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Backlash against Big Tech censorship may destroy their business models, and “they will have no one but themselves to blame”

Backlash against Big Tech censorship may destroy their business models, and “they will have no one but themselves to blame”

My column at Newsweek – Backlash Against Big Tech was a Long Time Coming

https://www.newsweek.com/backlash-against-big-tech-was-long-time-coming-opinion-1541487

As you know, I have written a lot here about the creeping authoritarianism of big tech, particularly the massive social media platforms that dominate political communications. In my Dreadful 9th Anniversary post in 2017, I wrote of the danger:

If the assault on the Electoral College was the game changer for me, a runner up was waking up to implications of the concentration of power in a small number of social media and internet companies who have been weaponized to shut down speech and expression. Google, Facebook, Twitter and two handfuls of other companies now completely control our ability to communicate with each other, while internet backbone companies are poised to block internet access altogether.

Imagine living in a repressive country in which the government blocked access to and suppressed internet content. You don’t need to move. It’s coming here but from private industry. This is, in many ways, more dangerous than government suppression of free speech because at least in the U.S. the government is subject to the First Amendment, and can be voted out of office.

I revisited a similar topic, updated for the social media censorship of the Biden family influence peddling scandal, for Newsweek, Backlash Against Big Tech was a Long Time Coming. Head over there and read the whole thing.

Here is an excerpt:

But big tech, particularly Twitter and Facebook, took things a step further, deciding to ban sharing the story altogether. Twitter suspended and blocked the accounts of those who tweeted links to the New York Post exposé, even limiting the ability of the users they’d reprimanded to distribute the story via direct message. When called out for their censorship, the outlets didn’t dispute the veracity of the Post’s reporting. Instead, they said the outlet obtained the content illegally, not apologizing for censoring public discourse on an important issue but lamenting they had done a poor job explaining why they had done so….

As a free market advocate, my strong preference would have been for public pressure to convince these companies to change their behavior. Unfortunately, public pressure from the people censored—conservatives—only made these companies dig in their heels. Self-correction does not appear likely. Moreover, as these sites control more of the digital frontier, it is harder for competitors to have a shot.

The social media oligopolies appear to believe they can act with impunity. The public and now government backlash may end up destroying their business models, and they will have no one but themselves to blame.

Spread the link.

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Comments

I can see a 50% tax on internet advertising.

    The Friendly Grizzly in reply to Neo. | October 26, 2020 at 6:52 pm

    Taxes cure everything.

    Brave Sir Robbin in reply to Neo. | October 26, 2020 at 11:53 pm

    Why not a 99.9% tax on high-tech billionaires… to pay for reparations for slavery, of course.

      MattMusson in reply to Brave Sir Robbin. | October 27, 2020 at 7:58 am

      Most are only nominally American. Some are not US Citizens. They would take all the money from their international business and store it outside of the USA. After all, half of their employees are Asian.

        Brave Sir Robbin in reply to MattMusson. | October 27, 2020 at 10:13 am

        Actually, the ones that control social media are US citizens. If they run? You can freeze bank accounts, seize assets, indict for tax evasion, place international criminal warrants, issue international dead or alive bounties on their heads and send SEAL Team Six after them. The possibilities are only limited by the imagination.

notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital | October 26, 2020 at 5:35 pm

Hey!

Who does BIG TECH think they are?????

Amazon.com???????

2smartforlibs | October 26, 2020 at 5:37 pm

We call rag on big tech but who gave them the green light to get like this? The answer the swamp we let fester for deacades

    “The answer the swamp we let fester for decades…”

    Yes – WE. We ARE to blame. But now is our chance at redemption.

      henrybowman in reply to TheFineReport.com. | October 27, 2020 at 12:39 am

      Yes, yes, blame the victim. Eternal vigilance blah, blah, blah. It’s not enough we have our own jobs to put food on the table, we have to work for free to supervise them while e pay them to conspire against us.

        rabidfox in reply to henrybowman. | October 27, 2020 at 2:38 am

        Also, big tech kept their totalitarian impulses mostly under cover until this last year. Gave them plenty of time to dig in and destroy any fledgling competition.

Newsweek published this? Someone’s head will roll at Newsweek.

