we have a new enemy

If it's not obvious by now, the whole "Big Tech" issue is beginning to fill up the entire horizon to the point of occluding everything else. Both Styxhexenhammer666 and Tim Pool have been talking about how the issue of rampant censorship (and, with the latest Google scandal, the issue of election-meddling) started out mainly as a problem for online conservatives but has now become a problem for everyone on both sides of the aisle. Algorithms designed to block vaguely defined "objectionable content" are knocking out lefties almost to the same extent as righties. In the video below, we see Jon Miller acting unusually calm as his in-studio guest, John Matze—founder and CEO of the knew Twitter competitor Parler (which I'm on as @bighominid, of course)—rants about how firms like Apple are trying to shut him and his operation down. Matze is genuinely angry, as you'll see if you watch the video below:


If you're still not seeing that there's an enormous crisis of free speech going on, I don't know what else I can tell you. The lesson I take from the above video is that new platforms like Parler are going to have to find a way to host their apps on their own store instead of relying on Apple's App Store or Google's Play Store (Play Store has de-platformed apps related to Gab, that other free-speech competitor of Twitter). Alt-tech has no choice but to create an entire parallel market if free speech is to be preserved, and precisely this has been a weakness of the right from the beginning: it often lazily refuses to fight for its own existence, being content to (1) lazily rely on platforms made by people who do not have the right's interests at heart, then to (2) lazily complain when the censorship and deplatforming start. My hat is off to people like Andrew Torba for creating Gab, and to John Matze for creating Parler. These guys are the front line in the creation of an alt-tech realm where free speech—as ugly as it can get—is actually taken seriously. I don't really like swimming through the sprawling fens of bigoted sludge on Gab, but I'll defend Gab's right to exist.

ADDENDUM: here's Tim Pool on how the Google scandal is blowing up, but only because Donald Trump is now talking about it. The left-leaning media refuse to pick up the story except in an oblique manner: