Congressman: Yes, We Did in Fact Lose Afghanistan Because of Big Tech

tehwebguy 2021-08-19 05:53:57 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I don’t know, author seems super concerned with “patriots” being censored or kept out of the marketplace while republishing a video of a conservative congressman on an incredibly conservative news network, literally the most popular cable news ever, the video hosted on YouTube, the largest video sharing site ever, whose algorithms instantly take conservative viewers into the far right fringe and gave far right talking heads not only a platform but a revenue model.

Feels like it takes a staunchly good-GOP vs evil-Dem approach when in reality both parties manufactured these immoral & insane wars. The only winners were the slimy politicians that won elections on the backs of the dead and the handful of soulless monsters selling “us” a trillion dollars worth of bombs & supplies.

Getting out is vital and the lesson should be that “America’s enemies” are the leaders that start these ridiculous wars.

pjc50 2021-08-19 03:45:40 +0000 UTC [ - ]

The conclusion is really incoherent: the author is promoting the standard line that splitting up Big Tech would be great, and that it should be harder to ban people with "bad politics" from the system. But then he wants the Taliban banned from all the now-more-fragmented systems!

The US has a reasonable chance of arm twisting messaging providers into banning the Taliban if there's only a few of them and they're hosted in the US. In a federated system they'd just have their own one or use a popular one from a non US country.

Not to mention the difficulty of deciding who's a Taliban (to be banned regardless of content) and who's an American (allowed to organize an insurgency in public because that's free speech).

I guess we're going to see a lot of misplaced blame over the next decade, just how Jane Fonda lost Vietnam.

kamray23 2021-08-19 09:24:23 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Yeah, my thoughts exactly. The author seems to believe that what matters is the per-platform absolute amount of terrorists. Splitting platforms up makes that number go lower. But in exchange, banning terrorists becomes infinitely harder as the network fragments and people can't be tracked across large networks and banned simultaneously. The article is left wanting two directly contradictory things and as such sounds just like a slimy politician's incoherent rambling.

swiley 2021-08-19 03:54:21 +0000 UTC [ - ]

So can we get rid of the surveillance crap now? Since it didn't work.

2021-08-19 05:53:51 +0000 UTC [ - ]

adriancr 2021-08-19 06:44:48 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Wow, did big tech arm and fund the Taliban?

megamindbrian2 2021-08-19 05:43:15 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Why don't they put "no Taliban allowed" in their terms of service. And then ban anybody who mentions Taliban. Did we learn nothing from Enigma?

throwawaysea 2021-08-19 05:59:18 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> It is clear, however, that these companies’ continued treatment of American citizens as domestic enemies at the same time as they give America’s actual enemies what amounts to a free pass cannot go unanswered.

This is spot on. I can’t believe Twitter and others banned Trump based on vague claims of incitement, quoting attendance of a ceremonial inauguration ceremony as proof (https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...), while numerous organizations associated with domestic crimes (antifa, “youth liberation front” or other anarchist networks, some BLM affiliates, etc) and international extremists (like the Taliban’s spokesperson) are allowed to operate freely on their platform. These are illiberal monopolies abusing their power for political gain, and they need to be broken up or regulated.

mgh2 2021-08-19 03:42:27 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Big tech is a strange animal, a leech on the human brain.

I wish the tech community can be unbiased and not politically motivated. While it rightfully bans conspiracy theories and right-wing extremism, it condones anything else that helps in furthering its ad-machine agenda: misinformation, crypto, terrorism, anti-gov, you name it.

I feel bad for the generation that engendered these tools and grew up in it, unknowingly participating in its brainwashing scheme to profit tech oligarchs.

Big tech is the real enemy, the government should go after them.

tehwebguy 2021-08-19 05:58:18 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> While it rightfully bans conspiracy theories and right-wing extremism

Wow I wish. Big tech gave both of these groups a megaphone and a cash machine.

Sure, people have to misspell covid when spreading antivax messaging on Facebook to avoid getting their posts deleted but hard right influencers are the majority of the top engaged pages on Facebook every week.

EricE 2021-08-19 13:20:32 +0000 UTC [ - ]

>hard right influencers are the majority of the top engaged pages on Facebook every week

Despite all the ongoing censorship. It's as if Twitter isn't the real world after all!