bow before AppGoogleZOn

I posted this on Facebook yesterday:



I said I was going to try to avoid the internet, and anybody wake me if something asinine happens… 48 hours later three giant mega-corporations colluded to crush a little uppity company for not bowing to leftist orthodoxy.

If you conservatives don’t like it here, go start your own place!

Okay.

NOT LIKE THAT!

(Wow. I’m sensing a pattern here)

Now comes the part where leftists suddenly love free enterprise and companies being able to do whatever they want… Okay, can all the small businesses open? Nope. Only companies that benefit leftist orthodoxy get to do what they want, and if you disagree with this double standard, obviously you hate–the leftist has to look at the printed word and try to sound it out–cap e tall ism?

Listening to lefties explaining capitalist philosophy is a lot like listening to militant atheists explaining what your religious beliefs are.

In principle I’m usually in favor of letting businesses do whatever they want. You know what else I’m usually against in principle? Bombing Japan. Yet strangely, after Pearl Harbor, circumstances changed, and things which were previously disagreeable become necessary. Go figure.

So basically, if Home Depot and a cabal of every building supply store in the country wants to ban an entire class of citizens, that’s fine, just grow your own trees, cut them down, and shape them into lumber yourself. Oh… except once you’ve put in the labor and grown the trees, then the saw companies say no chainsaws for you either. I guess you should just build your own chainsaws from scratch.

It’s okay though. All those companies are allied with the political party that hates you and wants to see your kind utterly eradicated from society, because you are bad people who deserve it. And most of the “leadership” on our side says this is fine, and it’s more important to be polite and play by rules the other side forsook a long time ago. When they get around to throwing dissidents into gulags, I’m sure guys like Mitt Romney will still be chiding us for using impolite swear words during our executions.

And this whole thing is a stupid play on the left’s part anyway. (I will admit to some schadenfreude, seeing thousands of pissed off republicans using a quote from lefty hippy George Martin about how ripping a man’s tongue out shows you fear what he has to say).

A giant swath of America already knows Big Tech is biased and full of shit. We all know that they lie and manipulate us constantly. It’s easy to spot because they are so damned bad at it. Even the people who pretend that Big Tech isn’t biased bullshit know that it is, they just lie and pretend to like it because they are shortsighted and think the lies currently benefit their team. Then all of us put up with it because it has basically become the public square (oh, and the government’s closed all the places human beings would actually talk to each other).

So when Big Tech all teams up to crush some little company, it’s going to make more people interested in the little company. Which is ass backwards for Big Tech, because if they’d just left the little oddball alone, it would probably end up wallowing in obscurity like most social media start ups without a critical mass of users. A few weeks ago I saw people saying “lol I don’t want to go to some stupid right wing echo chamber” and now the SAME people are like “omg we have to download the app before Big Tech takes it down” and sharing pics about how to change your settings to keep Apple from deleting it off your phone. Because nothing makes a real American want to do something more than a bunch of scolds telling them they can’t.

Personally, I registered on there as a fallback and I think I’ve posted like twice. But oh, NOW I’m invested.

So it’s stupid business, but there is much worse coming. So much worse, that these idiots can’t even sorta comprehend because they are totally out of touch with most of the country, and their view of us is a laughable caricature.

When tens of millions of people are feeling fucked over and that the system is rigged against them, and the media who are assuring them that everything is in fine working order are the same untrustworthy media who’ve been caught lying to them about literally everything else daily for years, now feel like their voices are being squashed by the same cabal of mega companies that have been lying and manipulating all the information we are allowed to see for years… and an increasing number of these usually calm and responsible, but now angry and disenfranchised people (who are also the ones who make society work and keep the lights on) are starting to think that lefty style stupid political violence might be the only way to be heard… so go ahead and kick them while they are down.

I’m sure that will work out splendidly, with absolutely no long term negative consequences.

And now I’m going to get off the internet again until the next crisis. Honestly, debating with repetitive idiots is the time suck part. So I’m just gonna share my take and then walk away… until they ban me for bad think again, obviously.

###

I posted that yesterday. I really am trying to avoid the internet because responding to the inevitable NPC parade is a time suck of stupidity. Randos just keep on appearing, trying to shame you into compliance with their boring, repetitive, inane narrative talking points (which you’ve probably already rebutted earlier). However, I’m also too opinionated to not say what I think, so I’m just going to drop my take, and then mostly ignore the comments. If there is some entertainment value and a sufficient audience I’ll engage idiots, but for anybody who is just egregiously stupid, I’m going to be a lot faster on the block button. Life is too short to listen to the same idiot gotchas over and over again.

Like I skimmed the comments to this post yesterday, and it was as expected. HUR DUR YOU SAID NO BAKE CAKE! Oh yeah… That’s totally the same thing. Because remember that time the entire baking industry colluded to deny bread to all gay people, and when the free market responded and somebody opened an LGBT bakery the powerful oven industry stepped in to shut them down… You fucking dopes.

Somebody else asked if I thought all these megacorps who are in a symbiotic relationship with the DNC destroying one little social media page was really going to push people further to the edge. That’s SO SILLY, CORREIA (insert vapid gas lighting here). Except it isn’t just this one thing in a vacuum. It’s a bunch of things. It’s business magazines threatening any company who dares to hire evil bad republicans who worked for Literally Hitler with bad press forever. It is one act of stupid civil disobedience being Kristallnacht, while thousands of acts of violence, looting, arson, and murder are fine. It is where congress works being a sainted temple but where you work being expendable. Shut up. You’ve got insurance.


it is all about controlling the public square
One of these things is not like the other

147 thoughts on “bow before AppGoogleZOn”

  1. I bow to no man or corporation.

    I went the first 46 years of my life without them. I’m betting I’ll go the next 46 years without them just fine.

