Merv's Politically Incorrect Audio Blog

I think I am just not a fan how they approach things. Each to their own. There are endless possibilities to create something new and user have choice which one they want to use.

 

The distinction between SBAF, Watchuseek is not that difficult to pinpoint, and the destruction of Parler can give some clues here.
The reason Parler was destroyed had nothing to do with content. That pretext was used to fool AOC and other enthusiasts of censorship. The reason was the very existence and success of social media platform that did not follow the social media predatory business model based entirely on selling user data and obliterating any traces of user privacy.

Parler focus and appeal is privacy. The amount of data they collect on users is not enough to sell to advertisers or use AI for targeting. They do not use algorithms to assess what you should see or could see.
It is entirely possible that large number of Trump supporters moved to on Parler but that was triggered not by Parler ideology but by the censorship on other platforms.
The posts inciting violence on Parler no doubt exist. Do you want to take a look at Twitter?

 

Decentralized video platform using Blockchain, underlying claims to be similar to P2P file sharing tech. I think YT is great but nice to see alternatives.

https://d.tube/

 

Good piece by Solana:

https://www.piratewires.com/p/insurrection-as-a-service

 

Thanks for this. An insightful piece that caused me to question my position on (specifically) the whole Section 230 question among other things. I appreciate this.

Also, I finally got a chance to listen to this tonight:

 

Outstanding article... and brings back the comment, at what point are these massive social media platforms similar to public communications or utilities? At what point do they have to be regulated and treated differently, with different rules than Section 230?

 

In every situation there are funny moments:
“Ahead of the Ugandan election, we're hearing reports that Internet service providers are being ordered to block social media and messaging apps,”
“We strongly condemn internet shutdowns – they are hugely harmful, violate basic human rights and the principles of the #OpenInternet,”
Those statements were issued today by ..Twitter. Those guys make billions but have self awareness of a cockroach sprayed with bug killer.

 

Tech has been purging conservatives or people on the right. But it's beholden to an elite cultural bias where being labelled fascist is many more times more onerous and reputationally damaging than being labelled communist, despite similar historical brutality.

And if Twitter banned people for being whiny bitches we'd barely have any Twitter at all.

 

Rep. Debbie Lesko was just lamenting the implementation of metal detectors in the Capitol. She said "These new provisions include searches and being wanded like criminals. We now live in Pelosi's communist America!"

Sounds like the same communist America that I have been living in since George Bush and the response to 9-11. I had to go through a "criminal wanding" last week at my county courthouse to get plates for my car. Been doing it for years. How's it feel Debbie? Politicians are supposed to be exempt from the horseshit they visit upon us commoners.

 

I think people thought that there is still something like Constitution, 1st Amendment that would protect them.
And, I believe no one really grasped the fact that those companies, acting together, own the US. They certainly will dictate the foreign and trade policy. And if in modern society speech happens mostly on Internet, blocking people and competitors access to the platform where speech is actually happening throws 1 Amendment to the garbage bin of history, and makes the US constitution, the envy of the thinking world, essentially worthless.
I think now everybody know and sudden understanding that this is just raw power struggle, with no rules , will change the country, and not for the better.
And independent platforms are just a temporary solution. How long before they convince smaller players like Dell, HP NOT to sell servers to certain people? Import? that path can be closed as well. The fusion of big business and the state leading to elimination of dissenting voices has a name, but let's not use it, there is still hope.

EDIT: About building independent platforms, Gab infrastructure is under sustained denial-of-service attack.

 

As Adam Townsend on Twitter (@adamscrabble) has pointed out many times in the last year, the Constitution is being replaced by Terms of Service.

 

You are basically confirming. 1st was created in the time in history when the only entity that free speech had to be protected against was government. If in modern world it does not protect the only place where effective political dialog can be actually happening, the 1st is not worth a piece of paper it was written on. In this case, you are right, there is no reason to lament its death.

 

What’s the plan if the staff at SBAF’s ISP decides the discussion on this thread has gone outside the Overton window? And perhaps thinks that the founder is a suspicious kulak who fled from California to Texas, and therefore deserves the plug pulled. Restore from backup (hope it’s not on the ISP’s boxes somewhere) and run on Tor?

 

So the US Constitution is both the envy of the thinking world and simultaneously so outdated that it no longer applies to modern life?

 

It kinda is both, isn’t? One gun control argument, for example, has long ago said that the Second Amendment was written with black powder and flintlocks in mind, and not smokeless powders and 30-round magazines. The gun rights retort was, was the First Amendment exclusively written for the printing press? With de facto bans on some points of view, we’re seeing this happen in practice, if not in theory.

Any business owner who runs a site on Amazon infrastructure, and who looks at AWS pulling the plug on a popular communication platform and does not think about this from a continuity planning perspective is, put simply, irresponsible. Today, Amazon pulls an unwelcome platform. Tomorrow, it pulls an online bookstore that sells books by Hayek and Friedman?

 

I'd say it's more likely that they undercut them on price and/or convenience and drive them out of business.