I believe Congress has said TWICE we are not to sell these weapons and to stop any support of what is going on in Yemen. Like everything else, they have just said "screw you, we're doing it anyway".
Trump refuses to open up an FBI investigation into the death of Khashoggi because it could jeopardize the sale of weapons to the country that killed him.
But they are more than willing to go to war over a camera that they intentionally flee into hostile territory, or threaten to put a photojournalist in jail for taking a picture of a letter sent by Kim.
#priorities
To be fair, how do we get an investigation of a murder in an embassy of another country in a third country?
He wasn't an American.
We have NO standing for jurisdiction.
I think there's a lot of evidence already available - I imagine the UN request is really a desire to see that evidence being evaluated and used as the basis for a trial if appropriate.
Khashoggi had plenty of ties to the US. He was resident there and employed by a US company. All of his children were educated there and at least 2 of them are citizens. A case could be brought in the US either:
- based on universal jurisdiction, due to the nature of the crime committed (extra-judicial murder), or
- based on extraterritorial jurisdiction, due to the fundamental interests of the state being affected (murder of someone eligible for protection under US laws).
I accept either rationale would be controversial, but the real obstacle is not legal, but political - Trump is working to protect those responsible in Saudi Arabia, not prosecute them.
Do you even bother fact check any of these things you post? I can't find one other source online that mentions Oregon senators fleeing to Utah. Utah doesn't even border Oregon! Also, state police can't cross state lines so why would they bother to 'threaten' them with death? A bunch of propaganda...
I saw that tweet and didn't post it because I couldn't verify it. What did happen is what I posted before. The lawmakers did flee the state, the militia group DID threaten to protect them by virtue of their arms, and the state GOP is openly mocking that fact on Twitter themselves.
Of course, the larger point here is what I said earlier, which is how if you are a large group of armed, white conservatives, you are granted near impunity for actions that would get anyone else killed. This goes back to the Bundy Boys (again, in Oregon). They literally participated in an armed takeover of federal land and threatened to kill anyone who tried to take it from them, and they were allowed to do anything they wanted for over a MONTH while being filmed by television crews. Does anyone here honestly believe if a group of Black Panthers or group of Muslims did anything like that they wouldn't have been shot on sight?? A group of black men with guns is a gang, a group of latino men with guns is a gang, a group of Muslims with guns are terrorists, and a group of white men with guns is......a militia. Well isn't that nice for them. The other 3 are all criminals and existential threats, while the last one is just some kind of freedom fighter. Now they are issuing threats that the security in the Oregon capital deems legitimate enough to shut it down for a day, and absolutely nothing happens. Again, if a Muslim group issued the same statement the militia did the other day, the FBI would knock down their door within the hour. And we ALL know this.
Moreover, when you preface any statement with "we are armed" you are implicitly stating that you are willing to shoot and kill. In addition, let's say two groups are at a protest about a certain issue. One is carrying cardboard signs, and the other is open carrying guns. The later has effectively taken away the free speech rights of the former. Because the very act of open carrying in a political context is intimidation and says louder than any words "we can kill you at any time, and we want you to know it."
Again, one can take sides on whether fleeing the state to prevent a quorum vote is a legitimate tactic. Both sides have done so. But what you WON'T find on the left is a quote like the one from State Senator Bill Boquist who said about the state patrol being sent to find them "send bachelors and come heavily armed". Wonder what that could mean......
About 10 years ago a group of Democrats from the Texas Legislature fled to Oklahoma in an attempt to prevent a quorum and thus shut down a vote on several bills with which they disagreed. Texas DPS worked with Oklahoma State Police to find the runaways and return them back to Texas. In my opinion, if you are a politician from any party and you flee in an attempt to derail the political process or prevent a quorum or vote then you should be immediately removed from office.
About 10 years ago a group of Democrats from the Texas Legislature fled to Oklahoma in an attempt to prevent a quorum and thus shut down a vote on several bills with which they disagreed. Texas DPS worked with Oklahoma State Police to find the runaways and return them back to Texas. In my opinion, if you are a politician from any party and you flee in an attempt to derail the political process or prevent a quorum or vote then you should be immediately removed from office.
