These idiots want to control everyone on Social Media.
There is a growing drumbeat for tech regulation coming from the establishment, the latest example being Salesforce.com CEO Mark Benioff’s call, made at Davos, for the world to “wake up to the threat from tech giants.” But what kind of regulation are they looking for?
Benioff compared the tech giants to tobacco companies, suggesting that their product is “addictive” and in some cases “bad for people” before alluding to the “manipulation” of elections by “outside forces.”
“I think you’d do it exactly the same way you’d regulate the cigarette industry. You know, here’s a product, cigarettes, they’re addictive, they’re not good for you, maybe there’s all kinds of different forces getting you to do different things …”
The Salesforce.com CEO’s comments echo the narrative of the left, which is that “fake news,” spread through social media and financed by Russia, put Donald Trump in the White House. Aside from the inflated claims and Red Scare-level establishment panic, the subtext of the argument is that users of social media platforms can’t be trusted to choose what information they receive. Unless social media companies limit access to information, they will be manipulated by hostile forces (and many on the left consider Breitbart News and the alternative media to be synonymous with “fake news.”)
It’s a narrative that says the free flow of information is dangerous, because voters are stupid and easily misinformed. It’s a narrative hostile to the idea of human rationality, one that says free speech and the free marketplace of ideas are flawed, because human beings — given the chance — will choose bad speech and bad ideas. Instead, governments and Silicon Valley gatekeepers should act as enlightened overlords, deciding what information the mentally feeble users receive. Rupert Murdoch expressed this opinion last week, when he said Facebook and other social media platforms should pay reputable new sources to atone for the crime of spreading “scurrilous news sources,” referring to the alternative media.
The right wants regulation too, but of a very different kind. Multiple right-wing commentators have called for Google and Facebook, whose market share eclipses old 20th-century monopolies like Standard Oil and the Bell System, to be regulated like utilities.
The impetus is the threat of political bias from companies that now have more influence over the flow of news and information than any other company in history. Facebook, through a recent change to its news feed algorithm, threatens to undercut the success of new media outlets. Google, by tweaking its search results, could swing an election anywhere in the world. Twitter has been the birthplace of entire political movements.
Yet all of these companies are subject to less regulation on viewpoint neutrality than a small-time radio or TV broadcast station, which are subject to the equal time rule (not to be confused with the Fairness Doctrine.) This states that broadcast stations must give equal and equivalent airtime to political candidates who request it. Give a Democrat five minutes, and you have to give his opponent five minutes too.
Unlike Benioff’s suggestion, the equal time rule weakens rather than strengthens the power of information gatekeepers, limiting their ability to choose what the public sees. Instead of one “unbiased” source who claims to offer the whole truth without bias (arguably an impossible feat for anyone, let alone a mainstream news company), the public will see two competing sets of partisan information, and decide for themselves which one rings true. It’s regulation that affirms, rather than denigrates, the intelligence of voters.
Tech companies, despite having political influence that vastly exceed a single T.V or radio station, are subject to no such rule, which means they can kick off or censor political candidates at will — as they’ve done to Roger Stone and Rep. Marsha Blackburn.
In addition to the utility argument, which would subject the tech giants to similar rules on content neutrality that were previously applied to ISPs under Title II regulations, conservatives have also suggested tying social media company’s legal immunity to viewpoint neutrality. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act exempts social media companies from legal liability for posts made by their users — without this protection, there is no way the tech giants could have grown to the size that they have achieved.
The legislation was written with the justification that the Internet offers a forum for “true diversity of political discourse,” and the “user control over what information is received by individuals” must be maximized. Conservatives want to tie the immunity more closely to its justification; if social media companies fail to deliver political diversity (say, by banning their prominent conservative users, as Twitter has done), then they lose the protection of Section 230.
Facebook, by insisting on ranking news content via an algorithm that favors so-called “broadly trusted” sources, instead of letting users decide what they see, is also violating the spirit of Section 230. They aren’t maximizing user control over the information they receive. As with political diversity, this could again be strengthened so that tech companies that meddle too much in their users’ ability to choose their own information sources without giving them a chance to opt-out should also lose the protections of section 230.
This, unlike the “solutions” suggested by the left, is again a type of regulation based on an optimistic view of users’ intelligence. The subtext is that users can be trusted to choose their own information sources, without the need to be protected from nefarious influences by Facebook, Google, and Twitter.
The elites at Davos, terrified of the unwashed masses, don’t think users can be trusted. They’re terrified of the choices being made by ordinary people, from the sites they read to the candidates they vote for, and they desperately want to regain control. Unable to countenance that their worldview might be flawed, they’ve convinced themselves that voters are stupid, and led astray by “fake news.”
Heck, even if they’re right and voters are morons, that doesn’t imply the elites are geniuses by process of elimination. They might be even bigger morons! The reason we have free speech isn’t that everyone is perfectly rational, but because no-one is, and therefore no-one should be allowed to go unchallenged. That’s why restoring their ability to control the flow of information, something now being loudly demanded by the left, must be opposed at all costs. Censorship is caused by people who believe that everyone except themselves are idiots.
The “populist surge” in Europe has far from peaked and is the most significant change to the European order since the end of the Cold War, a new report by former British left-wing Prime Minister Tony Blair’s own think tank has claimed.
