Silicon Valley Big Tech Tyranny

bernard

bernard

BuSo Pro
Joined
Dec 31, 2016
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I'm honestly a little freaked out with how the social media companies are purging and banning everyone connected to Trump.

I think too much and I see too many futures play out in my head and most of them are not good. Many are about tech-tyranny like in China. Like that sci-fi book title "I have no mouth and I must scream". I don't like it. People are becoming radicalized with covid. Reading Twitter is horror. People showing their worst authoritarian mindset.

I don't even live in the US.

What do you americans think about what is going on? Lets keep it clear of partisan politics, just about how you feel about the recent developments with all the bannings and the fracturing of the public conversation.
 
Not American, but it seems more like the Gulag Archipelago. Ive recently decided to not talk about anything of consequence with anyone I don't know. It's not worth it.
 
Stones said:
Not American, but it seems more like the Gulag Archipelago. Ive recently decided to not talk about anything of consequence with anyone I don't know. It's not worth it.
Click to expand...
Yes, I have the book. I dread to read it now.

Is this the takeover of America playing out before our eyes?
 
bernard said:
Lets keep it clear of partisan politics, just about how you feel about the recent developments with all the bannings and the fracturing of the public conversation.
Click to expand...
Lol, @bernard, you are already being political by the way you frame the topic and the question.

"Let's keep religion out of it and just discuss about how Jesus approved of moneychangers and Pharisees."
 
I don't think his question is partisan.
I believe his concern is clearly the fallout. Removal of rights, for the sake of "safety".
Surveillance state.
Forcing different viewpoints underground, and what that could lead to?
(In my opinion radicalization, making things far worse)

The man brought up the topic because of recent events, so yes, obviously it is because of the current political climate. But he asks, because fallout will be felt long after the current players are irrelevant.

(Did I get that right @bernard ? I don't want to speak in your name, I just didn't know how to phrase it differently).
 
I'm surprised nothings been said on here about it.

We're currently seeing a purge of all social media,

In the last 48 hours


The president has been banned from Twitter and Facebook.
Hundreds of thousands of people if not millions have left Twitter or have been banned.
Cloudflare have removed their support from 4chan
Parlour has been taken off the Apple and Google playstore
and just in the last few hours, Amazon have said they're removing Parler from AWS.

How does the left think this will play out, the left is the side who can't work out what gender they are, the right is the guys who love guns and freedom.

These lefties calling for blood are larpers they don't know what civil war is what it does to a country and the ongoing effects decades later, I've lived in countries which have had civil wars (not just Cambodia).
 
I saw this coming. But I admit, with how quickly they started banning Parler, Gab, etc, I was shocked.
Then I got stressed and took a day off.

Now I'm back to working, because I want to get to a position where I can fight this. Create/promote alternatives in a meaningful way.

To me this isn't about politics. This is the start of prosecuting thought crimes. Fuck that.

I've never wanted to use google, because I did not trust them. Eventually I went overboard to GA, because frankly, the other stuff didn't work properly.

Now I want to use their own shit to bring them down.

Become successful, build a network (so you are less prone to becoming irrelevant) and fight this bullshit.

Free promotion on my websites for anything that's not Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple or Microsoft.

Obviously the main focus is still profit. But I will work it in there. Somehow.

Not sure how useful this will be. But for now it has gotten me productive again. In fact, I'm on fire.
 
OK. This is probably one reason, amongst many, why I never ever set foot in political or social threads in internet marketing communities or on football forums. But I'll give it one more post:

Do you believe when joining this community that the owners and mods have the unquestioned right to remove your access, even if it is just for the reason that one of them decides they hate your username or avatar or use of .gifs?
 
ToffeeLa said:
OK. This is probably one reason, amongst many, why I never ever set foot in political or social threads in internet marketing communities or on football forums. But I'll give it one more post:

Do you believe when joining this community that the owners and mods have the unquestioned right to remove your access, even if it is just for the reason that one of them decides they hate your username or avatar or use of .gifs?
Click to expand...

Small communities absolutely, this gets an awful lot more grey with billion-dollar tech companies who are using government legislation to skirt around liability.

