Home » Posts tagged 'big tech' (Page 5)

Tag Archives: big tech

Olduvai
Click on image to purchase

Olduvai III: Catacylsm
Click on image to purchase

Post categories

Post Archives by Category

Leaked memos prove Google is a massive criminal enterprise engaged in felony election meddling and racketeering

April 10, 2019

Leaked memos prove Google is a massive criminal enterprise engaged in felony election meddling and racketeering

Image: Leaked memos prove Google is a massive criminal enterprise engaged in felony election meddling and racketeering

(Natural News) A bombshell series of leaked internal memos from Google reveals that the search engine is engaged in a massive criminal enterprise that may be prosecuted for engaging in “criminal racketeering.” The Daily Caller has acquired these internal memos which describe the manual process whereby Google selectively de-lists news websites that focus on conservative content, natural health and vaccine awareness information, among other topics. Once websites are targeted by Google for being blacklisted, virtually none of their pages appear in any search results whatsoever. (Natural News was almost completely blacklisted beginning in June of 2017.)

“Google does manipulate its search results manually, contrary to the company’s official denials, documents obtained exclusively by The Daily Caller indicate,” reports The Daily Caller. The DC describes Google’s ultra-secret “XPA news blacklist” being maintained by “Google’s Trust & Safety team,” which carries out the politically-motivated censorship and blacklisting actions to silence news sites that Google wants to suppress.

These memos reveal a shocking criminal enterprise being run inside Google, carrying out felony election meddling crimes and actions that qualify as “racketeering” under the RICO Act. Named as co-conspirators in this criminal enterprise are some of Google’s top engineers, including Paul Haahr (@haahr on Twitter) and Pandu Nayak.

Paul Haahr is explicitly responsible for censoring Natural News and other natural health websites, as he heads up the censorship efforts to target so-called “science / medical denial” and “conspiracy theories.” Ironically, Paul Haahr it himself carrying out a conspiracy to silence the truth about medicine, vaccines, cancer cures and natural health, yet part of his job is to censor “conspiracy theories.” Perhaps he tells himself, “There are no conspiracies… except the ones I’m running!”

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Big Tech Snuffing Free Speech; Google’s Poisonous ‘Dragonfly’

October 21, 2018

Big Tech Snuffing Free Speech; Google’s Poisonous ‘Dragonfly’

  • If the big social media companies choose what to publish and what not to publish, they should be subject to the same licensing and requirements as media organizations.
  • Google has decided it will not renew a contract with the Pentagon for artificial intelligence work because Google employees were upset that the technology might be used for lethal military purposes. Yet Google is planning to launch a censored search engine in China that will empower a totalitarian “Big Brother is watching you” horror state.
  • Freedom Watch filed a $1 billion class-action lawsuit against Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter, claiming that they suppress conservative speech online.
  • A Media Research Center report found that Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube stifle conservative speech and that in some instances staffers have admitted that doing so was intentional.
  • Chinese officials prevented a journalist, Liu Hu, from taking a flight because he had a low “social credit” score. According to China’s Global Times, as of the end of April 2018, authorities had blocked individuals from taking 11.14 million flights and 4.25 million high-speed rail trips.
Google is reportedly planning to launch a censored version of its search engine in China, code-named “Dragonfly,” which will aid and abet a totalitarian “Big Brother is watching you” horror state. (Image source: [Photo of woman] iStock)

The internet, especially social media, has become one of the primary places for people to exchange viewpoints and ideas. Social media is where a considerable part of the current national conversation takes place.

Arguably, big tech companies, such as Google, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, therefore carry a responsibility to ensure that their platforms are equally accessible to all voices in that national conversation.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Big Tech Has Performed the “Greatest Bait-and-Switch in American History” As It Now Turns On Free Speech

October 17, 2018

Big Tech Has Performed the “Greatest Bait-and-Switch in American History” As It Now Turns On Free Speech

Big tech companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube have performed “perhaps the greatest bait-and-switch in American history” as they now have committed to an about-face to the American value of free speech.

That is the assessment of Breitbart New‘s Allum Bokhari who exclusively presented a leaked Google internal briefing titled “The Good Censor” to the public on October 9th, exposing the world once again to major tech companies’ attitude towards the bedrock of traditional American attitude.

“The Good Censor” is an 85-page briefing that openly admits that Google and other tech platforms are undertaking a “shift towards censorship” in response to unwelcome political events around the world. Unsurprisingly – especially afterleaked video showed google employees in an emotional meltdown after the election victory of Donald J. Trump – The Good Censor cites the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the rise of the populist Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party in Germany as unwelcomed events.

