Tag Archives: Elizabeth warren

News, Observation, Politics

How the Supreme Court Could Make Your Life More Dangerous: new video by Robert Reich

Video

Below we’ve embedded the new video, along with the text of the video.

Your life could get a lot more dangerous. Republican appointees on the Supreme Court seem poised to strip away basic safety standards for our workplaces, our food, our air and water. 

Congress gives federal agencies the authority to enact regulations that protect us in our daily lives. Congress defines the goals, but leaves it up to the health and safety experts in those agencies to craft and enforce regulations. I know regulations don’t sound very exciting, but they’re how our government keeps us safe.

Remember when lots of romaine lettuce was recalled because it was causing E.coli outbreaks? That was the Food and Drug Administration protecting us from getting sick. Working in a warehouse? The Occupational Safety and Health Administration sets standards to ensure you don’t breathe in dangerous chemicals like asbestos. Enjoying the fresh air on a clear, sunny day? Thank the Environmental Protection Agency for limiting the amount of pollution that can go into our air.

These agencies save lives. Since OSHA was established a half-century ago, its workplace safety regulations have saved more than 618,000 workers’ lives.

Republicans have been trying to gut these agencies for decades. Now, with the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority solidly in place, they have their best chance yet.

In January 2022, the Supreme Court blocked OSHA’s vaccine-or-testing mandate from going into effect, which was estimated to prevent a quarter-million hospitalizations.

The Court claimed that Covid isn’t an “occupational hazard” because people can become infected outside of work, and that allowing OSHA to regulate in this manner “would significantly expand” its authority without clear Congressional authorization.

This is absurd on its face. Section 2 of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 clearly spells out OSHA’s authority to enact and enforce regulations that protect workers from illness, injury, and death in the workplace. Congress doesn’t need to list every specific workplace hazard before OSHA can protect workers.

What this ruling tells us is that the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court are intent on gutting the power of agencies to issue regulations.

This term, the Court will also hear a case regarding the EPA’s authority to enforce the Clean Water Act. If the Court undermines the EPA’s authority, it will put our environment – and our health – at risk. Remember when the Cuyahoga River caught on fire because it was brimming with oil, acid, and factory chemicals? That’s what we may be returning to.

And what’s next? Will they gut the Federal Trade Commission and put us all at risk of being defrauded? Target the Securities and Exchange Commission and deregulate the financial sector, sparking another financial crisis?

Beware. If Republican appointees on the Supreme Court succeed in gutting regulatory agencies, we all lose. This agenda is anti-worker, anti-consumer, and anti-environment. The only thing it’s good for is corporate profits.

Related Articles:

Check out Lynxotic on YouTube

Find books on Music, Movies & Entertainment and many other topics at Bookshop.org

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

Hot-Lynx

Congress want Amazon to Prove Bezos didn’t give perjured Testimony

Above: Photo / Lynxotic

While still CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos testified in Congress by video conference on July 29, 2020. Now, there are at least Five members of a congressional committee alleging that he and other executives may have lied under oath andmisled lawmakers.

In a press release by the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee the lawmakers state that they are giving Amazon a “Final Chance to Correct the Record Following a Series of Misleading Testimony and Statements”.

CurrentAmazon CEO Andy Jassy, who, in July, succeeded Bezos is being asked to respond to the discrepancies, including information found by The Markup published in a recent article

Read More at:

NPR

Related Articles:

Find books on Music, Movies & Entertainment and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Enjoy Lynxotic at Apple News on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

Business, News, Observation, Politics

After Docs ‘Show What We Feared’ About Amazon’s Monopoly Power, Warren Says ‘Break It Up’

Leaked documents reveal the e-commerce company’s private-brands team in India “secretly exploited internal data” to copy products from other sellers and rigged search results.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday renewed her call to break up Amazon after internal documents obtained by Reuters revealed that the e-commerce giant engaged in anti-competitive behavior in India that it has long denied, including in testimonies from company leaders to Congress.

