Free Speech & Silicon Valley
Music Videos, New Drop, Anti-Capitalism & Rage
Now that the smoke and gleeful entertainment after Trump’s involuntary exit from Twitter and Parler’s doxxing from Silicon Valley has passed it’s time to have a chat about all of this. I am in no way suggesting that I have reasonable answers, if anything, I have more questions that I would like everyone to have a think about and ideally comment on below.
Free Speech that is controlled by private cooperations is an oxymoron, yet here we are. At this stage we have 5 companies with little to no public oversight deciding what is socially acceptable, safe, sound and what classifies as Free Speech and what doesn’t. That is one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is undoubtedly that Trump used a private companies services to incite Hate Crimes, as did many members of the 2018 founded Social Media Service Parler - whilst not strictly speaking a MAGA site, home to many of his cult members and by relying on Amazon Web Services ( AWS ) who have a set rules of conduct, well there you go.
Here is where it gets tricky, one, because after the advent of Web 2.0 and Social Media, we haven’t had a collective discussion about what we are ok with to say and what not. Furthermore, we haven’t even had a public discussion about consequences in the new world, no, those are currently being decided at free will in boardrooms by untrustworthy characters in Silicon Valley and most executed by “content managers” aka wage slave labourers around the world - I know how I feel about that and to put it plainly, I think it is bullshit. Again, the other side of this discussion is I am 100% pro consequences of racist, sexist, fascist hate speech online, let alone in RL. I can make my own decisions as to how to deal with it ( engage, block, discuss, find the bastards and pay them a visit and so on ) yet, and again, collectively we haven’t even had that discussion, let alone decisions about how we collectively want to address this.
An additional layer here is the corruption and the moral ambivalence within Apple, Google, Twitter, Amazon and Facebook when it comes to the above decision.
And that’s to say nothing of the endless number of hypocrisies with Silicon Valley giants feigning opposition to violent rhetoric or political extremism. Amazon, for instance, is one of the CIA’s most profitable partners, with a $600 million contract to provide services to the agency, and it is constantly bidding for more. On Facebook and Twitter, one finds official accounts from the most repressive and violent regimes on earth, including Saudi Arabia, and pages devoted to propaganda on behalf of the Egyptian regime. Does anyone think these tech giants have a genuine concern about violence and extremism? - Glenn Greenwald
Additionally, there is the genuine argument that without Facebook Inc., Twitter and co.- extremism such as QANON, Myanmir, Egypt ( the list is endless ), for example, could not have grown so incredibly without said companies profiting off them for such a long time. With that, why do we applaud them for doxxing them now, let alone trust them with the decision making process and authority in the first place. Make no mistake, I am fully aware that our collective narrative has always been decided in rooms where none of us have a say, from the history written post World War 2, both CIA’s and KGB’s cultural wars fought throughout the Cold War to the onslaught of propaganda since the invention of Web 2.0. This isn’t anything new and I fear that we have reached a point of no return, or rather, we are lacking the political representation that itself isn’t corrupt through which we can channel the need to take back control of mass media. Greenwald did write a solid piece about this yesterday, asking some genuine, good questions, albeit with a concerning lack of reflection and acknowledgment of how restrictive the above companies have been for anyone on the broadest of Leftist Spectrum. Hit the picture below to read it and feel free to comment below.
After that unannounced hefty start to your Wednesday, I wanted to follow up with 2 new and one older ( for shits and giggles ) music videos to clean the palette so to say.
New track from the ever scathing Sleaford Mods. New album comes out on Friday!!
New video from Idles, again, I am still not sold on the new album in its entirety but this is a banging song. ADVANCE WARNING: THIS VIDEO IS GRAPHIC AS FUCK!
You may have picked up me putting a lot of Viagra Boys into my weekly playlists over the last couple of months, for a damn good reason as well, but this one passed me by.
How To Be An Anti-Capitalist in a Capitalist World
Like all good things, this does take a little more work but it is very much worth it. Find whatever you need on Amazon, find out who the seller is, google them and write them directly. Tell them that you would like their product but don’t want to pay the union busting bastard Bezos a penny. You’ll be surprised at the positive responses you will get, I started doing this at the behest of a friend a few years ago and it is a game changer. Oh cancel that fucking Prime Membership, even if only use it for video streaming, plenty of pirate sites around still comrades.
The first drop of the year goes live on Friday. Remember, paying supporters of this email get a discount code for all and any releases…cough cough
Here is your supply of rage posts to carry you through to Friday, kicking it off with a nice historical thread that I have linked into the picture below:
That GAFA action against Parler is disgusting but not surprising.... keep on the good work bro! And yes! Can’t wait for the complete Sleaford boys new on the 16th!!! 🖤🤘🏼♠️