Big Tech is the new deep state
govind.substack.com
govind.substack.com
Fact Check 1: NASA has not lost the blueprints and ability to engineer an engine like the Rocketdyne F-1. Sources:
[0] https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/20302/were-the-sat...
[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20100818173517/http://www.space.c... /saturn_five_000313.html
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocketdyne_F-1#F-1B_booster
Fact Check 2: Last I checked I can still download/clone repos anonymously, from public repos;
Fact Check 3: De-platforming has been a thing for a long time, for businesses like porn, crypto (at least back in the day), scams, terrorism.
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Parler, seems to be targeted for the last one on this list, for unmoderated fringe content.
Why is the expected treatment different from other similar radicalized fringe groups?
Why does our complacency for not learning how to manage servers etc fall on big tech?
edited: formatting
and I also remember reading that they had to reverse-engineer the designed and build their own CAD models because they couldn't re-build the situation (and it looks like a lot of customization was done to each engine). But my overall point still stands, IMO. They couldn't just rebuild it , just because they had the plans.
Fact Check 2: Last I checked I can still download/clone repos anonymously, from public repos; My point is , this can very quickly reverse. It won't take a lot of time for Github (and others) to add restrictions under any excuses to restrict anonymity.
Just like how it took one Apple and only a couple of years to make an entire industry almost completely eschew 3.5mm jacks for seeming no good reason (One excuse was waterproofing, but my s7 had a 3.5mm jack and was still IP67 rated).
Imagine if ifixit.org was de-platformed, because they were providing repair guides that was "illegal" from Apple/Google's perspective. Sure, as users we would rally behind ifixit because to us, the user's, ifixit's cause is noble. But, can you actually force Apple to reverse their decision, when it doesnt work out for your benefit ? If they don't , do you have an immediate alternative, that works for you, before your or ifixit goes out of business ?
This takes me back to my first Internet connection which was a partial T1 line back to a mid-tier Internet provider. We ran everything over that connection except for our main sales page and had a lot more autonomy. The provider didn't care what was running over that connection so long as they got paid.
My point is that I don't think the higher education institutions (where the Internet initially flourished) will be affected, nor will the big companies who already have connections as described above. Those of us who have traded our autonomy for cheaper operating costs and more convenience will indeed find that we've lot a lot of the control we used to have.
At some point you're dependent on another entity if you want to exist on the internet. I think a noble goal would be to change that, but we're far away from it.
Other people are biological creatures too, with all the same warts.
I think a noble goal would be for you personally accept that’s an arbitrary goal, expecting others to adopt it is exactly the problem you hate.
If we all adopt that goal, where is the alternative thought? Is there right to question that goal? Or protest that goal?
Round n round we go, regurgitating banal rhetoric, ignoring what it means in physical reality terms.
Emit whatever syntax you want. No one else is obliged to agree with or act according to the semantics. Expecting such is exactly the problem.
It's getting harder and harder to have your own email server.
Encrypted email is still a thing.
Decentralized internet is still a thing.
How many malls are going to let violent donkeys in?
Are they deep state for de-platforming a massacre?
Free speech is under attack when you would force workers to participate in speech they do not want to redistribute.
Freedom from pressure to serve everyone is exactly what the right wanted over gay wedding cakes.
DIY, exceptional people. Quit expecting everyone else to bend over backwards to satisfy your rustled jimmies.
Communities that shut down such discussions are usually authoritarian sects built on faith in a leader's guidance, not enlightened democracies.
Consider that people were having debates about whether things like democracy and slavery and caste systems were good for centuries before people got on board. And plenty of people still aren’t! What should the teacher do if the kids on Debate Team Jim Crow actually win the debate? Step in and say “actually, equality is better, let me show you why”? Or do we now have a bunch of kids who go through life thinking that we actually should make Black people drinking from different water fountains?
I also suspect that plenty of teachers themselves are not quite as bought in on racial equality as we’d hope.
Because problem is that segregation, fascism, etc aren’t “bad” per se. We don’t reject them because there’s some inherent logical fallacy — we do it because they’re morally wrong. It took us hundreds of years to get here, and if we’re going to get further it will be because we drew a line in the sand and said “hey, treating people in this particular way is just better than doing it this other way”.
> segregation, fascism, etc aren’t “bad” per se. We don’t reject them because there’s some inherent logical fallacy — we do it because they’re morally wrong.
