6 ms·

Big Tech Has Helped Trash America

anewaccount2021 6y ago
Kara will eventually figure out that writing things on the internet doesn't matter anymore (including my comment). One person in facepaint wearing a fake animal pelt moves the needle more than the collected works of Swisher, Greenwald, Taibbi, etc etc. Just another pithy editorial for you to harumph.
- paulpauper 6y ago
  how does he move the needle by being arrested and things reverting to how they were
  - anewaccount2021 6y ago
    Nothing has reverted, they are creating a permanent green zone around the Capitol right now.
    - BrianOnHN 6y ago
      Are you saying that was his intention?
      - anewaccount2021 6y ago
        Not explicitly, but surely everyone who has a longstanding axe to grind with the government is pleased to see a wedge driven between the establishment and the citizenry Its real change. What real change is created by pithy think pieces in WaPo, NYT, substack etc? None. The readers are invested in the establishment so they'll never offer more than the odd tish-tosh and go back to their lives. Take for example, established media discussions of climate change or Apple labor practices -the dear readers offer a witty condemnation in a comment but don't actually change their habits. edit: I can see why my comments earn dowvotes...HN readers think they are disruptors but in reality we are just the dweeb army slaving away to hold it all together
        the-dude 6y ago
        You are receiving up-votes too. Keep speaking up.
        nickthemagicman 6y ago
        Just want to say one person here is a centrist and as they say "actions speak louder than words" and also.. "I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" People aren't stupid no matter what the left paints the right as ...and I don't know if the left can continue to put a lid on this simmering pot of resentment from tens of millions of SILENCED people. The anger has a reason and can't just be ignored and hidden away. I think they made an egregious error and this anger is going to come back at them at some point.in the future.
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
        Until recently these people were not silenced in any significant way. That they thought they were was part of their whole warped world view where holding the presidency, a slim majority of the senate, and a slim minority of the house means that they are oppressed and unheard. It's like radical evangelicals who claim that Christians are being oppressed while a majority of our elected government identifies as Christian including the president of the united states (none of which have ever not identified as Chrsitian).
        nickthemagicman 6y ago
        Until recently? They were recently silenced down to the AWS hosting level. I don't know if any of this has changed by now. But censorship is never a good idea.
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
        > Until recently? ...yes? Until all the social media banning started, these people were definitely, obviously, unambiguously not being silenced in any significant way.
      - AnHonestComment 6y ago
        Here’s his Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake_Angeli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake_Angeli Apparently, he was trying to cast a spell by chanting as he walked down “ley lines”. Alternatively, someone with his background knew that he’d likely provoke a melodramatic response which in turn would turn more people against the establishment.
- darkerside 6y ago
  Just like everything Trump said, words didn't matter until they did. But the real world actions wouldn't have happened without the words. Of course words matter. Including yours.
  - User23 6y ago
    I often observe there’s a reason the first amendment was put before the second. A man with a rifle can cause dozens of deaths. A man with a big enough megaphone can cause millions of deaths. It’s funny that the specious argument that the second amendment doesn’t protect arms the framers didn’t have available isn’t applied to the first amendment. The Internet and mass persuasion is way more unforeseeable than a rifle that shoots faster. Perhaps it’s time for common sense speech control? This isn’t unconstitutional, freedom of speech is not unlimited under the constitution it’s just a matter of where to draw the lines.
    - jsjohnst 6y ago
      > isn’t applied to the first amendment There are quite a few limits on the first amendment, especially in the context of the current discussion and they’ve been covered both in the media and in comments here on HN at length.
- refurb 6y ago
  You’re downvoted but you have a point. We listen to the talking heads all day but action often has a bigger effect. And that’s not just Trump supporters but also BLM.
k33n 6y ago
It’s really bizarre that these people all insist that President Trump “incited” the attack. There’s a sinister undertone of hate and othering behind this narrative. They want revenge against 75,000,000 (and growing) populist right-leaning voters.
- deleted 6y ago
