Recipe for Gasoline

Nothing is less nonpartisan than a social media platform run by politicized CEOs. Yet social media platforms are precisely that: defined by their politics whether they be Facebook, Twitter, Parler or Gab. They are not ‘social media’ vehicles full of pictures of families having picnics or singing round campfires. They are places where activists call for the evisceration of their opponents. Nothing weiners and marshmallows about them.

Ask yourself: why is the telephone system not inflammatory? How come email never produced this incendiary effect. Perhaps the answer lies in how they differ from social media:

  • they carry all messages regardless of content;
  • the messages they convey are addressed to specific recipients. They are not broadcast media.

That’s why neither the telephone nor email stoked up the fires of unrest. By contrast social media is sent out into universe. Despite it’s refusal to call itself an edited platform it is full of algorithmic secret panels, alligator pits, rotating bookcases and trapdoors to snag the unwary. What we call social media is a broadcast platform, run by editors; nay by political activists.

The Costs of Wading into Politics

One of the nice things about not being in politics is not being in politics. Make no enemies where you can make no friends.

Facebook sees $34 billion erased from market cap as Trump-ban fallout continues to spook tech investors
CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the ban on Thursday, saying the risks of allowing Trump to remain on the platform ‘are simply too great.’

Like I said weeks ago, both sides are so evenly matched any clash will cause mutual damage. “The populist uprising is now objectively too powerful for progressives to crush. The left must live with it, negotiate with it, coexist with it because they can no longer bulldoze it away. By the same token, the populists must accept that progressives are similarly too powerful to ignore. They cannot be provoked without cost.”

A New Correlation of Forces
The revolt of the Deplorables

“We will have nothing left to open”

City hall can beat anyone except reality.

“Who sent you?”

(pause)

“God.”

(pause)

“Never heard of Him.”

After Forcing Thousands Of Businesses To Shut Down, Cuomo Now Says The ‘Cost’ Of Staying Closed Is ‘Too High’
After forcing thousands of small businesses to shut down – with some forced to close permanently – Gov. Cuomo said "the cost is too high" to remain closed.

Twitter stock tumbles 10% after Trump is permanently banned from the platform | Business Insider

Even battleships take damage. The long term damage will be greater. There a certain powers which are tolerated on the tacit understanding that they will never be used, like authority to order a nuclear strike or the capacity to beat up one’s wife. Once this capability is used, whatever the justification, things are never the same again. What has been seen cannot be unseen and things are never so free and easy as before.

Social media is global. Facebook in particular is widely used by the Third World. Presidents other than DT use Twitter. In the past this vast audience was prepared not to think about how social media spied on, used and policed them because they lulled themselves into thinking that cool, hip Tech would never act like a vengeful posse. Now there’s no ignoring the fact that if they can cancel millions they can cancel you. And everyone can imagine the noose tightening round their throat — at least potentially.

It would be surprising if in the months to come users didn’t seek a hedge against the power they’ve seen displayed.

Twitter stock tumbles 10% after Trump is permanently banned from the platform
REUTERS/Jonathan ErnstTwitter stock slumped on Monday after President Trump was banned from the platform.
Facebook Says It Is Removing All Content Mentioning ‘Stop the Steal’
Citing use of the phrase among members of the pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol, the tech giant said its move is aimed at stemming incitements to violence ahead of Inauguration Day.
Ron Paul blocked from accessing Facebook page over violating “community standards”
“Never have we received notice of violating community standards in the past and nowhere is the offending post identified,” the former GOP congresssman tweeted.

Gab.com sees traffic surge

‘Free speech’ social media platform with local ties sees web traffic surge
A social media platform with a Clarks Summit mailing address that claims to promote free speech experienced a surge in web traffic last week, according to its Moosic-native CEO.

Expect this to be the next online battleground. Gab is an obvious target because of its politics and apparent technical competence.

It’s not clear that fleeing to Gab is any more feasible than going to Parler. The same logic that closed the latter will apply to the former.

If they can close Parler, they can close Gab. As the ACLU is realizing they can close anything. It started with the NY Post but where it ends nobody knows.

Of course the real kicker is that every investor in alternative media stands to lose their stake.

Tech’s power play is a demonstration of network infrastructure dominance. Strategists and practicing tyrants will long study the CCP and Democratic party as either a how to or how not to.

(This incidentally is a preview of it means to lose the cyber war in China.)

So what’s going to stop them? Catastrophe. The very things that are wrecking California and wrecked Detroit. That’s not the facile answer but the likely one.

As an Example to Others

Parler goes offline following suspensions by Amazon, Apple and Google
Parler has gone offline after a decision by Amazon to remove the site from its web hosting services went into effect at 11.59pm Pacific time on Sunday. Parler CEO John Matze said the site “will likely be down longer than expected,” adding that “most people with enough servers to host us have shut th…

The other places of digital refuge are no safer. This has been in the making since 2003.

The Digital Imprimatur
Remember when the Internet meant freedom?

The dark night of fascism always looms on the right and happens from the left.

How concerned investors should be about Biden’s tax proposals

  • Technology                     down 9.2%
  • Health care                     down 8.4%
  • Communication services  down 8.2%
  • Consumer discretionary   down 7.5%
  • Financials                         down 6.5%
How concerned investors should be about Biden’s tax proposals
The Democrats’ control of Congress is shining a new spotlight on Biden’s tax proposals, particularly those that would affect stocks and bonds.

