Listen to a reading of this article: ❖ Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has resigned as CEO of the company, leading anyone who's been paying close attention to the rise of Silicon Valley internet censorship to voice concerns that the platform's relatively lenient attitude toward speech compared to other major social media services may be drawing to a close.
This is why I like Substack where we can see independent reporters and thinkers like Taibbi, Greenwald and others build increasingly huge audiences. The MSM is afraid of Substack.
I support Greenwald’s Substack-Rumble combination. That has the ability to make the MSM matrix take a new body blow.
People should just get their news from a constellation of Substack and Rumble pages. Let’s hope they keep getting more honest and original thinkers on board so we can watch the MSM/ Social media Tower of Babel crumble, forever.
I do remember Jack telling Congress something like "We don't want to be the arbiters of truth" and, as I recall, sounding kind of irritated that they were expecting that from him. Not that I ever stanned the guy or anything, but compared to how sycophantic Zuckerberg was in his responses to Congress, that was refreshing.
And so of course he had to go, and to be replaced by this fuckwit who thinks certain speech deserves to be heard or read more than others.
He doesn't even bother trying the usual argument of "You wouldn't want neo-Nazis or election-interfering Russian agents* to have large audiences, would you? Because that's all I'm saying, that we'll be marginalizing those people and that good people don't have to worry."
Nope, it's just "We need to recommend certain stuff, not recommend other stuff, and that's how it'll be. If you don't like it then write your representative in Congress, I'm SURE they'll listen to your concerns very seriously." *snickering*
I don't always see eye to eye with you on China since I do think that country has problems, including too much censorship. But America is proving more and more and more that it is in no position to criticize. Because sure, maybe this is happening due to internal pressure for Dorsey to resign instead of external, but external pressure HAS been repeatedly applied by the US government, and now they're getting their wish. And while it's impossible to know and may even be a little out there, I wouldn't be surprised if the government helped this Paul Singer twat gain as much of a stake in the company as he has somehow...
* Just for the record, I don't believe in RussiaGate at all. But they fear monger as much about Russians and America getting a taste of its own medicine re. election interference as they do anything else.
Funny how we're getting to use "pernicious," sneeringly servile, senile, zombie kleptocrat & suck-up nincompoops FAR more frequently as oligarchs simply buy-up what's left of our nascent means to whistleblow, exchange any information, report strawman, red-herring or gaslighting passing for journalism, cut and paste K Street/ Bell¿ngcat & Canary Mission agitprop catchphrase PR handouts on Amy Goodman, MSNBC & Fox... word-for-word?
For those of us at a certain age, it's easy to imagine a situation where Bell Telephone cut off your service because you said something the government didn't like. Of course, back then, liberals didn't have their heads up their backsides and would have fought such clear civil liberty abuses. The press would most likely have chimed in. No longer.
A tip of the hat is due the goons at the alphabet agencies, whose success in getting an entire generation to shit on their own core beliefs is nothing short of impressive.
Authoritative sources, my tuchis. One example suffices to illustrate how shitty and biased has been the Times reporting on COVID mRNA vaccines. They show a graphic of two immunologically independent variables. One graphic variable tells us that the vaccines are 13-times better at preventing serious disease compared to the stat in un-vaccinated populations. The other graphic variable tells us that they're five-times better at preventing transmission (probably an inflated stat, but that's beside the point). The Times then conflates the two independent variables in one sentence, telling us that the vaccines are good at protecting against serious disease and spread. This is pure propaganda. The stats clearly say that they're less than half as effective at preventing spread compared to their efficacy at preventing serious illness. And social media honchos are apparently unable to comprehend this --- or they're unwilling to buck the trend that automatically sees legacy media as "authoritative." As Mad Magazine used to parody the Times -- "All the news that fits, we print."
Well I reckon in the absence of modern tools for communication, we will just have to start talking with our neighbors directly. Who needs "meta", who needs "twitter"....who needs an effing smart phone if you think deep about it. Who needs that? Not I. I'm imagining the time coming up soon when I throw my smart phone in the river - good riddance.
