Tag Archives: markets

Alphabet Censorship

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They’re at it again.  This time, it’s Alphabet’s YouTube, owned through Alphabet’s subsidiary Google that’s inflicting censorship.

YouTube has blocked some British history teachers from its service for uploading archive material related to Adolf Hitler, saying they are breaching new guidelines banning the promotion of hate speech.

Alphabet restored the censored data, but only after it had gotten caught in its censorship and the ensuing uproar got too uncomfortable.

Alphabet’s censorship was because the material consisted of

content that promotes hatred or violence against members of a protected group.

Yeah—the protected group here was Alphabet’s censors.

One of the victims of this censorship, though, seems to have missed the lesson.  Scott Alsop owns the MrAllsopHistory website saw Alphabet censor his efforts to upload archival Hitler imagery and video clips because Alphabet disapproved of them.

I fully support YouTube’s increased efforts to curb hate speech, but also feel that silencing the very people who seek to teach about its dangers could be counter-productive to YouTube’s intended goal[.]

“Counter-productive?”  Well, NSS.

Alphabet’s IT personnel are professional folks, fully versed in what they’re doing.  So are Alphabet’s folks responsible for testing IT’s…fixes.  This failure shows that Alphabet either did this deliberately and got caught—to stop people being radicalized, because these Precious Ones know better than their users—or it demonstrates the inevitable outcome of well-intentioned incompetence.

Either way, censorship itself is a failure that directly attacks free speech.  Some speech is inherently uncomfortable.  The discomfort, though, is in the perception of the hearer (who plainly is not a listener) and not at all in the speech of the speaker.  The hearer can listen better or stop paying attention to the speaker altogether.  The hatefulness of other speech is in the speaker, true enough, but those who receive the speech still have only two choices: stop attending to the speaker, or answer him with their own speech.

The Alphabets of the world—private enterprise, as in the present case, or government man—have no business dictating to us what they, in their precious awesomeness, will presume to permit us to say.  Or to hear.  And we have no business sending them our money in the form of buying their product, nor do we have any business electing them to office.

A Nutshell

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On the matter of the House voting up the US Mexico Canada Agreement, the trade agreement agreed among the US, Canada, and Mexico to replace NAFTA, Congressman Gerry Connolly (D, VA) had this to say:

Given his behavior, I don’t see some great groundswell of support for this on our side of our aisle. I’m a free trader and I’m in no rush to approve this agreement.

That is the Progressive-Democratic Party’s hysterical anti-Trumpism in a nutshell. Party opposes the USMCA over Trump’s behavior; its opposition does not consider the merits or lack of merits in the agreement.

Never mind that Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has said his government will proceed with ratifying the USMCA despite President Donald Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on Mexico over the latter’s “migrant” flow failures.

Another Hollywood Culture War Campaign

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[Robert, Chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company] Iger told Reuters [last] week that it would be “very difficult” for Disney to continue filming its movie and television content in Georgia if a new state abortion law takes effect.

This is the same Bob Iger whose company enthusiastically operates a theme park and peddles movies in the People’s Republic of China, which government spies on its citizens with, among other things, facial recognition software and which government has locked up millions of PRC citizens—Muslim Uighurs, for the most part, but not exclusively—in “reeducation” camps reminiscent of the worst of Mao’s camps.

Since neither Iger nor Disney has any concern for the lives of aborted babies or for the principles of freedom generally, it will be far more than very difficult (no quotes necessary) for me to patronize any Disney movies, parks, or other product or service.

It will be impossible for me to do so.

Too Bad

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The FCC is working up a rule that would allow phone companies to automatically block robocalls.

Businesses demur.

The proposal is part of an effort to cut down on unwanted and illegal robocalls, but some businesses fear it could result in carriers also blocking automated calls from legitimate firms. Banks, collection agencies, and merchants say automated calls are crucial, even though some consumers find them annoying.

And

It’s important that the commission take a hard look at some of the proposals to make sure that they are appropriately targeted to address the problem, illegal automated calls[.]

Sorry, guys.  It’s not only illegal automated calls the want blocking.  So do annoying calls—and it’s the customer, the recipient, who makes that determination, not the business caller.  Businesses don’t get to barge into someone’s home without permission—which is what an unwanted, annoying call is, just as much as physically coming through the door.

Then there’s this gem:

The current call-blocking proposal could mean financial-services companies such as mortgage or educational lenders are unable to reach customers for informational purposes, which could keep them from complying with separate consumer-protection rules requiring such companies to contact customers under certain circumstances[.]

This adds cynical disingenuosity to the companies’ arrogance.  Blocking robocalls doesn’t even begin to render businesses unable to reach customers for informational purposes.  Business employees are fully capable of making telephone calls themselves, rather than relying on their bots—but that would require the business to have an actual human on one end of the call actually having to interact, live, with the customer.  This might be inconvenient to the business employee, but that’s singularly unimportant.  Even the cost increment from using a live person on a real phone call is the customer’s call to make, not the employee’s.

Business employees are fully capable of sending emails—even though customers are fully capable of recognizing spam and having those automatically filtered.  If an employee doesn’t want his email filtered, he’ll make it look like serious business correspondence rather than gussying it up with advertising and other froo-froo.  Software makes mass emails—even serious business emails—fast and simple and leaves the process cheap.

Business employees are fully capable of writing letters—they have their customers’ snail mail addresses on file as a matter of course.  If an employee doesn’t want his letter to go straight into the trash or recycling unopened, he’ll make his letter look like a serious business letter: he’ll have his name and return address (both, mind you) in the upper left corner of the envelope, and he won’t gussy up that envelope with advertising or other froo-froo.

Blowing Up Settlements

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The one being sabotaged here is between Facebook and the FTC over the FTC’s proposed settlement of Facebook’s “mishandling” of consumer privacy data, including surrendering millions of consumers’ personal information to Cambridge Analytica.

FTC Chairman Joseph Simons has the (Republican) votes he need to impose the settlement, from the FTC’s perspective, on a 3-2 partisan vote.  He’s quite rightly trying to get at least one of the Progressive-Democrats on the board to vote with him, but they’re bleating that a $5 billion fine and other controls don’t go far enough.

This is naked obstruction, though, based on a cynically manufactured beef.

Another impediment to the settlement is a textbook example of why Federal agencies ought not be spring-loaded to settle cases with miscreants.  “Settlements,” should be vanishingly rare, and they should occur only after the teeth from a history of court cases have been manifested.  This time, the block is whether

to name Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg as a respondent in the complaint that would be filed by the agency as part of the settlement. Naming Mr Zuckerberg as a respondent could make him liable for future privacy missteps—and give the FTC leverage if it should seek to remove Mr Zuckerberg from the company’s management in the future.

Whichever party wants this included, it’s an entirely legitimate inclusion.

“Facebook representatives,” though, object, and they say Facebook will not accept a settlement that includes this.

There’s nothing here for Facebook to accept or reject, though. Facebook screwed up with consumers’ private, personal information, and the screwups identified in this putative settlement are just the latest in a long string of such…errors.  That those prior misbehaviors are not part of this case does matter in determining the price to be paid in this instance, but they should inform the FTC’s willingness to go to court rather than itself settle for a settlement.

There should be no settlement on the table or on offer in any guise.  The case should be in the courts, moving apace—the FTC should not allow Facebook’s lawyers to drag things out, and neither should the courts—with a court judgment sought. That judgment should include, at minimum, a company fine of $5 billion or more, Zuckerberg named as correspondent, and Zuckerberg personally fined for his role as the MFWIC condoning, if not actively authorizing, such privacy invasions and sales.