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Eric Hines
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Tag Archives: rights
Free Speech
During last week’s Senate Commerce Committee hearings on Facebook’s, Alphabet’s, and Twitter’s seeming censorship of speech of which those entities’ MFWICS—Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, and Jack Dorsey—disapprove, Senator Ed Markey (D, MA) said this:
The issue is not that these companies before us today are taking too many posts down. The issue is that they are leaving too many dangerous posts up.
This, from the Senator who also said this about the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett:
Originalism is racist. Originalism is sexist. Originalism is homophobic. Originalism is just a fancy word for discrimination.
This is the assault on freedom of speech—on our Constitution—we can expect from a Progressive-Democrat-controlled Congress and White House.
Turkey’s Erdoğan
In Turkey, this Cover Page of the Charlie Hebdo publication would be a crime because Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is afraid of ridicule (the headline caption translates as “In private, he’s very funny”). In France and much of the West, it’s a matter of free speech and free press. Here, too.
The joke is on Erdoğan. Or he is the joke. You pick ’em.
Labor Rights
Whose rights are they, anyway?
Last Thursday, a California First Appellate District court upheld a State district court’s order that Uber and Lyft must reclassify their gig drivers as actual employees and so must add to their labor costs with benefits, paid leave of various sorts, payroll taxes, and so on. Never mind that this will reduce gig-oriented companies’ ability to recover from the State’s Wuhan Virus-related lockdowns and cost thousands of Californians access to additional income.
The time is fast approaching when it’ll be most useful for Uber, Lyft, and other gig-oriented businesses to leave California altogether.
It gets worse. As Uber noted in part,
…rideshare drivers will be prevented from continuing to work as independent contractors….
Indeed. The California court’s order (and AB5, the State statute that originally levied the classification requirement) go far beyond restricting gig-oriented businesses.
They’re attacks on gig workers themselves by denying them control over their own labor and the price and other parameters under which they’re willing to market their labor. The ruling and the statute convert those who wish to work in California into labor wards of the State’s government.
Almost like they’re State plantation laborers. But it’s all good, though; it’s for the workers’ own good.
The court’s opinion can be read here.
Alphabet’s Fact Checking
Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign team ran a campaign ad featuring a poor, downtrodden bar owner whose business was in the wind due to the Wuhan Virus (my term, not the ad’s) related lockdowns that shut businesses like his. In the ad, the bar owner blamed the situation on President Donald Trump.
The ad ran on YouTube during some Sunday football games.
There’s a problem, though:
[T]he [bar owner] is actually a wealthy tech investor who made contributions to the former vice president’s campaign. He also supported Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home orders that kept businesses shuttered longer.
Why blame Alphabet for this? YouTube is wholly owned by Google; Google is wholly owned by Alphabet. Alphabet is the MFWIC of this organization. The ad wouldn’t have run without YouTube‘s carefully considered checking and approval, that checking and approval is completely controlled by YouTube‘s controlling organization, Google, and Google‘s approval process is completely controlled by Google‘s controlling organization, Alphabet.
That’s sort of how the position of Boss works.
Plainly, Alphabet is carefully selective of the facts it chooses to “select.” The blatant censorship on display here is yet another reason to withdraw Alphabet‘s Section 230 exemption and further, to treat it like the publisher—equal time for all views, for instance—that the company insists on being, in deed if not word.