This is a totally reasonable position. What isn't reasonable is those lawmakers tacitly approving of the offered help of a citizen paramilitary organization in a possible stand-off with law enforcement. Again, most of these miltias seem to be operating with absolute impunity based on their privileged place in the societal hierarchy.
I think The television cameras prevented the police from acting sooner in the Bundy case more than the colour of their skin.
If they were black, and there was excessive force used to take them down and it was being being filmed live, there would be rioting across the country in 24hrs.
That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t go the Waco route and a mysterious fire so happens to start and kill them all or something similar to end a live armed showdown.
I think The television cameras prevented the police from acting sooner in the Bundy case more than the colour of their skin.
If they were black, and there was excessive force used to take them down and it was being being filmed live, there would be rioting across the country in 24hrs.
That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t go the Waco route and a mysterious fire so happens to start and kill them all or something similar to end a live armed showdown.
I argued vociferously at the time that allowing the Bundy Boys that long of a leash was a huge mistake and would only embolden future actions by militias and white supremacist groups. The Oregon police wouldn't act because I'm willing to bet alot of them are on the same political spectrum as those who took over the wildlife refuge. The feds weren't acting because they didn't want another Waco or Ruby Ridge. Is still maintain they should have been dealt with the moment they announced their violent intentions. Now here we are. It's 2019 and the same type of groups are leading marches down the street to Trump rallies (the Proud Boys in Orlando) and offering to be the personal security arm of one political party. Again, this is absolutely a preview of what you can expect if Trump loses and then claims the election was stolen from him. It's a powder keg waiting to explode.
"prevent trump" means not to prevent trump from being elected but to prevent their algorithms from being exploited with misleading and actual fake news.
I got to the two minute mark, and turned it off (but then continued watching, just to be proven right), as that is what the executives were pretty much saying in the clips, but were twisted to say it was about their own political ambition. 10:40 mark "A single point of truth for definition of news across Google products," is that. Hilary being sick on the campaign trail, doesn't mean sites pretending to be news can say "She's dying and won't last the 4 years!" which a lot of them did. That isn't a political ambition, that is attempting to stop the spread of misinformation through their products. It has nothing to do with fairness but accuracy.
The hate and racism is a liability thing that was already discussed in this thread with regards to Alex Jones. Alex Jones isn't a conservative. He a con man that peddles in hate and conspiracy. By giving him a platform, which google and youtube did, it sets those companies up for the same civil actions Jones exposed himself too. If those cases are successful, Google and YouTube would have paid the brunt of those lawsuits.
That is what needed to be changed and why. It literally has nothing to do with electing trump, but how he was elected. It has nothing do with "silencing" conservative voices, because most of these people are hiding behind the political label to spout their BS. There is nothing political about what they say.
The whole "fairness part is also a sham." Go ahead and just do an image search of CEO and see what actually comes up and actually visit the sites that are in the top search results. You'll realize that all the pictures either talk about CEOs generically, or news relating to a specific CEO either leaving, being hired, or some other news worthy content like being named CEO of the year. Which means, these sites have manipulated google's algorithms to actually return top results.
The autocomplete is another sham. If you look what is actually being filled in, it's either Donald Trump JR emails (you know the whole Trump Tower/Russia Ordeal) or Donald's Trump contact information. One of them is "sign up for Donald Trump's emails" Do you know what that is? That's trump's campaign paying google to make sure that shows up. It will also still complete the search if a person does submit "Hilary's Clintons Emails"
So ya, feel free to believe what you want to believe.
I partly agree. Alex Jones is a con man, conservative or no. The guy sells phony testosterone supplements and post-apocalyptic survival products. His political opinions are just there to draw people towards the merchandise.
I don't know about other people, but I'm pretty sure Milo Yiannapoulos "hides behind" a conservative identity. Milo has no particular loyalty to conservative ideals; he's just a troll who has found liberals to be an easy target. Claiming to be a conservative is a decent shield, since naturally conservatives would want to protect a fellow Republican from liberal attack.
It's a solid strategy, however unethical. Tribes close ranks under pressure, and there aren't really barriers to joining either the Democrat or Republican tribe. It would be a pretty effective way for a bad person to maintain a good reputation among at least a portion of the populace.