When the president of the united states is using your platform to speak to the nation then you have to make exemptions (Twitter has profited off Trump using their platform twitter was dying before Trump).

But that's less of an issue the issue is if you trying to set up your own platform then you have to build the entire infrastructure around it.

Loook at what happened to Gab, they set up their own social network they now need to set up their own merchant accounts after getting shut down by multiple merchant accounts. In fact the creator and his wife are apparently blacklisted from visa.

Alt tech is being built at a massive rate, and the last few days have spurred it on.
 
I do, 100%.

That is not the issue for me. The issue is that the companies are too powerful, with too much influence.
I have no problem that they control their own platforms. The problem is that currently a situation is being created where "wrongthink" is dangerous.

I won't sue them. They are legally in their right. But I will not just submit.

They also have too much influence on politicians. I have been shouting this for years. You know, the lobbyists etc.

Right now they are so big, they can influence what people think by deciding what to show them and what not. Only show the stupid arguments of the other side, making them look crazy.
Hide what's inconvenient for their own agenda. And at this point, pressure other companies in deplatforming competition.
Google and Apple together control 99.9% of the mobile space. If your app is not allowed there, you are not on mobile. If google decides to not index you, and facebook bans your domain, you are effectively not on the internet either. (Technically yes, but in a practical sense, no.)

ToffeeLa said:
Do you believe when joining this community that the owners and mods have the unquestioned right to remove your access, even if it is just for the reason that one of them decides they hate your username or avatar or use of .gifs?
Click to expand...
Nothing illegal about it. I believe they have that right. Unquestioned? I would hope people question that decision.

I REALLY don't like that (Google etc) they have that amount of power. Decentralization is needed imho.

Free speech isn't dead legally. Practically, maybe not quite. But I feel like it's getting there. Unless we stop the centralization of power.

If they remove me here, they don't stop me from making my own website. My website won't be removed from the app stores. I can still go to other communities. Or go to different websites to spout my views. BuSo is a small corner on the internet. Facebook, twitter, google, youtube, reddit are basically the whole town.

Unless we make sure they don't stay that way. And that's what I think would be best for the world.

I don't think there is anything wrong with what I'm saying. Try to change what you don't like.
Don't do anything illegal. Don't despair, work for the change you want to see.
 
If this does turn into a hot civil war, it could be argued that social media companies and the mainstream media are partaking in 5th-dimensional warfare (Information warfare). Does that make them a legitimate target to use force against...

Its shit like this that the lefties and mainstream media can't comprehend, they're calling for blood now but they won't be when there's lead flying in their offices. People calling for civil war are fucking larpers because they don't know the horrors civil wars brings.

I fucking fucking fucking hope I'm wrong but I can see a social media companies offices being ambushed or journalists being killed in the next quarter year.
 
I heartily agree with you about working for the change you want to see and creating your own platforms if there is a demand for it.

BUT I am quite amazed by the mental gymnastics involved in jumping from 'the government needs to stay out of people's lives' pov to calling for government actions against commercial companies making commercial decisions to protect their commercial interests.

Effectively, you are calling them public services subject to regulation such as electricity or water supply once companies get big enough. Which is not something I would necessarily disagree with, but it is an interesting flip of philosophy from a previously unashamedly pro-business pro-individual outlook.
 
There's no doubt that I am more sympathetic to the Trump idea of the world, than his opponents, but even if you're not a Trumper, you should realise they can do this to Bernie Sanders next time or someone you care about.

It never ends with just one bad guy. They'll always be able to find an excuse.

We're living in the information and communication age. Access to information and communication is in my opinion is a public utility, a human right.

I really fear for what the next year will bring. If you take away the option for people to express themselves democratically, then some people might feel desperate.
 
They should have some a better job of setting up their own shit. Everyone here is familiar with getting banned off a platform for w/e reason. Gotta have multiple (tested) backup plans. Carter been had an entire series about not relying on Google for shit.
 
