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I saw a lot of progressives turning into free market libertarians as soon as social media started censoring right wing opinions. Suddenly all I could see was "They're a private company, they can do what they want!"
It reaffirmed my belief that a healthy portion of either side doesn't actually have any principles. They just care that their side is winning and the other is losing.
I'm a moderate that a lot of people confuse for a conservative, and I say nail big business to a wall. I think the Microsoft-Activision deal should be declined just on the nature of the size of each business, not because it meets some arbitrary standard of anti-competitive behavior. Businesses as big as Microsoft do not need even bigger market coverage through owning more production houses. The whole point of the anticompetitive corrections is to avoid these giant conglomerates that have their hands in everything.
Microsoft already owns video game production houses. They produce one of the most popular home consoles in the world. They own a lot of the ecosystem that most people use on a daily basis on their pcs, namely Windows OS, Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more.
Why does one company need to have a bigger market share than this?
I think there's a bit of misconstruing "let companies do what they want" with "private businesses can run their business how they want but could and should suffer the consequences of their actions".
The main problem here is, who's going to govern the businesses? Who's got the teeth to throw the book at these companies like they're so eager to do at people that break stupid, societal made up laws like "weed is baaaaad. Grrrr"
Realistically either a federal court needs to step in or some sort of legislation needs to be passed/updated regarding speech on the internet. A handful of private companies control a huge amount of public communication on the internet. Essentially the internet is the "modern town square" and if you get deplatformed from Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter, your ability to communicate is massively impacted. Unless you're already an established name by the time you get deplatformed (Like Trump or Alex Jones), being deplatformed basically makes it impossible to have a voice online.
People don't care for now because the only people being deplatformed are "right wing extremists" but as time passes the definition for what is and isn't acceptable on major sites will keep getting more and more strict. Even in the beginning it was a pretty grey area where these private companies were removing "misinformation" and citing government entities as the "correct" source. And shortly after the Biden administration became known to work directly with companies like Facebook to remove what they consider harmful information. At what point do we cross the line from "private companies doing what they want" to "the government directing private companies to remove information that hurts them"? For all the people who support these companies censoring topics under the direction of the Biden administration, how will you feel when the next Republican administration does it?
I unfortunately don't see a way this ends that benefits Americans. Both parties have shown that they want to control speech/information on the internet, since 2019 it's not only become tolerated, but actually expected. And for the first time ever a majority of Americans support the US government restricting speech online. That scares the shit out of me personally. Congress isn't going to do shit, the FCC isn't gonna do shit, and the supreme court certainly isn't gonna do shit. I don't want to imagine how the internet is gonna look in 10 years.
We should have never allowed it to get to this point. The endless mergers of tech and media companies that resulted in a handful of companies effectively controlling the internet should have caused riots in the streets. The second companies started "fact checking" posts and removing what they consider false information should have set off tons of alarm bells. And the second the US government started directing tech companies toward posts they needed to take down there should have been riots in the streets. But nobody seems to care because we're all too busy defending powerful corporations and an authoritarian government because apparently authoritarianism isn't bad when it only hurts your political opponents.
This argument itself got politicized and associated with the "right wing". People in general have lost faith in the "marketplace of ideas" concept and instead are leaning towards this totalitarian approach of "let only good information exist", forgetting that the process to get to good information requires unhindered critique of bad information. Ultimately it's this unfounded faith that arbitrary centralized players (media, social media, government, whatever) wouldn't adhere to, or enforce, any incorrect doctrine of truth, which is a pretty dumb concept considering the number of things society doesn't even fully understand in the first place.
Ultimately it’s this unfounded faith that arbitrary centralized players (media, social media, government, whatever) wouldn’t adhere to, or enforce, any incorrect doctrine of truth
Everyone on earth (Especially in America) should be forced to understand this. Corporations in America are legally obligated to act in the interest of their shareholders. Ethics don't fucking matter to them unless a law says they have to, and as we established, most of our laws regulating corporations aren't even being enforced in the first place.
When I hear "moderates" say they want to curb big bizness.
I ask them how.
Do the courts politians and free markets work for the people? As a far leftist aka anarchist i say that they dont. I think the only real solution is revloution and getting rid of capitalism and most if not all systems of hierarchy.