    And yes, right now, my books are on Amazon. That will not last much longer as I’m working to remove them as we speak (it will be a lengthy process, but one I’m willing to undertake.)

    1. If you’re taking your books off of Amazon, please email me at akage222atgmail.com. I want to start networking with people who are carving out their own path in indie pub.

    2. Sure: Get set up with Silver Empire or Castalia et al.

      AND..

      (From Mrs. Hoyt’s comments section)

      I ’m perfectly happy to boycott. I haven’t bought or reviewed a Tor Book in years and I’m not going to until and unless they repent.

      But you have to be kidding me-! Using Amazon’s infrastructure to purchase pure quill Ungood CrimeThink and send money to the merry rebels making it?

      What’s not to love?

      So:

      Boycott every thing else. Use Amazon to find what you want. Call around until you find it elsewhere. Or call the company and order it direct. Then leave a review on the product explaining you bought it elsewhere with an explanation that you don’t support book-burning censorship gestapo like the Amazon staff who trashed Parler

      (And I think Parler is a grift. So what?)

      Then go buy another indie book.

      1. Actually the bloom is off the rose at Amazon. I’m finding that anything available on Amazon and locally is typically cheaper locally. Perhaps El Jeffe is spending too much on rockets?

        Parler may or may not have been legit. It was no where as user friendly as say MeWe but they were better than YouTwitFace. I read that the Parler CEO is suing Amazon Web Services for breach of contract among other things. I hope he wins. I’d even sign up for a class action lawsuit against AWS.

  2. Sooner or later, someone will pop up and hell “whataboutism”.

    “Whataboutism” is a word used by people whose case is completely indefensible, and want to make that someone else’s fault.

  3. And apparently last night when AWS pulled the plug all the servers lost their security and hackers came in and downloaded ALL of that private, personal, protected, information.

    Everything.

    They then spent the night going through the data to find everyone who had been at the rally and the protest in DC and sent that information to the FBI, Homeland, the FAA, etc.
    (Oh, and twitter is okay with them posting about this, because it’s not really doxxing if it’s ebil conserbatibes).

    Apparently if you were on parler and you went to DC, welp, you’re onna no-fly list now, so you can’t fly anymore.

    And of course, even though this is a felony, no body is going to investigate it – because the ‘right people’ did it.

    For the ‘greater good’ you know.

  4. I’ve been seeing the cake-bake thing all over. First off- didn’t that bakery end up LOSING all of their court battles and then going out of business?

  5. What I want to know, amongst all this angst and cries for boycotts, is what are the indies (like myself) and the numerous small businesses who are still surviving by using Amazon’s infrastructure supposed to do about it? Not all of us have the money for our own servers and SEO people.

    Some of us are stuck. And our own allies are going to burn our businesses down to be completely unnoticed by Bezos.

    1. You do what you can. If you have to rely on Amazon, do it, but always keep an eye out for how you can get away, or at least lessen your dependence, on Amazon.

      Also keep in mind that while you may want to continue to use Amazon, Amazon might not want to continue you, so keeping an eye out for other options is important, regardless.

      A couple of years ago, I heard a very important observation: “There’s no such thing as the Cloud. There’s only other people’s computers.” If I recall correctly, it was stated with regards to either cryptocurrencies, or backups. The point of the observation was that you can’t always trust the infrastructure to support you.

      (And that’s true no matter how innocuous you are. Often it’s true for innocuous reasons — such as a decision to end an unprofitable service you happen to rely on!)

        1. They’re both worse – as in, full-goose ‘woke’, and they don’t sell books worth beans.

          At present, Amazon is Hobson’s choice. But as Sarah Hoyt points out, ebooks are a rounding error in their overall business, and if you make sure that you buy nothing but ebooks from Amazon, they will be ‘one sad little Amazon’.

    2. You were always a serf to Amazon if your business doesn’t exist without them.

      Consider how you can grow to afford to hire someone freelance for those tasks or organize a hosting cooperative that shared a few SEO and IT folks.

      1. Hosting, SEO, IT, these are not the problem.

        DISCOVERABILITY is the problem, and there is no technological solution for that. Build the best ecommerce site in the world, and nobody will buy from it if they don’t know it is there.

        Even J. K. Rowling tried and failed.

        A viable competitor to Amazon will eventually appear, I’m sure, but it will take deep pockets and at least one killer feature that Amazon hasn’t got. Nobody has that yet.

    3. Keep at it, but then start exploring alternatives and seeing what you can do there. I say this independent of this current political drama. You never want one group to control your destiny, because they own to much of your life and can start dictating things you may not want to give on.

    4. I’ve already been told to go find something else. 95% of my income is from Amazon (KU to be precise). Nobody can compete. It pays for my rent, my car payment, my wife’s damned medication. What an >I< supposed to do?

    5. See my comment above. Make common cause with places like Silver Empire and Castalia.

      Have a backup.

      Then use Amazon until they force you off while sending e-mail / newsletter instructions on how people can buy your books (small beer for the ‘zons corporate profit) while boycotting everything else. Explain how. Make it easy.

      And always always point out you’re doing it because of the Gestapo staffers on Amazon *forcing* you to do this because of how these “crazy antifa” are making Amazon burn books and smash small businesses like Parler.

      Sure. Parler sucks. But they’ll do it to anyone….

  6. Where do they get off keeping the American people out of the Capitol with armed guards anyway? Why were the visitors’ galleries empty?

    That is OUR house. Congresscritters are just the help.

    Why aren’t we hearing about the BLM and Antifa infiltrators that were shown on video instigating the break-in? The cops opening the ‘barricades’ to let the ‘mob’ into the building?

    Never mind, everybody with more brains than a cockroach knows why.

  7. What CEO will ever assume the risk of using cloud services that can be turned off caprisiously as demonstrated this last week??

