Not content with their efforts to control the flow of information and censor pro Trump points of view, the tech dictators are now saying t...
Not content with their efforts to control the flow of information and censor pro Trump points of view, the tech dictators are now saying that social media should be banned by the government to “stop the flow of misinformation and lies on their platforms.”
Portland based Willamette Week recently interviewed Roger McNamee, who had invested money into such tech giants as Google and Facebook when they were in their infancy. He was also an early mentor to Mark Zuckerberg. McNamee now suggests that these tech giants he helped to create should be shut down.
What’s it going to be, America? Democracy or cat videos?
Roger McNamee, an early investor in Facebook and a onetime mentor to Mark Zuckerberg, says that’s the choice we have to make. The people who run YouTube, Twitter and Facebook can’t stop the flow of misinformation and lies on their platforms, McNamee says, so the only alternative may be to shut them down completely.
“The country is going to have to decide what it values: democracy and self-determination on the one hand, or the ability to look at cat videos on the other,” McNamee said in an interview with MSNBC on Oct. 17. “Our entire system of government is under attack, and it’s not clear that our institutions can stand up to it.”
McNamee is one of many tech mavens who have turned against social media. The real evil, they say, are the algorithms that serve up new posts and videos based on what people click. Those formulas turn Facebook and other sites into “cult factories,” according to neuroscientist and author Sam Harris, radicalizing users as they keep them watching.
Among the biggest threats, McNamee says, is QAnon, the far-right conspiracy group that claims that Donald Trump is battling a secret society of Satan-worshiping pedophiles and cannibals for control of the world. Until last month, when Facebook finally banned it, QAnon thrived on the platform for three years, recruiting new believers. But it may be too late.
“It’s very clear that the people running these companies can’t control them and that their value systems are misaligned with democracy,” McNamee said. “There are some businesses that we have banned, like slavery.”
He saw the light, he says, in 2016, when he watched false political advertising on the platform fan the flames of Trumpism and Brexit. He emailed CEO Mark Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and warned that Facebook had enabled things that were “truly horrible.”
They brushed him off, and McNamee’s inner bomb-thrower emerged.
“The values of these companies conflict with the Enlightenment values on which this country was founded,” McNamee said in an interview with WW.
So to sum it up, dude made close $1 Billion off these companies, doesn’t like the way they’ve turned out, and is now calling to end the flow of information that he doesn’t like. Because democracy depends on being able to control information and stop information you don’t like. Because reasons.
This is perhaps the most Stalin-esque, North Korean-esque, Goebbels-esque, CCP-esque thing they’ve suggested yet.
And these are the people who call Trump a dictatorial tyrant.
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