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- fakedang 6y ago
  Actively encouraging your supporters to charge into Capitol during a congressional vote is what we English speakers call "incitement".
  - the-dude 6y ago
    Could you provide a source for this? I am unaware of this reading.
    - fakedang 6y ago
      https://www.khou.com/mobile/article/news/nation-world/trump-save-america-rally-speech-before-capitol-riot-transcript/507-07d5ea40-a357-4bd9-bdb2-6e5cc384f325 https://www.khou.com/mobile/article/news/nation-world/trump-... Read the transcript. He actively exhorts his supporters to fight for the Constitution "today", exhorts Mike Pence to "do the right thing", telling them to fuck the media in general and in general inciting hatred against everything, with direct calls for encouraging them to "stop the steal" and put the pressure on Congress and Mike Pence - actively encouraging them to force Pence to use his power to call for a recertification.
      - the-dude 6y ago
        Access denied. Never heard of khou.com before either.
        fakedang 6y ago
pixxel 6y ago
Seems to me that now the US election is over the MSM is back to sniping at the big tech that stole its eyeballs.
- pluc 6y ago
  Yeah let's not blame stupid people who fall for idiotic conspiracies, let's blame the platform they read it on. The only reason this doesn't happen with books is because they're too stupid to read them.
  - rcstank 6y ago
    Why can’t both be blamed?
  - bluedino 6y ago
    What about people who see a twenty second video clip with no backstory, no facts, and react without using any logic?
  - the-dude 6y ago
    I assume you mean the weapons of mass destruction, capable of reaching the capitals of Europe? Because that has been the most disruptive conspiracy of this century so far.
  - throwaway9980 6y ago
    You don’t think it happens with books? My dad has a house full of books. He isn’t a talk radio guy and doesn’t do the Facebook that the kids are into these days. Instead if you look closely at his library you will find plenty of titles by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Michael Savage, Bill Bennett, and on and on. It’s a small percentage of what he reads, but it’s how he gets his ideology and has been for 20+ years.
    - secondcoming 6y ago
      How do you get your ideology?
djohnston 6y ago
So has the degradation of journalism.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  Which happened because Big Tech stole all their ad revenue.
  - deleted 6y ago
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- pgrote 6y ago
  The lack of self reflection in journalistic circles is amazing, but big tech ruined them, too. 1) Writing to appease Google rather than readers. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxLKUM0FlCw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxLKUM0FlCw) (http://experiment.cjr.org/experiment/features/the-evolution-of-headlines-at-the-new-york-times/ http://experiment.cjr.org/experiment/features/the-evolution-...) 2) Producing video to appease Facebook. (https://digiday.com/media/the-new-york-times-facebook-live/ https://digiday.com/media/the-new-york-times-facebook-live/) (https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/facebook-live-new-york-times.php https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/facebook-live-new-york-times....) 3) Have everyone tweet to appease Twitter. (https://www.niemanlab.org/2015/01/dont-try-too-hard-to-please-twitter-and-other-lessons-from-the-new-york-times-social-media-desk/ https://www.niemanlab.org/2015/01/dont-try-too-hard-to-pleas...) and how it is going (https://twitter.com/nyttypos https://twitter.com/nyttypos). Ms. Swisher is one of the tech pundits I always read.watch when she interviews someone. Perhaps she can do this with the new administration and find out why we allow the failed social media experiments to continue.
  - deleted 6y ago
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- eternalban 6y ago
  One could not happen without the other. The notion of misinformation being enabled by "Big Tech" is subtly but unintentionally leaking information. There are two logical possibilities when mass communication platforms (old or new flavors) in unison raise the specter of "contagious information" that affects deplorable heads: 1 - Mass media owners have been, since the very beginning of mass communication, aware of a curious fact not really understood by the rest of us: ideas and thoughts conveyed via mass communication are unthinkly accepted and internalized by large subset of society. (The birth of modern advertising occurs around the same time.) 2 - Simply having substantial control of mass communication is not enough if establishment views, and version of news, are countered by alternative views and news, in context of a political class that no longer enjoys public confidence. Madison avenue pretty much is built on #1. Collapse of USSR, itself a master of #1 technologies, could not be prevented by mere state propaganda (#2). During the entirety of Cold War, no one