We can't forget about the NSA/DOD/DHS/DAE contracts with the tech giants and the small contractors for data mining, surveillance and cloud services. American tax-payers have provided the funds that have gone into surveillance programming. To what end? Censorship. Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others, all have transparency reports, stating how many requests governments have made to them for user information and the take down of content. Since the beginning of the year, Google reports nearly 10 million YouTube videos have been removed. Most of us wouldn't have imagined so many, right?
Alex Jones is one to watch, but not because he's informative. Rather, he often nudges his audience toward the Conservative goals. This time around, internet censorship and surveillance is a dual-partisan objective. In April, the Judiciary Committee hearings grilled the Big Three CEOs about data security and the Cambridge Analytica breach at Facebook. They were invited back for the July hearings, but sent reps instead. They all conceded to pressure from Congressional Reps to deplatform Jones and the Fake News Alternative Media and to ensure that MSM content was pushed to the top of feeds.
On May 1, Facebook had it's annual general meeting of shareholders. Zuckerberg was pressured to downgrade his stock, split his CEO/Chair role, FIRE himself and produce MORE reports on Facebook user activity and demographics. Does it sound like privacy is a priority for shareholders? Just days after the July Congressional hearing, Facebook stock crashed. Zuckerberg lost $120B within hours. The stock is yet to recover. By August 6, he was onboard to deplatform Jones.
By Aug 14, George Soros buys up Facebook and Twitter stock and dumps Google and Amazon. Are you starting to see how many layers are involved? Open MIC is one of two Facebook shareholders holding a lot of stock, who were most insistent at the annual general about making those changes. Open MIC is funded in part by Tides and Tides is funded in greater part by George Soros.
In the last hour, Alex Jones is announcing that CNN has announced that INFOWARS is to be reinstated on Facebook, Google, Apple and reassures people that no one is being censored. I haven't found actual CNN statements to that effect.
At most I found a search result for a YT video with a partial description stating, "Alex Jones presents video footage of Roger Stone on Chris Cuomo's CNN show where he openly calls out the tech left's censorship campaign of conservatives acr..."
See how this game is played? This is not a 'good guys' versus 'bad guys' scenario. It's all propaganda, left, right and center.
Thank you for the detailed analysis. In the larger picture, yes it's all a political game to pay people against each other and keep going around in circles :/
Well, I'm glad your informative posted lured me in to comment! Thank you. :)
There is another approach to regulating social platforms that neither of us anticipated in the post thread, and that is voluntary adoption of the Internet Bill of Rights by social platforms. Not only is that a possibility, it just happened! Here's a post with links to the news article and related info. To summarize EFF is championing the Manila Principles On Intermediary Liability and Minds.com has adopted them.
Alternative social network Minds.com has debuted a digital bill of rights amid accusations of bias and political manipulation at Google, Facebook, and other Big Tech companies.
https://steemit.com/informationwar/@justmeagain/alternative-social-network-minds-com-has-debuted-a-digital-bill-of-rights-amid-accusations-of-bias-and-political-manipulation-at
Cool, that's good of them to adopt. But will they always align with it ;)
Inaction costs nothing, so I can't see why they would adopt censorship policies. I've been following the Facebook situation. To summarize, the April and July hearings and the May 1 shareholder meeting resulted in demands from 2 big shareholders to pressure FB to get strict with censorship, ensure 'fake news' and specifically Jones are deplatformed and MSM are always top of the feeds. FB hired thousands to do what the shareholders demanded.
July 25 they had a shareholder conference call and shareholders were told that the 4th quarter profits would be 20%. That's a decent profit for a mid-life company. The profit for previous quarter was double that, but because of the surveillance and censorship demands from the shareholders, hiring expenses would be up 60%.
Well, at about 3:30 one or more shareholders dumped stock, likely while still on the call. The cost was $120B to Zuckerberg!
So, the moral of the story is that censorship is expensive, while allowing free speech is FREE of cost for the platform. I'm sure Ottman knows it.