This is why I like Substack where we can see independent reporters and thinkers like Taibbi, Greenwald and others build increasingly huge audiences. The MSM is afraid of Substack.
I support Greenwald’s Substack-Rumble combination. That has the ability to make the MSM matrix take a new body blow.
People should just get their news from a constellation of Substack and Rumble pages. Let’s hope they keep getting more honest and original thinkers on board so we can watch the MSM/ Social media Tower of Babel crumble, forever.
I do remember Jack telling Congress something like "We don't want to be the arbiters of truth" and, as I recall, sounding kind of irritated that they were expecting that from him. Not that I ever stanned the guy or anything, but compared to how sycophantic Zuckerberg was in his responses to Congress, that was refreshing.
And so of course he had to go, and to be replaced by this fuckwit who thinks certain speech deserves to be heard or read more than others.
He doesn't even bother trying the usual argument of "You wouldn't want neo-Nazis or election-interfering Russian agents* to have large audiences, would you? Because that's all I'm saying, that we'll be marginalizing those people and that good people don't have to worry."
Nope, it's just "We need to recommend certain stuff, not recommend other stuff, and that's how it'll be. If you don't like it then write your representative in Congress, I'm SURE they'll listen to your concerns very seriously." *snickering*
I don't always see eye to eye with you on China since I do think that country has problems, including too much censorship. But America is proving more and more and more that it is in no position to criticize. Because sure, maybe this is happening due to internal pressure for Dorsey to resign instead of external, but external pressure HAS been repeatedly applied by the US government, and now they're getting their wish. And while it's impossible to know and may even be a little out there, I wouldn't be surprised if the government helped this Paul Singer twat gain as much of a stake in the company as he has somehow...
* Just for the record, I don't believe in RussiaGate at all. But they fear monger as much about Russians and America getting a taste of its own medicine re. election interference as they do anything else.
Very well written Caitlin, thank you.
Funny how we're getting to use "pernicious," sneeringly servile, senile, zombie kleptocrat & suck-up nincompoops FAR more frequently as oligarchs simply buy-up what's left of our nascent means to whistleblow, exchange any information, report strawman, red-herring or gaslighting passing for journalism, cut and paste K Street/ Bell¿ngcat & Canary Mission agitprop catchphrase PR handouts on Amy Goodman, MSNBC & Fox... word-for-word?
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/11/the-campaign-to-protect-christmas-profits-from-omicron.html#comment-3641670
https://readsludge.com/2021/11/29/health-insurance-and-pharma-lobbyists-max-out-to-the-dem-party/
https://chicagoreader.com/columns-opinion/opinion/vaxxing-our-kids/
For those of us at a certain age, it's easy to imagine a situation where Bell Telephone cut off your service because you said something the government didn't like. Of course, back then, liberals didn't have their heads up their backsides and would have fought such clear civil liberty abuses. The press would most likely have chimed in. No longer.
A tip of the hat is due the goons at the alphabet agencies, whose success in getting an entire generation to shit on their own core beliefs is nothing short of impressive.
Authoritative sources, my tuchis. One example suffices to illustrate how shitty and biased has been the Times reporting on COVID mRNA vaccines. They show a graphic of two immunologically independent variables. One graphic variable tells us that the vaccines are 13-times better at preventing serious disease compared to the stat in un-vaccinated populations. The other graphic variable tells us that they're five-times better at preventing transmission (probably an inflated stat, but that's beside the point). The Times then conflates the two independent variables in one sentence, telling us that the vaccines are good at protecting against serious disease and spread. This is pure propaganda. The stats clearly say that they're less than half as effective at preventing spread compared to their efficacy at preventing serious illness. And social media honchos are apparently unable to comprehend this --- or they're unwilling to buck the trend that automatically sees legacy media as "authoritative." As Mad Magazine used to parody the Times -- "All the news that fits, we print."
Well I reckon in the absence of modern tools for communication, we will just have to start talking with our neighbors directly. Who needs "meta", who needs "twitter"....who needs an effing smart phone if you think deep about it. Who needs that? Not I. I'm imagining the time coming up soon when I throw my smart phone in the river - good riddance.