jammed Soviet and setellite propaganda (such as Radio Moscow). At the same time, Soviets would jam the signal of Western mass communication organs (such as BBC). In the 90s, the political class in this country caved to capital class and previously illegal consolidations of media, finance, and banking were made permissible again. The degredation in the quality of journalism (and even cultural products) visibly began at that point (if you were paying attention). Now, having bet on #1 effects during 20 years of entirely questionable (and in times illegal) behavior by the entire political class of US -- 9/11, Iraq wars, and the collapse of the financial sector in '08, and role of the "journalism" in covering these events -- in a political environment that gradually brought us to American 'Pravda' moments, #2 phenomena raised its ugly head. Alt-news was a reaction to bullshit-news of American "journalism". (Hi "Judtih"! ...). It is also quite necessary to point out that many of these mushrooms of American night spewing strange theories smell like intelligence service cointelpro. We need to reimpose the pre-90s restrictions on consolidations in Banking, Finance, and Media and reinstate the regulatory 'firewalls' that protected the integrity of American political system prior to 90s. A regulatory regime that saw the West face world-class propaganda by Soviets with aplumb and broadcasted the demise of that source of "misinformation" to a world wide audiance, without ever having to resort to ham fisted censorship (with possible exception of the 'red scare' period and it's version of 'cancel culture').
bedhead 6y ago
When people stop saying tropes like big tech are “private companies” and “actions have consequences” every time someone from the wrong political ideology gets deplatformed I’ll take this bitching and moaning slightly more seriously. This says nothing about the comically dysfunctional state of our insanely biased media, of which Kara herself and her brazenly political agenda is a symptom of.
- hnra 6y ago
  Isn't that the point of separating a paper into editorial and opinion? The opinion section should be a place where journalists (or other figures) should be able to voice their concerns on what they see as important. Kara has been pretty vocal during the last few years on her opinion of social media allowing Trump to spread disinformation and try to incite violence. It took inciting an attempted coup and a couple of people dying before they did the right thing. Her opinion seems to be that they shouldn't have let it get that far, seeing as the writing has been on the wall for a long time.
  - bedhead 6y ago
    I'd strongly argue that having an editorial staff has proven to be a catastrophic error for newspapers since it poisons the culture of the newsroom, assigns a political brand to the company (which creates a flywheel where only people of the same ideology are attracted to and eventually accepted at the company whether it's Fox News or NYT), and blurs the lines between opinion pieces and reporting. Today at least, there is no justification for newspapers to have editorial staff at all. Having every media organization drop their editorial department would be an excellent first step in repairing our dysfunctional media.
deleted 6y ago
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daedlanth 6y ago
Relax, we have everything under control, like usual.
neartheplain 6y ago
I'm still surprised at how quickly and permanently Big Finance fell out of the national limelight after the 2008 financial crisis. In my view, big banks and private capital firms have a much bigger impact than Big Tech on the average American's ability to find work and afford housing. My impression is that American press attention shifted to Big Tech around 2012, coinciding with the end of the Occupy movement. I'd be curious to see whether anyone has quantified this shift, such as with NLP analysis of news articles.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  The money printing (QE infinity) is the reason of most of the world's current problems, like the amount of capital misallocation that's been going on for 50 years. Luckily Bitcoin improved on gold as a store of value, so while many are angry, people who understand that having hard money is the most important in current times have an easy life right now.
russellbeattie 6y ago