ToffeeLa said:
Do you believe when joining this community that the owners and mods have the unquestioned right to remove your access, even if it is just for the reason that one of them decides they hate your username or avatar or use of .gifs?
Click to expand...
I agree. It's like when we are told not to put all our eggs into Google SEO basket, and then an algorithm comes along and takes it away.
I am conflicted and the ACLU is on Trump's side right now.
The Right owns talk radio, so they are not completely shut off. This will play out and new media will appear in years ahead.
I'm still holding strong with Dry January :wink:
 
From A Marketing Perspective:

As @gcomt has stated, this is a CLASSIC example of why you need to have your own direct communication channel to your audience. You should be building your newsletter list, mobile text messaging database, and user databases that are DIRECTLY within YOUR control, not on some platform like Shopify and shit. Otherwise you will always be subject to the whim of the platform you are working on.

Example: YouTube is a lot less tolerant now than it was 5-10 years ago when it was still new. As platforms mature, become more powerful, broader acceptance, you can't post crazy stuff anymore because of fear of a name brand who advertises on that platform right next to a Nazi video. So what's the solution? Make sure you are funneling your YouTube subscribers into a database of some sort which allows you to communicate with them in parallel to YouTube. Email is one of them, spread them to twitter, facebook, or direct communication with text messages like with community.com.

But if you spread them to another platform you again will be under the power of that platform's whim.

This is also why you have to keep ALL your channels warm, emails, twitter, facebook, youtube, and so on, so your audience is used to seeing your communication from that platform.

When Alex Jones got banned, he was already directing people to his mail site, and has setup other avenues to get his message out there. As a brand you need to control the method of communicating with your audience.

Imagine if you were getting 100 visitors a day from Google, small number, and 1% of them, small number, signed up for your newsletter. That's 1 person a day, BUT that's one person that's really interested in your brand/ideas. THAT is a genuine audience member. After a year, you'll have 365 people that are genuine audience members so when you publish a new content piece, you send it out and it immediately gets views, and interaction. You don't have to wait on Google. After 5 years you'll be at 1,825 users - hopefully you figured out how to grow your audience faster than 1% and increased your daily visitors to over 100 a day.

BUT none of that shit means anything if you don't constantly communicate with your audience through that newsletter. A email list degrades about 10% for every month of no communication. Emails die, bounce, people forget you, etc. Trump can't just "switch" to email now because he was not communicating or driving that awareness to his newsletter, at least I'm guessing he wasn't - I'm not on his email list.

Even the Gab or Parler increase doesn't mean anything compared to his former Twitter reach. He should have been telling people for 5+ years to follow him on various other platforms, subscribe to his YouTube, and make sure to sign up to his email newsletter, and get their mobile numbers into his database. That way he can REALLY mobilize his base for whatever.

Something also to take away, @Brit in Cambodi mentions it, Twitter benefited greatly because of Trump. TRUMP is what I call a spark, someone that creates good/great and polarizing content. People follow sparks when they go to a new place. Even people that WANT to hate him follow Trump around. The haters will spread your brand further than the loyalist will.

Similar to how Wickedfire was created, Jon went to DigitalPoint, created a thread that that drove people to Wickedfire. He had a spark and an idea behind it, then executed on it.

What's missing in a lot of your "SEO" projects is a spark, a reason people will go looking for you. That's what branding and marketing is all about. That's why you guys have to rely on fucking Google for your SEO traffic, because no one gives a fuck about your brand/affiliate site.

People WANT to want Apple products. They want to follow Trump. They want to watch certain YouTuber's videos.

Simple creating an alternative without the initial sparks to start the momentum is futile. Without a spark you can't create momentum and if you can't keep the momentum going you can't dominate.
 
ToffeeLa said:
Do you believe when joining this community that the owners and mods have the unquestioned right to remove your access, even if it is just for the reason that one of them decides they hate your username or avatar or use of .gifs?
Click to expand...
Yes. Absolutely yes. Even as someone who has donated a few bucks I believe that if I started breaking the rules that they have set forth they should be able to remove me from the platform.

I have comments turned on on my website. If someone leaves a nasty comment (not even spam, but bashing a platform I'm promoting or something) I don't allow it. It's my platform. My website. I spent time and money to create it, it's going to run how I want it to run.

