big tech oligopolies

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Double Quote Of The Day

January 12, 2021 by 4 Comments

The quote of the day is actually a double quote of the day. Both come from the Monster Hunter himself, Larry Correia, from his post yesterday entitled bow before AppGoogleZOn.

The first quote is in reference to some members of the Stupid Party (as SayUncle calls them) whose words and actions would make Marshal Pétain nostalgic.

 All those companies are allied with the political party that hates you and wants to see your kind utterly eradicated from society, because you are bad people who deserve it. And most of the “leadership” on our side says this is fine, and it’s more important to be polite and play by rules the other side forsook a long time ago. When they get around to throwing dissidents into gulags, I’m sure guys like Mitt Romney will still be chiding us for using impolite swear words during our executions.

The second quote reinforces my belief that censorship of conservatives by Big Tech serves to remove the safety valve. The unintended consequences of that move might make our worst nightmare pale by comparison.

When tens of millions of people are feeling fucked over and that the system is rigged against them, and the media who are assuring them that everything is in fine working order are the same untrustworthy media who’ve been caught lying to them about literally everything else daily for years, now feel like their voices are being squashed by the same cabal of mega companies that have been lying and manipulating all the information we are allowed to see for years… and an increasing number of these usually calm and responsible, but now angry and disenfranchised people (who are also the ones who make society work and keep the lights on) are starting to think that lefty style stupid political violence might be the only way to be heard… so go ahead and kick them while they are down.

I’m sure that will work out splendidly, with absolutely no long term negative consequences.

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Censorship Is Never The Correct Answer

January 11, 2021 by 5 Comments

Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day

Home, home on the range
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day

Do we really want to live in a world where any contrary thought must be censored, stamped out, and prevented from seeing the light of day?

This is what I saw this morning when I went to open Parler. We knew that Amazon’s AWS service was planning to cut it off because they thought the content “dangerous”.

From the WSJ:

The effective disappearance of Parler shows the growing breadth and effect of efforts by big technology companies to restrict content they label as dangerous after last week’s mob attack on the U.S. Capitol. Amazon had said in a letter to Parler over the weekend that it had seen a steady increase in violent content on the site and said Parler’s efforts to remove it were inadequate.

Violent content, my ass! It is clearly a move to suppress any dissenting or contrarian voices. If your argument is so weak that it cannot stand up to criticism, then it isn’t that much of an argument to begin with.

What the Big Tech oligarchs need to fear, and indeed we all should fear, is that by removing ways for people to be heard that someone, anyone, who has nothing left to lose will engage in lone wolf attacks. Communication and the ability to be heard serves a moderating influence. With that gone, grievances fester and they harden putting all of us at risk.

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What A Coincidence

September 19, 2019 by 1 Comment

The Gun Rights Policy Conference starts on Friday evening in Phoenix. It is certainly important that all the social media accounts of sponsor Second Amendment Foundation be up and running.

It is important but yet that hasn’t stopped some nameless gnome at Twitter from suspending their account.

Dan Zimmerman at TTAG broke the story earlier today. Dan quotes Alan Gottlieb as being shocked. Alan notes that their account has never been suspended and that the timing is ” interesting that it’s happened right before the Gun Rights Policy Conference this weekend.”

My talk on Sunday at GRPC is about how we are at the mercy of the big tech oligopolies. I didn’t expect Twitter to confirm it this soon in advance.

If you have a Twitter account, you might want to tweet @jack (Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO) asking him about it. I did.

Now this all could be just a big mistake and some anti-gun Twitter techie hacked the Second Amendment Foundation account. It could be. It could also be that @Jack who was one of the CEOs who signed the letter to Mitch McConnell demanding action on “gun violence” (sic) decided that pro-2A organizations didn’t need any extra publicity.