    1. Well if it were just the server, it might be one thing. It is the whole system. Almost all websites use programs and services that you contract service from. No one is building the website from the ground up. These services also decided they will no longer do business with Parler. Big tech just crushed a small competitor.

    2. All of them, because “We’re not like those people. AWS will never cut us off.” I have literally had this conversation with Management every year for three years and it never makes any difference. All the bean counters see is that AWS is a monthly expense and servers are capx. Nothing else matters.

  8. Used to play a game called Syndicate Wars. It seems things are heading that way. Large syndicates of companies dominating the market, pushing it whichever way they want.

  9. Yep. Good one Larry. Dont count President Trump out just yet as it aint over. On an aside…. I need to get a few other books of yours (and others Richard), how can I get E copies without going thru big tech like amazon or kindle? Go thru publisher like Baen or what?

    1. I get mine directly from Baen, usually in EPUB format but they have a variety of formats available.

      I read them using the Aldiko app, but there are a lot of reader apps.

      I only use Kindle for free books and those that I can’t get any other way. I don’t trust that someday politically incorrect texts won’t be deleted by Amazon.

  10. I feel ya Larry,
    Listening to people who love to quote Noam Chomsky and have a rabid hate for anyrhing smacking of a conservative viewpoint suddenly spouting off like a bunch of Reagan-era neocons at a william Buckley rally has me shaking my head in annoyance. Where were their fine capitalist sensibilities when Bezos was using tax credits to offset his taxes? Oh wait thats right, Jeff bought the Post and started a spat with potus and now is attacking the rights ability to communicate so hes awesome…

    1. Started off strong but completely lost me with the contradiction of highlighting the left’s transition from “question authority to believe the science”, by following it with the execreble use of the fashionable pejorative “[Trump’s] complete denial of global warming”.

      Maybe takes like that explain some of your loss of traffic.

      1. There is a huge gulf between believing the Timeline du Jour and complete denial.

        I do not expect my house to burn down this year, but I have fire insurance.

        The science is uncertain as to what level of human added CO2 triggers major releases of trapped methane and ocean CO2. The experiment is ongoing. We live in the test tube.

        (And, by the way, conservatarians could use the threat of global warming to do all sorts of conservative and libertarian things. I think a future where rural and suburban homes are off the grid is a very good thing. Running power lines to farms was a New Deal project.)

        1. I remember when I was told in school that if it weren’t for Government, and in particular the New Deal, farms would never have had electricity.

          Just a few years ago, I came to doubt that. Granted, the Tennessee River wouldn’t have been dammed and power lines wouldn’t have been strung all over (or who knows? Maybe this would have been the most economical way to get power to farms after all), but it’s not entirely unlikely that mini-generators, perhaps big enough to power a town, perhaps only big enough to power farms, would have become popular.

          It’s not entirely impossible that our electricity generation would have become a lot more decentralized as a result.

          But in any case, electricity is far too useful a thing to have left farmers without it. Life would have found a way!

  11. I’d like to debunk the “its a private company, the 1st amendment doesn’t apply to them” talking point that both leftists and some shortsighted libertarians are using.

    Yes constitutional rights still apply to you if you are a private company. This is OBVIOUS if you just think of ANY other constitutional rights. Lets switch the right from “freedom of speech” to the “right to life” or “right to property”. Substitute either of those in for freedom of speech and see if the argument makes sense.

    “gee, the constitution does not apply to private individuals, its only the GOVERNMENT that is banned from taking your life/property, a private individual can do whatever they want with your life/property.”

    well, did that argument make any sense when applied to other rights? Of course it didn’t. You cant murder someone or steal from someone just because you aren’t the government.
    It is the governments DUTY to secure the individuals rights. If a private individual or company is violating the 1st amendment then it is the DUTY of the government to stop that behavior just as they would in the case of theft or murder. Taking away someone’s constitutional rights is a crime and it is the governments PRIMARY JOB to stop that.

    from the preamble of the constitution it quite literally sais this is the job of government:
    [We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union do ordain and establish this Constitution to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity]
    (summarized for clarity)

    so as you can see, the constitution EXPLICITLY gives to the government the duty of “securing the blessings of liberty” to the citizens. There is no exception for “unless it is a private business that is taking away their liberty”

      1. I don’t think Section 230 is the problem, and the problem isn’t going to go away even if we repeal Section 230. It can be argued that Section 230 needs to be tweaked, but the biggest problem is we’re now in an environment where we no longer have a culture of free speech, and things are going to go downhill from there.

      2. As has been pointed out elsewhere, Parler et al benefit from Section 230 also, and lack the squadrons of lawyers Big Tech has.

      3. Section 230 is an excellent law, but like the Constitution itself, needs some enforcement provisions. Neither currently have any.

        Section 230 gives immunity from lawsuits to communications platforms like the phone company, but NOT to “publishers”. The difference is that if you’re doing editorial content management, you’re a publisher, not a platform. So Googol and Twatter are exercising editorial control (by kicking us off), proving that they are publishers, and do not get immunity. But nobody is enforcing this.

        1. This.

          There’s also the knotty problem of spam. You need to allow people to remove spam comments, or your comment section will quickly be overrun by spammers. But any provision of law that allows “I removed this comment because it was spam” will end up allowing “I removed this comment because I didn’t like what it said” unless you’re very, VERY careful how you write the law.

          And as I understand it, that’s how Google et al are currently defending their actions: under the section 230 clause that “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.” Of course, they’re not acting in good faith, but that’s a little tricky to prove in court (even if the court takes your case), so so far they’ve been getting away with it.

      4. 230 is fine the issue is it’s not being enforced as stated. It provides protection for those that are not editorializing their content. With how heavy handed bots have become on the major platforms and the large amount of manual bannings for not crimes, I think there is an argument that they are editorializing, and are thus not subject to 230 protection.