At what point do I have to consult with some third party about whether I can remove comments or not?

WinMore said:
Forcing different viewpoints underground, and what that could lead to?
Click to expand...
Hasn't that been the case up until the last 15 years or so? AFAIK these fringe groups have always been around, they just haven't been able to talk freely out in the open. The book Spam Kings comes to mind.

I'm not just talking about political radicals either, I mean D&D players, furries, conspiracy theorists (the alien kind, not the Q kind), etc. They've kept to themselves but now Joe in Montana is able to peer into their group and see what's going on with them.

Dudes want universal rights to tweet but not universal healthcare.
I'm a disabled veteran so I already have healthcare for life

Wild.
 
ToffeeLa said:
Do you believe when joining this community that the owners and mods have the unquestioned right to remove your access, even if it is just for the reason that one of them decides they hate your username or avatar or use of .gifs?
Click to expand...
This kind of behavior is NOT protected under Section 230, which needs reform. Under Section 230, you're protected from being sued from what others publish as long as you aren't making editorial decisions. Once you do that, you're supposed to lose your protections, which obviously isn't happening.

Also the line is very gray. You are allowed to delete things that break your own rules or are beyond the protections of free speech (like calls to violence). But you can't ban someone because you don't like their avatar or their political leanings. That's not protected under Section 230.

Another problem, one that's a huge problem on Reddit and Twitter alternatives, are people creating new accounts as if they're "one of the club", posting calls to violence, and then immediately reporting their own call for violence and blaming it on the "other side" to get the platform banned. If that doesn't work, they go for hosting, domain registrars, payment processing, etc. Of course not all of it is false flagging with fake violence either, which is conveniently tricky to sort through.
 
I don't think it's tyranny at all. It's totally reasonable. Trump's been inciting violence for years and it has finally reach a tipping point. People became violent and 5 people died. "The culmination of all that came Wednesday when Trump supporters, exhorted by the president to go to the Capitol and "fight like hell" against a "stolen" election, overran and occupied the building in an explosive confrontation that left a Capitol Police officer and four others dead. The mob went there so emboldened by Trump's send-off at a rally that his partisans live-streamed themselves trashing the place. Trump, they figured, had their back" (https://abc7news.com/trump-violence-news-supporters-us-capitol-riots/9528818/). How could they not ban him after that? Allowing him to stay on Twitter would be similar to allowing Elliot Rodgers to stay on Twitter, after his shooting.

Let's view this in another light. If Trump wasn't a politician and, instead, a businessman speaking for his company, he'd be liable for the death of the office and the 4 other people. To prove liability, there needs to be: 1.) a duty 2.) a breach of said duty 3.) causation resulting from breach of said duty that results in 4.) some harm. The lawsuit is then to undo the harm. If, let's say, he was a spokesman for a beer company and said for years, that his beer would cause drinkers to "fight like hell" and, one day, a certain number of the beer drinkers assaulted others while drunk, fully believing that they could fight like hell when drinking the beer, and it resulted in 5 deaths, then the company could be found liable. If the beer company had a twitter account and other social media accounts, where they promoted their message, it is totally reasonable for twitter and the other social media accounts to ban the beer company.

In the US, the right to freedom of speech is only guaranteed from the Government. Private entities can censor you all they want.

As for abandoning solutions offered by tech giants for political reasons, ha! Ping me once you've changed your whole business operations. I don't believe you. If you did do that, you must really have an edgy site or you have one huge tin foil hat. Either way, it's still business as usual for me! Without the 200 extra manhours to switch everything to a new service!
 
It seems one of two things are going on:

Either the far left is confident they have power wrapped up and are now letting their totalitarian colors shine, or they're scared shitless of what's going to happen over the next 10 days and are lashing out like a cornered animal.

Let's hope it's the latter. And if not? I guess we'll just have to learn how to be obedient little sheep. Some of us are already there.
 
After reading the headlines today, it would seem that the US is in both a civil war (not hot but getting warmer), and also on the edge of war with China.

A war on two fronts doesn't usually work out.
 
So you guys just going to ignore the president tried to restrict all those companies and played the card first?