“These documents show what we feared about Amazon’s monopoly power—that the company is willing and able to rig its platform to benefit its bottom line while stiffing small businesses and entrepreneurs,” tweeted Warren (D-Mass.) “This is one of the many reasons we need to break it up.”

Warren is a vocal advocate of breaking up tech giants including but not limited to Amazon. The company faces investigations regarding alleged anti-competitive behavior in the United States as well as Europe and India. The investigative report may ramp up such probes.

Aditya Karla and Steve Stecklow report that “thousands of pages of internal Amazon documents examined by Reuters—including emails, strategy papers, and business plans—show the company ran a systematic campaign of creating knockoffs and manipulating search results to boost its own product lines in India, one of the company’s largest growth markets.”

“The documents reveal how Amazon’s private-brands team in India secretly exploited internal data from Amazon.in to copy products sold by other companies, and then offered them on its platform,” according to the reporters. “The employees also stoked sales of Amazon private-brand products by rigging Amazon’s search results.”

As Reuters notes:

In sworn testimony before the U.S. Congress in 2020, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos explained that the e-commerce giant prohibits its employees from using the data on individual sellers to help its private-label business. And, in 2019, another Amazon executive testified that the company does not use such data to create its own private-label products or alter its search results to favor them.

But the internal documents seen by Reuters show for the first time that, at least in India, manipulating search results to favor Amazon’s own products, as well as copying other sellers’ goods, were part of a formal, clandestine strategy at Amazon—and that high-level executives were told about it. The documents show that two executives reviewed the India strategy—senior vice presidents Diego Piacentini, who has since left the company, and Russell Grandinetti, who currently runs Amazon’s international consumer business.

While neither Piacentini nor Grandinetti responded to Reuters‘ requests for comment, Amazon provided a written response that did not address the reporters’ questions.

“As Reuters hasn’t shared the documents or their provenance with us, we are unable to confirm the veracity or otherwise of the information and claims as stated,” Amazon said. “We believe these claims are factually incorrect and unsubstantiated.”

“We display search results based on relevance to the customer’s search query, irrespective of whether such products have private brands offered by sellers or not,” the company said, adding that it “strictly prohibits the use or sharing of nonpublic, seller-specific data for the benefit of any seller, including sellers of private brands.”

Warren was not alone in calling for the breakup of Amazon following the report.

“This is not shocking. But it is appalling,” the American Economic Liberties Project said in a series of tweets. “Independent businesses have sounded the alarm for years—providing evidence that Amazon stole their intellectual property.”

“We said back in 2020 that a perjury referral was in order—and it still is,” the group added, highlighting testimony from Bezos and Nate Sutton, Amazon’s associate general counsel. “But Amazon will remain an anti-business behemoth, flagrantly breaking the law and daring policymakers to stop them.”

Highlighting a report from a trio of its experts, Economic Liberties added that “it’s time to break Amazon up.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by JESSICA CORBETT and republished under a Creative Commons license  (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Related Articles:

Find books on Political Recommendations and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Enjoy Lynxotic at Apple News on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

Books, Business, Economics, Finance, Observation, Politics, Tech

In: ‘Antitrust: Taking on Monopoly Power from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age’, Amy Klobuchar Takes on World’s Greatest Challenge

Photo Collage / Lynxotic

Is the title above wrong? Depends who you ask…

In her new book, Klobuchar tries to connect the historical roots of antitrust actions to populism and her own ancestry. That’s not all, however. Although difficult, particularly for readers who are not legal scholars, there’s an important and deeper historic thread here that she is aiming to contribute to.

That job is to find a way to illuminate how the digital age, with all its challenges and complexities, can come to terms with the simple question of how to measure damage that is being done by big tech monopolies, through sheer size, power and lack of external accountability.

Moreover, there is an issue of how antitrust law and practice veered away from the remedies and goals, first established during the Gilded Age, toward a laissez-fair, anti-regulatory stance that gained steam in the Regan years.