    1. you dont really understand this.

      yes, indeed, the consitution only protects against the federal or state government infringing the identified rights.

      that doesnt mean that an individual person can go ahead and infringe these. there are usually state laws against doing so. thus, your examples of a person being able to murder or steal if the rights in the constution didnt protect against it is just wrong. those thingsd would be progtected against by state law.

    2. Now that’s a beautiful rebuttal to the “bill of rights doesn’t apply to private companies” argument. It’s honestly one I hadn’t considered, though I really should have. I’m going to copy this into a Word document so I can hang onto it for posterity. Thank you for posting this.

    3. Uh no.
      The problem is that a company can take away your rights within reason when it’s their property rights we’re talking about.

      This is the problem with simply jumping up and down about “How dare they! We’ve got rights!” about shutting Parler down. Because they do have their own rights.

      And, in a better world, it wouldn’t matter (other than stupidly chasing customers away) that they tried to stomp down on some people and kicked them off their platform. (There’s a reason Adams said the Constitution only works with a moral and religious people.) But we’re in a world where something that was supposed to be free and a million little bits and pieces that self-healed the larger organism by filling in the gaps and breaks has turned into a few large tumors that have choked off everything else.
      SO, despite all of our love of freedom, we need to curtail a few things (in the same vein as anti-trust laws) to get the tumors taken care of.

      1. Concur. Monopoly and collusion are much better avenues for remedy than carping about private companies violating one’s 1A rights.

      2. Semi-concur. I think that anti-trust, monopoly, and collusion are much better ways to deal with this, compared to squawking about non-existent 1A rights to use someone else’s living room as one’s soapbox location.

        But I think that a lot of the problems we’re seeing with how large some of the players are, and thus, how much power they have, is due to the government restricting other people’s freedoms already, giving these guys a tilted playing field to work with. I’m not sure if more curtailment of freedoms is going to be the best solution. Especially considering who is about to take up the reins of power, and how they’d most likely write those regulations.

      3. The issue with Parler is completely different: AWS has contractual obligations with Parler, and AWS has trampled on those obligations.

        My landlord can’t just kick me out of my home without giving me 30 days notice; even with egregious abuse, I have 3 days to make things right before my landlord can evict me.

        This is fundamental contract law.

    4. This is a terrible take on this topic. And mind, I think that what these companies are doing is utter shit.

      But the first amendment very clearly says “Congress shall make no law”.

      You don’t have a 1A right to use Amazon’s server any more than you have a 1A right to post in the comments here. Now, Larry isn’t a censorious assclown, so he’s unlikely to ban people except for the most egregious of acts, but if he chose to start banning people because their username starts with a Q, the first amendment doesn’t come into play at all.

      And it’s not “shortsighted” to understand what the document being referenced actually says. It’s not about constitutional rights not applying when it’s private companies violating them, it’s that the first amendment is very specifically a protection from government action.

      What you are suggesting is tantamount to expropriation of property. Are you sure that you really want to open that can of worms?

      If you want to take a tack that might reasonably get some traction, it seems far more profitable to point out that this activity looks a lot like monopoly and collusion. But dump the 1A line, it’s a complete non-starter.

    5. This is a terrible take on this topic. And mind, I say that while thinking that what these companies are doing is utter shit.

      But the first amendment very clearly says “Congress shall make no law”.

      You don’t have a 1A right to use Amazon’s server any more than you have a 1A right to post in the comments here. Now, Larry isn’t a censorious assclown, so he’s unlikely to ban people except for the most egregious of acts, but if he chose to start banning people because their username starts with a Q, the first amendment doesn’t come into play at all.

      And it’s not “shortsighted” to understand what the document being referenced actually says. It’s not about constitutional rights not applying when it’s private companies violating them, it’s that the first amendment is very specifically a protection from government action.

      What you are suggesting is tantamount to expropriation of property. Are you sure that you really want to open that can of worms?

      If you want to take a tack that might reasonably get some traction, it seems far more profitable to point out that this activity looks a lot like monopoly and collusion. But dump the 1A line, it’s a complete non-starter.

      1. I like your take. But, is there a tie in to government when the private company is using a public accommodation to enforce or implement the will of a political party in order to gain power or reinforce it?

        The social media companies provide a public accommodation that they are not providing evenly. I can have a restaurant and say “No shoes, no service”. But I can’t kick people out because I disagree with there belief system. A Religious person I don’t like walks in, I can’t kick them out. A womyn comes in with green and pink hair I can’t assume she’s a flaming lib and kick xer out. A person can do all these things in the privacy of their own life or home, but when it goes public you cannot. Certainty not in hiring practices and who you service. You can’t even have a private club with paid members and do this. Wasn’t all these things considered with regards to first amendment protections?

        Finally you certainly are not allowed to collude with other companies to punitively affect another company. To me that is one of the most blatantly illegal parts of all this.

        1. Actually, as I just said in another comment to the OP in this thread that’s going to need moderation because of a link, but I wanted to admit my error directly to them, I’m wrong.

          Look up Marsh v. State of Alabama. SCOTUS case from 1946.

          I agree that the collusion is heinous.

    1. I prefer “Neo-robber barons”.
      Not like Vanderbilt, Gould, or Rockefeller et al in steel, railroads, oil and other such heavy industries, no these neo robber barons are about information, communications and non-industrial commerce.

      But they have the same bloated egos, vast riches, and no moral scruples about how they do business.

      The new neo-robber barons have also added a smug self-righteous certainty that they know what’s best for everyone – and no one is allowed to disagree into the mix.

      1. I think a C. S. Lewis quote is appropriate here.

        “It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience…”

        The tech oligarchs, of course, are both robber barons and moral busybodies.