How would you suggest that we prevent Microsoft from becoming an even larger entity?
Also while your at it why dont you tell us your views on abortion? That way we can know where you stand.
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Anarchism isn't far left.
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"Let's burn it all down and worry about a replacement system later" is the famous last words of pretty much every country that is now led by a dictator, warlord, or authoritarian power.
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I would suggest that we do what has worked for European nations and actually enforce workers rights, and establish antitrust laws to prevent monopolies where they exist now and to keep new ones from forming. Which means we will have to actually start voting in younger people into office instead of dinosaurs who are only interested in keeping their old money where it is.
So to you, other than "revolution, duh" how do you actually plan on solving the issues once you've destroyed the current system? You love asking others how they'll solve it but your ideas seem to end where the rioting does.
You don't want to solve problems, you just want to destroy shit.
- Anarchism isn't far left.
Please enlghten me on this idea. If you include libertarians into anarchists, We have different definitions of anarchy.
Anarchy is anti-Capitalist full stop.
Honestly, I dont think you know a thing about anarchy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_sit-down_strike
This is the strike generally credited with causing mass unionization within the auto industry.
You know how they did it? A sit dow strike in a GM plant in flint michagan in 1936-1937.
Strikers threw bolts and hinges at Cops who were shooting into the building, as they tried to forcably remove strikers.
Do you support this kind of protest?
At the time Sit down strikes are not protected as freedom of assembly by the federal government. They are illegal. So is occupying a private businesses building.
In fact , it wasnt but 1 year eariler with the wagner act that striking was protected by the federal government at all.
Do you know how Americans won the right to strike?
They performed illegal strikes and mass protests for a few decades until the federal government recognized it as a right.
Soo I beleive that mass striking is the only way to bring real change to this country.
I would suggest that we do what has worked for European nations.
Most European nations have had mass protests to inorder to force governments to institute social safety nets. Ever heard of france?
Do you support mass protest? Cuz they burn shit down in france.
I'm guessing you dont!
Also you didnt answer abortion question: please answer me, what are your views on abortion?
I dont debate with poeple who dont recognize abortion as a fundamental right of pregnant people.
Probably part of the right wing that's been working on coopting it for decades now. You should see the incredibly rich crypto psychos that call themselves anarchists.
The way I see the far-right attempt to coopt anarchism is the same as the name of "socialism" being coopted in germany in the 30s. They recognised its growing popularity and seek to ride confusion about that while disassociating themselves with the instant rejection being openly fascist gets them.
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This is a fair point. But the right co-opting anarchism does not mean anarchism isn't far left.
Just like how nazi's co-opting socialism doesn't make socialism into nazism. Anarchy has ideology that directly critizes money, capitalism, the state and hierarchical systems.
If people are calling themselves anarchist and then using that ideology to promote crypto-currencies. They are the ones doing it wrong.
I agree
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I saw a lot of progressives turning into free market libertarians as soon as social media started censoring right wing opinions. Suddenly all I could see was “They’re a private company, they can do what they want!”
Couldn't have said it better myself. The internet has essentially been in a wild west era since it was created, as the government has pretty much no laws or court decisions saying what information social companies can and can't regulate. On top of that we're in an era where the SEC happily rubber stamps every corporate merger under the sun. Now we're seeing the consequences of that as a majority of information on the internet is controlled by a handful of companies. And on top of that, even if you want to make your "alternative" platform, that's incredibly hard to do since services like web hosting and payment processing are also controlled by a handful of corporations.
Most major corporations have no business acquiring any other companies, and on top of that they need to be broken up. Just thinking of a few, Amazon owning Amazon shopping, AWS, Twitch, Ring, IMDb, and a fucking satellite internet company is ridiculous. The finance, energy, defense/aerospace, pharmaceutical/healthcare, and so many other industries are all guilty of this. Libertarians couldn't be more right about one thing, competition benefits consumers, but for some reason the only thing US republicans and democrats can agree on is that we should never enforce anti-trust laws. And internet leftists, the people who you'd figure would be all for corporations being broken up, are silent on the issue. It's infuriating to watch.