Commentary: Ruling Class Disturbance

WEF

The last few months have been interesting. We have started to see some very public disagreements among the world’s ruling classes. The gathering of elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, has long fascinated observers and become a lightning rod for criticism, becoming a bogeyman of the right, as well as the hardcore, anticapitalist left. It is a front-row seat to the thinking and priorities of the world’s most powerful people.

In Davos, the world’s media, academic, political, and financial elites spend a few days in luxurious surroundings, praising themselves and forming a consensus on solutions to what they deem to be the problems of the world. This includes everything from facilitating mass migration, tackling global warming by moving away from fossil fuel energy, and the need for economic redistribution to the poor and the third world, all through the corporatist idea of “stakeholder capitalism.”

Read the full story

Victor Davis Hanson Commentary: Once Vaunted as the Best in the Word, Stanford University’s Wayward Record is Growing Infamous

Stanford was once one of the world’s great universities. It birthed Silicon Valley in its prime. And along with its nearby twin and rival, UC Berkeley, its brilliant researchers, and teachers helped fuel the mid-20th-century California miracle.

That was then. But like the descent of California, now something has gone terribly wrong with the university.

Read the full story

Flow of U.S. Intelligence Analysts into Big Tech Jobs Raises Alarm

As Congress and the courts delve deeper into federally sanctioned censorship by Big Tech, a troubling revolving door has emerged between the U.S. intelligence community and the Big Tech giants on the front lines of one of the fiercest battles over free speech in modern American history.

A Just the News review of LinkedIn employment histories of senior Big Tech executives found that at least 200 former workers of the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security Agency, National Security Council and Homeland Security Department have landed Silicon Valley jobs, many within content moderation units regulating supposed “disinformation” and disproportionately throttling news and opinion deviating from approved, left-tilting norms. 

Read the full story

Commentary: Conspirators in Their Own Words

For the last five years, the Left—defined as the fusion of the mainstream media, Silicon Valley, the radical new Democratic Party, and the vestigial Hillary Clinton machine—has crafted all sorts of conspiracies to destroy their perceived conservative enemies.

Their method has focused on one major projection: alleging conspiracy on the part of others, which is a kind of confirmation of their own conspiracies to destroy their opponents in general, and Donald Trump in particular.

Read the full story

Victor Davis Hanson Commentary: Joe Biden and the Uses of Nihilism

Chaos is the new, the intentional, normal. A pandemic of nihilism has been unleashed upon the land. As in Lord of the Flies, when laws, rules, protocols, traditions, and customs are mocked and dismantled, primitive human nature in the raw is unleashed. 

Madness now reigns in every quarter, from the iconic to the irrelevant to the fundamental. Statues of Lincoln, Douglass, and Jefferson are toppled or defaced. The rules of capitalization have been altered. We are told that 1619, not 1776, was our founding date—and this by a “civil rights” activist-journalist who had no idea of the date that the Civil War began.

Quite quickly after the revolutionary boilerplate, America began reverting to its natural Hobbesian or Thucydidean essence. If you dispute that, look at looted packages along the Union Pacific tracks in Los Angeles. Try walking the nocturnal streets of Chicago or Baltimore. Visit the sidewalk homeless of San Francisco. Fly over our constipated ports. Drive into our empty new car dealerships. Pull up to our European-priced gas pumps. Shop in the emptying shelves of our Sovietizing food and discount stores. The common theme of the upcoming Super Bowl halftime show, apparently, is that the entertainers must have written lyrics threatening the police, denigrating women, using the N-word . . . and be worth $100 million.

Read the full story

Commentary: Platform Transparency Can Help Build Antitrust Cases

There is growing bipartisan concern over the power Silicon Valley’s oligopolies wield over American society. Amazon alone controls 72% of U.S. adult book sales, Airbnb accounts for a fifth of domestic lodging expenditures and Facebook accounts for almost three-quarters of social media visits. Just two companies, Apple and Google, act as gatekeepers to 99% of smartphones, while two others, Uber and Lyft, control 98% of the ride-share market in the U.S. Yet, for government to take robust antitrust action against Silicon Valley requires the kind of data it currently lacks: documenting the harm this market consolidation inflicts on consumers. A new RealClearFoundation report offers a look at how amending Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to require platform transparency could aid such antitrust efforts.

When it comes to Silicon Valley’s social media platforms, they have long argued that antitrust laws don’t apply to them because their services are provided free of charge. In reality, users do pay for their services: with their data rather than their money. Companies today harvest vast amounts of private information about their users every day, using that data to invisibly nudge their users toward purchases and consuming ads, or the companies simply sell that data outright.