That shift is, in many ways, to blame for the current extreme state characterized by dangerous levels of concentrated wealth and power by big tech.

This effort may seem like one that is doomed to being ignored by all but the already long-since converted. But, make no mistake, it is a topic that will grow, reverberate and become more relevant as the current administration in Washington consolidates and comes into its own.

“People have just gotten beaten down. I wanted to show the public and elected officials that you’re not the first kids on the block with this. What do you think it was like back when trusts literally controlled everyone on the Supreme Court, or literally elected members of the Senate before they were elected by the public?”

— Amy Klobuchar, in Wired interview with Steven Levey

When President Biden recently nominated Lina M. Khan to the Federal Trade Commission, in addition to Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu, who announced earlier this month he would join the National Economic Council, he set forth a clear path for an antitrust direction that has the potential to be more than just rhetoric and window dressing.

Khan is an unequivocal proponent of a new era of antitrust, one that is, not coincidentally, along the lines of what Klobuchar advocates. Likely sharing these ultra clear views from her long and celebrated research, Khan, along with Wu, is a key addition to Biden’s growing roster of Big Tech critics, and there is already a blueprint for actions and cases that will build to a crescendo over the next several years.

Buy at
Bookshop
Walmart
Amazon

Biden’s call for the repeal of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, meanwhile, a hotly contested and possibly flawed legal shield some feel is exploited by Internet platforms, is another indicator of the tenor of the coming actions.

In a sense, with this bestselling book [on Amazon: #1 in Political Economy, #1 in Government Management, #1 in Business Law (Books)] the gargantuan task of connecting the culpability of massive, nearly infinitely powerful behemoths, each in it’s own territory, to the social and economic catastrophes that they’ve brought down on the world.

However, while politicians like Klobuchar may not have the charisma and energy to set a fire under the population, it is the very deeds themselves that will eventually conspire to ignite an uprising and put pressure on the government and the courts to take real, substantive measures. And with young, new faces and minds such as possessed by Khan and Wu, ultimately there is a bulwark of criticism against monopolist abuses building in government and among the public at large.

“I am never saying, ‘Get rid of their products.’ But let’s have more of the products that give you more choices. You can keep one product, but it’s better to have other products, because we’re not China.”

Amy Klobuchar in Wired interview with Steven Levey

 In response to Klobuchar’s quote above Steven Levey in Wired wrote; “In other words, Facebook could keep it’s main app, but the public might benefit if Instagram and WhatsApp were not Mark Zuckerberg productions.” 

While this kind of “moderate” view may not be the earth shattering remedy that would turn the juggernauts around in a heartbeat, from Zuckerberg’s perspective it would not be ideal, to say the least.

Buy at
Bookshop
Walmart
Amazon

And, since we have seen the unfettered and viral growth of big tech, for at least a quarter century in some cases, and since there was a aura of hero worship afforded their leaders for most of that time, a break-up, such as that could ultimately turn out to be the beginning of more sweeping changes. A welcome outcome for those that have been harmed the various monopolistic structures that rule nearly all our lives, or at least it seems, at times.

Levey then asked Klobuchar why legislators so often embarrass themselves in hearings with irrelevant partisanship, clueless technical questions, and time-wasting grandstanding. Her response;

“Welcome to my life,” she says. “I get it—there’s going to be hearings that are irritating to people who know a lot. But that’s a great argument for tech to use because they don’t want this oversight.” 

Amy Klobuchar in Wired interview with Steven Levey

In defense of using the word “antitrust in the title, while also advocating its eradication in future she responded:

 “Well, I thought antitrust was an interesting word”. “It’s not only about this body of law; it’s also about not trusting anyone.”

Amy Klobuchar in Wired interview with Steven Levey

Perhaps it is more the course of history that led to the current and incredibly extreme situation and obscene dominance by big tech that is what should never have be trusted to arise in the first place.

Perhaps these firms will one day be seen, looking back from future generations, as a temporarily necessary, but evil mistake of history, as was the toothless interpretation of laws that led to their rise from “scrappy underdog startups” into malignant monopolies run amok.

Recent Articles:

Find books on Music, Movies & Entertainment and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Enjoy Lynxotic at Apple News on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

Books, Business, Entertainment, Observation, Tech

Facebook Acquires Giphy while Congress steps in with Antitrust Suspicions

A long, slow, converging consensus is coming to expose Facebook, Amazon and Google

On Friday, May 15th, Facebook announced that it will be buying Giphy— the world’s most popular GIF site on the internet, social media, and messaging services. Giphy is already an integrated part of iMessage, Tinder, Slack, and Twitter, and Facebook now owns it for a reported $400 million.

Acquiring a GIF-generating site seems inconspicuous enough for Facebook, the social media conglomerate that already owns Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus VR, and many other subsidiaries. Nevertheless, the purchase raised some red flags in Washington, especially for Democrats like Senators Elizabeth Warren (MA) and Senator Amy Kolchubar (MN) as well as Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) and David Cicilline (RI), all of whom have been critical of major corporate mergers throughout the coronavirus pandemic.

click to see “Facebook the Inside Story” and help
Lynxotic and all independent booksellers.

Because of COVID-19, many small businesses are facing immense hardships. They are in a vulnerable state, desperate for money and far more likely to sell out. By contrast, major corporations not only have the funds to stay afloat, but also the continued stability to take advantage of the smaller, more jeopardized companies. Senator Warren and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez have thus proposed the “Pandemic Anti-Monopoly Act” to halt all big-business mergers until the situation gets better for their small business counterparts.

Hence, Facebook’s purchase of Giphy comes at a dubious time. Giphy is no small time company, but Facebook’s ownership of it could still lead to increased exploitation down the road. Because the site is integrated into so many different apps and services already, it will provide Facebook with covert entrance’s into all of those platforms’ data.

As brought to the foreground in 2016’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook keeps an overabundance of data on each of its users. The site tracks and analogs everything we do, and that information does not remain confidential. Facebook sells it to other services, businesses, or even political assets, usually (but not always) for the sake of marketing.

With WhatsApp and Instagram already in house Giphy appears to be a bridge too far

With Giphy under the site’s control, Facebook’s data-mining efforts will overreach even farther. It will be able to access information from our Tweets, iMessages, Tinder matches, and even business correspondences via Slack. Evidently, the purchase entails a whole lot more than just the newfound ability to insert GIFs directly into our statuses.

click to see “Life After Google” and
help Lynxotic and all independent
bookstores.

The politicians against business mergers during the pandemic are by-and-large the same people who have been fighting Facebook for the past few years, demanding heightened security and increased regulations for big-tech across the board. Right now, the Department of Justice is planning antitrust charges for Google and many attorney generals are investigating Amazon for their monopolistic control over the market. If these cases prove successful, we might finally see some legislation passed to keep the long-unrestricted tech moguls in check.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has not yet commented directly on the Giphy acquisition, nor has he provided a public response to the “Pandemic Anti-Monopoly Act” proposition. In typical Facebook fashion, all the website has really done to help in these trying times is create a new “hug” reaction icon. It’s a nice addition, but hardly makes up for the company’s clear manipulation of the present circumstances.

If there is one shred of good news amidst the purchase so far, it is that Giphy will thankfully not be removing their library of embarrassing Mark Zuckerberg GIFs. Moreover, we can also take solace in the fact that there are many more GIF-worthy Zuck moments to come.

Find books on Big Tech, Sustainable Energy, Economics and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Enjoy Lynxotic at Apple News on your iPhone, iPad or Mac and subscribe to our newsletter.

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page.