There's so many MAGA supporters on HN, it's hard to imagine this won't be flagged, but when I look at the pics of the people invading the Capitol, I honestly believe that not a single one of them deserves the technology that's been given them. Millions of man hours dedicated to solving amazing technical problems which allow greater access to information than ever before in human history, and these useless idiots use it to spread lies, disinformation and foment insurrection. We require licenses for operating machinery like cars, and I truly, honestly, and without hyperbole think it's time we do the same for information technology. Spreading misinformation and disinformation has cost the U.S. nearly 400,000 lives and counting. That's worse than the number of car deaths by an order of magnitude. Time for us to act accordingly. Kara wants to blame Big Tech, but I don't. I blame the jerks who abuse and misuse the tech for personal gain, and the idiots who are their willing followers. I loathe Facebook, but it wasn't Zuckerberg inciting people to insurrection. Big tech has been restrained, all things considered. Think about it. Can you imagine if the head of, say, Microsoft, Apple or Google was as mentally ill as Trump? Serious, serious damage could result. You want to drive a car? You go take a test that shows you understand the law, and respect others on the road. You want to use a smartphone to share news about politics? You should have to take a test that shows you understand the law and respect others as well.
- the-dude 6y ago
  I am glad you are such a respectful commenter.
  - russellbeattie 6y ago
    Huh, I detect sarcasm. Did the words "jerks" and "idiots" really upset your sensitive nature that much? Or was it the labeling the outgoing president who tried to cause an insurrection as "mentally ill"? I'm going to have to say, that's about as respectful as one can get on this topic without ignoring reality. Unless you think the rioters were "wonderful and intelligent" and that the president's obvious sociopathic narcissism isn't a sign of severe mental illness.
    - 6y ago
gdubs 6y ago
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...” Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World, 1995. I’ve had this quote in mind at many points this year. The refusal to wear masks, the inability to agree on basic facts, the wildfire spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories. IMHO the only way out of this hole is by doubling down on critical thinking education. Education that focuses not just on skills for a labor market, but skills for thinking. Being able to separate fact from fiction, ‘feels from reals’. An aside: I’ve often felt that writing longhand on paper produces a different result than typing. Something about the deliberate pace. Technology has given us awesome powers, and the ability to blast out our stream of consciousness at hyper speed. We would do well to slow down a little, reflect more, try to fully grasp issues and consider the sources and validity of things before we share them out. But above all, we need to find our way back to truth through science - not just what feels good, but what we can sort out through the full power of our mental abilities.
cm277 6y ago
I am old enough to have used NCSA Navigator and read the Manifesto for Cyberspace and all that net-hippy stuff (and believed it). Cyberspace in the 90s was wide open prairie, a place to settle and built new cultures and civilizations. I was too young to realize that nothing starts from scratch; just like the pioneers that fled poverty and persecution to colonize the prairie, we built cyberspace on the culture we believed in: free market, free speech, growth above all. American libertarian in other words. The descendants of the French or Russian revolutions will happily tell you that that shit don't work. After you've settled that wide open prairie, you need to lay down rules and regulations, a polity. And what we (collectively) have found out that this ends up meaning well-regulated markets and well-regulated speech, enforced by democratically elected (and audited) authorities. Liberal democracies in other words, with bureaucracies and police and courts, not John Galt. So, 'no' to the TFA, we shouldn't restart Tech. We should evolve it, past the Pioneer stage into a proper polity and civilization. Regulate Big Tech, control it. We already have paradigms of what we consider appropriate: we can tell our friends whatever we want (free speech in private communication) but we cannot go on TV or on a newspaper and libel because those media have liability. Why should a tweet that 20 people read have the same restrictions as a tweet to 20M? why can't we pick reasonable rules that police the latter? escalated liability based on reach that Twitter (for example) would be liable for? Will that kill the margins of Twitter and YouTube and Facebook? absolutely, but so what? They are monopolies at a massive scale that our society is already dependent on, like we are on TV, or newspapers or the power grid. They can be fat and rich, just not more powerful than all news publishers in the history of humanity. Combined.
- marniewebb 6y ago
  This. Big tech -- and big pharma, and all the other bigs -- are built to be optimized with a system of shareholder value. They weren't built to optimize for civic engagement and thoughtful dialog. If we want the second -- some of it anyway -- we have to be prepared to give up -- through regulation and governance and then through behavior -- some of the first.
- jsjohnst 6y ago
  > I am old enough to have used NCSA Navigator Not to detract from your core point, but also old enough for the memory of NCSA Mosaic and Netscape Navigator to have merged, it seems. Been happening to me too lately.

