Some cracker has written up a thing about how the bigger tech firms just plain go along with the wishes of the Pentagon, but boy howdy are they dragging their feet over the moral crisis of it all. The author does bring up some fine points, but he misses the bigger picture by years and years and years. Ideologically, I think he even ripped off this article from four whole years earlier. It’s almost as though the entire ordeal is so all-encompassing now, presenting less and lesser room for denial, that the bare bones must be addressed even while the meaty flesh goes ignored.
But his basic premise is dead wrong though, as nobody in the government is twisting the arm of Jeff Bezos when this same government is gifting Amazon untold billions in grants, corporate subsidies and tax breaks. Who in the hell is he kidding. No mention of the hundreds of generally closed door meetings held by Google executives at the White House throughout the previous Presidential administration, all sometime before Eric Schmidt later chaired a panel inside of said Pentagon, as he does currently. No mention of how Google is currently working directly with the government that happens to be the largest purchaser of arms on the planet while still beheading journalists, feminists and sorcerers.
The professional writer also fails to mention how Bezos’ own AWS left dozens of terabytes of Pentagon data unencrypted on the web for anybody to stumble across, enjoying a get out of jail free card for exposing substantially more sensitive information than did Ed Snowden times a thousand. In fact, Bezos is now applauded as the wealthiest man in the world with nary a blemish to be found on his public record. Like his fingers are just too suckled by men in uniforms to get walloped by the proverbial ruler-wielding nun.
He doesn’t address Peter Thiel, whose own billions came from the privatized surveillance of entire cities on behalf of law enforcement. Who forces Thiel to do what he does? Although on a side-note, when we learn of law enforcement here in the west undergoing special training by Israeli military forces, one wonders if Israeli cyber-intelligence forces such as Black Cube also have a hand in the teaching. But as for Thiel, what if the ransomware attack in DC, which I think formed the origin point of the later WannaCry worm, was Thiel’s own moment of ‘losing terabytes’, like maybe he wanted to show his employers who exactly employs whom. Why is it so impossible for the public to view these men as super-villains?
Why downplay actions that affect millions and millions of people?
One of the better bumper stickers I’ve encountered in my time read something along the lines of, “Dear Lord, save us from your followers.”
It springs to mind whenever I hear word of the latest valiant struggle to ‘save the internet‘, because either woe boils down to asking a thing to deny itself. It’s requesting assistance from the problem in resolving the problem. Saved from what, precisely? Dangerous opinions? That’s coding for censorship, and laughable when the platforms in question are already explicitly owned by those with vested interests in controlling narratives. Dangerous opinions are then recognized as anything counterproductive to the narrative the ruling parties are most dependent upon that particular moment, repackaged for mass appeal. As I continuously shout to the winds, neither wealth or power come from good intentions. Accumulation of wealth and/or power, no matter one’s definition of wealth and/or power, comes from depriving others of wealth and/or power. Each and every societal struggle of the civilized, modern world amounts to competing billionaires. Brexit amounts to unelected billionaire outsiders vying for final say over the resources of a sovereign nation, regardless of which side one voted for. The melodrama in DC amounts to the Intelligence Community puppets of one set of billionaires clashing for the upper hand against the State Department puppets of another set of billionaires. The internet is no different. We are fighting for certain billionaires or we are fighting against other billionaires, yet either way some set of billionaires will get the grand prize.
To be anti-establishment is to be resistant to marketing, just as no degree of susceptibility can honestly be interpreted as thinking for one’s self. As such, if resistance to buying or selling is independence, and it most certainly is, then dependence on buying or selling is codependency. Masters nor servants can exist without one another short of some serious psychogenic-redefining action. Personally, I view taking back the means of production as problematic, as there would then still be production. It remains reliant on a market-based system, which is the blackened core of what constitutes Capitalism to begin with, the ease with which we can and will mistake anything under the sun for commodity. Like how Satanism is essentially just a very off-center denomination of Christianity, because it cannot exist without carjacking the same IP and getting really carried away with itself for such a cool paint-job. The changes necessary for our species to endure are a little more dramatic than deciding exactly who gets to cash the checks.
What no Capitalist will ever concede is how this is manifest for all online social networks. Truly left-leaning politics concern putting the needs of others before one’s own desires, whereas right-leaning politics concern putting one’s own desires before the needs of others. Social networking online is self-serving the ego, mistaking personal identity for the ebb and flow of manufactured trends and perspectives, and always with those vested interests as the consolation prize carrot tied like a noose to your memory stick. There is no culture in the west, where everything up to and including life itself might be bought and sold, only products. What gets the label of ‘cultural re-appropriation” has nothing to do with culture whatsoever, and everything to do with which products are permitted dominance by whichever dominant interests. Products exist to be owned. Culture exists to be shared. This is why those in the USA particularly freak when met with any authentic cultural tradition. Here, community is an audience, the recipient targets of products and not the sharer of cultural ideas or traditions. Religious fervor, brand loyalty and political partisanship all disguise this. The internet is rightwing by design.
Hence, the marketing and promotions that go into passing off official narratives as the will of the common people. Convincing someone to think a certain way, informing them what their desires are supposed to be, all of which can and usually does directly contradict their own actual, tangible needs.
No matter how much you like your twitter or whatever, these electronic fiefdoms are inherently rightwing. The interactions guided by algorithms aside, our presence here cannot help but to advance private gains, a situation irrevocably and fundamentally anti-left. There is no such thing as a leftwing billionaire. And the Silicon Valley cultists even hinting otherwise are heinously wrong. They may lack enough genuine human interaction to know better, but more likely, being members of the cult, they will say whatever they suspect might lead them to your billfold. Principles do not come with sales tags.
You don’t have to apply for membership, and there’s no registration or anything of the sort.