Business, Entertainment

Entertainment and Politics Collide as Nancy Pelosi goes to Hollywood

Photo Collage / Adobe Stock / Getty / Lynxotic

Lines Blurred in Tinsel-town in Must Win Election Year

Variety magazine, the renowned weekly entertainment trade, always sports pictures of familiar Hollywood faces on its covers. From Oscar winners to television tycoons, the trade typically displays stars synonymous with entertainment success. Thus, subscribers were likely surprised to find Nancy Pelosi on the cover of the March 3rd issue, and for the 79-year-old Speaker of the House to be the primary subject of the feature article.

While some might enjoy going to the movies or turning on the TV to forget about complicated, real world matters such as politics, global warming, or high-strung elections, the gap between entertainment and government is narrowing. Mainstream movies and shows are reflecting contemporary ideologies more transparently than ever before, and celebrities are using their influences to voice political thoughts. For evidence, one needs to look no further than this year’s politically fueled acceptance speeches at the Golden Globes and Oscars.

Click to Buy “A Very Stable Genius” and at the same time help Lynxotic and All Independent Local Bookstores. Also Available on Amazon 

Granted, politics have always overlapped with entertainment. Ever since the first televised presidential debate took place between Nixon and Kennedy in 1960, political theater has become a swaying source of amusement for many constituents. This became evermore prevalent in 1980, when former movie star Ronald Regan took office and led the nation with an endearing Western-cowboy-like kind of performance. Add in immense marketing campaigns, choreographed speeches, and pre-prepared rallies meant to evoke emotional responses for certain candidates, and elections start looking a lot like movie or TV productions, ongoing serials aired in episodic bursts on morning and nightly news programs.

This took on an entirely new level of truth in the 2016 election, when a literal reality TV star won the republican ticket and eventually took home the general election with an unprecedentedly theatrical campaign. The trend has continued in the media ever since, as Donald Trump now sits in the oval office and has been a goldmine of riveting, controversial stories over the past four years.

American politics are no longer the dry, niche subject that they were pre-Trump, and behaving apolitically is hardly acceptable anymore. This new push of activism has found its way into Hollywood quite palpably. Being that moviemakers and stars have lots of money and influence, several politicians have made friends with powerful members of tinsel town. As Variety outlined in its Pelosi article, the Speaker of the House has strong support and personal relations from the likes of producers Katie McGrath, JJ Abrams, Damon Lindelof, David Zaslav, and James L. Brooks.

The “Stay in your Lane” refrain no Longer Applies for Hollywood Stars

Meanwhile, many starts have publically endorsed candidates for the 2020 election. Before Super Tuesday, actor Michael Douglas supported Mayor Michael Bloomberg and actor/producer Seth MacFarlane co-hosted events for Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Meanwhile, Senator Elizabeth Warren has the support of John Legend, Chrissy Teigen, Jonathan Van Ness, and Scarlett Johanson amongst others in the industry, while Joe Biden has Tom Hanks, Michelle Kwan, and Alec Baldwin in his corner. Recently, you also may have noticed actor Danny DeVito lending his charisma to ads for Senator Bernie Sanders, who also has support from Ariana Grande, Dick Van Dyke, and Mark Ruffalo.

This is just the surface. Each candidate has an exhaustive list of celebs backing him or her. Each candidate except one, that is—the one currently in the White House.

Click to buy “Dark Towers” and at the same time help Lynxotic and All Independent Local Bookstores

While people in Hollywood are taking their picks of which candidate they want to support, the industry as a whole is uniting against Donald Trump. The foremost rhetoric behind each celebrity endorsement implies that this election’s primary objective should be defeating Trump. Thus, the film and television community (a community that has always been left leaning) is likely to rally behind whomever wins the Democratic nomination and vote Blue no matter what come November.

Endorsing Trump has proven to be unwise in Hollywood. The handful of actors, directors, and producers who openly supported Trump in 2016 have had trouble finding work since the election. Agencies and management companies often hesitate to represent Trump supporters, for Producers will rarely hire them. Simply stated, in a Liberal industry, those in charge do not want Trumpish toxicity on their sets or in their offices.