anewaccount2021 6y ago

Kara will eventually figure out that writing things on the internet doesn't matter anymore (including my comment). One person in facepaint wearing a fake animal pelt moves the needle more than the collected works of Swisher, Greenwald, Taibbi, etc etc. Just another pithy editorial for you to harumph.

paulpauper 6y ago
how does he move the needle by being arrested and things reverting to how they were
- anewaccount2021 6y ago
  Nothing has reverted, they are creating a permanent green zone around the Capitol right now.
  - BrianOnHN 6y ago
    Are you saying that was his intention?
    - anewaccount2021 6y ago
      Not explicitly, but surely everyone who has a longstanding axe to grind with the government is pleased to see a wedge driven between the establishment and the citizenry Its real change. What real change is created by pithy think pieces in WaPo, NYT, substack etc? None. The readers are invested in the establishment so they'll never offer more than the odd tish-tosh and go back to their lives. Take for example, established media discussions of climate change or Apple labor practices -the dear readers offer a witty condemnation in a comment but don't actually change their habits. edit: I can see why my comments earn dowvotes...HN readers think they are disruptors but in reality we are just the dweeb army slaving away to hold it all together
      - the-dude 6y ago
        You are receiving up-votes too. Keep speaking up.
      - nickthemagicman 6y ago
        Just want to say one person here is a centrist and as they say "actions speak louder than words" and also.. "I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" People aren't stupid no matter what the left paints the right as ...and I don't know if the left can continue to put a lid on this simmering pot of resentment from tens of millions of SILENCED people. The anger has a reason and can't just be ignored and hidden away. I think they made an egregious error and this anger is going to come back at them at some point.in the future.
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
        Until recently these people were not silenced in any significant way. That they thought they were was part of their whole warped world view where holding the presidency, a slim majority of the senate, and a slim minority of the house means that they are oppressed and unheard. It's like radical evangelicals who claim that Christians are being oppressed while a majority of our elected government identifies as Christian including the president of the united states (none of which have ever not identified as Chrsitian).
        nickthemagicman 6y ago
        Until recently? They were recently silenced down to the AWS hosting level. I don't know if any of this has changed by now. But censorship is never a good idea.
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
        > Until recently? ...yes? Until all the social media banning started, these people were definitely, obviously, unambiguously not being silenced in any significant way.
    - AnHonestComment 6y ago
      Here’s his Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake_Angeli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake_Angeli Apparently, he was trying to cast a spell by chanting as he walked down “ley lines”. Alternatively, someone with his background knew that he’d likely provoke a melodramatic response which in turn would turn more people against the establishment.
darkerside 6y ago
Just like everything Trump said, words didn't matter until they did. But the real world actions wouldn't have happened without the words. Of course words matter. Including yours.
- User23 6y ago
  I often observe there’s a reason the first amendment was put before the second. A man with a rifle can cause dozens of deaths. A man with a big enough megaphone can cause millions of deaths. It’s funny that the specious argument that the second amendment doesn’t protect arms the framers didn’t have available isn’t applied to the first amendment. The Internet and mass persuasion is way more unforeseeable than a rifle that shoots faster. Perhaps it’s time for common sense speech control? This isn’t unconstitutional, freedom of speech is not unlimited under the constitution it’s just a matter of where to draw the lines.
  - jsjohnst 6y ago
    > isn’t applied to the first amendment There are quite a few limits on the first amendment, especially in the context of the current discussion and they’ve been covered both in the media and in comments here on HN at length.
refurb 6y ago
You’re downvoted but you have a point. We listen to the talking heads all day but action often has a bigger effect. And that’s not just Trump supporters but also BLM.

k33n 6y ago

It’s really bizarre that these people all insist that President Trump “incited” the attack. There’s a sinister undertone of hate and othering behind this narrative. They want revenge against 75,000,000 (and growing) populist right-leaning voters.

