> Those who continue to argue that the social media companies are purely private ventures acting independent of US government interests are ignoring reality. Th

> Those who continue to argue that the social media companies are purely private ventures acting independent of US government interests are ignoring reality. The corporatist merger of “private” US social media companies with US government foreign policy goals has a long history and is deeply steeped in the hyper-interventionism of the Obama/Biden era. > “Big Tech” long ago partnered with the Obama/Biden/Clinton State Department to lend their tools to US “soft power” goals overseas. Whether it was ongoing regime change attempts against Iran, the 2009 coup in Honduras, the disastrous US-led coup in Ukraine, “Arab Spring,” the destruction of Syria and Libya, and so many more, the big US tech firms were happy to partner up with the State Department and US intelligence to provide the tools to empower those the US wanted to seize power and to silence those out of favor. It's nice to hear this from Paul. I assumed he would have engaged in the usual lolbertarian hand-waving about private enterprise. And he's right of course. I said it in a poorly-received comment earlier, but we should stop expecting American social media platforms and tech infrastructure to be neutral carriers of information—that's delusional. Like all other media, they are publishing houses with specific agendas. Unsurprisingly that agenda is pro-market, pro-intervention, and anti-populist, due to the material interests of the fabulously wealthy people that own these firms. It's not a mistake that these interests overlap with those of US intelligence agencies and ghoulish NGOs either. You can't beg such people to play fair; you have to disengage and set up parallel institutions. I don't know how to do that of course.