companies, will continue to identify Russian troll activity and to work with Congress…”
This was in a story in which Facebook stated that it did not know the source of all the pages. They might be Russian, or they might just be Warner’s idea of “sowing division.” Are we comfortable with that range of possibilities?
Many of the banned pages look like parodies of some paranoid bureaucrat’s idea of dangerous speech.
A page called “Black Elevation” shows a picture of Huey Newton and offers readers a job. “Aztlan Warriors” contains a meme celebrating the likes of Geronimo and Zapata, giving thanks for their service in the “the 500 year war against colonialism.”
And a banned “Mindful Being” page shared this, which seems culled from Jack Handey’s Deep Thoughts bit:
“We must unlearn what we have learned because a conditioned mind cannot comprehend the infinite.”
Facebook also wiped out a “No Unite The Right 2” page, appearing to advertise a counter-rally on the upcoming anniversary of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Facebook was “helped” in its efforts to wipe out these dangerous memes by the Atlantic Council, on whose board you’ll find confidence-inspiring names like Henry Kissinger, former CIA chief Michael Hayden, former acting CIA head Michael Morell and former Bush-era Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff. (The latter is the guy who used to bring you the insane color-coded terror threat level system.)
These people now have their hands on what is essentially a direct lever over nationwide news distribution. It’s hard to understate the potential mischief that lurks behind this union of Internet platforms and would-be government censors.
As noted in Rolling Stone earlier this year, 70 percent of Americans get their news from just two sources, Facebook and Google. As that number rises, the power of just a few people to decide what information does and does not reach the public will amplify significantly.
In a way, this is the other shoe dropping after last week’s much-publicized brouhaha over Infowars lunatic Alex Jones. Jones had four videos removed from YouTube and had his Facebook page banned for 30 days, though he seemed to find a way around that more or less instantly.
These moves were celebrated across social media, because who doesn’t hate Alex Jones?
The complainants in the Jones case included parents of Sandy Hook victims, who have legitimate beef with Jones and his conspiratorial coverage. The Infowars reports asserting the grieving parents were green-screen fakes were not just demonstrably false and rightfully the subject of a defamation suit, but also seemingly crossed a separate line when they published maps and addresses of family members, who experienced threats.
When Jones and his like-minded pals cried censorship and bias, they came across as more than a little disingenuous. After all, right-wingers have consistently argued on behalf of the speech rights of big corporations.
Conservative justices have handed down rulings using the First Amendment to hold back regulation of big tobacco and the gun industry, and to justify unlimited campaign spending. Citizens United was a crucial moment in the degradation of the First Amendment, essentially defining corporate influence as speech.
As many pointed out last week, the Jones ban was not a legal speech issue – not exactly, anyway. No matter how often Jones yelped about “Hitler levels of censorship,” and no matter how many rambling pages he and his minions typed up in their “emergency report” on the “deep state plan to kill the First Amendment,” it didn’t change the objectively true fact their ban was not (yet) a First Amendment issue.
The First Amendment, after all, only addresses the government’s power to restrict speech. It doesn’t address what Facebook, Google, YouTube and Twitter can do as private companies, enforcing their terms of service.
So it’s true, there was no First Amendment issue with the Jones ban. But that’s the problem.
The pre-Internet system for dealing with defamatory and libelous speech was litigation, which was pretty effective. The standard for punishment was also very high. In the 1964 Supreme Court case New York Times v. Sullivan — the bedrock case for libel law involving a public figure — the court went out of its way to make sure that complainants needed to prove reckless or knowing disregard for fact.
Among other things, the court worried that absent such a tough legal standard, outlets would play it too safe with speech, and “make only statements which ‘steer far wider of the unlawful zone.’”
This mostly worked. Historically there were few analogs to Infowars that got anything like wide distribution because of the financial threat, which scared publishers most of all. In order to have power to distribute widely you needed resources, but you put those resources at risk if you defamed people.
That all changed with digital media. Way back in 1996, when mastodons roamed the earth and people used dial-up to connect to the Internet, Congress passed the Communications Decency Act. It contained the following landmark language:
“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”
Essentially this meant that Internet providers wouldn’t be treated like news organizations. In the eyes of the law, they were less like CBS or Random House than they were bookstores or newsstands.
The rule allowed platforms to grow exponentially without the same fear of litigation. Companies like Facebook and Google became all-powerful media distributors, and were able to profit from InfoWars-style programs without having to be liable for them.
This led to the flowering of so much obnoxious speech that the First Amendment acquired a reputation as a racist con, and online media distributors, instead of being sued themselves as publishers, began to be viewed as potential restorers of order, beneficent censors.