Vote Blue No Matter Who is Standard Stance

Actors who backed Trump in 2016 such as Dean Cain, John Voight, and Antonio Sabato Jr have been all but blacklisted for the past few years. Sabato has even moved to Florida and taken on a construction job, ending his career in Hollywood for lack of work. Meanwhile, steadfast Republican celebrities such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Clint Eastwood have retracted their support for Trump despite his political affiliation.

Click to Buy “The Ghost Map” and at the same time help Lynxotic and All Independent Local Bookstores. Also Available on Amazon and Walmart.

Evidently, the ~3,000 mile distance between Hollywood and Washington DC is shrinking, as candidates are crisscrossing the continent for support from powerful and influential individuals. Historically speaking, this is hardly anything new, as celebrities have played roles in politics for decades. In World War II, the federal government solicited studios to create and distribute wartime propaganda films. During McCarthyism, troves of creative people were put on trial for creating films with Communist sentiments. As recently as the Obama administration, former Disney CEO Bob Iger held close relations and political counsel with the President, giving Mickey Mouse an influential voice of our federal government.

At the same time, political theater is getting all the more theatrical these days. The news feels more like “House Of Cards” everyday. It is entertaining, but unlike drama television, the consequences of real life politics do not end after 58 minutes. They remain authentic and oftentimes quite harsh. Trump proved in 2016 that a melodramatic, highly staged campaign can be triumphant in the modern era. In order to defeat him now, the Left has to hold their own in this sphere, but they are doing their best to uphold truth and dignity while giving the constituents the show they crave.

Enjoy Lynxotic at Apple News on your iPhone, iPad or Mac

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchased from this page.

Politics, Tech

Facebook Updates Logo to ALL CAPS in Colorful, Hopeless Re-Branding Stunt

Graphic Collage / Lynxotic

Facebook Attempts to Rebrand itself with New, Colorful All-Caps Logo for all Owned and Acquired Apps

In the fifteen years that Facebook has graced our computer screens, the website has undergone many aesthetic and technical changes, yet its lower-case, white printed name set against a blue background has stood the test of time as the company’s unmistakable corporate logo. However, even the most familiar things must evolve at some point. Despite its long run, Facebook’s corporate logo is finally changing and the change is far from subtle.

Facebook’s updated logo no longer reads “facebook” but instead shouts “FACEBOOK” in all-caps, slightly bolded Helevetica font. According to Mark Zuckerberg, the new logo is meant to offer a sense of security and optimism, with its soft edges and comfortable spacing reminding users that the website was created to bring people together.

Perhaps even more dramatically than the all-caps decision, though, Facebook’s new logo is also losing its signature blue and white color combo. The company’s name will now be written in transitional colors, changing hue depending on the application it is seen on.

The logo will be seen on multiple applications, as Facebook also announced that it will start branding itself more straightforwardly on the company’s other apps and sites. One may not know that Facebook owns Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, Workplace, Portal, and Calibra. The company plans on making this Facebook-family of services more blatantly related, printing “from Facebook” on each homepage using the new logo.

New Facebook Marketing Stunt Comes Amidst Political Strife and Corporate Pitfalls

This re-branding marketing stunt could not have come at a more astute time for Facebook. The company has been in hot water for well over a year at this point, and the pot is beginning to boil over.

During the 2016 election, the Cambridge Analytica British Consulting Firm used Facebook to steal data and falsely advertise for the Trump campaign. Since then, the company has been accused of profiting off of fake-news and not doing enough to police their content. 

New multi-colored version of the Logo released as an animated GIF

Just a couple weeks ago, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez grilled Mark Zuckerberg before Congress, exposing the young CEO’s ignorance as well as his lack of initiative to address Facebook security issues and protect its users. 

