What do you good folks think about that idea? Just because Google is an information monopoly with an ultra-leftist bias that openly discriminates against alternative viewpoints, should we call for the government to regulate them?
This is a damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario and the only reason why anyone would want to regulate Google would be to overtly hurt and diminish them. Although I’m not a fan, whatsoever, of government, something needs to be done with Google. Just based off the firing of James Damore, you see how fucked Google is with their Orwellian way of thinking.
Tucker Carlson discusses that and how right wing personalities on Youtube are being censored. Just last week, YT nuked ten years worth of vids from Lee Stranahan and Paul Joseph Watson has been complaining about his demonization and censorship on YT for months.
Watch.
Thoughts?
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That dude can barely speak. Idiot savant or something. Do not do evil or fake some memo. Interesting times.
This internet censorship has it’s seeds in the financial crisis of 2008. At that time a number of YouTubers who would capture the statements made by Congressmen during debates on the bailout and Americans suddenly began to understand the stupidity of their government at a time of great crisis. The great awakening had begun.
These clips were obtained from CSPAN, a publicly funded station. But by mid 2009, Senator Lieberman, to me a member of the axis of evil (AKA the McCain/Graham/Dodd club), wrote letters to and personally visited Silicon Valley content providers (including Google) apparently threatening legislation against them. Lieberman professed support of the First Amendment but his actions tried to legislate it out of existence. This was also the early stages of SOPA and CIPA.
So Google voluntarily introduced new terms and procedures and started closing down Youtubers. Surprise! The first to go were the CSPAN clips of Congress.
So here we are and the screws get ever tighter each year. At some point, however, it would not be surprising to see Google cut Youtube loose, because it will become too unwieldy, too politically charged and too costly to maintain.
What can be done about their monopoly? I say don’t regulate. Instead provide an open source API to their database for companies in the United States only, much the same way that Microsoft provided an open API to Windows in the 90s. Let American competitors have equal access to this information to shape their own search outcomes while restricting non-American access.
Damore was using company resources as a platform to communicate his personal political opinions that he knew would be controversial. Sure enough, it became such a big problem that the CEO had to cut short his travel to come home to deal with the problem. It most likely disrupted the work environment to such an extent that the only reasonable solution was to remove Damore.
As an employee of a company, you must recognize that your commitment and contribution to the success of the company comes first and foremost. Therefore it is in your best interest to place a higher priority on being productive and doing your part to help the company succeed over your First Amendment Right, especially since you are being paid to do exactly that – put aside your First Amendment Rights between 9am-5pm. You can exercise your First Amendment rights outside of company time.
If you do not believe in the direction that the company is taking, then you can always choose to resign and work for a different company.
You have made some good points but as I understand it Damore was responding to a request for comments on the diversity seminar he was invited to attend, and his document sat around for a month or so before someone leaked a highly edited copy to a website. On the surface it looks like Google will have provide a rather large settlement, and it is possible that certain other websites may be in line for defamation suits.
But in the end, as usual, the lawyers will be the winners if Damore decides to persue it. In any case, I don’t see how Google gets out of this unscathed, unless they fire their CEO and announce some dramatic changes – especially with the DOJ launching investigations into University affirmative action/reverse discrimination claims.
There is an emerging class of “workers” in large companies whose only job seems to be using company resources to spread political opinions.
This is a very interesting point. Persons that are employed on the basis of ideology disguised as diversity may be the very ‘class of workers’ that will destroy a company’s reputation. Sort of the equivalent of swallowing a suicide pill.
The leak of Damore’s document to the internet was probably done by a member this ‘class of worker’ and this has rained down such hell on Google that it may cost the CEO and others their positions.
Kind of like the commissars present in the factories of the old USSR perhaps? There to make sure that the party line is obeyed, production quotas met or falsified, and to scare anyone who might consider thinking for themselves.
There are many monopolies that have developed now because of immense control over networks and platforms. All the FANG companies and more. They also vacuum up immense cash and need fewer and fewer workers.
If history is any guide, America has been here before and whenever things get out of whack government creates laws to breakup monopolies and taxes to siphon some of their profits.
It seems necessary to me to have some countervailing power against the sort of corporate monopoly power that these companies have that control networks and platforms. Otherwise they use their power to continue to influence change over rules that then favour their continued control and financial wellbeing.
This is a different reason to regulate them than for their control over what’s on their network but no less important.
Governments are now sending public messages to one another via Twitter, making it too integral and important to let some scrub CEO and BoD oversee it without regulation.
Google is just about there as well; the power to push certain results over others can be disastrous. On top of that, the Google ecosphere is used by a significant portion of citizens and privy to its most personal information. That’s power right there.
We live in a time where CEOs of most businesses earn way more than the President and a few of these businesses command an obscene amount of cash and assets. At what point do these entities being to rival our own government in terms of power? Is it possible for Apple to use its cash hoard to buy Puerto Rico’s debt then raise an army of millennials to create a Caribbean safe space?
Have you guys Googled, “White Couples” or “American Inventors”, yet?
@skul very interesting results.