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Net Neutrality Gave Us Shadow Banning
Where are the 
liberal free speech advocates? Conservative thought is being silenced. Silicon Valley’s powerful programmers are hiding voices with which they politically disagree by using statist-like media restrictions not dissimilar from North Korea. Kim Jong Un approves. Just this week we saw two new examples:
Project Veritas latest investigation demonstrates Twitter’s shadow banning of conservative accounts:
Twitter Engineers To “Ban a Way of Talking” Through “Shadow Banning,” Algorithms to Censor Opposing Political Opinions”. This results in far fewer people seeing conservative Twitter accounts.
Daily Wire reports:
Google Targets Daily Wire, Other Conservative Sites With Left-Wing Fact Checks, Immunizes Left-Wing Sites. Suffice it to say that the use of left-wing fact-checkers as truth police is a massive step in favor of media bias, not against it.
Free market advocates, like myself, firmly believe government control of a product or service reduces competition, decreases quality while increasing pricing. In deregulated markets such as airlines and telecoms, we have seen more options, which increase quality all while allowing lower prices for consumers.
We complain about the paying for luggage or pillows, but the reality is the cost of airfare is still very affordable. Low-cost carriers turned the antiquated airline industry on its head and while you probably hate Spirit Air, they do a service in keeping United and Delta in check.
And when was the last time you screamed at your kids for calling another area code?
When the powerful elite entices government to put its thumb on the scale, the state ends up picking winners and losers. Today’s winners are our Silicon Valley betters who dictate progressive values through suppression of any Deplorable’s alternative thought, quite possibly yours.
YouTube (Google), Facebook and arguably Twitter own the marketplace of user-created content. When programmers are politically motivated to silence your voice, you have little recourse. Currently, there are no other content platforms of comparable reach. Everyone needs to be on the big three.
For small/medium size content providers, the ability to rise above the noise has always been the challenge and Net Neutrality made it harder to remain financially viable. But now with the repeal of Net Neutrality, producers of content, whether a blog, podcast, or video service now have the ability to compete with the behemoths like YouTube and Facebook. In fact, internet service providers will start offering their own video hosting sites to creators of content and, as free-markets always do, provide more options, at a lesser cost.
ISP’s now have the freedom to determine pricing structures that best suit their own business model, as opposed to working around the states one-size-fits-all. If you are Google or Facebook, which many now compare to utilities, you were very happy with preventing serious competition. But if ISP’s can now launch their own versions of YouTube for their own customers at faster speeds with less ideological programming, suddenly there are more options.
The biggest complaint by activists against the repeal of Net Neutrality is that ISP’s who choose to create their own platform for their users may in-turn increase pricing to users who wish to access YouTube. That this may result in fewer people watching Honest Trailers (one of my favorites) on YouTube, thus YouTube loses ad revenue, as does Screen Junkies (the producers).
But, in free markets, water always finds it’s own level. Content creators such as Screen Junkies will have more choices where to put their content, which may include smaller, but more cost-effective platforms. Those platforms then grow and, voilà, more competition to YouTube. It’s then likely YouTube, no longer a monopoly, will have to adapt or die.
Small/medium-sized content creators will likely leave YouTube and Twitter, or at least spend fewer resources on those platforms and spread their investment over multiple outlets.
Whether or not Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe’s new investigation catches a gust of wind and results in change, it’s important to remember that due to the repeal of Net Neutrality, free markets can provide us the power to fight back.
Published in General
So what YouTube, Google, and Twitter want is to be able to restrict content for political reasons, but to disallow the ISP’s doing it for economic reasons.
But that’s different. Profit is evil, but their hearts are pure.
Sometimes I forget.
One of the biggest problems about this whole thing is the misunderstanding of it on the part of so many young people. @spin wrote an effective explanation of Net Neutrality that should be read by all these idiot SJWs who oppose it based on their shoddy understanding of what it all means. I can’t recall if I saw Spin’s article here or on Facebook, but it should be required reading.
Would love to read it, if you can provide the link.
I was able to turn my 15 year old around on NN just by telling him who paid for the lines in the ground and then how they get used. Get got it.
Found it – it was a Ricochet post:
http://ricochet.com/477269/net-neutrality-a-guy-in-the-trenches/
Please explain.