deleted 6y ago
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fakedang 6y ago
Actively encouraging your supporters to charge into Capitol during a congressional vote is what we English speakers call "incitement".
- the-dude 6y ago
  Could you provide a source for this? I am unaware of this reading.
  - fakedang 6y ago
    https://www.khou.com/mobile/article/news/nation-world/trump-save-america-rally-speech-before-capitol-riot-transcript/507-07d5ea40-a357-4bd9-bdb2-6e5cc384f325 https://www.khou.com/mobile/article/news/nation-world/trump-... Read the transcript. He actively exhorts his supporters to fight for the Constitution "today", exhorts Mike Pence to "do the right thing", telling them to fuck the media in general and in general inciting hatred against everything, with direct calls for encouraging them to "stop the steal" and put the pressure on Congress and Mike Pence - actively encouraging them to force Pence to use his power to call for a recertification.
    - the-dude 6y ago
      Access denied. Never heard of khou.com before either.
      - fakedang 6y ago

pixxel 6y ago

Seems to me that now the US election is over the MSM is back to sniping at the big tech that stole its eyeballs.

pluc 6y ago
Yeah let's not blame stupid people who fall for idiotic conspiracies, let's blame the platform they read it on. The only reason this doesn't happen with books is because they're too stupid to read them.
- rcstank 6y ago
  Why can’t both be blamed?
- bluedino 6y ago
  What about people who see a twenty second video clip with no backstory, no facts, and react without using any logic?
- the-dude 6y ago
  I assume you mean the weapons of mass destruction, capable of reaching the capitals of Europe? Because that has been the most disruptive conspiracy of this century so far.
- throwaway9980 6y ago
  You don’t think it happens with books? My dad has a house full of books. He isn’t a talk radio guy and doesn’t do the Facebook that the kids are into these days. Instead if you look closely at his library you will find plenty of titles by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Michael Savage, Bill Bennett, and on and on. It’s a small percentage of what he reads, but it’s how he gets his ideology and has been for 20+ years.
  - secondcoming 6y ago
    How do you get your ideology?

djohnston 6y ago

So has the degradation of journalism.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Which happened because Big Tech stole all their ad revenue.
- deleted 6y ago
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- deleted 6y ago
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pgrote 6y ago
The lack of self reflection in journalistic circles is amazing, but big tech ruined them, too. 1) Writing to appease Google rather than readers. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxLKUM0FlCw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxLKUM0FlCw) (http://experiment.cjr.org/experiment/features/the-evolution-of-headlines-at-the-new-york-times/ http://experiment.cjr.org/experiment/features/the-evolution-...) 2) Producing video to appease Facebook. (https://digiday.com/media/the-new-york-times-facebook-live/ https://digiday.com/media/the-new-york-times-facebook-live/) (https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/facebook-live-new-york-times.php https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/facebook-live-new-york-times....) 3) Have everyone tweet to appease Twitter. (https://www.niemanlab.org/2015/01/dont-try-too-hard-to-please-twitter-and-other-lessons-from-the-new-york-times-social-media-desk/ https://www.niemanlab.org/2015/01/dont-try-too-hard-to-pleas...) and how it is going (https://twitter.com/nyttypos https://twitter.com/nyttypos). Ms. Swisher is one of the tech pundits I always read.watch when she interviews someone. Perhaps she can do this with the new administration and find out why we allow the failed social media experiments to continue.
- deleted 6y ago
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eternalban 6y ago
One could not happen without the other. The notion of misinformation being enabled by "Big Tech" is subtly but unintentionally leaking information. There are two logical possibilities when mass communication platforms (old or new flavors) in unison raise the specter of "contagious information" that affects deplorable heads: 1 - Mass media owners have been, since the very beginning of mass communication, aware of a curious fact not really understood by the rest of us: ideas and thoughts conveyed via mass communication are unthinkly accepted and internalized by large subset of society. (The birth of modern advertising occurs around the same time.) 2 - Simply having substantial control of mass communication is not enough if establishment views, and version of news, are countered by alternative views and news, in context of a political class that no longer enjoys public confidence. Madison avenue pretty much is built on #1. Collapse of USSR, itself a master of #1 technologies, could not be prevented by mere state propaganda (#2). During the entirety of Cold War, no one jammed Soviet and setellite propaganda (such as Radio Moscow). At the same time, Soviets would jam the signal of Western mass communication organs (such as BBC). In the 90s, the political class in this country caved to capital class and previously illegal consolidations of media, finance, and banking were made permissible again. The degredation in the quality of journalism (and even cultural products) visibly began at that point (if you were paying attention). Now, having bet on #1 effects during 20 years of entirely questionable (and in times illegal) behavior by the entire political class of US -- 9/11, Iraq wars, and the collapse of the financial sector in '08, and role of the "journalism" in covering these events -- in a political environment that gradually brought us to American 'Pravda' moments, #2 phenomena raised its ugly head. Alt-news was a reaction to bullshit-news of American "journalism". (Hi "Judtih"! ...). It is also quite necessary to point out that many of these mushrooms of American night spewing strange theories smell like intelligence service cointelpro. We need to reimpose the pre-90s restrictions on consolidations in Banking, Finance, and Media and reinstate the regulatory 'firewalls' that protected the integrity of American political system prior to 90s. A regulatory regime that saw the West face world-class propaganda by Soviets with aplumb and broadcasted the demise of that source of "misinformation" to a world wide audiance, without ever having to resort to ham fisted censorship (with possible exception of the 'red scare' period and it's version of 'cancel culture').