Read the full story

GETTR CEO Jason Miller Welcomes Trump to Social Media World

Despite former President Donald J. Trump’s Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) announcing plans to become a rival of newly-launched social media site GETTR, the CEO of the latter firm welcomed Trump into the social media space.

“Congratulations to President Trump for re-entering the social media fray! Now Facebook and Twitter will lose even more market share. President Trump has always been a great deal-maker, but we just couldn’t come to terms on a deal,” Miller said in a Wednesday statement. “And get ready for the new platform features GETTR has on the way: live-streaming, GVision short videos and our GETTR Pay payments system capabilities. Exciting new additions that will provide our global customer base an even better user experience. Let the downloads begin!”

Read the full story

The Billionaire Space Race: A Competition Between the World’s Richest Men Is Resurrecting an Industry

Jeff Bezos became the second billionaire to successfully reach outer space this month when his Blue Origin New Shepard spacecraft exited the atmosphere Tuesday, the latest development in the ongoing space race between Bezos, SpaceX’s Elon Musk, and Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson.

Branson was the first billionaire in space last week when he and several crew members aboard his VSS Unity spaceplane successfully flew to an altitude of 53.5 miles. His company Virgin Galactic, founded in 2004, is developing commercial spacecraft to be used in suborbital flights for those seeking a trip to outer space. Musk’s SpaceX, founded in 2002, has been at the forefront of the private space industry for over a decade, with Musk planning a mission to Mars as early as 2024.

Read the full story

DeSantis Signs Bill Curbing Censorship by Big Tech Companies

Ron DeSantis at press conference

Yesterday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill, SB 7072, designed to limit the scope of Big Tech companies and their influence in Florida. The bill will fine companies $250,000 per day if they censor or suspend accounts for political candidates, with Disney World being a notable exception.

“This session, we took action to ensure that ‘We the People’ — real Floridians across the Sunshine State — are guaranteed protection against the Silicon Valley elites,” said DeSantis in a release. “Many in our state have experienced censorship and other tyrannical behavior firsthand in Cuba and Venezuela. If Big Tech censors enforce rules inconsistently, to discriminate in favor of the dominant Silicon Valley ideology, they will now be held accountable.”

Read the full story

Commentary: They Have Opened the Gates of Hell and It’s a One-Way Passage

Recently, we received a copy of a private commentary sent around by a tech founder in Silicon Valley, who wrote the following, which we quote here with permission provided the author’s anonymity is preserved:

The entire American tech stack – which enables Americans to buy, sell, pay, and communicate – has been weaponized in furtherance of a radical anti-freedom agenda.
This is the single most chilling week in my lifetime, and America’s since the Civil War.

Read the full story

Commentary: Silicon Valley Titans Lie Again as Congress Meekly Looks On

After a series of mishaps involving muted senators, virtual cross-talk, and “connectivity issues” befuddling one of the world’s most tech-savvy men, the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter, and Google appeared before the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday for what has now become a performative ritual: senators of both parties yell about different aspects of social media, the tech giants respond with bland, vague, noncommittal statements. And nothing substantive happens.

This is exactly where the Senate Commerce Committee found itself on Wednesday, when Big Tech was confronted with a host of critics and without any defenders—but ultimately very little in the way of committed follow-up from legislators.

Read the full story

More Than Half of American Voters Support Breaking up Big Tech Companies, a New Poll Finds

More than half of American voters strongly or somewhat support breaking up Silicon Valley tech giants to promote competition, according to a poll published Thursday.

Only 26% of voters oppose or strongly oppose splitting up the country’s largest tech companies, while 19% of those surveyed didn’t offer a view, a poll from progressive think tank Data for Progress showed. The poll, which surveyed 1,200 likely voters in September, comes as the House lawmakers conclude their nearly yearlong probe into the industry’s supposed anticompetitive behavior.

Read the full story

A Major Pro-Trump Tech Investor Is Reportedly Working Behind the Scenes to Save TikTok’s US Operations

One of President Donald Trump’s biggest supporters inside Silicon Valley is acting behind the scenes to rescue TikTok’s U.S. operations while the president considers the app’s future, according to recently published media reports.

Doug Leone, a Sequoia Capital global managing partner, is pressing U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House adviser Jared Kushner to find a solution to keep TikTok in the U.S., The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday, citing sources familiar with the discussion.

Read the full story

Commentary: Silicon Valley Ramps up Censorship of Conservatives

Silicon Valley’s pre-election censorship of conservatives is rapidly increasing, with anything that questions the imposition of a new level of COVID-19 lockdown misery and economic devastation a top target.