While admitting the shift away from free speech it is also simultaneously admitted that those select few giants “control the majority of online conversations.”

The briefing goes into how Google, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube are stuck in a position of going along with the “unmediated marketplace of ideas” (free speech and free markets) vs. “well-ordered spaces for safety and civility” (censorship). These two directions are also described as the “American tradition” which “prioritizes free speech for democracy, not civility” and the “European tradition,” which “favors dignity over liberty and civility over freedom.” The internal pages claim that all tech platforms are now moving toward the European tradition.

Perhaps the most significant part of the brief, as Breitbart’s Bokhari reports, is when it associates Google’s new role as the guarantor of “civility” with the categories of “editor” and “publisher.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Real Reason the Government Won’t Hold Big Tech Accountable

September 26, 2018

The Real Reason the Government Won’t Hold Big Tech Accountable

technology in your hand

The villagers are marching with their torches and pitchforks. Big tech companies are in trouble.

The government is coming to regulate them.

Someone leaked a draft of an executive order from President Trump. It calls on various agencies to use all current laws to look into possible anticompetitive practices by Facebook and Google.

In fact, the EU already fined Google $5 billion in July for “abusing the market dominance of Android.” And now they’ve set their sights on how Amazon uses customer and seller data.

Elizabeth Warren wants to force Amazon to choose between providing a platform for sellers and selling goods. Echoing European Union regulators, she says Amazon has an unfair advantage by competing against the same sellers it collects information from on its platform.

Governments use antitrust laws to break up businesses that resemble monopolies. The government can call just about anything an “anticompetitive” practice. The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 gives the US government sweeping powers to regulate almost any business behavior.

And there’s plenty to choose from:

  • Google gets the vast majority of search engine users.
  • Facebook is the go-to social media website.
  • Together, Google ads and Facebook ads capture 90% of new advertising spending. They get 71% of all ad dollars in Europe.
  • The left says Facebook’s lax data policies helped win Trump the election. The right claims Facebook targets conservatives for censorship.
  • Google favors it’s own results, and censors certain news.
  • Amazon collects almost half of all online retail sales in the US.

But much of the criticism misses the mark.

A Bloomberg article called Tech Giants Spend $80 Billion to Make Sure No One Else Can Compete, offers a perfect example of misplaced criticism:

How can a company hope to compete with Google’s driverless cars when it spends $20 billion a year to ensure it has the best laser-guided sensors and computer chips?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

EU Enters “Final Stage” of Crafting Bill Forcing Big Tech Censorship

September 6, 2018

EU Enters “Final Stage” of Crafting Bill Forcing Big Tech Censorship

The European Union is in the final stages of crafting legislation that will force big tech and internet companies to censor “extremist” content and cooperate with law enforcement, Reuters reports.

The bill is expected to be released by the end of the month and will absolutely require companies such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter to swiftly remove any content considered terroristic from their platforms.

EU Commissioner in charge of Justice, Consumers and gender equality, Věra Jourová , speaks at a news conference on a second monitoring of the illegal online hate speech code of conduct in Brussels, Belgium, 1 June 2017. [Olivier Hoslet/EPA]

In March, the European Commission told such companies that they had three months to show they were removing “extremist” content more rapidly or face legislation forcing them to do so.EU recommendations were sent out at the time regarding the speedy removal of all content including terrorist content, incitement to hatred and violence, child sexual abuse material, counterfeit products, and copyright infringement.

The threat eventually led to the creation of an online “code of conduct” aimed at fighting racism and xenophobia across Europe, an effort both the EU and big tech collaborated on.

According to European Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova, that an existing code of conduct to counter hate speech could remain voluntary.

“(But on) terrorist content, we came to the conclusion that it is too serious a threat and risk for European people that we should have absolute certainty that all the platforms and all the IT providers will delete the terrorist content and will cooperate with law enforcement bodies,” Jourova said on Wednesday.

“Yes, this is in the final stage,” she added, addressing the new bill.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Idemia: The Corporation Building Spy Grid in China, National ID in India Also Creates Drivers Licenses in the U.S.

August 23, 2018

Idemia: The Corporation Building Spy Grid in China, National ID in India Also Creates Drivers Licenses in the U.S.

Company that helps manufacture U.S. citizens drivers licenses brags of “building and managing databases of entire populations” across the globe.

