FB “whistleblower” saga has propelled push for social media “permits”

Apparently emboldened by a recent “Facebook whistleblower’s” congressional testimony and media tour, an op-end has surfaced on project-sindicate.org exploring how information could be further and more efficiently contained and obscured from users, beyond “old-fashioned” ways like censorship and downranking.

And Steven Hill, formerly of the Center for Humane Technology (CHT) – an outfit dedicated to “radically reimagining our digital infrastructure” – has an appropriately radical idea: introduce digital operating permits and “protect people” by not allowing more than 1,000 to see a particular post.

To make the idea somewhat palatable, it was introduced under the guise of a novel way of dealing with what everybody seems to agree needs to be dealt with: tech monopolies. But the tech monopoly horse has left the barn a long time ago, and it seems that a degree of regulation will now be needed to rein it in and then allow natural ways of dealing with monopolies – fair competition and innovation to take care of the problem.

But Hill thinks the way to make them less dominant is by making major social media sites’ audiences artificially smaller. And since an average person hardly communicates with 1,000 people “in real life” (notwithstanding that people’s digital lives have very much become a part of their “real” one), Hill doesn’t think that users would be “deprived” by this limitation.

But right away, the true nature of this extraordinarily dystopian idea reveals itself to be not to truly limit the power of tech monopolies, but to make sure that the message that does get out to a lot of people (so, more than 1,000 at a time) is very controlled.

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Days After Cops Raid Home, 3D Gun Legend ‘JStark’ Found Dead of ‘Heart Attack’ at 28

The 3D gun pioneer, who invented the rapid-fire 3D-printed gun that could be entirely printed at home, “JStark” has died, according to German magazine Der Spiegel. He passed away in his home, according to the magazine, of a heart attack. He was just 28-years-old.

After his invention of the FGC-9 in 2020, JStark became a well-cherished internet hero and news of his death is sending shockwaves through his popular channels. According to Der Spiegel, JStark died on Friday, October 8 of a heart attack.

The magazine reports that it “appears” his death was natural and police ruled out foul play. Adding to the suspicious nature of a 28-year-old man, who appeared to be in good health, dying of a heart attack, however, is the fact that days before he died, on October 6, police raided his home.

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The Science Of Propaganda Is Still Being Developed And Advanced

We live in a far less free society than most of us think.

It looks like we’re free. We don’t get thrown in prison for criticizing our government officials. We can vote for whoever we want. We can log onto the internet and look up information on any subject we’re interested in. If we want to buy a product we have many brands we are free to choose from.

But we’re not free. Our political systems are set up to herd people into a two-party system that is controlled on both sides by plutocrats. The news media that people rely on to form ideas about what’s going on and how they should vote are controlled by the plutocratic class and heavily influenced by secretive government agencies. Internet algorithms are aggressively manipulated to show people information which favors the status quo. Even our entertainment is rife with Pentagon and CIA influence.

How free is that? How free is your speech if there are myriad institutional safeguards in place to prevent speech from ever effecting political change?

It doesn’t matter what you’re allowed to say if it doesn’t matter what you say. It doesn’t matter if you’re allowed to call the oligarchic puppet put in office by the last fake election a dickhead. It doesn’t matter if you’re allowed to Google any information you want only to find whatever information Google wants you to find.

What is the functional difference between a regime which directly censors the internet to prevent dissent and a regime which works with Silicon Valley plutocrats to control information via algorithms and has a system in place which prevents dissent from having any meaningful impact?

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Trudeau Bans Unvaccinated From Travel, Leaving the Country, And Earning A Living

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced this week that starting Oct. 30th any citizen wishing to board a plane, train, or cruise in or out of Canada will be required to show a ‘vaccination passport’ proving they received the COIVID-19 shot in order to move freely, USSA News reported.

While the draconian mandate has a temporary clause allowing the alternative of showing proof of a negative COVID-19 test, it is set to expire a month later.

Trudeau announced the measure, suggesting that those who took the shot have ‘deserve their freedom back.’

“This is about keeping people safe on the job and in our communities,” Trudeau declared. “If you’ve done the right thing and gotten vaccinated, you deserve the freedom to be safe from COVID-19, to have your kids safe from COVID, to get back to the things you love.”

The Canadian Prime Minister’s recent announcement is one of his strictest rules implemented thus far, essentially forcing any citizen who does not comply to become an absolute societal outcast. Many have pushed back on the stated mandates and suggest that they are an attack on human dignity.

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16-Year-Old Wyoming Student Arrested for Not Wearing Mask, Entire School Placed on Lockdown

A 16-year-old student in Wyoming was arrested and the entire school was placed  on lockdown — all because she refused to wear a mask.

Grace Smith, 16, had already been suspended twice from Laramie High School in Wyoming for refusing to wear masks in class.

As the brave student attempted to go to class unmuzzled once again, she was met with police and given a $500 citation. When she was told to leave the school, she refused to comply. At that point, she was handcuffed and arrested.

As the situation unfolded, an announcement over the loudspeaker said that “we are in a lockdown, please stay in your rooms.”

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Shocking Study Finds Over Half of Those Killed by Police Have Never Been Counted

Tragically, in America, the domestic security force we are forced to pay for, also known as police, kill more people than any other police force on the planet. The numbers that are released publicly are staggering, however, according to a new study, they are actually far worse.

The study, conducted by the University of Washington and published in the British medical journal, The Lancet, found that police killings in America have been undercounted by more than half over the past four decades.

Researchers at UW compared the government’s numbers from the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) with the open source work at nonprofit groups like Fatal Encounters, Mapping Police Violence, and The Counted. What they found was shocking — the government is not counting police killings nearly as close as private citizens are.

The study found that the NVSS data undercounted police killings by 55.5 percent between 1980 and 2018. Overall, according to the researchers, “the misclassification of police violence in NVSS data is extensive.”

According to an analysis of the study by the NY Times, the “findings reflect both the contentious role of medical examiners and coroners in obscuring the real extent of police violence, and the lack of centralized national data on an issue that has caused enormous upheaval. Private nonprofits and journalists have filled the gap by mining news reports and social media.”

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