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.

Muh blue wave?

I actually think the polling is *understating* Democrat performance as it tends not to poorly sample the young. And as someone who works with the young frequently, I can say they're like mindless Reddit zombies who take their marching orders from social media.

The polls consistently oversampled Democrats back in 2016.

They still do.

I get into this argument a lot around here so I don't want to get sidetracked. So we'll agree to leave it at this. You think there's going to be a red wave, I think there's going to be a blue one.

I think the GOP will gain at least 3 seats in the Senate.

By any means, the current congress should *really* be looking into this censorship while they still have a chance.

What about the House?

The GOP will hold the House.

I think the GOP will lose the house solidly. Not sure what happens in the Senate.

But again, I think this stuff needs to be taken care of *now*

Regardless of November.

And do vote, I have very strong doubts the Democrats will do anything but frame censorship and destruction of privacy into law.

Anonymity has already been confirmed as a right by the Supreme Court.

...you do know it's usually Republican-nominated judges who limit the rights under 4th, right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McIntyre_v._Ohio_Elections_Commission

Sure?

Doesn't mean anything about social media.

'Hate speech' has been obliterated by the Supreme Court as a source of legal liability for social media platforms, too.

Remember that whole "unlock the Apple phone" fiasco?

@devpav Has it? Show me the opinion.

They've said that hate speech isn't a valid restriction on speech from the government point of view, but that does leave it open for private entities.

Anyhow, I'm not doing it. They can lock me up.

Don't give a fuck.