The latest example of this pre-election censorship occurred yesterday, when Facebook, Twitter and Google removed a press conference video by frontline doctors featuring U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and organized by Tea Party Patriots.

Read the full story

Commentary: California Is a Cruel Medieval State

One way of understanding California is simply to invert traditional morality. What for centuries would be considered selfish, callous, and greedy is now recalibrated as caring, empathetic, and generous. The current ethos of evaluating someone by his or her superficial appearance – gender or race – has returned to the premodern values of 19th-century California when race and gender calibrated careers. We don’t pay medieval priests for indulgences of our past and ongoing sin, but we do tweet out displays of our goodness as the penance price of acting amoral.

Read the full story

The YouTube Channel That Never Happened

“Six hundred years ago, when elsewhere they were footing the blame for the Black Death, Casimir the Great—so-called—told the Jews they could come to Krakow. They came. They trundled their belongings into the city. They settled. They took hold. They prospered in business, science, education, the arts. With nothing they came and with nothing they flourished. For six centuries there has been a Jewish Krakow. By this evening those six centuries will be a rumor. They never happened.”

Read the full story

Michelle Malkin Joins the Tennessee Star Report to Talk About Her New Book ‘Open Borders, Inc.’ and the Silencing of Conservatives on Social Media

  Special guest Michelle Malkin joined The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Monday morning’s broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC. Leahy spoke to Malkin about her new book Open Borders, Inc. and discussed how so many conservatives are being de-platformed, disappeared, or de-personed on social media. “And so this social media which is so critical to helping the Tea Party succeed is now being rigged by its owners and CEO’s and many of the social justice warriors inside the company,” added Malkin. Near the end of the segment, Malkin talked about a chapter in her book that describes how billions of dollars are being used and leveraged by the United Nations and transnational organizations, and NGO’s in Europe and Africa to dump hundreds of thousands of refugees not only into Tennessee but also in flyover country. Leahy: Welcoming our good Michelle Malkin. Welcome, Michelle. Malkin: Thanks for having me. Leahy: First, I have to say some very good things about you. The author of Open Borders Inc. We’re going to talk about that in a bit. When the Tea Party launched in February of 2009 no one did more to promote it and to…

Read the full story

Marsha Blackburn Warns About Technology Companies’ Abusive Behavior Using Your Personal Information

  U.S. Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee reportedly warned in a speech this week about privacy concerns as technology companies gather consumer data and profit from it. This, according to Broadbandbreakfast.com, which reported Blackburn’s remarks during a speech to the free market group Free State Foundation in Washington, D.C. “The framework for federal privacy regulation is emerging as another flashpoint in some conservatives’ political battles with Silicon Valley powerhouses,” according to the website. “The more data companies extract, the more profitable they are,” the website quoted Blackburn as saying. “Big tech needs to trust the American consumer to make the wise decision, which means big tech needs to be transparent,” said Blackburn. Broadbandbreakfast.com also reported that many people in the audience agreed with the idea of more privacy regulations. “Privacy violations can result in consumer harm in the marketplace, harms which should be ‘identified, analyzed and potentially regulated,’” the website quote Noah Phillips as saying. Phillips is a Commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission. The website also quoted Phillips as saying new privacy laws must allow for “investment and risk-taking.” Michelle Richardson, director at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said Congress needs to rebalance power between companies and consumers.…

Read the full story

Commentary: How Silicon Valley Disrupts Local Politics

by Roxanne Beckford Hoge   Silly me. I believed Justice Louis D. Brandeis when he said more speech was the remedy for speech you don’t like. “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies,” Brandeis wrote nearly a century ago, “to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.” I also believed in Abraham Lincoln’s formulation of “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” What happened to shake those two rock-solid foundations of my naturalized-American sensibility? I ran for office last year in California and discovered, not only do we have a government chosen by only a majority of those who participate, but that getting an informed electorate to turn out isn’t a goal necessarily shared by all. Let me back up. I was motivated to run as a Republican against an incumbent Democrat in a very blue state assembly district in 2018 because California is worth fighting for. Merely 13.5 percent of the voters in Studio City and its surrounding areas are registered with the Party of Lincoln. Not to worry, I thought. I’m pretty good at communicating, and if…

