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Blocking direct competition is one thing, but what if Twitter starts blocking tweets about VW electric vehicles and promoting tweets about Tesla? It's a very s

Blocking direct competition is one thing, but what if Twitter starts blocking tweets about VW electric vehicles and promoting tweets about Tesla? It's a very strange setup - although not that different from Bezos' and the Washington Post removing all investigative journalism into the CIA / NSA while AWS seeks large services contracts from those government entities.

jrmg 4y ago
Washington Post removing all investigative journalism into the CIA / NSA while AWS seeks large services contracts from those government entities That happened?
- guelo 4y ago
  No
  - photochemsyn 4y ago
    AWS got $10 billion from the NSA last year. Do you really think Bezos' Washington Post is going to be publishing anything that might derail contracts of that value?
    - codetrotter 4y ago
      Why would NSA stop using AWS just because WaPo wrote something about NSA? It doesn’t make sense, really. Only thing that should really matter to NSA in regards to using AWS is, does AWS offer the products they need, at the price they want to pay.
      - photochemsyn 4y ago
        Maybe what matters to NSA bureaucrats making contracting decisions is knowing that Bezos will give them lucrative private sector jobs? Maybe exposing these public-private relationships between black-budget agencies and private tech outfits is something Post editors are now reluctant to examine in any detail? > "Amazon today elected Keith Alexander, a retired four-star general of the U.S. Army, as it newest board director. Alexander was previously director of the National Security Agency and chief of the Central Security Service from 2005 to 2014. (Sep 9, 2020)" Just a coincidence, nothing to see here.
        spaced-out 4y ago
        >Maybe what matters to NSA bureaucrats making contracting decisions is knowing that Bezos will give them lucrative private sector jobs? So wouldn't that mean the last thing they'd do is raise a fuss about what some random WaPo reporter, that Bezos has almost certainly never met, wrote which has probably not even gone viral? Just ignore it and give AWS the contracts...no?
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  The last major work of investigative journalism of that nature at the post was "Top Secret America" with lead reporters Dana Priest and William Arkin (2010): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Secret_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Secret_America Feel free to point to anything even vaguely similar since Bezos took over the post.
  - bonzini 4y ago
    When was the one before? They also didn't publish one for 3 years after 2010 and before Bezos bought the Post.
greggarious 4y ago
To be fair, WaPo (much like NPR) was always more a place to go for geopolitics whitepapers masquerading as reporting, it was usually places like NYT, The Guardian, or Intercept the that did adversarial journalism. Bezos didn't change much in that regard. (Though I did cancel my subscription when they kept insisting on doing tracking even after I paid the guy... if you're gonna be like that when I try to hand you money for your information, I'll steal it and not give you a shred of what you wanted except for a bullshit IP and a fingerprint that claims I'm running WebTV.)
- eternalban 4y ago
  > adversarial Watergate. Also my impression has been that NYTimes definitely does geopolitics - Earth laughably and famously turned "flat" in NYTimes editorial pages*, not the Washington Post's /g. The Intercept can not possibly be classed in the same group (of which I am not exactly a fan, but fair is fair). New York Times is the establishment's (the fabled East Coast Liberals of yore) ideological platform. Washington Post is the establishments institutional (i.e. Congress, CIA, Pentagon, State Department, ...) organ. Wall Street Journal represents the establishment's (petite) capitalist class -- this is why things like Theranos get pounded on by WSJ: the petite capitalist class depends on the fairness of the system. Things like Theranos (and FTX) damage the faith in the system. * https://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/magazine/its-a-flat-world-after-all.html https://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/magazine/its-a-flat-world...
  - greggarious 4y ago
    >Watergate. Fair point, my bad -- I'm a millennial, that's before my time, I'm giving my thoughts as someone who became old enough to stop violating COPPA around "Indecision 2000". >Also my impression has been that NYTimes definitely does geopolitics - Earth laughably and famously turned "flat" in NYTimes editorial pages My impression was WaPo is run by the CIA, and NYT is run by like, at least nine eyes[1]. (With the usual France vs USA bullshit continuing on from the cold war playing out in the opinions pages) >Wall Street Journal represents the establishment's (petite) capitalist class -- this is why things like Theranos get pounded on by WSJ: the petite capitalist class depends on the fairness of the system. I can't comment either way on WSJ because heir paywall works too well LOL -- I haven't read it in years. Forbes was good tho -- that's how I discovered one of my favorite journalists before they moved on to the Times. And I'm not exactly uh... petite... nor particularly capitalist myself. I'm a fan of democracy. Representative or otherwise, take your... pick... but capitalism is an economic system, not a political system, and conflating the two is the path to totalitarianism IMHO :-) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_Providence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_Providence [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement#9_Eyes,_14_Eyes,_and_other_%22third_parties%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement#9_Eyes,_14_Eye...