I kinda hate to think how many crooks are actually using that strategy, because it could work for a lot of them.
"Please dot break apart our oligarchy, it'll make it harder for us to manipulate politics"
This is simply more of what we already know and can see in practice on a daily basis, really. They have the capacity to control information, and they are highly ideological and don't profess to be otherwise. The motive and the means are abundant. The selective enforcement is clear. These massive institutions with far too much power are long deserving of regulation as the holders and gatekeepers to the vast majority of the public square that they are. Many if not most public figures live, or die, by these institutions.
But, paradoxically, don't expect the left to get on board with properly regulating these corporations, as you would expect in virtually any other context. They are trying to manipulate the public to ends generally favorable to them on social issues, so they don't find much to complain about.
I will also add that if you actually think Google does these practices, feel free to use other products and boycott them.
I don’t use Chrome. I use Bing search engine. I have an iPhone over an Android and a Surface Pro tablet. Very rarely do I use google products outside YouTube and that is mostly for game reviews and play throughs or an attempt to find something I had already previously viewed from another source.
Besides video sharing (and twitch can catch up to them there), they do not have even close to a monopoly that people want you to believe.
I will also say the alt-right has the resources and the knowledge to do what Fox did in the 90s and start creating their own infrastructure to promote the content they want to push.
I've never subscribed to the libertarian idea that you should just protest big corporations doing active harm in whatever form by just not doing business with them. The power of your individual internet-usage is simply laughable in the face of these powerful entities. That's basically the entire reason we regulate them in various forms for various reasons.
A person not given equal rights to spew whatever they want without the service provider cracking down on them?
Sorry. I still subscribe to the theory that Google is a brand and needs to protect its brand’s image over select individual users who get but hurt because they can’t peddle lies like the video above did by twisting truths to fit a narrative.
There is a difference between “we don’t want Trump elected again,” to “we don’t want the way Trump was elected to happen again.”
So right there, if that is the type of narrative that the “right” want to protect by regulating Googles practises (which many law makers probably wouldn’t understand to begin with) because it’s easier to spread this type of misinformation than actually forming concrete ideas and practices then I am on the side of Google.
Speaking of Google, this case did not involve them directly but https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf/17-1702_h315.pdf, Manhattan Community Access Corp. ET AL. v. Halleck ET AL, decided that private entities are not "state actors" who are subject to the First Amendment--they may block or restrict any content with which they, as a corporation, disagree.
Do you even bother fact check any of these things you post? I can't find one other source online that mentions Oregon senators fleeing to Utah. Utah doesn't even border Oregon! Also, state police can't cross state lines so why would they bother to 'threaten' them with death? A bunch of propaganda...
"Do you even bother fact check any of these things you post? "
Yes. And yes the Republicans are a bunch of treasonous cowards. You see the story on this yet? Not sure how you can miss it if you checked multiple sources.
Oregon Statehouse Shut Down After Lawmakers Flee, Right-Wing Militia Announce Protest While leaving the statehouse before the walkout, one Republican senator implied that police who pursued them should be ready to die: “Send bachelors and come heavily armed.”
About 10 years ago a group of Democrats from the Texas Legislature fled to Oklahoma in an attempt to prevent a quorum and thus shut down a vote on several bills with which they disagreed. Texas DPS worked with Oklahoma State Police to find the runaways and return them back to Texas. In my opinion, if you are a politician from any party and you flee in an attempt to derail the political process or prevent a quorum or vote then you should be immediately removed from office.
I agree. There one of the Democrats caved and came back. The reason they were fleeing was over protecting fossil fuels corporate profits like the Republicans are doing in Oregon. In Texas it was over gerrymandering power grab so while the cause was more important than protecting corporate profits, it was not the right move.
The problem with voting with your dollar is that it costs you a dollar. Worse still, it costs you even more when you vote against the largest companies. If I refuse to use Google because I disagree with one of its practices, I lose multiple unrelated services, and due to Google's sheer ludicrous size, it's not like there are a lot of other options--much less equally strong options.
Real votes, ballot votes, are non-transferable across elections, so using them imposes zero opportunity cost. The right to vote is free and can only be used for one thing--the only sacrifices you make are the ones based on your own interests and principles.