Why Has It Gone Haywire?

“Nobody has been dealt a tougher hand than Gavin Newsom,” Gray Davis, the former California Democratic governor who was recalled in 2003, said in an interview. “Look, I had the energy crisis and a recession. He has a pandemic we haven’t seen for 100 years. He has the fallout from that pandemic, racial injustice, wildfires, and I think I’m leaving something out. But nobody, no living governor, has had to experience as many crises as him.”

https://news.yahoo.com/fallen-apart-newsom-scrambles-save-093034599.html
‘It’s all fallen apart’: Newsom scrambles to save California — and his career
The Democrat leading the nation’s biggest state is facing a raging pandemic, vaccine distribution problems and a nascent recall drive.

It may not be the only thing about to fall apart. In a crisis of competence “bad luck” cascades. Things go bankrupt gradually then all of a sudden. It was striking how the Capitol Police collapsed.

The populist challenge is primarily a symptom of the system’s weakness not its cause. The most worrisome thing is that nobody seems to know how deep the rot goes.

California is desperate, but volunteer health corps dwindles
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California desperately needs more medical workers at facilities swamped by coronavirus patients, but almost no help is coming from a volunteer program that Gov. Gavin…

Yes I Can

It’s possible to be pretty well educated on very little money. Anyone with a little self discipline could have learned a lot at MIT. “Massachusetts Institute of Technology MOOCs. Browse free online courses in a variety of subjects. Massachusetts Institute of Technology courses found below can be audited free or students can choose to receive a verified certificate for a small fee.”

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology — a coeducational, privately endowed research university founded in 1861 — is dedicated to advancing knowledge and educating students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century. Learn …

“You don’t need college to learn stuff, everything is available basically for free. You can learn anything you want for free, it is not a question of learning … I think colleges are basically for fun & to prove you could do your chores but they’re not for learning” — @elonmusk

What’s necessary for learning then? Schools largely serve to socialize students, to impart world views and attitudes as much as subject matter content. When students, some of them perhaps loners, can get the best part of a technical education what will the result be?

Building Alternatives is the Best Protest

From the privacy point of view the establishment is building a big digital prison. Don’t complain about being kicked off social media. Be glad it happened.

The whole point of leaving bondage is not to wander in the desert but to enter into a promsed land. There’s got to be more to life than providing grist for the giant machine learning mill — and there is.

To make the point unmistakably clear dissidents should build, subscribe or invest in new networks that protect privacy and data ownership. The only way to convincingly demonstrate the benefits of freedom is by competitive contrast.

Tech startups have been creating onion networks, vpns, encryption and blockchain search engines for some years as an alternative to systems everyone knows are deeply flawed. Today’s big silicon may be tomorrow’s legacy old country from whom many will be glad to be free.

The natural allies of rebels are innovators not ideologues. No rebellion is sustainable unless you can make a buck at the same time.

But it won’t happen without hard work.

The genuine new world is not just a negation of the existing one but a competitive improvement on it. It is achieved less by destruction than by construction and by learning what others are forbidden to discover.

Your Report Card

Has China’s social rating system come to America? Once something is potential it very often becomes actual. Like the big red button marked ‘do not push’, some curious fellow always does.

Those with lower scores find daily life harder. They aren’t allowed to buy high speed train tickets or take flights. Doors close to certain restaurants. Their children may not be allowed to go to college.

Such report card systems are bound to hunt down the outliers. Unfortunately that is often where the solution to the challenge problem lies. The knowledge potential of a society is highly correlated with its ability to rigorously describe what it doesn’t know. If you considered things you didn’t know as blank volumes with only titles, how would you file them in the Dewey Decimal System?

Strategies in Dealing With Complexity

The establishment’s approach to complexity is to control it with one global long term plan. The alternative is to foster lots of small, relatively short term efforts to adapt, ameliorate or harness unexpected developments.

Establishment efforts will always be Too Big To Fail. By contrast the problem solving approach uses failure to learn and make changes.

Perhaps most importantly the diversified approach is inherently competitive whereas establishment efforts are only cosmetically different but they are operationally monolithic.

Detaching oneself from the hive is possible. There’s a lot you can take with you offline. Public domain Gutenberg alone is nearly a terabyte.

Part of freedom is the right to be alone with the problem under consideration, to seek a haven from committee meetings and groupthink. Perhaps the worst thing social media did was define every POV in opposition to another.

Less Spying

One of the advantages of using the standard Internet protocol site (like this) is that you don’t have to give up your information to access the site. Many social media sites are Walled Gardens that leach out your personal details.

Coming here is cheaper, in lost information, than going there. Nobody takes your info at the door.

Speaking for myself it’s a relief to be rid of character limits, little text boxes and overlapping windows.

Many partings

The social media purge means that conflicting sides can no longer abide in the same virtual room. This does not mean a breakdown in communication, just a breakup of the network into components.

Rather than being one loud space the universe will construct rooms. One of advantages of componentization is that POVs need not be one size fits all. It can more easily cross the boundary into concrete action for instance.