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The 21st Century Version of Book Burning
It used to require an angry mob and a can of gasoline. Now a few smugly self-righteous billionaires can decide who gets to hear and see and read what.
I’ve just canceled my Amazon Prime membership.
Damn the censors.
Published in General
The next right thing. Always.
Yeah, I know–that doesn’t answer the question at hand. I don’t have the answer either. At some point I aim to go back to Facebook, promote this book I’m editing, say something rational about politics, and hope to survive the ordeal. I’m pretty sure that’s a good thing–like Faramir on the edge of Mordor reminding the Enemy his troops are not entirely unopposed.
Keep Ricochet going–whether as social media alternative or as conservative institution alternative, that’s worth doing.
I’m on Parler too. Documented some of the election fraud stuff there.
https://parler.com/profile/TeacherOfPhilosophy/posts
Yeah, so did I.
What happened? Did I miss something? What did Amazon censor?
They colluded with Google and Apple to nuke Parler, a (mostly) free speech, conservative-friendly alternative to Twitter that was growing by leaps and bounds in response to Twitter banning everyone. Right now, Bongino (the owner) needs to find a new host, who will be subject to coordinated action in turn.
Oh. I had not heard. I really do think some of these internet companies have gotten too huge, and now it sounds like they are colluding. I am for breaking some of the biggest companies up. They have a monopoly that is detrimental to the public.
I quit my Prime membership yesterday, opting to do it immediately rather than when the current term expires. I bought an audiobook tonight, after reading a Seawriter review of it. I use my Amazon password to log on to audible.com. I don’t plan to discontinue that, even though it’s owned by Amazon.
I suppose music and video will be a problem for some people, but I just haven’t been able to get myself interested in those services. I’ve watched a movie or two, based on recommendations here at Ricochet, but they weren’t that great.
I’m sure I’ll still make some purchases from Amazon, but I’ll be more diligent about looking for alternative sources.
Yes, but we should still read the Federalist Papers at least once. And maybe we should add Power of the Powerless to this list.
I don’t like the idea of breaking them up, because it means we’re asking a bigger bully/monopoly to rescue us from a smaller bully/monopoly. It rarely ends well. However, I do favor creating conditions that will want to make them decide on their own to break up.
But desperate times call for desperate measures. We could follow Poland’s lead and enact laws that make it illegal for them to drop users that aren’t violating Polish laws. (Poland hasn’t enacted these laws yet, but supposedly they are on the way.)
It might be that Poland is the country in which smaller social media companies need to host their servers. Most likely the best is some kind of distributed hosting, but maybe Poland should be involved.
The combination in restraint of trade is more serious than the exercise of monopoly power, at least to me. Seems like a real crime.
Poland’s idea seems like a good approach. Also, deeming these services as sue-able entities, since they are going to start judging the worth of content on their sites. Maybe that will be the natural governor or choke on their influence.
But if they have become so powerful that they can laugh off any attempts to stop them now, so easily have bought off every and all politicians with money too huge to resist, so that stopping them through the normal means we would expect to use, then we are very interestingly f***ed.
Maybe we are indeed at a time of a great reset.
The huge increase in the value of Tesla stock. His “wealth” is all on paper, and could evaporate in an instant. The day the government stops letting Tesla sell “emission credits”, Tesla dies. Most of Tesla revenue comes from the sale of those credits to other auto-makers, so they don’t have to build electric cars no one wants to buy. This is the ultimate house of cards, utterly dependent upon government mandates.
These companies are obviously coordinating to control political speech. If they are doing that, they are almost certainly colluding for profit. These are not market competitors. Big tech is a monopolistic cartel, and the companies should be dissolved.
That’s going to be tough for me to do. The convenience of not having to go to a store and put up with the crowds is too much to loose. In addition, they are my publisher via Kindle Direct Publishing.
Other than Ricochet, I’m not on any social media platform, so I can’t quit what I’m not a member of . . .
Me too, but I have to do something. I think that’s going to be to make an effort to find at least some stuff elsewhere and not to just reflexively buy from Amazon. For example, our pet food business, which is pretty considerable, now is going to Chewy (free 2-day shipping, $50 and over).
I download all the audio books I need through two different library systems on a program called Overdrive. It is free. I love it.
If Parler truly did refuse to remove calls for violence or threats, then I think it’s justifiable for Apple, Amazon, etc. to drop them. It would help matters if they would disclose details on what they were concerned about. Same with Twitter and Facebook when they ban someone.
I see no value in conservatives shrinking away from these formats or boycotting them. There won’t be nearly enough who do that to impact these companies’ decisions, which they have the right to make, after all. Better to remain engaged, and try to reach people who don’t already agree with you. If everybody just retreats to conservative friendly sites for all their political discussion, thinking they’re punishing Big Tech (whatever that is), it just makes reasonable conservative points that much harder for others to hear.
Oddly enough, this is creating a huge market opportunity for a non-American company. These companies are as arrogant as GM, Ford and Chrysler used to be.
Delusional. First, it isn’t a matter of retreat, it is a matter of being driven out. Have you not noticed? I doubt you have.
Second, punishment will consist of anti-trust, prosecution as they are breaking the law, and through taxation.
This evaluation and judgement of the personal characteristics of customers is very unAmerican when one thinks these entities are in business to deliver products and services. It is really an unacceptable trend.
Edit: Isn’t this the business practice the Chinese Communists call Social Credit and it is on a par with financial credit?
It’s extraordinary, but I’m not sure how widely it’s available. Also, the number of books may be subject to municipal budgets. I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth, but there are quite a few audible books that aren’t available on our system.
This is an excellent point. Dissidents in other countries have long used US hosted services to avoid censorship and persecution. Looks like we may be in the same boat. Do you know of any realistic candidates for Twitter and Facebook substitution?
Yes, but they’re Chinese. Unfortunately. Tiktok and Renren. No reason that something else couldn’t come about.
No one is asking you to die.
Elon Musk said it best last week :
True, but only because I see a massive amount of conservative, right leaning, anti-left commentary on social media sites, which is a good thing.
This sounds a lot like boycotting movies and TV shows that star actors who are particularly politically obnoxious. It’s possible, but it leaves you with a lot fewer options, and it doesn’t really have much effect.
I don’t know how well Walmart is it delivering packages in your neck of the woods. So I cannot speak as to whether Walmart would be a suitable substitute for Amazon delivering products to your doorstep.
But I can tell you, you are by no means limited by the legacy music that you bought from Amazon. All the music that I have ever purchased from Amazon is on my phone in this subdirectory
sd_card/android/media/com.amazon.mp3
It’s all there, mp3 file names are the song titles, and the artists and album names are in the metadata of each MP3 which can be seen by altering the display options of the file folder containing the transferred MP3s once you copy the MP3 is off your phone and onto your computer. (I have a chron job that does this nightly, just in case Amazon “recalled” an MP3 due to a copyright take down notice. Which turns out to have been handy now)
Once on your phone you can use your favorite music app to organize the mp3s (I use winamp, a legacy Windows app)
Thank you!
I can support that. It certainly would be preferable if the government didn’t break it up.
You spoke for me too.