bedhead 6y ago

When people stop saying tropes like big tech are “private companies” and “actions have consequences” every time someone from the wrong political ideology gets deplatformed I’ll take this bitching and moaning slightly more seriously. This says nothing about the comically dysfunctional state of our insanely biased media, of which Kara herself and her brazenly political agenda is a symptom of.

hnra 6y ago
Isn't that the point of separating a paper into editorial and opinion? The opinion section should be a place where journalists (or other figures) should be able to voice their concerns on what they see as important. Kara has been pretty vocal during the last few years on her opinion of social media allowing Trump to spread disinformation and try to incite violence. It took inciting an attempted coup and a couple of people dying before they did the right thing. Her opinion seems to be that they shouldn't have let it get that far, seeing as the writing has been on the wall for a long time.
- bedhead 6y ago
  I'd strongly argue that having an editorial staff has proven to be a catastrophic error for newspapers since it poisons the culture of the newsroom, assigns a political brand to the company (which creates a flywheel where only people of the same ideology are attracted to and eventually accepted at the company whether it's Fox News or NYT), and blurs the lines between opinion pieces and reporting. Today at least, there is no justification for newspapers to have editorial staff at all. Having every media organization drop their editorial department would be an excellent first step in repairing our dysfunctional media.

deleted 6y ago

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daedlanth 6y ago

Relax, we have everything under control, like usual.

neartheplain 6y ago

I'm still surprised at how quickly and permanently Big Finance fell out of the national limelight after the 2008 financial crisis. In my view, big banks and private capital firms have a much bigger impact than Big Tech on the average American's ability to find work and afford housing. My impression is that American press attention shifted to Big Tech around 2012, coinciding with the end of the Occupy movement. I'd be curious to see whether anyone has quantified this shift, such as with NLP analysis of news articles.

xiphias2 6y ago
The money printing (QE infinity) is the reason of most of the world's current problems, like the amount of capital misallocation that's been going on for 50 years. Luckily Bitcoin improved on gold as a store of value, so while many are angry, people who understand that having hard money is the most important in current times have an easy life right now.

