Silicon Valley's crisis of conscience
The article looks like a LOT of words but without a clear point. From what it looks, it appears to be about Facebook, Donald Trump etc.<p>While Im on the total opposite of the spectrum of Donald Trump and his crowd - and not even in a US sense - in actual left&#x2F;right spectrum - these calls for big tech literally deciding what people can hear, see, and think can not be labeled anything but literal censorship. You cant go full feudal on people when the results of an election is not to your liking.<p>Nobody on the planet consented to give the feudal overlordship of content, politics or the Internet to big tech players. At this point, the US big tech acts as a literal extension of the US corporate-state establishment, pushing its policies to everyone on the planet - to the extent of trying to overthrow other countries&#x27; governments to censoring information for any other country. It even helps the US government target any specific individual or country, as can be seen from Assange, Snowden leaks and other leaks.<p>There is absolutely no reason why other countries would continue to allow the US big tech to influence their own societies without those countries&#x27; regulations and laws regulating them. If an app or service is acting according to a specific country&#x27;s policies and against a specific country&#x27;s own laws, it means that it is an unregulated foreign agent. At this point many of those who read this text will think that such things are &#x27;for the good&#x27; of those countries&#x27; people for things like fighting &#x27;authoritarianism&#x27; and so on. But that&#x27;s a false consolation that is an escape from cognitive dissonance: First, the US tech corporations push US corporate-state policies that have nothing to do with any kind of &#x27;authoritarianism&#x27;. Second, if there was any fight against any such evil being done, the first to go after would be those who lied and murdered people on lies like nonexistent WMDs. Third, nobody gave you the right or authority to decide what is &#x27;authoritarian&#x27; - especially if you are living in a country that kills its people when they cant pay for healthcare and you are consenting to it.<p>Countries already started to take measures to regulate US tech companies that operate on their Internet. More alignment between the US tech and US corporate-state establishment would just end up in more regulation abroad, and ultimately exclusion of such apps and services from those countries&#x27; Internets and domestic alternatives taking their place.<p>Again - many of you may err in thinking that this philosophy of big tech companies being de facto feudal lords of information is something that is &#x27;for the good&#x27; of others, and its &#x27;better&#x27; for not only Americans, but the entire Internet to be literally regulated by private American corporate entities. That is arrogant and utterly hypocritical. This philosophy originates from the country that kills its people if they cant pay for healthcare. That country ireats its homeless people as if they were animals. In that country, millions of working families go hungry despite multiple parents working. It regularly invades and murders other people in other countries to suck their oil and whatever. The war criminals who facilitate that are celebrated as prominent figures without any censorship or &#x27;visibility filtering&#x27; in all US tech apps. If you are not putting your wallet where your mouth is and dealing with the elephant in the room, stop being so arrogant as to think that you &#x27;know better&#x27; - less, thinking that you have any right to dictate what is &#x27;good&#x27; to anyone else.