Similarly, Senator Elizabeth Warren has scathingly called out Facebook during her Democratic presidential campaign. Part of her anti-corporation platform includes breaking up the big tech conglomerates—that means Apple, Google, Amazon, and yes, Facebook. Essentially, Warren gave a voice to the widely accepted belief that Facebook currently holds too much control and has become an unchecked power. 

No—Facebook is not on great terms with its users nowadays. More and more people are deleting their accounts on the site that once ruled social media, following the #deletefacebook trend growing across the globe. Sadly, there is not a whole lot Facebook can do about the underlying causes, though. As dumbfounded as Zuckerberg may have seemed before congress, these cyber-security questions are far from simple. 

For now, Facebook is doing what it can for itself. It is changing its image, hoping that the updated logo and united approach to the multiple apps will revamp interest in the site and maybe just cover up some of the hostility it currently faces. A new logo doesn’t actually solve anything. Facebook will still remain the same old site it always has been. So how do we take the new logo? As a sign of corporate reformation on Facebook’s behalf? Or as a symbolic front to distract user’s from the company’s inaction? Or is it just a logo? A marketing ploy like any other meant to make the website more modern and appealing to digital passerbys.

Find books on Big Tech, Sustainable Energy, Economics and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Enjoy Lynxotic at Apple News on your iPhone, iPad or Mac and subscribe to our newsletter.

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page.

Politics, Tech

Zuckerberg claims Facebook is the ‘5th Estate’ while in Reality he runs Algorithmic Dictatorship

Collage / Lynxotic

Imagine a Monster Dictator who claims he wants to Free us all from “Traditional Gatekeepers” while he Controls the Ultimate Gate with Iron Fist

Here, a man who almost single-handedly controls the world’s largest social network – with users counted in billions, implies that there is any connection whatsoever with heroes of the history of journalism and what is now disparaged as “The Media” but was once called the 4th Estate.

People having the power to express themselves at scale is a new kind of force in the world — a Fifth Estate alongside the other power structures of society. People no longer have to rely on traditional gatekeepers in politics or media to make their voices heard, and that has important consequences.

– Mark Zuckerberg

Claiming that, somehow, thousands of independent newspapers with tens of thousands of writers and editors, challenging governments and investigating corruption and lies is similar in any way to a digital dictatorship that controls every word or image through its algorithms, and has as its only goal to maximize private profits, is an outrage – and yet this point has only been hinted at in even the most critical coverage.

Express Ourselves at Scale? Really? As long as His Algorithm deems it in Facebook’s Monetary Interest

Mentioning the “traditional gatekeepers” blocking voices, as if his private, for-profit platform has no gate and makes no decision in which voices are heard and by whom is a lie, told in plain sight, so enormous it is shocking.

Except, as he clearly hopes, on hearing vague pronouncements about a fantasy world, most will just switch focus, away from the real way his digital empire functions to some kind of vague discussion of “free speech”. And, in the case of political advertising, speech that he collects millions of dollars to promote and propagate, with no thought of actual free speech that will be drowned out and silenced by his dictatorial decision. That’s the real gatekeeper at work.

Talking about “free speech” as having any role whatsoever on a platform where exposure is controlled 100% by the same network’s private corporate ownership is worse than any Jospeh Goebbles propaganda the Nazi’s ever came up with and is an Orwellian nightmare come to life.

Since Zuckerberg’s speech was clearly designed to confuse and cover up this simple, obvious fact, using Trump style repetition of simple irrelevant lies to influence people to abandon the more complex truths, the underlying truth bears repeating.

Yelling “fire” in a Crowded Theater is of no use if the Crowd can be digitally disappeared at any time

Claiming that “censorship” of “free speech” is not appropriate for a platform that controls who sees and hears that content 100% at all times has to stand as the criminal obfuscation of the century.

As misleading propaganda it is brilliant in its stupidity. To imply that any speech at any time is “free” on a platform that controls access by each and every user at all times is ludicrous at best and vile propaganda at worst.