Big Tech has gathered unprecedented amounts of personal data from millions of people. At the same time, a system of total surveillance has been constructed: Facial recognition, biometric scanning, cell phone surveillance and more have amassed a huge amount of information.

We see the stories about the growing surveillance state, but we don’t hear about the gigantic multinational corporation that is helping to build the physical infrastructure supporting it.

Idemia (formerly Morpho), is a billion dollar multinational corporation. It is responsible for building a significant portion of the world’s biometric surveillance and security systems, operating in about 70 countries. Some American clients of the company include the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, and the FBI.

The company website says that Morpho has been “…building and managing databases of entire populations…” for many years.

From the company site:

Morpho has been building and managing databases of entire populations for governments, law enforcement agencies and other government bodies around the world, whether for national ID, health cards, bank cards or even driver license programs.

In the United States, Idemia is involved in the making of state issued drivers licenses in 42 states.

The company is now pushing digital license trials in the U.S. Delaware and Iowa are among five states involved in the trials this year. With the mobile license, law enforcement will be able to wirelessly “ping” a drivers smartphone for their license. The move is part of a wider trend toward cashless payment.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Murphy’s Law: Big Tech Must Serve as Censorship Subcontractors

August 18, 2018

Murphy’s Law: Big Tech Must Serve as Censorship Subcontractors

In a recent tweet, US Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) warned that “Infowars is the tip of a giant iceberg of hate and lies that uses sites like Facebook and YouTube to tear our nation apart.” His solution: “These companies must do more than take down one website. The survival of our democracy depends on it.”

Yes, odd as it might seem, Senator Murphy believes that the future of America can only be secured by suppressing information and discussion he doesn’t like. That sentiment seems to be going around. David McCabe  of Axios reports on a leaked policy paper from the office of US Senator Mark Warner (D-VA). Two of its most dangerous proposals:

“[N]ew federal funding for media literacy programs that could help consumers sort through the information on online platforms.” In other words, well-financed government propaganda to make sure we hear what Mark Warner wants us to hear (and think what he wants us to think about what we hear elsewhere).

“[R]equiring web platforms to label bot accounts or do more to identify authentic accounts, with the threat of sanction by the Federal Trade Commission if they fail to do so.” America’s long tradition of anonymous and pseudonymous political speech — not least among it the Revolution-era pamphlets of Thomas Paine — shouldn’t be subject to the veto of Mark Warner or Chris Murphy.

Then, a good laugh: “The size and reach of these platforms demand that we ensure proper oversight, transparency and effective management of technologies that in large measure undergird our social lives, our economy, and our politics.”

Since when has government ever produced proper oversight, transparency, or effective management of anything? And what could possibly go wrong with eviscerating the First Amendment to give these jokers “oversight” or “management” powers over technologies that undergird our politics? What’s really going on here?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why Big Tech May Be Getting Too Big

September 28, 2015

Why Big Tech May Be Getting Too Big

Conservatives and liberals interminably debate the merits of “the free market” versus “the government.” Which one you trust more delineates the main ideological divide in America.

In reality, they aren’t two separate things and there can’t be a market without government. Legislators, agency heads and judges decide the rules of the game. And, over time, they change the rules.

The important question, too rarely discussed, is who has the most influence over these decisions and in that way wins the game.

Two centuries ago slaves were among the nation’s most valuable assets, and a century ago, perhaps the most valuable asset was land. Then came another shift as factories, machines, railroads and oil transformed America. By the 1920s most Americans were employees, and the most contested property issue was their freedom to organize into unions.

In more recent years, information and ideas have become the most valuable forms of property. This property can’t be concretely weighed or measured, and most of the cost of producing it goes into discovering it or making the first copy. After that, the additional production cost is often zero.

Such “intellectual property” is the key building block of the new economy. Without government decisions over what it is, and who can own it and on what terms, the new economy could not exist.

But as has happened before with other forms of property, the most politically influential owners of the new property are doing their utmost to increase their profits by creating monopolies that must eventually be broken up.

The most valuable intellectual property are platforms so widely used that everyone else has to use them, too. Think of standard operating systems like Microsoft’s Windows or Google’s Android; Google’s search engine; Amazon’s shopping system; and Facebooks’ communication network.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Post navigation

Newer posts →

Olduvai IV: Courage
Click on image to read excerpts

Olduvai II: Exodus
Click on image to purchase

Click on image to purchase @ FriesenPress