  12. Parler should have put in a hate-speech-not-allowed policy to appease the Big Tech clown boys. How Parler defines hate speech would still be up to Parler. Beat them at their own game.

    1. Parler should not have let the “free” hosting from Amazon temp them into entering the pen.

      Pay for co-location in a jurisdiction that does not give a rat’s ass about politically correct.

  13. Foreign reaction was interesting. There was an Indian commentator whose reaction was that India, Isreal and others, as a matter of national security, need to develop their own platform. Then AMLO and even Merkel reacted negatively. In terms of numbers and tech capacity, that is serious heft.

  14. I find myself hoping the POTUS decides to invest in alternative virtual infrastructure once he’s out of office so there will be a place for us. I don’t care if he puts his money in an existing platform or builds something new, but I do think if he’s not playing a massive game of 4D chess, then the best way he can MAGA is to make sure free speech exists somewhere.

    1. If Trump isn’t arrested 10 seconds after the swearing in. If he doesn’t have his property and wealth confiscated.

      Seriously, you think that after all this that they’ll let him walk around free and still rich?

      Imprisonment for him and his family.

      Suddenly the IRS finds billions in unpaid taxes so the confiscations begin.

      They just bankrupted the Parler guy. In one night of action. Shut his business down, deplatformed him, denied him access to servers and the internet, scared his lawyers and contractors off. Totally isolated and shunned him.

      Now, considering they only hate the Parler guy just a little, what do you think they’ll do to Trump and his family since they hate the Trumps with the heat of a thousand suns?

      Excecution? Yes, I think if they can get away with it. Otherwise assassination or maybe just settling for totally destroying the Trumps.

      They have gone too far. I mean, how bad do you have to fark up to get Angela Merkel to speak bad of your actions. (Yes, Angela Merkel, Little Miss Hitler-in-drag, said that deplatforming the President is a very bad thing.) That’s how badly They want Trump wiped off the face of the Earth.

      10 milli-microseconds after Trump is no longer President, Free Speech is completely dead. It pretty much died during Obama’s reign of terror (like, sitting in a coffee shop and bitching will earn you federal time bad, no, really, happened, it’s true.)

      1. I’m not one to condone violence. I don’t even condone the people entering the capitol building on the 6th (I don’t entirely condemn all of them or everything they did either).

        But if they want to arrest Trump, or convict him of pretty much anything, that’s probably gonna put a lot of shooty people over the edge. Unlike Gerard Butler’s Leonidas, I don’t pray they’re that stupid.

      2. If we are not allowed to elect our own leaders, and are not allowed to even speak about it or any other subject that upsets our new self-appointed masters, then there is only ONE alternative left. You know what is is.

  15. Case in point(@Jason’s comment above)
    If you rent an apartment, the owner cannot ban you from having a gun in said apartment – this has been litigated many times, and he can’t ban you from exercising your 2nd amendment rights just because he’s running a private company.
    I think he can’t evict you if he finds out you have one either, but it’s been awhile since I researched any of these cases.
    The same should be true of tech companies, just with the first amendment. I have come to think Section 230 has been corrupted to mean “you can’t sue them at all” instead of “you can’t sue them for speech that isn’t theirs” By all means, correct me if I’m wrong, I’d rather be wrong and learn better from it, than be right in total ignorance.

    1. Nah, pay attention to an American:

      This is ridiculous and offensive, Arnie, and you know it too. Geh dichselbst einen blasen, Arnie.

      Marching on the capitol with grievances — to wit the certainty you were disenfranchised and that your courts and institutions betrayed you — is totally like burning down or ransacking tens of thousands of private residences and synagogues, putting 30,000+ people in concentration camps (killing significant numbers.) Totally the same, Arnie. You’re such a good German, Arnie. Just like your dad. (Yes, I do know he is Austrian. Do you know who else was Austrian?)

      From https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/425254/

    2. “Ahnold” was never a Republican, or at least, not any more Republican that Mike Bloomberg. Remember, Arnie married into the KENNEDY family.

      Alas, there are LOTS of people who CLAIM to be Republican, but who NEVER support other Republicans or any Republican principles. Colin Powell, for example, has never voted for a Republican for President. (We know this because he had said that he didn’t vote while on active duty, and has supported Democrats ever since his retirement.)

    3. To quote Sarah Hoyt (writing at Instapundit):

      “This is ridiculous and offensive, Arnie, and you know it too. Geh dichselbst einen blasen, Arnie.

      “Marching on the capitol with grievances — to wit the certainty you were disenfranchised and that your courts and institutions betrayed you — is totally like burning down or ransacking tens of thousands of private residences and synagogues, putting 30,000+ people in concentration camps (killing significant numbers.) Totally the same, Arnie. You’re such a good German, Arnie. Just like your dad. (Yes, I do know he is Austrian. Do you know who else was Austrian?)”

  16. Political opinions are not a protected class, if I am remembering correctly. There is a reason, why people usually don’t talk politics in the workplace.

    Still, in our world where so much communication is routed through the internet a few corporations should not have the power to decide which opinions are acceptable and which aren’t. This should be the task of the state (I know I am going to get some flak for that comment here).

    This whole situation is weird and I am looking forward to see how it will develop.

    1. However, “conspiracy in restraint of trade” is still an actual crime, and failure to follow terms of a contract is an easy way to face a civil lawsuit.

      1. Suggested depo questions:
        >”So, Mr. ‘zon Employee: What prior contact and coordination did ‘zon have with Zuckerbook before ‘zon decided to effectively shut down Zuckerbook competitor Parler?”
        >”As an experienced professional in the internet services market, what impact do you expect on Zuckerbook’s market share if ‘zon’s action results in shutting down Zuckerbook competitor Parler?”
        >”Can you define a MONOPOLY for me? Not the legal definition – just in your own words.”
        >”Tell me the names of any Zuckerbook employees that you personally communicated with before you took this action. Note before you answer that as part of discovery we are getting all email, text, and recorded phone messages between ‘zon and Zuckerbook, and any mentioning Zuckerbook competitor Parler.”
        >”When ‘zon decided to shut down the servers of Zuckerbook competitor Parler for which they had paid ‘zon, was that action at the specific request of Zuckerbook?”

