Here’s a headline at Politico that caught my attention:
The U.S. government under incoming President Donald Trump should intervene to stop the EU from fining American tech companies for breaching antitrust rules and committing other violations, Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said late Friday.
Exactly how is Trump going to “intervene” with the EU’s business? Will he invade Brussels once he’s conquered Greenland, or what? Trump can always ask the EU nicely to lay off the tech bros, of course; and the EU can and probably will tell Trump to go pound sand.
Zuckerberg complained that the EU had forced U.S. tech companies operating in Europe to pay “more than $30 billion” in penalties for legal violations over the past two decades. Last November, the tech chief’s Meta conglomerate, which operates Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and other social media and communications platforms, was fined €797 million for breaching EU antitrust rules by imposing unfair trading conditions on ads service providers.
Last year the EU fined Meta 1.2 billion euros for sending users’ personal data to the U.S., I assume without the permission of the users. “The decision applies to user data like names, email and IP addresses, messages, viewing history, geolocation data and other information that Meta — and other tech giants like Google — use for targeted online ads.” Stuff they get away with here.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk — having bought the U.S., apparently — is now moving on Europe. And the Europeans don’t care for it much. Newsweek reports that “Musk is being investigated in Europe amid concerns the billionaire’s influence, for instance through his posts on X, constitutes an ‘interference’ in upcoming elections.” Well, yes, it probably is. Go for it, Europe. See also EU politicians warn against Elon Musk’s incursions into European politics at ABC News.
Same old story, some organization with a mad scientist wants to rule the world. They always have a lethal device and a button they can press. You know Rupert Murdock is all over this one, as his hate speech racket is not allowed in Canada or most of Europe. Who would have thought the scientists would be computer scientists a.k.a. computer jockeys.
I wish I could skip to the end of the book and read the ending. Who knows if a James Bond type is even a character in it. We kind of know where the evil villains hang out, and who their fascist heroes are. That's pretty obvious. The usual scapegoats are in this one, but the immigrants have the lead role now.
At this point in the saga Mother Nature is showing her power and control of the earth. She will be the winner in the long run, with a possible attempted escape by some villains to Mars of all places. I see Gavin Newsom is stepping into a hero role. Good for him.
"Everybody wants to rule the world."
I'm sure this was true in Hitler's ascent to power. The Nazis had factions that vied for power… for a while. There's an event called "The Night of the Long Knives" that ended the competition and there were elements of opposition, A documented 85 enemies of Hitler were murdered by the "brownshirts", the brutal private army Hitler assembled. I ssid, "at least" – some historians place the toll of enemies in the hundreds. This "event" which ran over several days, got all the wannabe puppetmasters who thought they could manipulate Hitler in line. The tyrant has the power of life and death, and if he thought you had crossed him of would, the result was often a painful death, without a trial. So Hitler's generals were slow to give Hitler anything but happy news. D-day might have failed except Hitler believed false information the Allies fed him. Hitler's generals KNEW where the real invasion was happening but Hitler had concentrated his forces to repel a feint. With the outcome of the war in the balance, no German general dared confront the megalomaniac.
Trump does not have sole power, even over his own movement. He'd rather play golf and issue edicts. (Hitler was an obsessive micromanager who decided every detail.) Delegating to the cast of idiots Trump has assembled will not deliver cohesive results. They will (and are) fighting with each other. Yes, the US will set records in domestic human rights violations but the infrastructure of an effective force to purge opposition isn't there.
For example, I have doubts about the tax cuts passing by reconciliation in less than a year. There are fiscal hawks in the Freedom Caucus who want spending slashed. Trump wants to spend like a drunken sailor – that's why Trump wants to eliminate the debt ceiling. To make matters worse, Trump wants everything rolled into the reconciliation bill, some of which may be rejected by the Parliamentarian. (There are strict limits on what may be in a budget bill passed by reconciliation.)
Other factions besides the Freedom Caucus are pulling Trump's strings. White Supremacists, Evangelicals, Expansionists, Isolationists, The MI Complex, Tech Bros… and none of them are scared of Trump. Oh yes, a lot of factions including the media are sucking up to Trump and they are "afraid" of regulatory retaliation. None of them fear the guillotine or concentration camps.
It's a partial consolation that we won't see efficiency in the evil of Trump's regime, but we will see a clownish show of barbarism.
Too many things on my mind, but I'll start here: Maha's summary above led me to ask myself: "Why isn't the internet regulated the way the use of radio waves was prior to Reagan?" We are living with a totally unregulated information ecosystem.