Dollars, by contrast, are hard to get. And not everyone has the same number of them. And we need those dollars for everything else in our lives.
Besides, the impact is pretty darn tiny when it comes to the biggest issues. My vote has only a tiny impact on a presidential election, but my dollar has a far smaller impact on Google. The former is the sum of tens of millions; the latter is the sum of tens of billions.
We have far more power over our government than we have over private corporations. If we're not happy with something in our economic system, we'll get a lot more done if we make demands of our government than if we make demands of a corporation.
The bad news is that liberals and conservatives tend to view each other in terms of caricatures, and folks who follow the news are even more prone to doing so:
Americans who rarely or never follow the news are surprisingly good at estimating the views of people with whom they disagree. On average, they misjudge the preferences of political adversaries by less than 10 percent. Those who follow the news most of the time, by contrast, are terrible at understanding their adversaries. On average, they believe that the share of their political adversaries who endorse extreme views is about 30 percent higher than it is in reality.
I'm guessing it's a feature of the type of content that is deemed newsworthy, whether by traditional media or random folks on the Internet. People don't generally click on articles about how 50% of the United States isn't crazy, so people don't generally write those articles, either--no matter how easy the thesis might be to prove.
Do you even bother fact check any of these things you post? I can't find one other source online that mentions Oregon senators fleeing to Utah. Utah doesn't even border Oregon! Also, state police can't cross state lines so why would they bother to 'threaten' them with death? A bunch of propaganda...
"Do you even bother fact check any of these things you post? "
Yes. And yes the Republicans are a bunch of treasonous cowards. You see the story on this yet? Not sure how you can miss it if you checked multiple sources.
Oregon Statehouse Shut Down After Lawmakers Flee, Right-Wing Militia Announce Protest While leaving the statehouse before the walkout, one Republican senator implied that police who pursued them should be ready to die: “Send bachelors and come heavily armed.”
About 10 years ago a group of Democrats from the Texas Legislature fled to Oklahoma in an attempt to prevent a quorum and thus shut down a vote on several bills with which they disagreed. Texas DPS worked with Oklahoma State Police to find the runaways and return them back to Texas. In my opinion, if you are a politician from any party and you flee in an attempt to derail the political process or prevent a quorum or vote then you should be immediately removed from office.
I agree. There one of the Democrats caved and came back. The reason they were fleeing was over protecting fossil fuels corporate profits like the Republicans are doing in Oregon. In Texas it was over gerrymandering power grab so while the cause was more important than protecting corporate profits, it was not the right move.
Not one of those sources mentions Utah or the fact that only one of the lawmakers threatened anybody. Other than the one asshole this isn't any worse than the Democrats who fled Wisconsin a few years ago.
The bad news is that liberals and conservatives tend to view each other in terms of caricatures, and folks who follow the news are even more prone to doing so:
Americans who rarely or never follow the news are surprisingly good at estimating the views of people with whom they disagree. On average, they misjudge the preferences of political adversaries by less than 10 percent. Those who follow the news most of the time, by contrast, are terrible at understanding their adversaries. On average, they believe that the share of their political adversaries who endorse extreme views is about 30 percent higher than it is in reality.
I'm guessing it's a feature of the type of content that is deemed newsworthy, whether by traditional media or random folks on the Internet. People don't generally click on articles about how 50% of the United States isn't crazy, so people don't generally write those articles, either--no matter how easy the thesis might be to prove.
Interesting article @semiticgod. Did you check out this clickbait article that was embedded in it? More good stuff...
Do you even bother fact check any of these things you post? I can't find one other source online that mentions Oregon senators fleeing to Utah. Utah doesn't even border Oregon! Also, state police can't cross state lines so why would they bother to 'threaten' them with death? A bunch of propaganda...
"Do you even bother fact check any of these things you post? "
Yes. And yes the Republicans are a bunch of treasonous cowards. You see the story on this yet? Not sure how you can miss it if you checked multiple sources.
Oregon Statehouse Shut Down After Lawmakers Flee, Right-Wing Militia Announce Protest While leaving the statehouse before the walkout, one Republican senator implied that police who pursued them should be ready to die: “Send bachelors and come heavily armed.”