Now, at a moment of crisis and high political tension, the public seems unable to grasp the gravity of allowing the government or anyone else to use that power.
It is already a scandal that these de facto private media regulators have secret algorithmic processes that push down some news organizations in favor of others. Witness the complaints by outlets like Alternet, Truthdig and others that big platforms have been de-emphasizing alternative sites in the name of combating “fake news.”
But this week’s revelation is worse. When Facebook works with the government and wannabe star-chamber organizations like the Atlantic Council to delete sites on national security grounds, using secret methodology, it opens the door to nightmare possibilities that you’d find in dystopian novels.
The sheer market power of these companies over information flow has always been the real threat. This is why breaking them up should have long ago become an urgent national priority.
Instead, as was obvious during the Senate hearing with Mark Zuckerberg earlier this year, politicians are more interested in using than curtailing the power of these companies. The platforms, for their part, will cave rather than be regulated. The endgame here couldn’t be clearer. This is how authoritarian marriages begin, and people should be very worried.
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Aw Gee, But Taibbi DID Give Ref. For His Lies, Citing Other Liars, Ho Ho Ho
Ho hoh oh oho, I see now Taibbi did give an idiot ref. citing CNN liars, but these ref.s certainly do NOT confirm what Taibbi asserts about poor Jewwy flack, Ajax Jewns, fast-talking hill-billy (InfoWars.com).
CNN, Jew-tube, and Taibbi just don't like what Jewns said, that's all, and it's aside fm Jewns' right to say what he thinks.
Anyone can do basic searches and easily find Jewgle was built-up out of tax-payers' money. Now that they and Jew-book are dominant monopoly, the criminals pretend they're "privately-owned," right, giving them prerogative to censor and suppress by means of their moronic "policy" of "strikes," etc.
Note then, this is blatant criminal conspiracy, by Jew-tube and Jew-book, against citizens' Constitutional rights, obvious monopolistic abuse and actually TREASON, given the scale of its pretentions.
It's No "Slippery-Slope," Suckers–It's Gross, Criminal Fraud And Treason
Title of this moronic article by Taibbi has "slippery slope" in it, when actually it's simply a deliberate fraud and deprivation of rights by criminal conspiracy involving use of tax-payers funds to building a MONOPOLY, then using that monopoly for criminal purposes against the tax-payers and citizenry, as we plainly see.
And this treasonous conspiracy simply follows fm the first, beginning conspiracy of central-banking featuring fiat currency, not real money, commodity-based, like gold/silver. See Mises.org for expo on central-banking, etc., use site search-engine.
Why can't the stupid puke, called "the people," figure-out the central-bank scam featuring nearly INFINITE currency? Because the brainless scum actually imagine the infinite nature of potential amount of currency is a good thing–when the fact is the continuing issuances of more and evermore currency obviously debases and devalues the currency already circulating.
But before the currency becomes utterly worthless, in the meantime, the monopolists behind and around the central-bank–the "deep-state," literally–is found to have bought-up and owning everything and everybody, beginning of course, w. the politicians, judges, and Jews-media, which Jews-media now the I-net is made to be mere subservient part.
Don't forget, the central-bank can issue practically any amount of currency it takes to out-bid anyone else.
And this very problem about the fraudulent, criminal central-banking was quite explicitly noted by Jefferson against the arch-criminal and imperialist, Alexander Hamilton, then later by Andrew Jackson who made the central-bank issue prominent part of his 1832 electoral campaign against the famous criminal shyster, Henry Clay, hero of mass-murderer, Abe Lincoln.
So anyway, one thus sees the utterly worthless, ignorant, and incompetent nature of the so-called "journalism" of Matt Taibbi, who lies and mis-characterizes, and most of all leaves-out the necessary hist. CONTEXT of this criminal fraud and monopolization, fake-book, Jew-tube, and Jewgle being mere particular and recent manifestations.
Agreed on all your points prof. The article was appreciated .
It's satanic Monopolization Vs. Freedom And Rule-Of-Law
Ok Fetzer, fair enough, as u say, but Taibbi is a liar and deliberately confuses things, failing for basic definitions, pushing dis-info–he's not just "ignorant"–he's a deliberate liar. Note Taibbi gives no citations for his lies regarding what Ajax Jewns (InfoWars.com) says about Sandy hoax. U're PROFESSOR?–u'd have given this moron a big ol' F for research paper. We're looking at a gross BREAK-DOWN in basic civilization here regarding Taibbi's lies and lying–not to mention the problem he pretends to discussing.