Professor, does it get boring to be so absolutely spot on target, so often?

This is a very strong indictment of Big Tech. From what I know of how they operate, I would like to see a bill passed stating that they are absolutely forbidden from selling any users personal data, unless they have prior written permission for EACH instance.

That should break their finances pretty completely.

notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital | October 26, 2020 at 5:43 pm

Latest on this matter…


Larry C. Johnson: When It Comes to the Bidens, Journalists and Social Media Are Deaf, Dumb and Blind

Published October 26, 2020

How would social media and the so-called mainstream media react if a Russian site popped up tonight with a video of Donald Trump in a Moscow Hotel room engaged in voyeurism as two hookers rain a yellow shower on the bed where Barack Obama slept? Would they cover it? Would they allow the story and the video to be re-tweeted and linked on Facebook pages? You bet your ass they would. They would be scrambling for first dibs on the stories like passengers on the Titanic trying to grab a seat on the last lifeboat.

Bearing that in mind you can begin to comprehend both the malevolence of both social and regular media and the enormity of their hypocrisy by examining their reaction to the breaking news last night when the videos and photos from Hunter Biden’s laptop were published a la ‘The Full Monty” on a Taiwanese website. Facebook and Twitter immediately quashed anyone attempting to publicize the news. These Silicon Valley sychophants sprang instantly into full-on protection mode for the Joe Biden campaign. Truth no longer mattered. The social media colossi decided to squelch, erase and obliterate any information that exposed the corrupt dealings of the Chinese-compromised Joe Biden and his family of reprobates. The Chinese now own Joe Biden’s wrinkled posterior. I don’t know the Manadarin phrase for–“Joe’s their bitch”– but Sleepy Joe is beholden to the Chinese.

The good folks at The Gateway Pundit reported on the sudden appearance of the hideous and perverse Hunter Biden videos and images and were immediately banned by both Facebook and Twitter. Jim Hoft posted the link to the site carrying the videos but was careful to keep salacious images obscured. But Facebook and Twitter reacted almost instantly and shutdown Jim’s Twitter account (you can read his experience here)….”

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/10/larry-c-johnson-comes-bidens-journalists-social-media-deaf-dumb-blind/

    notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital in reply to notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital. | October 26, 2020 at 6:27 pm

    Media Goes Into Overdrive Claiming That Sundown Joe Didn’t Say He Was Running Against George

    Tomorrow Night, Tucker Carlson Will Play Tony Bobulinski’s Recordings of Biden Operatives Calling Him on the Phone — and Begging Him to be Silent About Biden Crime Family Corruption

    —Ace of Spades

    Carter Burger – the last refuge

    “Biden and Harris were forced on the democrat base.

    They were not the choice of their electorate. That was Bernie.

    In 2016 they sucked it up and voted for Hillary anyway. Not this time. All but their most rabid supporters have turned their back on the party. At first I thought it would be a 1984 Regan landslide victory. But now I’m thinking a 1972 Nixon.”

jumpedupneobarb | October 26, 2020 at 5:45 pm

They are behaving like the old railroad robber barons who thought owning the network that connected communities gave them the right to run the communities. Alternate transportation solved the problem.

Spread the link.. ok, but now that twitter is throttling my own account,, no on sees my tweets.. but I tried Professor.

https://twitter.com/amwick3/status/1320847424357879808?s=20

When any person or entity pushes too far there will always be a counter reaction. These companies have cast their lot with the political fortunes of one political party/ideology.

If the election results go as I believe they have made a very poor decision.

What I don’t like about Big Tech is basically how they are nakedly in bed with certain political entities who in turn are then using them as a conduit to do a end run around our civil rights. And then they turnaround and rub our noses in it. It’s BS. And no, it’s not a Democrat/Republican thing – it’s an ‘American’ thing.

There was a column that Peggy Noonan wrote about a year ago and this passage has stayed with me. I think it is extremely relevant right now:

“America has always been in love with the idea of success. It’s rewarded the creation of wealth, made household saints of the richest men in the world. We were proud they lived here.

But big business, especially big tech executives and bankers, should be thinking: In this century they’re coming at you left and right.

