ArneBab @ArneBab@rollenspiel.social

When you send an email in response to a problem that's been bugging you and in typing up the email you realize the answer and excitedly braindump it right into the email!

I *LOVE* that feeling.

„Wenn Sie mich fragen, was ist das, was mich beunruhigt, dann ist das der exponentielle Anstieg. Den müssen wir stoppen.“ — Angela #Merkel, https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/heute-journal/heute-journal-vom-15-oktober-2020-100.html — #heute bin ich #DankbarFürMerkel

Distributed secure programming with Spritely Goblins https://share.tube/videos/watch/c08afc11-16eb-4d56-8aef-bd19089db65e

#1yrago Britain’s unbelievably stupid, dangerous porn “age verification” scheme is totally dead https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/10/uk-government-abandons-planned-porn-age-verification-scheme/

#1yrago Want a ride in a Lyft? Just sign away your right to sue if they kill, maim, rape or cheat you https://memex.craphound.com/2019/10/16/want-a-ride-in-a-lyft-just-sign-away-your-right-to-sue-if-they-kill-maim-rape-or-cheat-you/

#1yrago In Kansas’s poor, sick places, hospitals and debt collectors send the ailing to debtor’s prison https://features.propublica.org/medical-debt/when-medical-debt-collectors-decide-who-gets-arrested-coffeyville-kansas/

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Consider that the American Bar Association, a voluntary organization involved in academic and ethical standards of US law schools, used to help vet potential Supreme Court nominees for over 50 years.

Well, some people were unhappy w/ this because the ABA wasn't "conservative enough" and wanted to find a parallel "All-American" political organization to do it. 2005: enter the Federalist Society, George W Bush, and Alito.

@darius @cj Totally agree. IMO it's also in part why the conservatives/republicans seem WAY better at the long game than the dems. Look at how they're stacking the supreme court and will likely get Roe v. Wade either repealed or badly weakened.

The Federalist Society is a particularly insidious example of how political trends in the USA change and destroy norms.

Take some norm or non-partisan organization doing their thing. A typical conservative strategy is to find it isn't conservative enough, so they set up a parallel organization with a conservative bent and a more patriotic name. Then try to replace the existing norm or non-partisan organization with their own, shifting the whole culture with them.

Propaganda, censorship, and surveillance are attributes of the same underlying aspect: Monopoly. Centralised control.

All three problems have the same effective solution: Break up the monopolies.

Propaganda is a function of amplification, attention, audience capture, selective promotion, discovery, distraction, stealing the air supply or acquiring of any competion, and coöption of the platform. Propaganda is an inherent property of monopoly control.

Censorship and Gatekeeping are functions of excludability, audience gating, selective exclusion, obfuscation, distraction, stealing the air supply or acquiring of any competion, and, again, coöption of the platform. Censorship is an inherent property of monopoly control.

Surveillance whether of the state, capitalist, or non-state actor varieties, is a function of population and provider capture, coercion or gatekeeping of vendors and pipelines, and, again, coöption of the platform. Surveillance is an inherent property of monopoly control.

Audiences, a public, divided across independent networks, with access to different editorial selection, from different distribution networks, with access to different input message streams, are far less subject to propaganda, censorship, or surveillance.

It's importance to realise that the key is not nominal control but actual control, which may be nonobvious or unapparent to many participants. A system with appearances of decentralisation may well be centralised under the surface. Retail brand labels vs. brand ownership, or Luxottica's stranglehold over the eyeglasses market, for example, give a false sense of "consumer choice" in a case of actual tight corporate control.

And why is this? What's the fundamental connection between monopoly and control? Control is about maximising desired outcome to applied effort. In monopoly, there is a central focus of influence, the monopolist. Even a very partial controlling share can still be effective. In a first-past-the-post majority scenario such as elections or corporate share ownership, the bloc which swings the majority has control, even if it itself is numerically a minority. In markets, networks, organisations, etc., a single place to permit or deny input or output increases control by decreasing effort and increasing effect.

Shout-outs to Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic -- a great profile to follow, and https://pluralistic.net), Matt Stoller (https://mattstoller.substack.com/?no_cover=true), Lina Khan (https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox), Zephyr Teachout (https://bookshop.org/books/break-em-up-recovering-our-freedom-from-big-ag-big-tech-and-big-money/9781250200891), and others breaking through some seriously Borked chickenshit thinking on this topic.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24735860

#propagand #censorship #surveillance #monopoly #SurveillanceState #SurveillanceCapitalism #control #power #decentralisation #decentralization #pluralistic

Like tobacco apologists of the fifties, they're selling doubt, and corporate-friendly politicians are buying.

Herd immunity is bad science, but it's good for business. Tossing low-waged workers into a viral meat-grinder "keeps the economy going" - which is to say, it keeps billionaires' fortunes intact.

Remember, if they need you to risk your life to make their fortunes, then you - not they - are the reason they have that fortune to begin with.

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These three convened the meeting that produced the "Great Barrington Declaration" arguing for herd immunity - a declaration whose signatories include many obvious fakes ("Dr Johnny Bananas").

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/09/herd-immunity-letter-signed-fake-experts-dr-johnny-bananas-covid

And these three are cited by GOP governors and local pols for their refusal to implement lockdowns, mask orders and other evidence-based, life-saving measures.

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We're at a moment in history where those threats are reappearing. It's up to us to pick up this work and keep fighting for cryptographic rights, without which we lose our human rights.