jrmg 4y ago

Washington Post removing all investigative journalism into the CIA / NSA while AWS seeks large services contracts from those government entities That happened?

guelo 4y ago
No
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  AWS got $10 billion from the NSA last year. Do you really think Bezos' Washington Post is going to be publishing anything that might derail contracts of that value?
  - codetrotter 4y ago
    Why would NSA stop using AWS just because WaPo wrote something about NSA? It doesn’t make sense, really. Only thing that should really matter to NSA in regards to using AWS is, does AWS offer the products they need, at the price they want to pay.
    - photochemsyn 4y ago
      Maybe what matters to NSA bureaucrats making contracting decisions is knowing that Bezos will give them lucrative private sector jobs? Maybe exposing these public-private relationships between black-budget agencies and private tech outfits is something Post editors are now reluctant to examine in any detail? > "Amazon today elected Keith Alexander, a retired four-star general of the U.S. Army, as it newest board director. Alexander was previously director of the National Security Agency and chief of the Central Security Service from 2005 to 2014. (Sep 9, 2020)" Just a coincidence, nothing to see here.
      - spaced-out 4y ago
        >Maybe what matters to NSA bureaucrats making contracting decisions is knowing that Bezos will give them lucrative private sector jobs? So wouldn't that mean the last thing they'd do is raise a fuss about what some random WaPo reporter, that Bezos has almost certainly never met, wrote which has probably not even gone viral? Just ignore it and give AWS the contracts...no?
photochemsyn 4y ago
The last major work of investigative journalism of that nature at the post was "Top Secret America" with lead reporters Dana Priest and William Arkin (2010): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Secret_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Secret_America Feel free to point to anything even vaguely similar since Bezos took over the post.
- bonzini 4y ago
  When was the one before? They also didn't publish one for 3 years after 2010 and before Bezos bought the Post.

greggarious 4y ago

To be fair, WaPo (much like NPR) was always more a place to go for geopolitics whitepapers masquerading as reporting, it was usually places like NYT, The Guardian, or Intercept the that did adversarial journalism. Bezos didn't change much in that regard. (Though I did cancel my subscription when they kept insisting on doing tracking even after I paid the guy... if you're gonna be like that when I try to hand you money for your information, I'll steal it and not give you a shred of what you wanted except for a bullshit IP and a fingerprint that claims I'm running WebTV.)

eternalban 4y ago
> adversarial Watergate. Also my impression has been that NYTimes definitely does geopolitics - Earth laughably and famously turned "flat" in NYTimes editorial pages*, not the Washington Post's /g. The Intercept can not possibly be classed in the same group (of which I am not exactly a fan, but fair is fair). New York Times is the establishment's (the fabled East Coast Liberals of yore) ideological platform. Washington Post is the establishments institutional (i.e. Congress, CIA, Pentagon, State Department, ...) organ. Wall Street Journal represents the establishment's (petite) capitalist class -- this is why things like Theranos get pounded on by WSJ: the petite capitalist class depends on the fairness of the system. Things like Theranos (and FTX) damage the faith in the system. * https://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/magazine/its-a-flat-world-after-all.html https://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/magazine/its-a-flat-world...
- greggarious 4y ago
  >Watergate. Fair point, my bad -- I'm a millennial, that's before my time, I'm giving my thoughts as someone who became old enough to stop violating COPPA around "Indecision 2000". >Also my impression has been that NYTimes definitely does geopolitics - Earth laughably and famously turned "flat" in NYTimes editorial pages My impression was WaPo is run by the CIA, and NYT is run by like, at least nine eyes[1]. (With the usual France vs USA bullshit continuing on from the cold war playing out in the opinions pages) >Wall Street Journal represents the establishment's (petite) capitalist class -- this is why things like Theranos get pounded on by WSJ: the petite capitalist class depends on the fairness of the system. I can't comment either way on WSJ because heir paywall works too well LOL -- I haven't read it in years. Forbes was good tho -- that's how I discovered one of my favorite journalists before they moved on to the Times. And I'm not exactly uh... petite... nor particularly capitalist myself. I'm a fan of democracy. Representative or otherwise, take your... pick... but capitalism is an economic system, not a political system, and conflating the two is the path to totalitarianism IMHO :-) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_Providence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_Providence [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement#9_Eyes,_14_Eyes,_and_other_%22third_parties%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement#9_Eyes,_14_Eye...