The left used to say, “You didn’t build that,” while the right said, “You did.” But now there’s a convergence, with both sides starting to think: This country made you. It made the roads you traveled; it made the expensive peace in which your imagination flourished; it created the whole world of arrangements that let you become rich.

You owe us something for that. You owe us your loyalty. And if you allow us to discern—and in this century you have been busy allowing us!—that you do not really care about America, that your first loyalty isn’t to us but to “the world” or “global markets,” then we will come down on you hard.”

I love the phrase ‘expensive peace’.

https://peggynoonan.com/the-century-of-the-postheroic-presidency/

Good job Professor!

“Imagine living in a repressive country in which the government blocked access to and suppressed internet content. You don’t need to move. It’s coming here but from private industry.”

No difference. They’re run by the same people. Government has simply out-sourced rights violations to giant corporations (including their HR departments).

And the RINOs have responded by having them testify about their election interference…. AFTER the election.

You can’t make this stuff up.

The RINO gimps have basically announced that if they win this election they will face zero consequences.

And oh by the way, the New York Post Twitter account IS STILL LOCKED

notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital | October 26, 2020 at 6:28 pm

“We’re not going away!”

https://youtu.be/Mgvg4LM33mw

It’s not just their ability to control political speech but the inter-connectedness of their vast empire. For instance, 20% of Apple’s earnings are derived from awarding Google with being the default browser on Apple products. That is a huge number and represents an unfair barrier for better browsers to overcome.

Microsoft’s practice of making it nearly impossible to uninstall it’s Edge browser from the Windows platforms is annoying but it doesn’t prevent users from setting another browser as the default (if you know how to do it) and it is on their own product so they aren’t paying for the attempt at exclusivity.

Even using a non-Google browser, it is impossible to not be dependent on the Google architecture. Google essentially controls everything.

Newsweek? Are they attempting to be credible?

They are acting in a similar manner to those in the Roosevelt and the Trustbuster era

Last night me and the wife had a deep conversation about the direction the country is heading.

They came for the Christian bakers and florists and we did nothing because we’re not the kind of Christians who pick fights like they did.

They came for the cops who were a little rough on thugs and we did nothing because we don’t know them and didn’t want to get into a fight that wasn’t ours.

They came for the prosecuting attorney at the state’s AG office who closed out his tab at a Tacoma bar because he wouldn’t patronize an establishment that supported BLM and we did nothing because we don’t know him or the full story.

They came for the couple who stood outside their home with guns when a riot descended on their neighborhood and we did nothing because it’s not a place where we would choose to live and it’s not our state/city to vote in.

They came for the radio host (Dori Monson) who dared to say that it’s not scientific to fill out a form and legally change your gender and we did nothing because there’s no action we could take.

They came and have destroyed the downtown area near where we live and we did nothing because the voters there are a bunch of liberals and are getting exactly what they voted for.

They came for my job (tech firm) because I’m not a diversity hire and they found a qualified candidate who was. I left anyway because I didn’t want to work for a manager who was a slimy POS and it would be near impossible to prove- I have enough money to semi-retire, so good riddance.

All of this not jumping in is because I HAVE fought politically for a cause earlier in my life and it is a painful and consuming endeavor. However, doing nothing is becoming less and less of an option.

    henrybowman in reply to Andy. | October 27, 2020 at 12:43 am

    At this point, if I do something, I’m going to do something gratifying.
    What is best in life, Conan?

notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital | October 26, 2020 at 7:31 pm

Here’s more of what Deep State Big Dem Tech is censoring.


Seb Gorka characterizing Joe Biden as America’s gravest national security threat. Andrea Widburg at American Thinker:

GTV, a Chinese dissident billionaire’s Taiwan-based media outlet, is releasing sordid, depressing videos and photographs of a person purported to be Hunter Biden engaging in sex and seemingly smoking crack. That’s not the big news. The big news is that the same outlet claims that (a) Communist China owns Joe Biden; (b) Joe Biden sold out CIA assets in China who were then executed or imprisoned; and (c) GTV has millions of images showing other presumably influential people in comprising positions. If all this is true, we may see a complete realignment in Western politics…
This video shows only the tip of the iceberg of what is important in the Chinese Communist Party’s Blue-Gold-Yellow (BGY) program. They take advantage of all those Western politicians, celebrities, and their families who are greedy for Chinese wealth, and threaten them by getting hold of and recording their sex and drug videos, forcing them to sell out their countries and people, and even their own national security in order to cooperate with the Chinese Communist Party’s world domination.
U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden is 100% controlled by the Chinese Communist Party as one of the most successful political instances of the BGY program. He is also a target of the CCP’s 3F plan, which aims to “fall, fail, and fell,” to weaken, destroy and kill America!