  17. I can recall, quite vividly, the praise showered on the Internet when it was relatively newly opened to non-government, non-academic use. One of the phrases I’ll never forget runs thus: “The Internet regards censorship as damage and routes around it.”

    Well, some kids of censorship, perhaps…but when the majority of its users have become dependent on a handful of sites and service providers, things aren’t quite so rosy.

    We need a new peer-to-peer network that’s independent of centralized controls and choke points. Something like Kazaa of fond memory, but with security provisions engineered in from the outset. TCP/IP itself was originally aimed in that direction. I hope someone with more insight, money, and years to live than I is working on it right now.

    1. 2 words come to mind: “Tor” and “blockchain”. Tor (onion routing, not the publisher) has issues related to bandwidth (too slow) and easily denied service (well known endpoints and dang near every website of interest going all CAPTCHA-happy on Tor users). But it’s a step in the right direction.

    2. We need a new peer-to-peer network that’s independent of centralized controls and choke points. Something like Kazaa of fond memory, but with security provisions engineered in from the outset.

      Check out https://beakerbrowser.com/ – I don’t know what specific security provisions you’re thinking about, so I can’t tell you whether they’re in there or not. But their FAQ describes their concept of a “decentralized Web” like this:

      Basically the “decentralized Web” or “dweb” is about having a digital life that’s not entirely controlled by a corporation. Decentralizers want to live independently and they’re worried about what happens when Facebook or Google controls everything about the Internet.

    3. Check out the Beaker Browser (no link so that this comment doesn’t end up in automoderation, but it should be easy to find with a simple DuckDuckGo search). It’s basically what you’re asking for. Their FAQ talks about building a “decentralized Web”, which “is about having a digital life that’s not entirely controlled by a corporation. Decentralizers want to live independently and they’re worried about what happens when Facebook or Google controls everything about the Internet.”

    4. I can remember when they told us that the Internet was going to bring down barriers to communication and make the world more democratic, by bypassing oppressive state censorship and corrupt corporate newsmedia, and facilitating peaceful organization to bring about peaceful change. Do you remember? I remember. Now, of course, they are saying “NO! WAIT! NOT LIKE THAT! STOP! STOP!”

  18. Sorry

    And thanks web hosting software for not allowing me to use minimalism to highlight the irony of my post by saying my response was to short.

  19. On point as always, Larry. Riffing on this, I found it ‘interesting’ to watch Biden’s speechifying yesterday, especially this comment…

    “Our priority will be Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American owned small businesses, women-owned businesses, and finally having equal access to resources needed to reopen and rebuild.” — President-elect Biden

    So the poor white men out there can just suck it up… So much for his pledge of ‘unity’. Their version of ‘unity’ is not like our version of unity.

    1. As if any of those groups haven’t already been More Equal Than Others, now they’re gonna make them Extra More Equal Than Others.

  20. The progs are trying to claim the riot at the Capitol was “Kristallnacht” while using it as an excuse to suppress their opponents… which is pretty much happened after the Reichstag Fire.

    It’s amusing… in a “I must laugh or scream” sort of way. *sigh*

  21. Our genial host writes, “the leftist has to look at the printed word and try to sound it out–cap e tall ism?”
    Anecdote: I was sharing a brief text with a youngling no more than 22, a recent college graduate, and to my horror he wasn’t even trying to sound out an unusual word in said text. Instead he was trying to GUESS how to say it. So I asked a couple of questions, and it turns out that he was never taught phonics, and didn’t know how to sound out a new word; in other words, this poor lamb, and everyone else subjected to this unforgivable excuse for teaching, was functionally illiterate. In this crowd, I don’t have to point out how useful that is to a corrupt ruling class….

    1. Well, yeah. That is how “whole word” is taught today. Not phonics plus Dolch words, but guess everything. Most kids from such school systems cannot read out loud at speed, or sing along from a hymnal, unless their parents did their own teaching.

  22. It’s a religion. Progressivism, that is. And it’s a conquering one. Once it moves in, it will allow no apostasy, no heresy.

  23. > All those companies are allied with the political party that hates you and wants to see your kind utterly eradicated from society, because you are bad people who deserve it.

    Can you expound on who “you” and “your kind” are in this sentence?

    I think there’s an important idea here, but when I try to rephrase it precisely I can’t. And I’m sure those who are on board with the eradication would be happy to answer that it means white supremacists, hence the eradication.

    1. Well, Dan, “White supremacists” are anyone who disagrees with them in the slightest. You are with them or against them, no disagreement.

    2. Can you expound on who “you” and “your kind” are in this sentence?


      He could, but it would be wrong tomorrow when the Left updates their ‘enemies of the statists’ list. A workable approximation is ‘Everybody that doesn’t completely support what the Leftroids are doing today.’

      If you oppose, if you even question, you must be destroyed.

  24. I notice that the other side is either, “Big companies are free to crush anyone they want” or “Hur, hur, that’s just capitalism in action” as if any of this heavy-handed control freak BS has anything to do with free markets and serving the customer.

  25. That “one act of stupid civil disobedience” isn’t Kristallnacht; it’s the Reichstag Fire. (Or, to use a more recent analogy, a Gulf of Tonkin incident.)

    Regardless if the original was a lone nut, a false flag, a patsy, or otherwise; it’s an enabling event.

    Do note that Adam Schiff has already presented a “domestic terrorism” (read: his political opposition) bill two years ago. It’s ready to go to literally make any non-left political dissent prosecutable as sedition. History rhymes.