Ouch! Fascism and segregation are morally wrong, but just as important they produce systems and societies that exhibit horrible features and, time and again, crumble and fail. Morality is pliable -- many things considered good two generations ago can now seen as morally wrong and vice versa. When your grandkids ask "grandpa, why did you break/prohibit/deplatform/cancel X?" you may want something better to stand on than "because we had that power and we could". Because that is how your argument reads to me.
Sure. We teach five year olds about Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement because it’s an important part of our history. Children are going to have questions about why things happened, and what the “right” side of it was. What are we going to tell them? At that age, they’ll basically believe whatever we say. So we have to either decide that segregation will be the “fringe” view, or that kids will grow up thinking that it’s acceptable.
> Fascism and segregation are morally wrong, but just as important they produce systems and societies that exhibit horrible features and, time and again, crumble and fail.
Who’s to say what features in a system are horrible? If we’re truly neutral here, should we not implement those features too so as not to ostracize people who think they’re good? :)
My point is that for literally every “horrible” feature, there are people who want it in earnest — and they often want it because it benefits them, not because they haven’t been won over by the merits of the alternative.
Like, how are you gonna convince the dude wearing the Camp Auschwitz sweatshirt? It’s not like he’s never been exposed to the argument that genocide is wrong. At some point we just have to draw the line and say “this is bad” rather than wringing our hands about how we can really decide not to listen to people advocating segregation or fascism or genocide or whatever.
I hope you have a good answer. And if they question it, because it is natural for kids to question the world around them, you have a great chance to explain and reinforce that message with arguments. But if instead we shut down the questioner that chance will be lost, and they will likely revisit it later as they grow up, not inclined to take your priors anymore.
And yes, a few will always stay unconvinced. That is the price of freedom. But the country where the majority holds their opinions because they were allowed to think them through, consider alternatives and were not demonized for disagreement is much more resistant to sellers of next Auschwitz than the country where the majority parrots what a talking head on TV/Twitter/Facebook tells them.
> Like, how are you gonna convince the dude wearing the Camp Auschwitz sweatshirt?
A dude or a gal wearing the Camp Auschwitz sweatshirt is, as I said, the price you pay for freedom. In a society where the majority would like to live, the predominant reaction on the street would be "Yuck". In a society that is told what is right it is much easier for the ruling party to bring the next extermination camp to a site next to you.
> The problem is - who decides what should be fringe and ostracized? At different times in history, women's rights, abolition, etc were all heretical ideas that the majority would want to squish if they could.
Rephrased: "since there is no omniscient referee to determine which ideas are good and which are bad, we should treat all ideas as equal."
But of course, not all ideas are equal. You and I have acknowledged as much in this conversation. One of the points of society — indeed, the very thing that lets us progress — is figuring out which ones are good and which are bad. And in the case of racial equality, genocide, etc, we've put in the work and mostly agreed that these are bad things.
The reason I reach for the teaching example is that it basically forces that choice. We either design the lesson so they learn that racial equality is good, and why it's good… or we throw our hands up and say "who decides that segregation should be a fringe view?" and teach them Jim Crow propaganda and race science as well.
And of course, despite all that, there will always be Camp Auschwitz sweatshirt guy. But if he wants to eat in our restaurants, or socialize on our networks, or host websites on our servers, we should have no qualms telling him to take it off first.
A constitutional republic was deemed at the time of the founding to strike the best balance of all systems of governance at the time. That's it. It scaled, it resisted demagoguery, and most importantly, it virtually guaranteed that the pace of legislation and change was slow at the time. No man can do much damage in 4 years.
Fast forward to now, and you have D.C. pulling strings and reacting on weekly timescales. The status quo can change on the timescale of hours, not even days. Issues increasingly get pushed to be resolved at the National level instead of being delegated up only to the locality or States effected, which contributes to increased inter-state animosity. The key optimization that the Founders were going for is something that let everywhere "do as thou wilt" with a mechanism for collective action organized from the bottom up. It was certainly not the intent to drive the entire country at once from the top-down except in regards to matters of National Defence and International Diplomacy, and resolution of interstate matters. The role of the Federal Government has greatly expanded over the years, now including land management/conservation, operating regulatory edifi, law enforcement, etc...
The Founders understood a government was only as inherently good as the people running it, and admitted from the start it would only be fit for a nation of well-educated citizens with a vested interest in maintaining their own liberties. No formal guarantee was given that somehow the system would work sevoid of everyone putting their best foot forward, which in part means not getting what you want all the time, and actually accepting that just because you could do something, it doesn't mean it should be done forever, or even permanantly.