russellbeattie 6y ago

There's so many MAGA supporters on HN, it's hard to imagine this won't be flagged, but when I look at the pics of the people invading the Capitol, I honestly believe that not a single one of them deserves the technology that's been given them. Millions of man hours dedicated to solving amazing technical problems which allow greater access to information than ever before in human history, and these useless idiots use it to spread lies, disinformation and foment insurrection. We require licenses for operating machinery like cars, and I truly, honestly, and without hyperbole think it's time we do the same for information technology. Spreading misinformation and disinformation has cost the U.S. nearly 400,000 lives and counting. That's worse than the number of car deaths by an order of magnitude. Time for us to act accordingly. Kara wants to blame Big Tech, but I don't. I blame the jerks who abuse and misuse the tech for personal gain, and the idiots who are their willing followers. I loathe Facebook, but it wasn't Zuckerberg inciting people to insurrection. Big tech has been restrained, all things considered. Think about it. Can you imagine if the head of, say, Microsoft, Apple or Google was as mentally ill as Trump? Serious, serious damage could result. You want to drive a car? You go take a test that shows you understand the law, and respect others on the road. You want to use a smartphone to share news about politics? You should have to take a test that shows you understand the law and respect others as well.

the-dude 6y ago
I am glad you are such a respectful commenter.
- russellbeattie 6y ago
  Huh, I detect sarcasm. Did the words "jerks" and "idiots" really upset your sensitive nature that much? Or was it the labeling the outgoing president who tried to cause an insurrection as "mentally ill"? I'm going to have to say, that's about as respectful as one can get on this topic without ignoring reality. Unless you think the rioters were "wonderful and intelligent" and that the president's obvious sociopathic narcissism isn't a sign of severe mental illness.
  - 6y ago

gdubs 6y ago

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...” Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World, 1995. I’ve had this quote in mind at many points this year. The refusal to wear masks, the inability to agree on basic facts, the wildfire spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories. IMHO the only way out of this hole is by doubling down on critical thinking education. Education that focuses not just on skills for a labor market, but skills for thinking. Being able to separate fact from fiction, ‘feels from reals’. An aside: I’ve often felt that writing longhand on paper produces a different result than typing. Something about the deliberate pace. Technology has given us awesome powers, and the ability to blast out our stream of consciousness at hyper speed. We would do well to slow down a little, reflect more, try to fully grasp issues and consider the sources and validity of things before we share them out. But above all, we need to find our way back to truth through science - not just what feels good, but what we can sort out through the full power of our mental abilities.

cm277 6y ago

I am old enough to have used NCSA Navigator and read the Manifesto for Cyberspace and all that net-hippy stuff (and believed it). Cyberspace in the 90s was wide open prairie, a place to settle and built new cultures and civilizations. I was too young to realize that nothing starts from scratch; just like the pioneers that fled poverty and persecution to colonize the prairie, we built cyberspace on the culture we believed in: free market, free speech, growth above all. American libertarian in other words. The descendants of the French or Russian revolutions will happily tell you that that shit don't work. After you've settled that wide open prairie, you need to lay down rules and regulations, a polity. And what we (collectively) have found out that this ends up meaning well-regulated markets and well-regulated speech, enforced by democratically elected (and audited) authorities. Liberal democracies in other words, with bureaucracies and police and courts, not John Galt. So, 'no' to the TFA, we shouldn't restart Tech. We should evolve it, past the Pioneer stage into a proper polity and civilization. Regulate Big Tech, control it. We already have paradigms of what we consider appropriate: we can tell our friends whatever we want (free speech in private communication) but we cannot go on TV or on a newspaper and libel because those media have liability. Why should a tweet that 20 people read have the same restrictions as a tweet to 20M? why can't we pick reasonable rules that police the latter? escalated liability based on reach that Twitter (for example) would be liable for? Will that kill the margins of Twitter and YouTube and Facebook? absolutely, but so what? They are monopolies at a massive scale that our society is already dependent on, like we are on TV, or newspapers or the power grid. They can be fat and rich, just not more powerful than all news publishers in the history of humanity. Combined.

marniewebb 6y ago
This. Big tech -- and big pharma, and all the other bigs -- are built to be optimized with a system of shareholder value. They weren't built to optimize for civic engagement and thoughtful dialog. If we want the second -- some of it anyway -- we have to be prepared to give up -- through regulation and governance and then through behavior -- some of the first.
jsjohnst 6y ago
> I am old enough to have used NCSA Navigator Not to detract from your core point, but also old enough for the memory of NCSA Mosaic and Netscape Navigator to have merged, it seems. Been happening to me too lately.