    Kristallnacht came later, just not at the modern speed of electronics. It’s not even deplatforming Trump (that’s just the cover); Today’s Kristallnacht is rendering Parler instantly mute, it’s removing all #walkaway groups on Facebook, it’s GoDaddy dropping ar15.com. It’s *making you afraid to express yourself if it conflicts with their beliefs*.

  26. I understand your point, Jason, even if I don’t agree with its main thrust. As a “conservative libertarian” myself (actually something else, but the day is too short for a long-winded explanation), I acknowledge the basic right of private enterprises to throw around their weight within their own realms, subject to the terms of contractual agreements and civil law.

    But! When an ideological cabal — for cabal it is — first represents to the public at large a reasonably neutral position in order to build massive market share and control and THEN in that order suddenly yanks the rug out from under the feet of a disfavored class (conservatives, typically) or person, then it’s … call it what you wish. Lying, betrayal, collusion, restraint of trade, persecution.

    The leaders of these companies — Apple, Google, Amazon, et alia — need to be violently arrested (by police officers, naturally) and thrown into ram-up-your-ass-daily federal prison. Their assets need to be violently seized as well for security against satisfying an enormous civil judgment in favor of Parler’s founder and other victims of intensely anti-competitive actions.

    Ah! I wished also to address one of your points, Mr. Correia. I think many people are too quick to forget that Apple, Amazon, Google, Twitter, Facebook, and on and on are not monolithic leftist power centers. As far as I know, they’re all still publicly traded companies that must answer to their stockholders and to some extent other stakeholders. There’s no reason whatsoever why a staggering raft of conservatives cannot obtain common stock in these companies and then raise a huge stink about abdicating corporate responsibility to stockholders to seek maximal profits. Dumping a giant turd on the heads of certain customers is socially irresponsible at a minimum and doubtless otherwise opens a giant legal can of worms. CEOs and other top company officials have been fired for far less. Just saying.

    1. This tactic (buying up stock in hostile companies and using it to force those companies to be at least neutral, if not friendly to us) was first proposed, AFAIK, by none other than Saul Alinsky! His idea was for people on his side to buy up shares in companies that didn’t do right (by Alinsky’s views) and then assign the proxies to people like Alinsky.

      That way, the stockholders would still get their benefits (dividends and suchlike) while the agitators could legally attend stockholders’ meetings, and raise hell. And if they had enough proxies to vote, they could threaten the company directors’ comfortable jobs…which WOULD get their undivided attention.

      This tactic works well no matter who is doing it.

  27. Very good column! I cannot believe you are still on FB, that they haven’t perma-banned you, they took Ron Paul down today… bailing out of there after the 20th…

  28. I hope panache for deft decimation of useful idiots and bad actors brings you joy. It does me!

    “The progs are trying to claim the riot at the Capitol was “Kristallnacht” while using it as an excuse to suppress their opponents… which is pretty much happened after the Reichstag Fire.” P. Chester

    Indeed, but this time there seems to be a plan in place to counter it.

    Where was Nancy today? And has she seen her laptop since wed?

  29. But, the election was on the up and up and that there’s absolutely nothing, nothing worth investigating. Completely censoring negative stories about a political opponent by the same tech giants is in no way, shape, or form related to censoring people and outlets who question election results.

    By gum, Joe Biden even brought in a board member from the Dominion as a member of his transition team, so we should all rest assured of the legitimacy of the election.

    I mean, sure, Democrats have a recent historical pattern of voting against certifying presidential elections, but everyone knows that Rethuglikkkans in the senate should be denied banking services for campaign contributions for daring to exercise their constitutional prerogatives. That’s just good policy!

    Now go build your own internet and quit whining.

  30. I have access to a time machine, Mr. Correia. If you REALLY want to live in a country run by an insane megalomaniac, I can drop you into Auschwitz 1943 any time you want.

    1. Now this is the kind of high quality meaty intellectual comment I’ve come to expect from the left.
      If you have a problem with parts of the all powerful government colluding with a handful of super powerful big tech megacorps to stifle the free speech of millions of people just because they have a handy excuse right now, then mumble mumble something Literally Hitler.
      Oh fuck off.

    2. Or you could also take your time machine to visit the Soviet Union to see what happens when the state entities control all information (whether run by one guy or committee). Or you could just save that time machine’s batteries and check out Communist China right now, you unimaginative one note wonder.

  31. Please keep commenting, Larry.
    Ever seen the Science Fiction series “Dark Matter?’ The megacorps control everything. Watched it in about 2018 and significant other said can’t happen, not how corporations can behave under the law. That and the first 4 seasons of Babylon 5 are worth a rewatch.

  32. Personally I’m kinda wondering how large the fuel tanks for the back-up gen-sets are at all those companies’ headquarters? I mean after the power poles that feed them collapse under the weight of the bodies hanging on them…Or the transformers that feed the power-lines suddenly start leaking,heh, heh, heh.

  33. ALERT: Someone is planning a false flag event this weekend. Either the 16th, 17th, or 19th at state capitols and DC (the date of the supposed patriot event varies). Poorly designed posters have been mailed out to conservatives and conservative groups. The FBI is in on it, since they are now making noises about “uncovering the plot”. (Sources, the Blaze, ABC, etc..)

    The president is being held incommunicado, and our normal modes of communication are recording the event are being shut down. This is (other than the sheer hell of it) so that we cannot shine a light on what really happens this weekend.

    The posters call for armed men to show up at the capitols for a march. This is a TRAP. Unfortunately, with a few million pissed off people, it’s almost inevitable that enough idiots will show to give them their set-piece Tienanmen square massacre. If by some miracle, everyone stays home, I’m sure antifa, or Hollywood CGI will fill in.