The Chinese Communist Party’s use of this tactic to threaten Biden and his sons and to bribe them with large amounts of wealth is one of the major causes of the disputes over the South China Sea, US-China trade, intellectual property rights, and energy prices, etc., as well as Biden’s provision of large numbers of CIA intelligence agents in China to the Chinese Communist Party.

The Chinese Communist Party has such a BGY program in the United States and in several Western countries in Europe. We will have millions of videos and photos of government officials, corrupt people, traitors, and criminals colluding with the Communist Party to dominate the world.

…Again, merely because Guo’s outlets have been accurate about some things does not mean that the above allegations are true. However, the following three allegations, if true, are earth-shaking:

First: China has long owned Biden thanks to its having compromising information about his family (and possibly about him too).

Second: Biden identified CIA assets in China. The back story is that, between 2010 and 2012, China executed or imprisoned 18 to 20 assets who had bravely worked with the CIA, destroying a critical intelligence network.

Third: Guo’s outlets have “millions of videos and photos” of people who have worked with the Chinese against their own countries. If true, this implies that Guo managed to get into China’s “blackmail” database and can release that information.

If you thought Epstein’s secrets were big, these new claims, if true, could blow everything out of the water. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that this information — again if it’s true — could realign politics in America and elsewhere…..”

http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=390975

notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital | October 26, 2020 at 7:40 pm

Fyi

Pass it on.

The Last Refuge

“letjusticeprevail2014 on October 25, 2020 at 7:57 pm
“I cannot even believe I am saying this… but the MAGA movement in-person and in the digital sphere is actually, well, WINNING.”

Yes. WE CAN DO IT.

MAKE Jack Dorsey and his horde of Leftist Twitter moderators LIVE BY THEIR OWN RULES.

JUST TODAY I was able to get (yet another) Leftist Twitter Troll suspended from that platform simply by using their rules against them.

1) Identify the Leftist Trump haters-BUT DON’T ENGAGE THEM
2) Search their timelines for a Tweet that violates Twitter rules
3) REPORT IT

–REPEAT THAT OVER AND OVER against other accounts

4) Watch your notifications-if the mods agreed, you’ll get a notification THANKING YOU for “Helping to keep Twitter a ‘Safe Place’”— IT WILL NAME THE ACCOUNT you reported
5) REPORT THAT ACCOUNT AGAIN for a DIFFERENT violation
6) KEEP DOING IT

It takes 3 or 4 violations before their account is permanently suspended

IF ALL OF US (Conservative Twitter users) did this for even 15 minutes a day, the Twitter Mods will be overwhelmed and forced to change their discriminatory practices”

MattLauersNob | October 26, 2020 at 8:40 pm

I’m done with FB and will not be renewing Amazon prime. I am not the least bit interested in Twatter.

Pro sports can also pound sand.

Strangely, I seem to have more time for shooting, fishing, reading etc.

    Terence G. Gain in reply to MattLauersNob. | October 27, 2020 at 6:44 am

    It’s very tempting to leave Facebook, but then how else can we educate our uninformed friends and relatives? I announced on my Facebook page a month ago that I was leaving. None of my friends responded. I Decided to stay until after the election so that I can explain President Trump’s landslide victory.

Don’t forget Monsanto purchased Blsckwater aka Xe. Big corporations are capable of anything especially when they are run by degenerates.

Big tech is the tool that the powerful will use to control the world population without being known or reachable by those they enslave.

One of the worst tragedies of recent history has been to allow the internet–which was created by taxpayer dollars–to be exploited by a few not only to become millionaires but to gain an unprecedented control over what Americans hear and read. The time is long past for a crackdown.