Read the full story

Report Details Nature of Facebook’s Secret Rulebook Governing Global Speech

by Chris White   Facebook’s secretive rulebook regulating how employees censor certain forms of expression contains numerous biases and outright errors, according to internal documents The New York Times obtained Friday. The nearly 1,400-page document shows the Silicon Valley company’s guidebook is riddled with mistakes and is not nimble enough to handle cultural nuance, the report notes. The guidelines censor mainstream speech in one country while allowing extremist language to fester in others. Several dozen Facebook employees gather every other Tuesday to brainstorm rules that flesh out what people can and cannot say while navigating the platform, according to TheNYT. The guidelines that are agreed upon are then sent out to 7,500-plus moderators around the world. The Facebook employees, many of whom are young, attempt to distill complex issues into concrete yes-or-no categories. Much of the post-by-post moderation is outsourced to companies that enlist unskilled workers, the report states, citing documents from an employee who worried the rule book is too intrusive. Moderators often use Google Translator for the mind-numbing work. They must recall countless rules and apply them to the hundreds of posts a day, with the cultural context largely stripped. They suss through emojis, smiley faces and sometimes innocuous…

Read the full story

Facebook Joins Silicon Valley Giants That Have Blocked Pro-Blackburn Ads, This Time Temporarily Removing Susan B. Anthony List Video Exposing Bredesen’s Pro-Abortion Views

UPDATE: Late Thursday, Breitbart News reported that Facebook has changed course and will now allow the Susan B. Anthony list ad supporting Marsha Blackburn. The Susan B. Anthony List announced Thursday morning that Facebook had censored their ad contrasting Senate candidate Phil Bredesen’s pro-abortion views with opponent Marsha Blackburn’s unequivocal support for life. The tweet says, “BREAKING: This morning Facebook banned our 30-second ad exposing pro-abortion @PhilBredesen in Tennessee and supporting #ProLife Marsha Blackburn for Senate.” The tweet contains a link to the ad. BREAKING: This morning Facebook banned our 30-second ad exposing pro-abortion @PhilBredesen in Tennessee and supporting #ProLife Marsha Blackburn for Senate. Watch the ad Facebook censored: pic.twitter.com/BHlklKqD0Q#TNSen @VoteMarsha #IVoteProLife✅ — Susan B. Anthony List (@SBAList) November 1, 2018 This comes after the ad had been airing on digital platforms, including Facebook, since Oct. 23. “Facebook’s decision to take down this ad is just another example of the liberal elites of Silicon Valley censoring conservative ideas online,” said U.S. Rep. Blackburn (R-TN-07). “We have repeatedly seen a demonstrated bias against conservatives and it needs to stop. The SBA List has a record of principled leadership on pro-life issues, and it is an honor to have their support in my…

Read the full story

Silicon Valley’s New ‘Woke’ Code of Conduct Offers an Unexpected Twist

by Nick Bieter   If you want to be successful as a computer programmer, one of the best ways to show off your skills to prospective employers is to contribute code to open source projects. These projects, such as Firefox or the Linux Operating System, are frequently controlled by the project founders or a consortium of top developers. While anyone can submit code for inclusion, it’s up to the project overseers if it is included in the code base or not. There’s been a quiet revolution going on in this world of Open-Source Software. Led by Coraline Ada Emcke (pictured right), a group of activist developers has been seeking to implement the Contributor Covenant for the last several years. This Code of Conduct is very explicit in its focus on inclusion and the prevention of any sort of negative or hostile environment for code contributors on Open Source projects. This is all in service of ensuring that no one feels discriminated against or otherwise rejected by the maintainers of these projects. But it goes much deeper than that. Emcke, in conjunction with many of these same activists, promotes a compact known as the Post-Meritocracy Pledge. This pledge states that allowing program…

Read the full story

Joe Carter Commentary: What You Should Know About Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Senate Hearings

by Joe Carter   What just happened? On Tuesday, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave testimony (though not officially under oath) before a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation committees. On Wednesday, Zuckerberg testified at a second hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He was asked to appear before Congress to discuss such issues as data privacy and Russian use of his social network to meddle in the 2016 election. Why is Facebook and Zuckerberg now under scrutiny? Facebook has been at the center of recent data privacy scandals and concerns. The Senate hearings were particularly interested in learning about the connection between Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. Last month the New York Times reported that British data analysis firm Cambridge Analytica had “harvested private information from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their permission.” As law professor Andrew Keane Woods explains, The data that Cambridge Analytica obtained seems to have come from Aleksandr Kogan, a researcher at Cambridge University who convinced hundreds of thousands of Facebook users to take a Facebook-linked personality quiz—thereby granting Kogan access, through Facebook’s developer platform, to a treasure trove of user data. Kogan then shared…

Read the full story