So what is the real problem culturally?–THE DESTRUCTION OF RULE-OF-LAW. Instead of the Christian republic, upholding the objective reality (hence rule-of-law), we have a Jew/satanist -dominated rule of SUBJECTIVISM as the ideal/principle–whatever is good for Jews, upheld by "Israel-first" Trump, who's angling for a big hit on Iran, for one thing, and is setting-up for the typical, usual false-flag, as he's done before, Las Vegas last October being just the latest example of a fiasco. Parkland Fl. was another but just not quite as obvious a fiasco, ho ho ho ho.
See Talmudical.blogspot.com, RevisionistReview.blogspot.com, and Come-and-hear.com for expo on Jew subjectivism.
Thus we have Fake-book and Jewgle which are government/tax-payer funded acting and pretending now they're "privately-owned"–nothing but a HUGE, big-lie. They're (fake-book and Jewgle) really and literally just glorified UTILITIES (gov.-sponsored monopolies) and shouldn't be allowed, by law, to censor anybody or anything at all, whatsoever–like it was in the beginning (with exceptions for such as child-porn, for example, which however was another matter of special law).
So u see, Fetzer: u have a country and thus the whole world in grip of MONOPOLIST corp.s–beginning w. the central-banks who have a literal monopoly on issuance of currency, NOT real money, this currency being practically INFINITE in amount, the continued issuances by this central-banking monopoly steadily defrauding and draining away the value of the currency already in circulation ("inflation"). See Mises.org for expo; use their site search-engine.
U literally thus have criminal enterprise(s) ruling the culture/society–a satanic situation w. DEATH and genocide as the only possible outcome and end, demonstrated explicitly in Agenda-21 and -2030, "pop.-reduction."
So the connection is DIRECT and quite plain and apparent for Fakebook and Jewgle, these literally just agents for the very same MONOPOLY headed by central-banks, afore-mentioned, satanic and Jew-serving, no less than "big pharma" presently poisoning and mass-murdering the people, along w. Monsatan corp. and monopolized agriculture w. the poison GMO foods, poison herbicides, and food additives, etc.
Thus "tyranny" is the ONLY possible outcome of such criminal monopolization presently in-our-face, beginning w. the central-bank(s). And death and genocide is the PURPOSE, also in-our-face. Such is Satanism (Judaism), deliberately and openly applied.
FIGHT GLOBALISTS ? – BUY SNAKE OIL! ?
If Alex Jones lived 150 years ago he would have traveled around with a horse-drawn wagon ? selling his patent medicine with a medicine show featuring amazing stories about hacking his way through the jungle to find cures and sitting down with Indian medicine-men to learn their secrets.
https://theoutline.com/post/3617/google-is-still-hawking-infowars-snake-oil?zd=1&zi=bwk3t5pv
Matt Tiabbi wrote Wall Street pieces from the Rolling Stone awhile back. He was using Alex Jones as a model or trained in the same methods or paid by the same puppeteer. It was just so odd to be getting that topic from that source.
I see Matt has been sliding down to a different topic that is odd for the same reasons.
All print media is CIA with some worse than others. Worse for me to see the truth, better for the CIA to keep me befuddled.
What any individual concludes vis a vis the censorship and shadow-banning on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube very much depends on:
[1] their interpretation of the 1st amendment,
and..
[2]: whether they believe that those companies are public,i.e.government funded] or wholly private entities.
Facebook appears to have been initially funded by the CIA, as does Youtube [via CIA funded parent co.s Google/Alphabet], which makes neither of these wholly private co.s. [Not sure about Twitter].
As far as I'm aware, [after a lot of listening to recent Infowars shows], Jones is fighting the lawsuit claims of the alleged Sandy Hook victims parents via:
[i]defamation of character countersuits [claiming he never said Sandy Hook was a hoax as was/is repeatedly reported by the MSM and cohorts- therefor the lawsuits are all frivolous], and ….
[ii] via 1st amendment issues – that is: _because_ Facebook and Youtube etc are _not_ wholly private companies, but are in fact CIA funded/controlled public utilities, that even if he _had_ claimed Sandy Hook was an elaborate hoax [which he didn't], he has a constitutionally protected right to make such a claim on his shows and to have that information posted on Facebook etc. etc.
But maybe I'm missing something 🙂 .
Regards, onebornfreeatyahoo
As most of you know, I do not always agree with the articles I republish but do so because they deal with important issues in an interesting way.
That is the case here, where Matt Tiabbi shows his massive ignorance about Sandy Hook and other staged shootings, but makes telling points about censorship and the tyranny it represents.