How?
What is preventing this now?
Under Net Neutrality, @davidsussman could start a service to compete with youtube and the local ISPs could not crush him. Now the ISPs can. The ISP becomes the monopolist. Should the phone company or gas company get to charge you whatever it wants? BTW, in terms of censorship issues, is there anything worse than an entity that needs to suck up to government to get its franchies renewed?
I see no reason why they won’t be even more prone to censorship than google, etc.
How? What is stopping those small platforms now? Why won’t the ISPs keep them down?
Again, where are these outlets coming from (other than just having to deal with 50 different local monopolist ISP holding companies in different areas)?
I’d love to see this start and spread. I think that if some regular producers who get grief on youtube would help get the new platforms going, like Prager University. If organizations that use youtube a lot would promote this idea, we can help the new guys get going. I hope I understand this correctly!
And will someone please explain to these people what fascism actually looks like.
If the ISP built all the lines and owns them, then they should have control of them.
They built them under a contract that gives them a renewable monopoly franchise and gives the municipalities authority to approve terms.
This was excellent. Sending it to my 17 y.o.
Jonah Goldberg was right. It will come here in the US with a smiley face as it has at Google, YouTube et al., all in the name of the greater good.
Marietta contracted with Comcast and ATT to run cable into my home?
I can tell you the exact day that I quit looking at Twitter. March 1st, 2012. The day Andrew Breitbart died and the most vile disgusting slime perculated up from the bowels within the sub strata of the internet and rejoiced at his death. I haven’t been back since that day. My life has been fine and I don’t feel the slightest bit disadvantaged.
Do you think CTLaw, Inc. could just run cable to your house without contracting with Marietta?
When I was in high school, lo those many years ago, my history teacher had fought the facist in World War 2. He never refered to the the Germans as Nazi’s. He referred to them as National Socialist with an emphasis on the word Socialist. I’d just be happy if people would acknowledge the historical background of fascism.
Wasn’t there a court order preventing you from doing that again? ;-)
I don’t know what to think, other than Verizon and Google also lay cable in these here parts (though not to my home).
It really depends on the technology you are talking about, but there is a ton of problem wrapped up in the fact that not all cable operators can provide cabling in all locations. This needs to be fixed, for sure. But I’ll just say again: this industry is changing dramatically, and even the experts who work in it all day every day aren’t sure where we end up in 5 years, let alone 10. Net Neutrality applies yesterdays thinking to tomorrows technology. It was wrong headed, and I hope it stays gone.
How to Get Kicked Off YouTube – By Colin Flaherty
He writes on the disproportionate criminal mischief done by 13% of the population. So of course he’s banned from YouTube.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/01/hot_to_get_kicked_off_youtube.html
He recommends https://www.minds.com/
I think there will be plenty of competition soon enough. Of course https://gab.ai/ is a good twitter substitute.
I don’t know about Marietta. I am in the process of moving coax and fiber from one spot to another. The county has to give a permit, but the poles are owned by the local power company. Well, some of them are owned by us, but the point is, the cable running in the public thoroughfare doesn’t require a “contract” with the county or the city. A permit yes, but not a contract.
That was a restraining order by a woman named Marietta.
Are you sure? So I could start my cable company down there without any city franchise?
CT, all good questions, unfort. heading out to dinner, but wanted to point you to a great piece from an IT pro that answers many of your questions. Written 4 weeks ago.
First, I will say this. Smaller players getting a foothold in any industry is always hard. But NN made it harder as they added hundreds of pages of red tape which prevent aggressive businesses from providing features and options for customers which would otherwise be popular. Example from the same IT Pro: T-Mobile’s “Binge On”.
Cheers.
Very good comment. I also don’t see how repealing Net Neutrality helps here. I don’t see how having Net Neutrality helps, either. I’m not 100 percent sure about this, but I suspect the only thing that will help maintain political diversity is chaos, i.e. allowing states and localities to do their own regulation.
Following this thread.
Thanks for letting us know. We will refrain from commenting further.
Here you go
http://ricochet.com/477269/net-neutrality-a-guy-in-the-trenches/comment-page-2/#comment-4011376