Justice John Roberts said that “Congress is fine with the expression,” but “not fine with a foreign adversary … gathering all this information about the 170 million people who use TikTok.”
So you’re trying to tell me that gathering “all this information” is, in fact, dangerous to our republic and our freedoms, but it’s acceptable when every US company and the NSA all do it? Have I got that right? It is a realistic security problem, but it’s not an abridgment of the Fourth Amendment? Really? OK, just checking.
There were a handful of websites I found way back in the 2000’s that I liked, and kept on a short list to check every few days. This one stuck in my head because of the domain name, which I thought was terribly clever. I dug it up in the Internet Archive. It’s been taken over by some film company? Or something? I’m not clear if it’s run by the same people or not.
Another one was called “The Bassment” (sic), made by a guy who worked at SGI. It was named that way because he played bass, too. I can’t find it in the archive. It was run out of an Indy he had at his house, which inspired me to run my own web and email servers out of my house for 15 years.
There were others, like “Ze Frank,” who has moved to TikTok and YouTube (and probably others).
Anyway, I just wanted to capture the kind of free design that used to be prevalent on the internet before everyone started using “engines” and “templates” and “front ends.” And, no, the irony is not lost on me, sitting here using WordPress with a stock theme. And, sure, I started to rewrite another custom web site for my personal use, but I was using Bootstrap anyway. I readily admit that I’m not creative, but I used to at least try.
Graphics by FrontPage 97 and Image Composer
The web used to be a wild frontier of programmers and artists and writers who were exploring the new medium. Now, it’s just YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, et. al., etc. There are very few personal sites left. It all got so boring. And for all the “AI” that’s supposed to be in “the algorithms,” TikTok and YouTube offer me 20 pieces of crap for every 1 thing I might have been interested in.
TL;DR: You know that Russia and other governments try to manipulate people online. But you almost certainly don’t how just how effectively orchestrated influence networks are using social media platforms to make you — individually– angry, depressed, and hateful toward each other. Those networks’ goal is simple: to cause Americans and other Westerners — especially young ones — to give up on social cohesion and to give up on learning the truth, so that Western countries lack the will to stand up to authoritarians and extremists.
And you probably don’t realize how well it’s working on you.
This is a long post, but I wrote it because this problem is real, and it’s much scarier than you think.
The best part? The very best part? Reddit is one of the biggest parts of the problem, and I don’t see anyone in the comments with either that realization, or the guts to say it. The site got used like a 3-dollar whore in the run-up to the 2016 election, in favor of Trump. Then they “fixed” that algorithm problem, and now the entire front page is almost always filled with posts about people being awful to one another, in various forms. It’s ALL hatred towards “others.” It’s ALL moral superiority over someone else. Just zoom out and look at it without being logged in. It’s kind of like junior high, but way, way worse.
FEC documents show that Ellison made the $250,000 donation to the Security is Strength PAC on September 14th. The Security is Strength PAC has bought ads exclusively in support of Graham’s political ambitions, including his 2015 presidential campaign and his current reelection bid for the US Senate.
Larry Ellison is one of the richest people in the world. $250K is lunch money for a guy like this. The truly sad thing about our American democracy isn’t that it can be bought; it’s that it can be bought so cheaply. It’s nauseating.