About 10 years ago a group of Democrats from the Texas Legislature fled to Oklahoma in an attempt to prevent a quorum and thus shut down a vote on several bills with which they disagreed. Texas DPS worked with Oklahoma State Police to find the runaways and return them back to Texas. In my opinion, if you are a politician from any party and you flee in an attempt to derail the political process or prevent a quorum or vote then you should be immediately removed from office.
I agree. There one of the Democrats caved and came back. The reason they were fleeing was over protecting fossil fuels corporate profits like the Republicans are doing in Oregon. In Texas it was over gerrymandering power grab so while the cause was more important than protecting corporate profits, it was not the right move.
Not one of those sources mentions Utah or the fact that only one of the lawmakers threatened anybody. Other than the one asshole this isn't any worse than the Democrats who fled Wisconsin a few years ago.
I agree. Essentially it's an argument about whether the ends (promoting or blocking policy changes) justify the means (ignoring agreed procedures). While on any particular issue you can always make a case (though different sides will make different cases) that the policy is more important than the procedure, the effect of doing that is that procedures cease to have meaning - and democratic institutions can't function without agreed procedures. On this issue I think there is a clear justification for referring to 'both sides' and I would hope that both sides would now agree that neither side should use this sort of tactic in future .
If the people of Oregon (or Wisconsin) want this, then it's not the minority power's job to shut it down. If the people think it's a mistake, they can take it out on the majority party in the next election. Democracy at work...
Sourcing James O’Keefe? You know it's fake news when it involves O'Keefe.
He's a right-wing huckster infamous for his nonsensical “undercover sting” videos. O’Keefe’s stings are scams. He follow the same pattern: he presents edited footage of whatever con job he's pushing as a sinister left-wing conspiracy. Usually he gets an operative to infiltrate the group and has that operative ask leading questions to low-level members of the group while recording their interactions with a hidden camera. Then he deceptively edits the footage to take everything out of context and create something fake which he will tell you is bad. It's fake.
Not only is it a nothing burger, the "censorship" by a corporate entity is *legal*--check the SCOTUS decision I referenced earlier on this page. Private corporations are not "state actors" and are thus not bound by the First Amendment.
I saw clip of Ted Cruz earlier this morning asking a Google executive if anyone she knew at the company had donated to Donald Trump. As if the basis of whether or not Google should be regulated should hinge on whether enough of the employees donated to his political party.
The argument for regulating Google, Facebook and YouTube would be because they can reasonably be seen as unavoidable public utilities at this point, like phone or electric companies. But hardly anyone on the right is making that argument. Instead, they are claiming martyrdom.
Moreover, much of the conservative fit over YouTube is not about their videos straight-up being taken down. Alex Jones is the only prominent one who was removed from the platform because at this point he is so irresponsible he is a walking lawsuit magnet. It's about de-monetization of certain videos. It's not that they care about free speech (indeed, one of the leaders of this new conservative movement, Candace Owens, thinks tech companies are tyrannical yet literally supports the punishment for flag burning to be losing your citizenship). What they are pissed about is that they can't make MONEY off of it. Has the definition of the first amendment now had a direct deposit feature added to it??
If YouTube is de-monetizing conservative channel hosts then perhaps all those conservatives should get together and found their own hosted video/streaming channel service platform. Sure, you would have to compete against Google/YouTube but then there are "general" stores which compete against Wal-Mart and manage to turn a profit so it is possible.
If YouTube is de-monetizing conservative channel hosts then perhaps all those conservatives should get together and found their own hosted video/streaming channel service platform. Sure, you would have to compete against Google/YouTube but then there are "general" stores which compete against Wal-Mart and manage to turn a profit so it is possible.
The thing is, it wouldn’t get advertisers to actually pay to put their ads in front of these videos.
Do you actually think it is YouTube wanting to demonetize these videos? No it other corporations saying “we don’t want to be associated with this, do not play our ads with this video.”
Comments
I think there's a lot of evidence already available - I imagine the UN request is really a desire to see that evidence being evaluated and used as the basis for a trial if appropriate.