    What is planned next is a brutal crackdown on America in “response” to inaugurate the new regime. The capitol hill protest didn’t do what they want, so this is plan B. These liars will now make up reality to suit them, so that they have some bloody shirt to wave giving them moral authority for the rest of the evil they plan.

  34. You know what I find funny about all this on both sides? You people are so up in arms about elections and voter fraud and free speech… HOWEVER… BOTH Political parties have been off and on guilty of Anti-Trust laws for over 100 years. (When you have 51% of the Senate, 51% of the House, and 51% of the Supreme Court, you have effectively stifled any chance of competition in voting sessions of congress of any other ideologies.) The worst crime in american history and all people can talk about is a company throwing another company off their servers. Or whether this or that vote was counted. Wake up and smell the obsolete constitution that was thrown out the window the first time a single political party controlled all three branches of government.

  35. Not that I expect consistency from the left, but so does this mean they’d all be fine with those places now *not* baking the cake?

    (I mean, of course not, they’re just scrabbling for any pile of shit they can throw at the “enemy” in the hope that something will stick.)

  36. In 2017 and 2018, the Republican Party had 100% control of all three branches of government. Do any of you understand how utterly and completely that violates the concept of checks and balances? “But they didn’t do anything with it.” Actually, they did by stacking the Supreme Court even further in their favor. If you support either political party after reading this and doing your own research on Anti-trust laws and election statistics, then you can consider yourself a cult member that has been brainwashed.

    1. Why is it acceptable for a (D) president to appoint leftist judges to SCOTUS, yet when an (R) president names judges that nominally agree with (R) beliefs it is the end of the world?

      I’m sorry that you missed school the day they taught about how SCOTUS justices are picked. The major parties don’t alternate picks.

      1. “We want justices that will follow the Constitution,”
        vs.
        “We want justices who will vote according to their Latina Wisdom”.

        Yeah, totally the same.

    2. I realize that Larry just wrote a big thing about how it’s bogus to demand that someone have a solution before they talk about a problem but, geez, guy? Maybe you ought to let us know what you think ought to be done about it, or at least explain the significance instead of asserting that you’re really upset and that’s significance enough to demand that people admit you’re right.

      And really and truly, if you’re just looking for someone to admit that both parties are pretty much filled with worthless sorts, you probably won’t get a lot of disagreement. So, you know, calm down.

      1. It isn’t an “Admit you’re right” situation. It is a wake up and smell the ashes of the constitution that both liberals and conservatives burned to ash a century ago by forcing everyone else to follow their specific set of ideals. Either left or right. We are the only country that has that. There are other countries with thirty political parties and none are dominant over any others. Solution is to file charges against them and sue them citing the Anti-trust act. Break them up so we can actually breathe again without two overpowered groups demanding we kill each other for their selfish goals.

  37. The problem is simply that none of what you say is actually true. None of it.

    The DNC is not in some mystical conspiracy with Big Tech to “keep the truth hidden”. If they were, Big Tech would not have allowed Donald Trump and the rest of the far right in this country to spew lies and bullshit for the past decade. If they were, Donald Trump would never have been elected in the first place. If they were, Elizabeth Warren wouldn’t have been discussing severe anti-trust action to break up said large tech giants as a major plank of her presidential campaign platform.

    Nor is it true that the reaction to the riot and insurrection in DC is more lenient that the consequences faced by BLM protesters this summer. That is simply NOT TRUE. If anything, the pro-trump rioters have been treated far more leniently and faced far fewer consequences for behavior that was objectively and factually more damaging. https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/08/us/dc-police-arrests-blm-capitol-insurrection-invs/index.html

    But most of all, it is simply not true that the crowd of people who gathered to try to illegally and treasonously overturn the results of a free election are some sort of disenfranchised group. They are not. They are definitely not voiceless, considering just how hard it is to get them to stop spouting bullshit and lies all the time. Fox News still exists to pander to their deluded point of view. The Republican Party is still controls half of Congress and most of the Federal Appellate Circuit and the Supreme Court. Breitbart hasn’t been wiped from the internet. And, that’s true now, much less BEFORE those sacks of shit decided to invade the house of Congress and threaten the lives of both Democratic and Republican Congressman alike.

    But mostly though it is impossible to take seriously anyone who looks at current America and thinks that upper middle class white dudes are an oppressed class. Sure, yeah that Data Analytics CEO who broke into Congress is really disenfranchised.

    You wanna know what the difference between the BLM protests and the DC riots were? The BLM protest were motivated by people actually being killed. That’s what oppression and “disenfranchisement” actually looks like. When you are quite literally afraid of death. In contrast, being angry that maybe someone might block your twitter account for being an asshole is a childish tantrum.

    I don’t know how we got to a place where a sizable chunk of America have this unreasonable view of the world. But we have to fix it. I think the only way is to sue the living daylights out of everyone who keeps parroting lies to a gullible demographic. You will notice how swiftly Fox and OANN retracted their implications of election fraud once Dominion made it clear that they would not just take their libel lying down.

    1. Every single line and every single word of that screed is a lie, including “a,” “an,” and “the.” That’s actually sort of impressive, in a perverse sort of way.

  38. Ya beat me to it, nomen, and you were much kinder to that twit (and that’s an insult to twits everywhere)then I would have been.

  39. From what I understand, Amazon doesn’t get that much of their revenue from on-line book sales. Something like 2 or 3 percent of their annual gross. So it might be better to keep on using them to support indie conservative authors until THEY pull the plug. Just remember to have a fallback position set up. You don’t have to jailbreak your Kindles, yet.

  40. Time to make Twitter, FB, Instagram, Google etc the equivalent of the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, NC.

    1. A good thought but the problem is that in this case, the protesters are physically prevented from getting to the counter while the bigots walk in without a problem.

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