by Karl Denninger, Market Ticker:

Let’s cut the crap eh?

Facebook has been caught “demotiing” things it doesn’t like, while tolerating the same sort of abusive content (e.g. that which promotes Sharia) aimed at different people.  For example, you can’t say “gays are bad” or “women should be slaves” without being accused of inciting violence and restricted or banned entirely, but you can talk about and be in favor of Sharia Law on their platform, which in fact is the same thing, because under Sharia Law women are slaves and gays would be literally imprisoned or slaughtered.

The firm has also been caught selling data — personally identifiable data — to third parties.  That’s what “Cambridge” is all about; selling access to personal profiling capabilities for money.

Twitter has said they don’t “shadowban” — and then admitted at the same time they did, in that their search algorithm will not find content (deliberately) or even, in some cases, a person’s Twitter handle if they are what Twitter considers a “****ty person.”  What’s a “****ty person”?  I guess that’s whatever some group of people at Twatter say it is.

Are Facebook and Twitter free to do this under US law?  Yes, they are, provided they don’t represent otherwise.  That is, provided they do not commit fraud by representing either openly or by inference that they are a place where freedom of speech is present they are free to set whatever rules they like.

But both platforms, along with most others, have committed fraud in this regard because they do represent that their policies are not arbitrary, capricious, or applied unevenly.

As a counter-example I point to the FAQ here on the The Market Ticker.  It explicitly says that your access here is a privilege, not a right or contractual obligation, that same can be withdrawn with or without cause, and that the owners (that would be me) can edit, move or remove content as seen fit with or without notice.  That’s pretty clear.

But as soon as you represent that there is some process that’s not arbitrary and is evenly applied you damn well better adhere to it — in both letter and spirit.

Neither Face****er or Twatter do so and in fact they both have said exactly that in direct contravention of their claimed public position in their terms of service!

In response to all of this there have been myriad screams from various people, and now Gaetz (my district’s Congressnake) has filed an FEC complaint saying that Twitter’s misdirection on this amounts to unfair (and thereby illegal) subsidization of his opponents.

What Gates could do (but won’t) is urge people to vote with their wallets.

An overwhelming majority of the people who live here are “deep red” politically.  If they, along with the rest of the people in this country that are hard-core “Red State” folks not only told these companies to screw off but also boycotted all their advertisers this problem would be resolved immediately.

It’s not like that wouldn’t completely destroy these firms.  It would.  Consider that they all survive by running advertising, since none of them charge users directly.  What happens to their market value if half the nation, which is roughly where the R/D split lies among partisan lines, actively boycotts any firm that advertises on either network?

Their advertising value goes to zero, that’s what happens — and so does the company.

So exactly how pissed off are you?  If the answer is “very pissed off” then fix it yourself, jackass.  It’s not like these companies don’t make known on a trivial basis who their advertisers are, since the ads are literally “in your face!”

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