Khashoggi had plenty of ties to the US. He was resident there and employed by a US company. All of his children were educated there and at least 2 of them are citizens. A case could be brought in the US either:
- based on universal jurisdiction, due to the nature of the crime committed (extra-judicial murder), or
- based on extraterritorial jurisdiction, due to the fundamental interests of the state being affected (murder of someone eligible for protection under US laws).
I accept either rationale would be controversial, but the real obstacle is not legal, but political - Trump is working to protect those responsible in Saudi Arabia, not prosecute them.
Do you even bother fact check any of these things you post? I can't find one other source online that mentions Oregon senators fleeing to Utah. Utah doesn't even border Oregon! Also, state police can't cross state lines so why would they bother to 'threaten' them with death? A bunch of propaganda...
Of course, the larger point here is what I said earlier, which is how if you are a large group of armed, white conservatives, you are granted near impunity for actions that would get anyone else killed. This goes back to the Bundy Boys (again, in Oregon). They literally participated in an armed takeover of federal land and threatened to kill anyone who tried to take it from them, and they were allowed to do anything they wanted for over a MONTH while being filmed by television crews. Does anyone here honestly believe if a group of Black Panthers or group of Muslims did anything like that they wouldn't have been shot on sight?? A group of black men with guns is a gang, a group of latino men with guns is a gang, a group of Muslims with guns are terrorists, and a group of white men with guns is......a militia. Well isn't that nice for them. The other 3 are all criminals and existential threats, while the last one is just some kind of freedom fighter. Now they are issuing threats that the security in the Oregon capital deems legitimate enough to shut it down for a day, and absolutely nothing happens. Again, if a Muslim group issued the same statement the militia did the other day, the FBI would knock down their door within the hour. And we ALL know this.
Moreover, when you preface any statement with "we are armed" you are implicitly stating that you are willing to shoot and kill. In addition, let's say two groups are at a protest about a certain issue. One is carrying cardboard signs, and the other is open carrying guns. The later has effectively taken away the free speech rights of the former. Because the very act of open carrying in a political context is intimidation and says louder than any words "we can kill you at any time, and we want you to know it."
Again, one can take sides on whether fleeing the state to prevent a quorum vote is a legitimate tactic. Both sides have done so. But what you WON'T find on the left is a quote like the one from State Senator Bill Boquist who said about the state patrol being sent to find them "send bachelors and come heavily armed". Wonder what that could mean......
This is a totally reasonable position. What isn't reasonable is those lawmakers tacitly approving of the offered help of a citizen paramilitary organization in a possible stand-off with law enforcement. Again, most of these miltias seem to be operating with absolute impunity based on their privileged place in the societal hierarchy.
If they were black, and there was excessive force used to take them down and it was being being filmed live, there would be rioting across the country in 24hrs.
That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t go the Waco route and a mysterious fire so happens to start and kill them all or something similar to end a live armed showdown.
I argued vociferously at the time that allowing the Bundy Boys that long of a leash was a huge mistake and would only embolden future actions by militias and white supremacist groups. The Oregon police wouldn't act because I'm willing to bet alot of them are on the same political spectrum as those who took over the wildlife refuge. The feds weren't acting because they didn't want another Waco or Ruby Ridge. Is still maintain they should have been dealt with the moment they announced their violent intentions. Now here we are. It's 2019 and the same type of groups are leading marches down the street to Trump rallies (the Proud Boys in Orlando) and offering to be the personal security arm of one political party. Again, this is absolutely a preview of what you can expect if Trump loses and then claims the election was stolen from him. It's a powder keg waiting to explode.
"Please dot break apart our oligarchy, it'll make it harder for us to manipulate politics"
I got to the two minute mark, and turned it off (but then continued watching, just to be proven right), as that is what the executives were pretty much saying in the clips, but were twisted to say it was about their own political ambition. 10:40 mark "A single point of truth for definition of news across Google products," is that. Hilary being sick on the campaign trail, doesn't mean sites pretending to be news can say "She's dying and won't last the 4 years!" which a lot of them did. That isn't a political ambition, that is attempting to stop the spread of misinformation through their products. It has nothing to do with fairness but accuracy.