Assessing what the report identifies as a “populist threat” as a means to defeat it and “renew the centre”, the globalist Institute for Global Change document questions widely-held assumptions that right-populist politics is an “interlude”, or blip in history which “optimistic” observers believe will burn out.
Blair Gifts Money to Set up New Anti-Populist ‘Institute
To the contrary, the Institute’s own research shows “the trend line suggests that populists will continue to gain strength in the next round of elections”, and particularly in Eastern Europe, the report noting: “Populists are strongest in Eastern Europe. They routinely out-compete the political mainstream and have already taken power in seven countries: Bosnia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Serbia, and Slovakia.”
Populism could instead prove to be “the new normal” and may “drive European politics into a more nationalist and protectionist direction… governments would move decisively towards restricting net migration flows; make access to some social benefits conditional on citizenship status; and undermine minority rights in key respects.”
Populist Woman Mayor Wins Rome by Landslide: ‘New Era’ Begins
Looking forward, the paper predicted that should the next decade see populist parties enjoying the same growth as they had in the past ten years, then nations like Germany and Sweden could too see themselves “vulnerable” to such movements.
The report comes as left-wing papers including The Guardian and New York Times mourned the “demise of Europe’s centre-left”, at the expense of the populist right, noting surging right-wing parties across the continent.
EXCLUSIVE: Polish Senator SLAMS ‘Offensive’ BBC Hit Job on Anti-Mass Migration Poland, Hungary
EXCLUSIVE: Top Polish Government Minister Hits Back at ‘Offensive’ BBC ‘Illiberal Democracy’ Smears
A senior Polish politician has hit back as the BBC airs a documentary on Poland and Hungary which accuses them of being anti-democratic.
Beyond protecting Europe’s borders, one of the areas of right-populist influence that apparently most concerned the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change authors was changes to institutions, across Europe often created or shaped in the post-war period and widely acknowledged to be totally in the hands of mainstream, politically-left management as a result of the famed “long march through the institutions”. One prominent example of such change being presently wrought by a European populist government is reform of the judiciary in conservative Poland.
A hangover of the old Communist system, the Polish government was elected on a platform of judicial reform to increase accountability in the courts, but has been relentlessly attacked by globalist institutions such as the European Commission for attempting to rebalance. Poland and Hungary are both key points of interest in the Tony Blair report, where the ruling parties of both nations are accused of emphasizing “a nationalism based on soil, blood, or culture”.
Despite the criticism, the report concedes “populist governments in Hungary and Poland are as popular as ever”.
First thing I would love to say is thank you to the Common Sense Nation for all your support. Also yes Vimeo has taken all my videos down also but that will never stop us. We are doing a Radio Show at this link https://www.spreaker.com/user/commonsensenationand we will start doing it every day for 2 hours. We have some short shows that are only 15 minutes long but that is changing.
There is ton of information to prove the DNC lied about how they cheated on Bernie Sanders. There is also information out there about how Crooked Hillary Clinton delete over 30,000 emails and lied about it. Did MSNBC or The New York Times look into the famous tarmac meeting of Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton? Also James Comes and the FBI lied about having any documents about the meeting to discuss family. I think is is so damn funny that MSNBC, The New York Times, and YouTube would go after be for calling a filthy vile Atheist who killed 27 people a possible Muslim, Bernie Supporter, or even Antifaso insulting. We have evidence of Antifa being very violent and don’t forget the Times allowed them to run a full page ad. Here is a link of Antifa being very violent against peaceful protesters. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/08/28/black-clad-antifa-attack-right-wing-demonstrators-in-berkeley/?utm_term=.b439518f39e9
Hell and do I need to even list the times The Religion of Peace has done violence? Here is a site with all of their beautiful and peaceful work. https://www.thereligionofpeace.com/
So why is it that MSNBC and The New York Times would do a hit piece on little me? Because they have a damn agenda to spread “REAL FAKE NEWS”. They are not upset that those 27 died but they are more upset that Hillary Clinton’s Lost the Damn Elections and to make sure it never happens again they are attacking all Conservatives and “Right-Wingers” I ask Kevin Roose has he ever done a story on false reporting of the “Left” He tried not to answer me and then said he had wrote about bias on Facebook and other Social Media. Anyone whose head is not stuck up their ass and is looking for truth would have to admit that the “Left” are the real cheaters.
Who owns almost every News Outlet and every Social Media Outlet? This includes Fox News. They are all owed by left-wing American hating, Free Speech Despising social/communist pieces of shit.
So go look at YouTube, Social Media, New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, And even ESPN. They all lean to the left. So ask yourself the damn question. Why would these big powerhouse go after me? But I got News for you Goliath’s. You pick the wrong one to pick a damn fight with. I will be your David and I am going to war with the phony liberal bastards and only DEATH will stop me. I FEAR NO MANbut GOD. You people are the ones that has destroyed this damn country and they are so damn upset when they lose and this is what this is all about. Donald Trump won the Damn Election so get the FUCK over it.
They are attempting to bring down every conservative voice out there so when 2020 comes around they want to make sure only the “Left” is being heard.
So please join me on the radio and don’t worry we are working on a Video Platform that do not have these vague “Community Guidelines” so all of you SJW who can’t stand to have your feeling hurt. You ain’t seen nothing yet. I’m also setting up some interviews to get the word out so stay tuned and that includes all of the troll QUEERS.
Please stand with us and if you can Dontae to the fight on the website it would really be aprieciated.