[Federalist] Big Tech Thinks You’re An Idiot Child Who Can’t Govern Yourself

You should totally start a Parler analog for Amazon. You can totally call it Chattahoochee, or something equally evocative. You can sell lawn jockeys and nazi repro gear and and all kinds of other free thinking stuff. But you definitely have to ban Holden Caulfield, because you have to draw a line at that kind of smut. People might get upset.

 

Free market conservatives think companies shouldn't be allowed to make free market decisions and run their companies as they see fit.

 

Bit of an orobouros of circular logic for libertarian cons to complain about big tech's state-like powers.

It's almost as if they're screaming and yelling inside their big tent of circus freaks so that the cancel ready Bible thumpers can take on the task for getting Big Government to flex it's Big Beastly powers (that libertarians normally advocate weakening) and tear those tech assholes down a peg.

This doesn't solve the inherent problem that Big Tech is indeed enormous, with valuations the size of a G20 country's GDP. They suffer from power laws that make it hard to regulate or moderate extreme speech at the tail edges, which caused opportunists to leverage their platforms as a way to sow chaos and dissention.

If 1% of 500 million daily messages are explosive, that might be tolerable to a human being but for a country it might slow or grind the country down to a halt.

This is very similar to the problems governments deal with speech and their claimed tolerance for speech. America claims they're very tolerant yet a different Western country like Germany makes it a crime to promote Nazism. It's just happening and evolving on a much faster level in those companies.

The issue ignored is debating how much transparency is required for these algorithms that have enormous powers to divert the traffic of billion+ daily messages.

People saying those controls aren't needed are likely the Parler crowd who have fire proof skin for being in the same forum as those who wanted to burn down the Reichstag. It became that much of a civil and potentially criminal liability.

The framing of the issue also needs improving. Algorithms shouldn't be considered the problem, rather it should be yet another on the list of social responsibilities lazy me first Americans will shrug and collectively ignore.

Make it work and make it better!!

 

Big Tech is right about the D&D for sure!!!

 

After seeing all the Qanon, proud boy, conspiracy theorists come out in full force, Big Tech certainly has a point.

 

Just seems like more of the same cry, over and over.

"The growing movement on the left [actually of huge chunks of corporate America] to censor, purge, block, and suspend, [actually have terms of service for their privately owned platforms], anyone who expresses disfavored views..." [and that's my personal favorite, the "disfavored views" gloss for verifiable falsehoods or statements promoting violence, as if it was as harmless as rooting for the Jets or wearing white pants in winter. I guess Al Qaeda also has disfavored views that we should allow to flourish.]

Also, this construction is one of my personal favorites:
"Let’s be clear about something: this isn’t..." anything but your opinion dressed up as some devastating absolute.

 

This dude really wants the entire D&D turned into his pet project of a trivial subject matter.

Can we at least keep it in one thread? There are signficantly more important issues that are worthy of discussion.

 

"It's so weird -- I can still wear 2, 3, or even 4 masks at once. Bizarre!" said Austin progressive activist Frank Miles as the sun rose and his mask was still firmly in place on his face, exactly as it had been all night. "I don't know what to think about this! Sometimes I just sit around and wait for a notification to pop up on my phone with the latest government advisory on how many masks I should wear, if I should get the vaccine, and whether I should wear pants."

Progressives across the state, however, began to grow worried that they would now have to start to make their own decisions about their health. What's worse, they would have to take responsibility for their actions when it comes to where they go, whether or not they mask, and whether or not they social distance.

"If the government doesn't force me to wear a mask, how will I ever make my own decisions about what's best for me and my health? Oh no!" said one woman as she looked outside and saw children playing. "Children! Having fun! I'm staying inside today!"

 

That's not how masking works. They prevent transmission more than prevent infection.

So it's only as effective as everyone wearing one. Let's say masking is 50% effective preventing infection. Two people in the room masked increases their prevention rate to 75% (1-(.5 * .5)). With 3 people, it goes up 87.5% (1- (.5*.5*.5)).

If one guy says ****-it, you're pretty much rolling the dice on That Guy being infected, so the 3 person group's chances of infection drops down from 87.5% back to 50% or whatever chances That Guy is infected...for everyone. You can fancy this up by throwing in % of locals infected or actual prevention rate of cloth masks, but the principle remains the same.

The slobs who don't mask in a closed area are only spreading their **** to other people.

Very similar to vaccinating children for measles or mumps.

There used to be a day when anti-vaxxers were a fringe liberal thing. Damn that science in politics...

 

If not wearing a mask in public during a pandemic is your last bastion of fighting for your freedoms, you probably need to examine your life and think of something to be passionate about.

 

What an ignorant take on the issue.

 

Conservative humor only works when you make up a absurd strawman of your ideological enemy.

 

That's exactly correct. If the humor starts from something off-base, it fails.