The hate and racism is a liability thing that was already discussed in this thread with regards to Alex Jones. Alex Jones isn't a conservative. He a con man that peddles in hate and conspiracy. By giving him a platform, which google and youtube did, it sets those companies up for the same civil actions Jones exposed himself too. If those cases are successful, Google and YouTube would have paid the brunt of those lawsuits.
That is what needed to be changed and why. It literally has nothing to do with electing trump, but how he was elected. It has nothing do with "silencing" conservative voices, because most of these people are hiding behind the political label to spout their BS. There is nothing political about what they say.
The whole "fairness part is also a sham." Go ahead and just do an image search of CEO and see what actually comes up and actually visit the sites that are in the top search results. You'll realize that all the pictures either talk about CEOs generically, or news relating to a specific CEO either leaving, being hired, or some other news worthy content like being named CEO of the year. Which means, these sites have manipulated google's algorithms to actually return top results.
The autocomplete is another sham. If you look what is actually being filled in, it's either Donald Trump JR emails (you know the whole Trump Tower/Russia Ordeal) or Donald's Trump contact information. One of them is "sign up for Donald Trump's emails" Do you know what that is? That's trump's campaign paying google to make sure that shows up. It will also still complete the search if a person does submit "Hilary's Clintons Emails"
So ya, feel free to believe what you want to believe.
I don't know about other people, but I'm pretty sure Milo Yiannapoulos "hides behind" a conservative identity. Milo has no particular loyalty to conservative ideals; he's just a troll who has found liberals to be an easy target. Claiming to be a conservative is a decent shield, since naturally conservatives would want to protect a fellow Republican from liberal attack.
It's a solid strategy, however unethical. Tribes close ranks under pressure, and there aren't really barriers to joining either the Democrat or Republican tribe. It would be a pretty effective way for a bad person to maintain a good reputation among at least a portion of the populace.
I kinda hate to think how many crooks are actually using that strategy, because it could work for a lot of them.
This is simply more of what we already know and can see in practice on a daily basis, really. They have the capacity to control information, and they are highly ideological and don't profess to be otherwise. The motive and the means are abundant. The selective enforcement is clear. These massive institutions with far too much power are long deserving of regulation as the holders and gatekeepers to the vast majority of the public square that they are. Many if not most public figures live, or die, by these institutions.
But, paradoxically, don't expect the left to get on board with properly regulating these corporations, as you would expect in virtually any other context. They are trying to manipulate the public to ends generally favorable to them on social issues, so they don't find much to complain about.
I don’t use Chrome. I use Bing search engine. I have an iPhone over an Android and a Surface Pro tablet. Very rarely do I use google products outside YouTube and that is mostly for game reviews and play throughs or an attempt to find something I had already previously viewed from another source.
Besides video sharing (and twitch can catch up to them there), they do not have even close to a monopoly that people want you to believe.
I will also say the alt-right has the resources and the knowledge to do what Fox did in the 90s and start creating their own infrastructure to promote the content they want to push.
A person not given equal rights to spew whatever they want without the service provider cracking down on them?
Sorry. I still subscribe to the theory that Google is a brand and needs to protect its brand’s image over select individual users who get but hurt because they can’t peddle lies like the video above did by twisting truths to fit a narrative.
There is a difference between “we don’t want Trump elected again,” to “we don’t want the way Trump was elected to happen again.”
So right there, if that is the type of narrative that the “right” want to protect by regulating Googles practises (which many law makers probably wouldn’t understand to begin with) because it’s easier to spread this type of misinformation than actually forming concrete ideas and practices then I am on the side of Google.
"Do you even bother fact check any of these things you post? "
Yes. And yes the Republicans are a bunch of treasonous cowards. You see the story on this yet? Not sure how you can miss it if you checked multiple sources.
Oregon Statehouse Shut Down After Lawmakers Flee, Right-Wing Militia Announce Protest
While leaving the statehouse before the walkout, one Republican senator implied that police who pursued them should be ready to die: “Send bachelors and come heavily armed.”