If early abolitionists were deplatformed, you think the idea of abolition would still magically arise in everyone's head at the same time? Nope,society would never heard the concept, never adopt it and we'd still have slavery.
Let's be a society of adults. Allow voices to be heard and be rejected or accepted by people as makes sense to them. Otherwise you are moving the decision power from the people to the silencers.
There's no precident in history for that working out well.
They choose to go beyond that.
They’re not owed the fealty of others above and beyond supporting common human needs.
Why should everyone have to distribute others ideas?
The idea that we’re just routers for everyone is anti-free thought. Generalizes everyone to personal agents for all.
That’s hardly allowing for dissent.
Physical reality that obliges everyone to support everything equally is not a free reality.
What bothers me is when people celebrate the suppression of others without seeing how that knife can cut the other way very quickly.
Have they truly been suppressed?
They can still engage in a fulfilling life for themselves or continue to demand of others.
Let’s see what they choose.
We have been presented with a slice of reality. The legislative branch of a superpower was stormed, normal democratic process was disrupted and people were killed. A mob was egged on by lies and conspiracy theories spread by a president who is effectively trying to set in motion a coup d'etat. It is likely that this isn't the last such event we will see in the coming years.
What do you think ought to be done?
Wait until Parler is sued or prosecuted, and if a court order to shut it down. Go ahead.
There are already tools to deal with bad actors, it's the knee-jerk reactions that I don't like.
Should we not have the freedom of choosing with whom we would like to associate?
Is it not hypocritical to expect companies to provide resources to hate groups on the grounds of "freedom of expression" when those same groups have shown, by their actions, that they themselves oppose freedom of expression and expel anyone who voices disagreement?
You appear to be confusing the government and private companies here. Government must follow a far more stringent set of rules in which certain determinations have to be done by courts. Private companies are under no such obligations when it comes to enabling speech.
You are arguing that one should be able to compel people to promote hate speech. May may not intend to argue that case, but by what is presumably thoughtlessness, that is what you appear to be doing.
My answer was to the question of how "society" should handle the situation. I fully understand that the companies are free to do what they want. And I believe that as capitalistic entities, they would not have cut off paying customer without pressure from a large segment of society. I just believe that segment was wrong in pressuring the companies to do so.
Again, I understand that it is also their (those who wants Parler to have no platform) rights to free speech. I just happen to think that it is the wrong way of approaching this situation.
Edit: if it was a single company removing the Parler community (similar to how Reddit was kicking off alot of subreddit a couple of years ago). I think I would be a lot more inclined with your line of reasoning. It's the coordinated action from too many sides that made me feel uncomfortable with how this happened.
I do hope you appreciate that this question stopped being a purely academic question four days ago and became the very real death of five people and the closest the US has come to a coup d’detat in a very, very long time?
The decisions to de-platform the United States president and the angry mob is not something any service provider wants or would do lightly. These are the hardest decisions many of these companies will make this decade.
Is it the best decision in this situation? We won’t know for years. Was it a good decision? Yes. And it was one that took courage.
I’m glad someone had the courage to make that decision.
As long as this doesn't lead to a slippery slope of more censorship (both by the state and private entities), and more power to non due-process witch hunt, I would be wrong. I don't think there are a way any of us can say for certain what will happen, so let's wait a couple of years and see how it turn out.
So, do you believe that a business should not be forced to serve racial minorities? How about the gay wedding cake situation, should a baker be forced to make a cake for a gay couple? Should I be able to refuse to hire trans people?
If you're not sure about those, then you don't believe in free association as a rule. I'm not saying anything about you personally, but most people only want to involve free association in the cases where it means they get to refuse people they don't like.
I think it’s too late to turn the ship around at this point though. We’ve done nothing at all to address working class and rural alienation. Now we’ve got to somehow weather the storm.
And honestly, my comment was somewhat hyperbolic, in response to a lot of the discussion that occurred last night on this topic of Amazon vs Parler. Many people were equating the violence of Wednesday with "somebody not liking us," trying to suggest that this single extreme situation is an indicator of Amazon/big tech freely making political decisions (much like this linked article) for run of the mill things.
I appreciate your polite question and your critical-thinking takes in your comment history.
I do not defend Parler or the people on it either. What happened was not a civilized thing. The whole point of rule of law is that society doesn't succumb to rule of the jungle
Should Parler be banned ? I don't know. A big chunk of me leans towards the answer yes.