Before radio in the early 20th century, communication in society was by the printed or spoken word (with spoken communication limited to being between people within 20 yards or so of each other). Printed communication was by books or documents; booksellers, libraries, public mail systems, couriers, etc. It was impossible to present an idea to millions of people without huge amounts of effort (and cost). In today's world, anyone with a cell phone has the potential to present an idea to millions of people with little to no cost (and due to monetization, there's money to be made). And to make matters worse, there are few resources to determine what purported "information" on the internet is true and what is fiction.
As communication technology evolved, from town criers, hand delivered pamphlets and local newspapers, through pony express and couriers, though telegraph lines and Morse code, through Morse code, voice and music on radio waves, though broadcast television, societies have had a solid sense of the importance to a functioning society of separating fact from fiction.
In my opinion (I haven't done research on this): A significant reason why society understood the importance of having clear separation of fiction from fact is that all the way back to the pony express (and before) major militaries were quick to incorporate emerging communication technologies; and in the context of military conflict it is obvious how valuable true information is and how damaging false information is. Plus the two world wars made it massively obvious the harm that can result. So it was normal in the twentieth century for society to have mechanisms for curating the truth. But throughout history there has been another force with an interest in communication technology: marketing. Currently the force of advertising interests has overshadowed society's need to have truth separated from fiction. Up until the current century, society's need for truth has coexisted with the marketplace's desire for deception. But from the end of WW2, the marketplace has slowly but steadily gained the upper hand.
But what happened? The internet has completely scrambled things. A disturbingly large percentage of the population gets their "news" from social media, which is essentially the wild west on steroids when it comes to information. Facebook, Twitter/X, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and more. In the aftermath of the 2024 election there has been much hand-wringing among Democrats, a lot of it focused on messaging and party brand. I think there may be useful messaging lessons to learn, but I'm not sure there was enough of a problem with the campaigns messaging to explain the loss. I have to ask myself: How many of the late undecideds even heard the campaign's messaging? Broadcast and cable TV ads? People just use the clicker to ignore them. What about the voters who either stayed home or didn't vote for president/vice-president? They are people who don't pay much attention most of the time, but all they see is the two parties fighting all the time, and a) they don't think anything is getting done (false) and b) they think all politicians lie (except for their own senator and rep) (also false). The information system is flooded with so many conflicting "assertions", they don't have the time or the will to figure out who is really truthfully on their side.
Bottom line for me: I'm retired, and health issues mean that I need to strictly limit my in-person exposure to the general public, BUT, as soon as I can figure out how to get started in the right direction, I plan to get involved in real world efforts to fix our broken information environment. Without improvement in that realm, I don't think our society has much of a chance to avoid massively evil neo-feudalism.
"Without improvement in that realm, I don't think our society has much of a chance to avoid massively evil neo-feudalism"
I agree 100% but unfortunately I don't think that will happen any time soon. As we have seen the people who control these platforms will change policies to suit the party in power. Zuckerberg didn't even wait until inauguration day day to please the magat base, he basically started the day after the election. The only way to get the social media bullshit machine under control is to wrestle the platforms away from the egomaniacal owners and put them into some sort of non-profit public/private governance model. I do not see that ever happening; hell I think we are getting ready to lose NPR.
I hear you, Uncle. And I agree with your points about the current state of the social media space and the behavior of the oligarchs who control the current platforms. However:
Platforms come and go. On the right, when moderation/curation/fact-checking was done a few years back, the right-wingers went to Parler. Also, there are organizations in our society that maintain independence from federal government control; maybe few but they exist. What we must not do is to cede the playing field simply because things look dire right now. Ceding the playing field is guaranteeing we lose. Harris/Walz got over 48% of the votes cast. 75 million voters. The plutocrats want to demoralize us and get us to abandon the field of battle. We need to hang on tight to what is good for us and also build from the bottom up solutions to the obstacles. S, although I haven't yet figured out what I'm going to do, and I'm not asking anyone else to do the same, I suggest that folks maintain frequent contact either in-person, or by phone/text/email with people you know are on our side… the goal to avoid feeling isolated and alone in the coming 4 years.
Exactly. I bet a huge percentage of the electorate had no idea what Kamala Harris was running on. And I don't see that as her fault.
No, voter error was at fault. In hindsight a problem solver was needed, and a problem maker was elected. She ran as a problem solver he ran as a problem maker. Problem maker or, as Maureen Dowd recently labeled him, Emperor of Chaos.
This brings to mind Marshall McLuhan's "The Medium is the Message," where for McLuhan, it was the medium itself that shaped and controlled "the scale and form of human association and action". That really holds true when it comes to the internet in general, and social media in particular and especially. Depending on the message, where you put it, e.g. Instagram, Tik Tok, YouTube, Facebook, etc., determines not only how often its read but how its received and by whom. For example, young men generally weren't attending Trump rallies to any significant extent, but then he figured out he could successfully reach and enrage them with the same kinds of trivial grievances on Tik Tok. Now he wants to keep Tik Tok around.