Here's some links:
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/449947-oregon-statehouse-forced-to-shutdown-due-to-militia-threat-over-climate
https://www.thedailybeast.com/oregon-statehouse-shut-down-after-lawmakers-flee-team-up-with-right-wing-militias
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a28168996/oregon-republican-senators-militia/
https://www.npr.org/2019/06/24/735413213/for-days-oregon-republicans-are-on-the-lam-over-a-climate-bill
https://www.wweek.com/news/2019/06/24/missing-oregon-senators-are-hiding-out-in-idaho-with-burner-phones/
I agree. There one of the Democrats caved and came back. The reason they were fleeing was over protecting fossil fuels corporate profits like the Republicans are doing in Oregon. In Texas it was over gerrymandering power grab so while the cause was more important than protecting corporate profits, it was not the right move.
Real votes, ballot votes, are non-transferable across elections, so using them imposes zero opportunity cost. The right to vote is free and can only be used for one thing--the only sacrifices you make are the ones based on your own interests and principles.
Dollars, by contrast, are hard to get. And not everyone has the same number of them. And we need those dollars for everything else in our lives.
Besides, the impact is pretty darn tiny when it comes to the biggest issues. My vote has only a tiny impact on a presidential election, but my dollar has a far smaller impact on Google. The former is the sum of tens of millions; the latter is the sum of tens of billions.
We have far more power over our government than we have over private corporations. If we're not happy with something in our economic system, we'll get a lot more done if we make demands of our government than if we make demands of a corporation.
The bad news is that liberals and conservatives tend to view each other in terms of caricatures, and folks who follow the news are even more prone to doing so: I'm guessing it's a feature of the type of content that is deemed newsworthy, whether by traditional media or random folks on the Internet. People don't generally click on articles about how 50% of the United States isn't crazy, so people don't generally write those articles, either--no matter how easy the thesis might be to prove.
Not one of those sources mentions Utah or the fact that only one of the lawmakers threatened anybody. Other than the one asshole this isn't any worse than the Democrats who fled Wisconsin a few years ago.
Interesting article @semiticgod. Did you check out this clickbait article that was embedded in it? More good stuff...
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/the-yuck-factor/580465/
I agree. Essentially it's an argument about whether the ends (promoting or blocking policy changes) justify the means (ignoring agreed procedures). While on any particular issue you can always make a case (though different sides will make different cases) that the policy is more important than the procedure, the effect of doing that is that procedures cease to have meaning - and democratic institutions can't function without agreed procedures. On this issue I think there is a clear justification for referring to 'both sides' and I would hope that both sides would now agree that neither side should use this sort of tactic in future
Sourcing James O’Keefe? You know it's fake news when it involves O'Keefe.
He's a right-wing huckster infamous for his nonsensical “undercover sting” videos. O’Keefe’s stings are scams. He follow the same pattern: he presents edited footage of whatever con job he's pushing as a sinister left-wing conspiracy. Usually he gets an operative to infiltrate the group and has that operative ask leading questions to low-level members of the group while recording their interactions with a hidden camera. Then he deceptively edits the footage to take everything out of context and create something fake which he will tell you is bad. It's fake.
Not only is it a nothing burger, the "censorship" by a corporate entity is *legal*--check the SCOTUS decision I referenced earlier on this page. Private corporations are not "state actors" and are thus not bound by the First Amendment.
The argument for regulating Google, Facebook and YouTube would be because they can reasonably be seen as unavoidable public utilities at this point, like phone or electric companies. But hardly anyone on the right is making that argument. Instead, they are claiming martyrdom.
Moreover, much of the conservative fit over YouTube is not about their videos straight-up being taken down. Alex Jones is the only prominent one who was removed from the platform because at this point he is so irresponsible he is a walking lawsuit magnet. It's about de-monetization of certain videos. It's not that they care about free speech (indeed, one of the leaders of this new conservative movement, Candace Owens, thinks tech companies are tyrannical yet literally supports the punishment for flag burning to be losing your citizenship). What they are pissed about is that they can't make MONEY off of it. Has the definition of the first amendment now had a direct deposit feature added to it??
The thing is, it wouldn’t get advertisers to actually pay to put their ads in front of these videos.
Do you actually think it is YouTube wanting to demonetize these videos? No it other corporations saying “we don’t want to be associated with this, do not play our ads with this video.”