I dont think it's this deep. I think the President was the threat to Democracy.

He fired everybody who went against him.
He tried to put restrictions on Twitter, Tik Tok, more.................
Then tried to create a 'coupe'

I'm not a person who cares about politics and i dont think Trump was all bad but he made some glaring GLARING mistakes. Especially when he tried the coupe. The end.
 
CCarter said:
From A Marketing Perspective:

As @gcomt has stated, this is a CLASSIC example of why you need to have your own direct communication channel to your audience. You should be building your newsletter list, mobile text messaging database, and user databases that are DIRECTLY within YOUR control, not on some platform like Shopify and shit. Otherwise you will always be subject to the whim of the platform you are working on.

Example: YouTube is a lot less tolerant now than it was 5-10 years ago when it was still new. As platforms mature, become more powerful, broader acceptance, you can't post crazy stuff anymore because of fear of a name brand who advertises on that platform right next to a Nazi video. So what's the solution? Make sure you are funneling your YouTube subscribers into a database of some sort which allows you to communicate with them in parallel to YouTube. Email is one of them, spread them to twitter, facebook, or direct communication with text messages like with community.com.

But if you spread them to another platform you again will be under the power of that platform's whim.

This is also why you have to keep ALL your channels warm, emails, twitter, facebook, youtube, and so on, so your audience is used to seeing your communication from that platform.

When Alex Jones got banned, he was already directing people to his mail site, and has setup other avenues to get his message out there. As a brand you need to control the method of communicating with your audience.

Imagine if you were getting 100 visitors a day from Google, small number, and 1% of them, small number, signed up for your newsletter. That's 1 person a day, BUT that's one person that's really interested in your brand/ideas. THAT is a genuine audience member. After a year, you'll have 365 people that are genuine audience members so when you publish a new content piece, you send it out and it immediately gets views, and interaction. You don't have to wait on Google. After 5 years you'll be at 1,825 users - hopefully you figured out how to grow your audience faster than 1% and increased your daily visitors to over 100 a day.

BUT none of that shit means anything if you don't constantly communicate with your audience through that newsletter. A email list degrades about 10% for every month of no communication. Emails die, bounce, people forget you, etc. Trump can't just "switch" to email now because he was not communicating or driving that awareness to his newsletter, at least I'm guessing he wasn't - I'm not on his email list.

Even the Gab or Parler increase doesn't mean anything compared to his former Twitter reach. He should have been telling people for 5+ years to follow him on various other platforms, subscribe to his YouTube, and make sure to sign up to his email newsletter, and get their mobile numbers into his database. That way he can REALLY mobilize his base for whatever.

Something also to take away, @Brit in Cambodi mentions it, Twitter benefited greatly because of Trump. TRUMP is what I call a spark, someone that creates good/great and polarizing content. People follow sparks when they go to a new place. Even people that WANT to hate him follow Trump around. The haters will spread your brand further than the loyalist will.

Similar to how Wickedfire was created, Jon went to DigitalPoint, created a thread that that drove people to Wickedfire. He had a spark and an idea behind it, then executed on it.

What's missing in a lot of your "SEO" projects is a spark, a reason people will go looking for you. That's what branding and marketing is all about. That's why you guys have to rely on fucking Google for your SEO traffic, because no one gives a fuck about your brand/affiliate site.

People WANT to want Apple products. They want to follow Trump. They want to watch certain YouTuber's videos.

Simple creating an alternative without the initial sparks to start the momentum is futile. Without a spark you can't create momentum and if you can't keep the momentum going you can't dominate.
Click to expand...

I know this and I like what you say but I'm not sure how good this is.

For sure it's better than doing nothing and focusing on one platform... Good Luck Instagrammers, Good luck Youtubers.

But email newsletters and SMS lists are easy to damage and control if you are a target.

If Gmail alone decides to block your emails, or even all emails related to the topics you cover they can do it, they have the power to create powerful filters to circumvent your attempts to get to Gmail accounts. And Guess what, They have Over a Billion Users.

There are ways to blacklist your domains and make you land on the spam folder and get filtered on most ISPs and most email services.
 
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