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This argument, much like the “just make your own x” meme, is one of the many hypotheticals that actually saw real world testing in the past two years. These da

This argument, much like the “just make your own x” meme, is one of the many hypotheticals that actually saw real world testing in the past two years. These days, the ”private company so this isn’t 1A” argument oddly reminds me of the omnipresent 200x-era GOP claim that running a federal budget is akin to balancing a household checkbook. Designed to be convincingly simple to state and yet extremely obnoxious to refute to a layperson. Facebook in particular probably wouldn’t even exist without backing from DARPA, the “defunct” TIA program, and a host of other spooky agencies, corporations, and individuals (Palantir and Thiel for instance). Skip over 18 years of also-damning stuff to when the public/private mask started to blatantly slip in 2020: Since then, we’ve had multiple leaks, whistleblowers, etc demonstrating overt collaboration between the government and social media companies to censor, ban, and shape narratives. Not a lawyer, don’t know how you’d frame a 1A lawsuit, but it is absolutely unacceptable that our digital public square is being operated by companies that clearly serve as “Bill of Rights Avoidance” shell corporations for the intelligence agencies and now the Executive Branch writ large. It’s like everyone forgot about Snowden. This sort of highly suspicious take should be everyone’s default position at this point, particularly in tech. And no, you absolutely cannot “just build your own Project Lifelog if you don’t like it”.

seadan83 4y ago
I don't know if I'm saying, just "build your own if you don't like it". More, if you don't like it, don't use it (eg: if you don't like Arby's, don't go there). Though, I do concede that these platforms/apps/companies are very monopoly-like and that certainly creates its own gravitational pull and challenges to competitors. Do you have any references for further information about how the government supported Facebook? If Facebook received some support from the government, does that make their platform a public square? What would that threshold be? I'm really suggesting that "open to the public" does not mean "public". Hence, while anyone can sign on to 'Facebook', the nature that they pay for their servers, to develop software, have a business model, etc.. does not make it a public square even if it might feel like that at times (it's a private corporation, which means nobody has a first amendment right to do whatever they want with that software - there actually is no freedom of expression in the US, just freedom from government persecution to express what you want - that is what is written in the constitution)
- trafficante 4y ago
  >Do you have any references for further information about how the government supported Facebook? If Facebook received some support from the government, does that make their platform a public square? What would that threshold be? Some of what I mentioned is covered in a very roundabout way in this Vice article [1] while the Palantir/Thiel connections (as well as info on early FB executives being “former” CIA employees/contractors) is on FB’s Wikipedia page. There’s a decent NYT write up from ~2010 on some of the DARPA connections but I’m having a hell of a time finding it right now. As far as I know, there’s less of a smoking gun so much as there’s a series of very big dots that are hard NOT to connect to the intelligence agencies. You can search up some of the stuff below and draw your own conclusions. Much like with PRISM etc, where security researchers weren’t exactly surprised at the content of the Snowden leaks, the alphabet agency connections to SV are pretty apparent but we’ll never see documented proof without another Ed Snowden. Eg: DARPA’s Total Information Awareness program was established post-9/11 with the stated goal of creating a total digital panopticon. It was officially canceled due to public outcry. That said, several of its programs have popped back up over the years and many analysts believe it was just broken up into classified chunks - SAFE HOME [2] being one of the more recent and obvious examples of an old TIA project resurfacing. Lifelog was another TIA project that was essentially “Facebook’s social graph but with satellite tracking and bio surveillance for added creepiness”. It was shutdown one day before Facebook launched [3]. Basically there’s a whole lot of very odd circumstantial evidence (usually the only kind of evidence you can get regarding active intelligence programs) that heavily suggests a link between early FB and DARPA/CIA. It’s very similar to Palantir and suggests that the main outcome of the negative public response to TIA was to push it underground and into “private” hands. It absolutely glows in the dark (RIP Terry) and should be subject to the same rules and Constitutional restrictions as the agencies that aided its birth and certainly still play a huge internal role to this very day. [1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbqdb8/15-years-ago-the-military-tried-to-record-whole-human-lives-it-ended-badly https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbqdb8/15-years-ago-the-mili... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/22/white-house-considers-new-project-seeking-links-between-mental-health-violent-behavior/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/22/white-hou... [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_LifeLog https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_LifeLog
scarface74 4y ago
Is the answer giving government more power? Conservatives love “the free market” and “small government” when it suits them. These are the same politicians who are opposed to net neutrality. It’s much easier to create an alternative social media platform than create an alternative ISP.

seadan83 4y ago

I don't know if I'm saying, just "build your own if you don't like it". More, if you don't like it, don't use it (eg: if you don't like Arby's, don't go there). Though, I do concede that these platforms/apps/companies are very monopoly-like and that certainly creates its own gravitational pull and challenges to competitors. Do you have any references for further information about how the government supported Facebook? If Facebook received some support from the government, does that make their platform a public square? What would that threshold be? I'm really suggesting that "open to the public" does not mean "public". Hence, while anyone can sign on to 'Facebook', the nature that they pay for their servers, to develop software, have a business model, etc.. does not make it a public square even if it might feel like that at times (it's a private corporation, which means nobody has a first amendment right to do whatever they want with that software - there actually is no freedom of expression in the US, just freedom from government persecution to express what you want - that is what is written in the constitution)

trafficante 4y ago
>Do you have any references for further information about how the government supported Facebook? If Facebook received some support from the government, does that make their platform a public square? What would that threshold be? Some of what I mentioned is covered in a very roundabout way in this Vice article [1] while the Palantir/Thiel connections (as well as info on early FB executives being “former” CIA employees/contractors) is on FB’s Wikipedia page. There’s a decent NYT write up from ~2010 on some of the DARPA connections but I’m having a hell of a time finding it right now. As far as I know, there’s less of a smoking gun so much as there’s a series of very big dots that are hard NOT to connect to the intelligence agencies. You can search up some of the stuff below and draw your own conclusions. Much like with PRISM etc, where security researchers weren’t exactly surprised at the content of the Snowden leaks, the alphabet agency connections to SV are pretty apparent but we’ll never see documented proof without another Ed Snowden. Eg: DARPA’s Total Information Awareness program was established post-9/11 with the stated goal of creating a total digital panopticon. It was officially canceled due to public outcry. That said, several of its programs have popped back up over the years and many analysts believe it was just broken up into classified chunks - SAFE HOME [2] being one of the more recent and obvious examples of an old TIA project resurfacing. Lifelog was another TIA project that was essentially “Facebook’s social graph but with satellite tracking and bio surveillance for added creepiness”. It was shutdown one day before Facebook launched [3]. Basically there’s a whole lot of very odd circumstantial evidence (usually the only kind of evidence you can get regarding active intelligence programs) that heavily suggests a link between early FB and DARPA/CIA. It’s very similar to Palantir and suggests that the main outcome of the negative public response to TIA was to push it underground and into “private” hands. It absolutely glows in the dark (RIP Terry) and should be subject to the same rules and Constitutional restrictions as the agencies that aided its birth and certainly still play a huge internal role to this very day. [1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbqdb8/15-years-ago-the-military-tried-to-record-whole-human-lives-it-ended-badly https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbqdb8/15-years-ago-the-mili... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/22/white-house-considers-new-project-seeking-links-between-mental-health-violent-behavior/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/22/white-hou... [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_LifeLog https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_LifeLog

scarface74 4y ago

Is the answer giving government more power? Conservatives love “the free market” and “small government” when it suits them. These are the same politicians who are opposed to net neutrality. It’s much easier to create an alternative social media platform than create an alternative ISP.