Browsed by
Tag: #BigTech

The Heat Is On…Big Tech

The Heat Is On…Big Tech

It may be summer, but we well know that tech – and rust – never rest. Last week, “Former President Donald Trump, who has been banned from most major social media platforms, announced a class-action lawsuit against tech giants Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, along with their respective CEOs Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and Sundar Pichai,” Yahoo reported. “…In court documents, Mr. Trump’s legal team argued that the tech firms amounted to state actors and thus the First Amendment applied to them. Legal experts said similar arguments had repeatedly failed in the courts before,” said the New York Times.

But Palace Intrigue noted a while back that in April, 2012, “Barack Obama himself admitted that the government helped Google and Facebook get off the ground. The government was present at the beginning when both companies were created.”

  Read More...

1984: Blueprint for the New Normal

1984: Blueprint for the New Normal

George Orwell. Photo from Gordon Johnson/Pixabay

This just in: Wall Street A-Listers Fled to Florida. Many Now Eye a Return, Bloomberg News reported. For the record, “USPS data shows few New Yorkers moved to Miami, Palm Beach; New Jersey, California and Connecticut were most popular moves.”

Looks like things are about to return to normal, right?

In case you missed it, Google will invest $250 million this year in building out New York City office presence, while Facebook Bets Big on Future of N.Y.C., and Offices, With New Lease, and note to self, “With the 730,000-square-foot lease, Facebook has acquired more than 2.2 million square feet of office space in the city for thousands of employees in less than a year, all of it on Manhattan’s West Side,” the New York Times reported. Meanwhile, we saw Amazon buying Lord & Taylor building for $1.15 billion, “While Facebook has been in talks to lease the 700,000-square-foot Farley Building, Apple last month inked a lease on 220,000 square feet at 11 Penn Plaza,” said the New York Post. Why Is Jeff Bezos Buying Up Apartments in the Coronavirus Capital?, Realtor.com queried during the height of the pandemic.

Why indeed and lest we forget, all of these companies already had a considerable footprint in NYC even prior to the pandemic. While many formerly NY-based companies, shops and restaurants pulled up stakes – or were driven out due to high rents and property damage – seems that the various members of the tech cabal didn’t bat an eyelash, and rather, waited for real estate prices to drop, even though it seems some will still pay top dollar. Read More...

Jesus Was a Blackbelt: A Lesson in Moving Forward

Jesus Was a Blackbelt: A Lesson in Moving Forward

Image by Artistraman on Pixabay

Last week, Twitter removed US President Donald Trump from the platform, tweeting that “After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” Never mind that Twitter Allows ‘Hang Mike Pence’ To Trend. Violent groups and terrorists have been using the platform for years to coordinate their activities, but we cover technology, not politics, and are more focused on the implications of Twitter’s move – as well as those of tech cabal members Google, who removed Parler from their app store, as did Apple, and Amazon, which eliminated Parler app from its servers.

As actress Emily Ratajkowski warned: If Mark Zuckerberg Can Shut the President Off Facebook, He Can Shut Any of Us Off. History will remind us that no one is truly immune.

There’s no doubt that censorship is alive and well and spreading – unchecked – and it’s not simply to do with politics but also having opinions that are not in lockstep with those of the cabal or the prescribed talking points. Example: Big Tech censors COVID-19 video featuring doctors, YouTube REMOVES viral video of two California doctors questioning stay-at-home orders  and Facebook declares war on anti-vaxxers as it pledges to remove conspiracy theories, never mind that Hundreds (were) Sent to Emergency Room After Getting COVID-19 Vaccines, and “Thousands of people self-reported being unable to work or perform daily activities, or required care from a health care professional, after getting one of the doses from the first tranche,” as the Epoch Times reported. Read More...

Fresh Eyes on the New Normal

Fresh Eyes on the New Normal

Image by Barbara Rosner from Pixabay

To hear the Wall Street Journal tell it, you’d think that the stay at home economy is here to stay.

Frankly, we’re not convinced that the votes are all in yet.

While amusement parks, movie theatres, gyms and many restaurants, et al have closed or have been permanently shuttered, are those verticals truly gone forever? Movie theatre sales had been down for quite some time, thanks streaming services, what to speak of the fact that many A list actors found it incumbent upon themselves to take political stances and lost a good part of their fanbase prior to this flu. The common folk expressed their opinions in box office receipts. Read More...

Don’t Look Now, But Tech Just Became Way More Dangerous (Actually, You Need to Look)

Don’t Look Now, But Tech Just Became Way More Dangerous (Actually, You Need to Look)

While we’re not big on conspiracy theories – we’re simply too busy to get sidetracked – we do love to follow trajectories to see where things may be going. Or to once again quote Wayne Gretzky, if you want to know where the puck is going, look to where it has been.

The news this week was the banning that has been happening with the social media platforms. War on Free Speech: Facebook Bans People It Considers “Dangerous”, and Twitter is at it, too. While the question seems to be coming up more and more – Is it time to break up Twitter, or regulate it as an edited platform (Big Tech Trying to Have it Both Ways as Platform and Publisher)?, and this would extend to all of the socials – let’s be honest, aren’t they publishers, after all? In fact, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself is calling for regulation, and that should be concerning, especially given his focus, which is in lock step with that of the tech cartel, trust us. As Wired reported, Platforms Want Centralized Censorship. That Should Scare You.

So, why now?

Forest through the trees time, and Big Tech has gotten the four Ds down to an art, and yes, four – Deny, Deflect, Defend, Delay. Important, considering what else has been going on in tech to which not many people have been paying much attention: the rise of the Fakes, or as we prefer to call them, PHAkEs, which is our acronym for Post Human-Acknowledged Entities. Read More...

Big Tech is riding the same rails as robber barons of the past

Big Tech is riding the same rails as robber barons of the past

The Last Spike, 1869.

The tech industry – in particular, the FAANG stocks – have hit a strange inflection point. They’re taking a beating on Wall Street. And Facebook is under attack from all sides.

There was The New York Times piece (Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis), which was written with the assistance of no less than 50 sources.

An international committee of foreign governments has requested that Zuckerberg appear before lawmakers to face inquiries, particularly into disinformation, election meddling and privacy issues. Zuckerberg refused. Read More...