Post · bonfire.cafe

@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz · 5 months ago

"Yet there is today a very real threat of a tyranny in the vein of James. It lies, however, in a different place—in the reach, knowledge, interests, and prerogatives enjoyed by the interlocking network of private corporations that control our online communications and commerce. It is Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, and Apple that today enjoy the power to create and destroy, to censor and punish, to 'make and unmake' who they will."

#BarryCLynn, 2024

https://harpers.org/archive/2024/10/the-antitrust-revolution-big-tech-barry-c-lynn/

Strypey

@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz replied · 4 months ago

"Many publishers have banded together to demand that legislators make tech giants stop stealing their ad dollars and treat every publisher the same. When governments in Australia, Canada, and California tried just that, Google and Facebook have sometimes simply shut off the flow of news across their platforms entirely, denying citizens and publishers of this most basic of rights"

#BarryCLynn, 2024

https://harpers.org/archive/2024/10/the-antitrust-revolution-big-tech-barry-c-lynn/

This is so oversimplified it's misleading, see;

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/10/big-tech-isnt-stealing-news-publishers-content/

Strypey

@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz replied · 4 months ago

That said, I agree with Lynn's larger point; the power to cut off most people's usual source of news at the flick of a switch, across a whole country, is a power no one platform should have.

But the root issue is that no one platform should be allowed to monopolise people's access to news and other important information, in the way the DataFarmers have. That's what needs to be addressed by anti-monopoly actions, and this is quietly continuing in both EU and US (for now).

Strypey

@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz replied · 4 months ago

"What is still missing from this broad narrative is a full understanding of how this neoliberal counterrevolution succeeded in changing everything. Not merely the distribution of wealth and power. Not merely the relation of the individual to the private corporation. But how we live and see and dream."

#BarryCLynn, 2024

https://harpers.org/archive/2024/10/the-antitrust-revolution-big-tech-barry-c-lynn/

Funny choice of words. What this article makes clear is that "neoliberalism" is and always was a misnomer. A more accurate term is neofeudalism.

(1/2)

Strypey

@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz replied · 4 months ago

As was the monopolist "liberalism" of the late 1800s, which "neoliberalism" was named in reference to.

EDIT: When right-wingers call themselves "classical liberals", they're also referencing this neofeudalism rebranded as it's opposite.

(2/2)

Strypey

@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz replied · 4 months ago

"In 1864, President Lincoln, speaking of the slave masters, distilled the American vision of liberty to the simplest of terms:

'We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor'."

https://harpers.org/archive/2024/10/the-antitrust-revolution-big-tech-barry-c-lynn/

#liberty

Strypey

@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz replied · 4 months ago

"... the single most dangerous effect of the neoliberal philosophy ... was to blind most of our leading economic and legal scholars to the power structures of the production and communications systems on which we all depend. And further, to destroy our understanding that liberalism is not an attitude, not a form of tolerance, but rather the political art of structuring power and behavior in ways that promote our political and spiritual liberties."

#BarryCLynn, 2024

https://harpers.org/archive/2024/10/the-antitrust-revolution-big-tech-barry-c-lynn/

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