just make them think they are

so we can laugh at them

for how stupid they are

?

Is there some sort of actuarial calculation going on where A='dollars spent on discrimination lawsuits' and B='money wasted on diversity bullshit' and if A>B you hire a diversity officer.

someone told me last year that half of all youtube views are fake

something to do with youtube inflating traffic with fake views to sell ads

never got a source of a news, guess is just a rumour

i think the gobt should regulate youtube

on the ads stuff

I think Tim is right and nothing is going to happen to regulate big tech. I looked on some conservative forums and support for any kind of intervention is very low. Most are taking the NRO opinion, which is basically "yes these companies are biased and are fucking us over and deplatforming us, but private companies can do whatever they want"

If you don't like it host your server in your basement or something and make your own trillion dollar social media giant.

Yeah, the base is kinda naive. You even see it here when I get into the fights with Beemann.

That twitch video from the Quartering is a big part of why I don't trust "alternatives" either.

That said, I can smell things changing.

That NRO article mentions going to some panels and the panel being uniformly in favor of some kind of regulation.

/r/conservative went from being 'maybe we should talk about Net Neutrality' to 'TIME TO REGULATE' or 'BREAK UP GOOGLE!'

I think it's a case of the people who are technically sophisticated and aware of all the news versus the "principles" types who stick their heads up their asses and talk among each other all day.

There's an article I pass around here where a progressive senator from Washington was criticizing "hypocritical free market republicans like Ted Cruz who want to do something to Google"

And the Dems and Social media in particular are going after Ted Cruz HARD in this re-election cycle.

*something* smells. But it's not yet raised to a level of cohesive action yet.

A bunch of attorney generals in red states actually are starting an anti-trust suit against Google *right now*.

There's also a component of the tech illiterate not understanding that there really is a monopoly here. Google is ~96% of US search engine market, and Youtube is roughly the same for video sharing. The social media market is a little more competitive at first glance, until you dig deeper and learn that they're actually all part of the same 2-3 parent companies.

Stupiditiy isn't a monopoly.

Also, if you're in TX, Reddit *does not like* Ted Cruz. And the forums and back channels are backlogged with cases of pretty obvious manipulation. If it's reddit corporate or ShareBlue behind it isn't really clear. But there's a very obvious astroturf operation against Ted Cruz right now and Reddit's administration seems supportive. He's got them scared.

If this stuff bothers you, seriously consider voting for Cruz. I'm not sure what he's said. But he's clearly got the tech giants worried.

And it's happening behind closed doors.

One thing that might help would be designating the donation of services as a political contribution. If a newspaper gave a political party free advertising space for an election cycle, that would cause an uproar, but if Facebook, Google, or Reddit give the democrats free analytics or promotion, nobody bats an eye.

@Atkins It's actually worse than that. Google's tools are used by everyone else too in an internal capacity.

Then there's the ad monopoly. There was an anti-trust suit under consideration back under George W Bush, but Schmidt was very close to the Obama Administration and it got shut down.

Yes, I can agree, but you'd have a hard time drawing that line.

And services should be. They are in other industries.

Is there an ad monopoly? I wouldn't know since I've always used an adblocker.

Well, I'd like congress to at least think about it. But it's hard to drag them away from the 'muh Russia' narrative when they get these people on the hill.

Cruz may've been the only Senator to question Facebook's CDA 230 immunity.

@devpav Oh, yes. Back under Bush it was >90%. It's now down to something like 60-70% because Facebook, Reddit and Twitter. But if you see ads on a random webpage it's almost certainly routing through Google or a Google subsidiary.

Mostly Google bought out all the other competing ad services.

And routed their information and services through their own systems.

Digital advertising seems like such a massive fail nowadays.

@Atkins I got a bad feeling there's going to be a bloodbath and then the Dems are going to make regulations that will make all the censorship far worse and enshrined into law. They've already proposed things like banning anonymity.

A bloodbath for whom?

I also think the average Republican congressman is hopelessly behind on this stuff. They got outflanked by Obama;s campaign twice and I can see them getting outflanked again.

@devpav the Republicans.

Hah.