Have millions of dollars to spend to ensure that your lies are seen by millions? No problem. Have inflammatory disgusting views to share? Sure, the algorithms love anything that increases “engagement”.

On the other hand, as members of the actual 4th Estate found out during the “Great Purge” of 2018, if Zuckerberg & Co decide that you should not be seen for any reason, usually a reason that pertains to increasing profits for Facebook, then you are disappeared, Pinochet style, and can forget about your “free speech” being heard or seen ever again.

Nice way to build a “5th Estate “ to protect us from “traditional gatekeepers”.

Algorithmic Crimes are the Real Story, bigger and worse than Traditional Antitrust Violations

Just mention the word “algorithm” and we all tend to get glossy-eyed and begin to lose interest.

Never mind that the results of your Google search are controlled by algorithms that “decide” what you should be allowed to see or not, while what you may buy is controlled by the private, infinitely biased algorithm employed by Amazon, whose only goal is to increase its own profits at your expense. And then there’s Facebook.

A master of dystopian science fiction would be hard pressed to envision a more sinister, hellish world than the one we already inhabit, where what you think, what you think you “know”, what you believe and what you consume are all controlled by what are essentially robot brains, owned and controlled by evil private corporations with trillion dollar market caps.

And Mr. Zuckerberg has the nerve to talk about “Free Speech” on Facebook? In the words of Greta Thunberg “How dare you!”, and as in the struggle against the powers that profit from the accelerated extinction of future generations, it’s time to end the Algorithmic Dictatorships and, via the real Fourth Estate and free the billions that are, as yet, unknowingly victimized, by whatever means necessary.

Find books on Big Tech, Sustainable Energy, Economics and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Enjoy Lynxotic at Apple News on your iPhone, iPad or Mac and subscribe to our newsletter.

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page.

Business, Economics, News, Tech

Warren’s Facebook Ad Calling For Breakup Is Removed, Then Restored

Egg On Face Of Facebook, Again.

Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren recently made a point, and then proved that point with the “help” of Facebook. The Massachusetts Senator posted an ad calling for the “break up” of tech giants Facebook, Google and Amazon. The video advertisement was removed by Facebook. Their reasoning for the removal was that the ad was in breach of Facebook’s advertising and copyright policy (the Facebook logo was used in the ad). The removal was reversed by Facebook based on a stated policy of wanting to allow a “robust debate”. The ad wasn’t expensive. It was only $100, but proved in the end to make an invaluable point.

The ensuing bru-ha-ha was worth many times the original sum by bringing more attention and focus to the very issue the ad was meant to highlight:

Read More: Facebook Acquires Giphy while Congress steps in with Antitrust Suspicions

The Democrat Senator served as Barack Obama’s Director of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She’s also an aggressive opponent of “big banks” and unlawful practices committed by Wall Street. Warren’s argument was contextualized by antitrust law violations by Microsoft in the 90’s. Warren also explained how these laws lead to the opportunity for websites and tech companies to flourish. Yet, these (aforementioned) tech giants aren’t playing by the rules. 

Opposing Monopolists: a rising trend among Democrats

Warren acknowledged the invaluable place that these companies play in our lives, during her speech at SXSW. She also affirmed that they need to be “broken up” in order to promote innovation. 

“Facebook, Amazon, and Google. We all use them. But in their rise to power, they’ve bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field in their favor.

It’s time to break up these big companies so they don’t have so much power over everyone else.

Presidential Candidate Elizabeth Warren

The Senator isn’t the only high profile Democrat taking big tech companies to task, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was a voice of opposition in the recent Amazon HQ to Queens deal.

Read More: Big Tech headed for a Storm of Changes once the Novel Coronavirus Fades from Center Stage

Find books on Big Tech, Sustainable Energy, Economics and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Enjoy Lynxotic at Apple News on your iPhone, iPad or Mac and subscribe to our newsletter.

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page.