There’s plenty of evidence now that all of big tech was working with the Biden administration to censor their political opponents.
We need a law or a court decision that says that the government isn’t allowed to restrict citizens speech by proxy by pressuring private organizations. Because this is going to keep getting worse if not.
It’s probably not worth bothering to reply. (Political arguments on the internet are dumb and I doubt you’re actually curious to learn more.)
But if you actually want to know, look at what Zuckerberg has said since the election, read reporting on the Twitter Files, and look into who was responsible for lobbying tech to ban Trump from all platforms after he lost in 2020.
The Republicans I’m sure will now use all these tactics to their own ends, and the previous four years will be forgotten.
Hold up, you're the one who chose to introduce the topic of censorship just moments ago, why are you suddenly making excuses and running away from answering the easiest[0] question about the thing you wanted to share?
I'll level with you: I'm getting the same vibes as the "2020 election was stolen" folks, where they also kept insisting there was "plenty of evidence" but refused to ever show it. It was literally an article of faith that something incontrovertible was always just +1 hop away and someone else had it somewhere, trust me go ask them instead.
Eventually, when dozens of court cases across the nation finally forces them to "put up or shut up"... they couldn't! It was all fluff like "some guy said a friend of his heard a story that", or "poll workers packed up a box and I don't know what was in it but it must have been uncounted ballots", and "I saw one worker hand something to another and I didn't see it clearly but it must have been a USB stick for some kind of evil."
[0] OK, maybe not the easiest if two items are a close comparison, but FFS nobody's insisting on that kind of accuracy.
Biden wasn't president when they make takedown requests on the revenge porn of Hunter Biden. The trump administration however was shown to use the government to force twitter to do their bidding and the Twitter files showed that, but it wasn't talked about as much.
It is really embarrassing how people contort themselves into pretending Biden was anywhere near as bad as trump on this, especially given how trump performed in the past and present as a politician.
I get the impression there is much less freedom of speech on X than there was on Twitter.
I actually do not care myself how people run their platforms, I do not use that one. But from where I sit, and what I see, Musk is very controlling on what is said on his (privatly owned) platform
Good on him. He is taking advantage of the tools available to him
>look at what Zuckerberg has said since the election
Zuckerberg has become such an obsequious "lickspittle" (as Gruber would say), that his words are worse than useless. He has become a Trump mouthpiece, and it's embarrassing. I cannot fathom how discouraging it must be to work at Meta now, knowing that your grovelling bro is putting on such a disgraceful act.
The most incredible example was when him and Rogan were talking about the Hunter laptop thing, trying to frame this against Biden. But it was Trump's administration that said go slow on that (not to mention that as hacked materials every service already barred content like that, and it didn't even need government input). Similarly, most of the laughable dud "Twitter files" happened during the, again, Trump's admin.
There is nothing wrong with government trying to work with big businesses to get messaging right or to go slow on possible if not probable disinformation. But there was literally nothing in any of these cases that crossed a line. Trump getting a bunch of oligarchs to line up and pay into his extortion fund, however, not only crosses the line, it is so cravenly corrupt that at this point the United States is a banana republic. Every other nation needs to start seriously reconsidering ties to US tech as there is absolutely zero safeguards anymore.
Which I think is why all the China fear-mongering about DeepSeek and stuff isn't landing. To most of the world, including half of the US, China is by far the more mature, responsible player on the world stage. The US is some rogue nation where a felon rapist halfwit threatens various nations with military conquest with every passing day. Oh look, some random trade war contrived on made up reasons begins tomorrow: Good luck everybody!
> I cannot fathom how discouraging it must be to work at Meta now
I think they are okay with it as they drown their sorrows in the wads of cash that appears in their bank account every month and the RSUs that appear in their brokerage account when they vest.
No one who works for either Google or Meta (ad tech) or Amazon (if evil had a mascot it would be the Amazon logo) do it because they think they are making the world a better place. (Former AWS employee).
No I’m not excusing Apple either. I think it’s even worse for a gay CEO from Alabama who knows first hand how modern Republican policies hurt LGBT to kiss the ring.
But the DNC is not blameless, they tried to do the “Weekend at Bernie’s” to the American people propping up a senile old man.
> To most of the world, including half of the US, China is by far the more mature, responsible player on the world stage. The US is some rogue nation where a felon rapist halfwit threatens various nations with military conquest with every passing day.
No, China's "value" comes from being an alternative to to create competition, not for being inherently trustworthy.
Speaking as an American and former Hong Kong resident, they will still break international agreements when they want to.