But this very answer scares me. Who am I, in a civilized, nation state, with a legislative, executive, govt. , to decide who has a voice and who doesn't ? And even if I do , who checks my powers ? What stops me from doing the unethical, the incorrect and the evil ?
What I wanted to focus was, not on Parler (it was my prompt for ideas washing around in my head for a while), but on the sheer amount of centralized power and authority in the hands of Big Tech, at the moment. Wikileaks was the wakeup call. It showed how much financial, media and technological clout Big Tech has and how effectively they operate in conjunction with the government.
Social media unshackled the voices of the normal people from the dependence of print and TV. It made the system of checks and balances more approachable for the common. I fear that Big Tech is now becoming the very same villain that they wanted to liberate the common man from.
And it scares me.
Maybe it is the right thing, but it would be new.
I think you are probably giving "Big Tech" a coherent animus that it never really had.
That's what this is. Parler has become a hotbed of radical and violent extremists calling for murder of politicians and people in the media.
These companies didn't shut off parler "quickly". They waited until after Parler took a large part in helping organize a violent mob that assaulted the capital.
Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook all have the same problem. The only way you can argue Parler being kicked out of AWS is right and Parler shouldn't be able to operate is if you think those sites should be shut down too.
With some of the comments I've seen here, honestly, this site gets close sometimes too.
Anybody want to talk about BDS? Because that's certainly advocating for violence and the death of lots of Jews and it's very popular among the Justice Democrats and their followers, just as an example. They consider it justified violence, just like the article "In Defense of Looting" did, but proponents of political violence always consider themselves justified. That was published by NPR, so I guess they should be shut down too, right?
Or is this actually about silencing a specific kind of political speech and not really about violence at all? That seems more likely to be.
The violence at the Capitol is just an excuse to silence political opponents.
This is the amount of control that Big Tech has on the internet that allows them to coordinate actions like this and also tells us once again that you're licensed to use their platform and don't own anything. Once you keep using their platform for your services, you risk losing this control.
For example in the case for Github (now owned by Microsoft) and the developer ecosystem, I kept repeatedly making the case for self-hosting [0] rather than 'centralising everything'. Now self-hosting is another solution if the same Big Tech companies wish to de-platform your business/service for any reason.
For what the Big Tech companies can give, they are more than able to take away.
It seems to me that big techs acted against Parler not because it represented a threat to them, but because of emotional reasons. "It was the right thing to do" or something like that. If they acted for business reasons, it would likely be slow and gradual, not "like a pack of wolves hunting down a rabbit".
> The days of downloading source code from sourceforge anonymously are long gone.
I can't believe that author is deeply concerned about centralized github but an the same time feels nostalgia about centralized sourceforge. At least github does not spread bundleware.
I really hope that is not what you are doing.
It's such a weird and pathetic phrase to use.
Seems like an odd definition of "quickly" to me.
It also wasn't in his post or his quote.
And you know why you added that, because you know quick can easily be disputed by simply looking back in time. Parler was on the services from 2018 to now. 2+ years is hardly "quick".
pipe bombs, zip ties to take hostages, weapons, and people looking to exact their version of justice on government officials were on the premises of the Capitol. things easily could have turned much worse than
According to history, common sense, and several world religions.
What doesn't "advance" as an argument is using a senile boomer self-own chimpout as a justification for FAANG absolutism. One of these guys literally tazed his own balls! I believe natural selection will be quite sufficient here.
Hostages and executions in an alternate reality do not justify corporate absolutism in this one.
Its possible to have a discussion about the power of big tech, about their anti-competitive behavior, and lack of democratic oversight, but perhaps those issues should be discussed separately from banning Trump and kicking Parler—which seem like good choices on the part of the companies, even though it was done far too late.
This seems like an exaggeration. There are alternatives to hosting your platform on AWS.
Of course, you're not supposed to allow users on your platform to issue death threats and act like you're not supposed to do anything about it.
I can't agree with holding Parler as an example of "freedom and the openess of the internet".
The point of TFA is that this is nullified when all hosts coordinate to take down services they do not like.
I don't really have any sympathy anyway, but this is 50+ years of ideological chickens coming home to roost.
When I was growing up, the ACLU would defend the rights of neo-nazis to speak, etc, because liberal people understood that if you don't protect the rights of the extreme you lose those rights yourself. It's shocking to me how quickly people seem to have lost hold of these principles.