President Trump's FCC chairman blasts Twitter for silencing conservatives https://t.co/K3tQL6lphJ pic.twitter.com/2YZha5yxOJ
— CNN (@CNN) November 28, 2017
Nazis. They unverified a bunch of sieg heiling, torch marching, murderous mob leading NAZIS. F***. https://t.co/dgD7ZO9Jmc
— Zeddy ( me [ person ] ) (@ZeddRebel) November 28, 2017
And if you think it’s a coincidence the Repubs shoved a brown-skinned guy with a “furrin” (Pai’s Indian-American) name in front of the camera, well… would you be interested in purchasing a very popular, well-known bridge? Or perhaps a treasure map for a cache of undersea gold bricks?
Per the Washington Post:
Ajit Pai, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, blasted Twitter on Tuesday for what he said was a push to “discriminate” against conservatives, during an aggressive defense of his agency’s plan to repeal net neutrality rules.
Speaking during an event hosted by the R Street Institute, a conservative think tank, Pai accused Twitter of hypocrisy for its criticism of the FCC’s plan to repeal the Obama-era regulation.
“When it comes to a free and open Internet, Twitter is part of the problem,” Pai said. “The company has a viewpoint and uses that viewpoint to discriminate.”
Twitter, Google and Facebook have been vocal opponents of the FCC’s proposal to repeal net neutrality, joining others who say the repeal will harm the flow of information on the Internet. On the other side, Internet service providers such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon have supported the FCC’s push, which it says will allow the Internet to return to the free market environment it was created in.
The FCC is expected to repeal the Obama-era regulations, which are aimed at ensuring all websites are treated equally by Internet providers, at its Dec. 14 meeting.
But Pai, a Republican, said that Twitter’s own practices already violate the principles of openness that the company espouses, accusing it of using a “double-standard” to police its own content. He cited the company’s recent regulation of “conservative users’ accounts,” apparently referring to Twitter’s recent decision to suspend and de-verify some prominent white nationalists and far-right users on its service…
The company’s public image has badly suffered after the disclosures that Russian operatives created fake accounts on the service and had some success at gaming its algorithms in order to sow division before the 2016 election.Pai himself has faced a similar problem: a comment forum set up by the FCC earlier this year for the public to weigh in on its proposal to repeal the net neutrality regulation appears to have been flooded with hundreds of thousands of identical comments supporting the move. Investigators say that many of the comments were submitted by impersonators, and that some of the names and information that were submitted appear to have emerged in a data breach. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a Democrat, says the FCC has stymied an investigation into the fraudulent comments, while a journalist’s freedom of information requests have been rebuffed…
CNN:
… Pai, a Republican commissioner appointed to head the agency by President Trump, specifically called out Twitter for appearing to have a “double standard when it comes to suspending or de-verifying conservative users’ accounts as opposed to those of liberal users.
He did not specify which conservative accounts he was referring to. Twitter recently removed the verification from several prominent users, including controversial conservative commentator Laura Loomer and white nationalists like Richard Spencer and Jason Kessler…
In his speech, Pai didn’t just attack tech companies. He also went after celebrities like musician Cher and actors George Takei, Mark Ruffalo and Alyssa Milano by name for criticizing the rules.
“These comments are absurd,” Pai said after reading off a tweet from Ruffalo claiming the net neutrality repeal would be fuel for authoritarianism. “Getting rid of government authority over the Internet is the exact opposite of authoritarianism.”
Gosh, wouldn’t it just be a terrible thing if the True Americans(tm) were to go after some prominent enemies of His Gilded Greatness, Lord MAGA?
Everyone asks me if I'm afraid for my life reporting in Russia. What I'm really afraid of is already happening to the press—here, in America. My latest: https://t.co/ZECDY1Nj43
— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) November 28, 2017
Hunter Gathers
Enjoy your open Internet while it lasts.
That trust fund isn’t going to grow itself, you know.
Baud
The Bros on Reddit are really upset about net neutrality but they attribute it to “corruption” rather than ideology. It’s kind of an interesting form of denialism.
?BillinGlendaleCA
The internet was created via a DARPA(BIG BAD EVIL FEDERAL GOVERNMENT) program, not the free market.
HumboldtBlue
Here is some raw commentary to match the grey skies. NSFL. Racism. Joyner Lucas — I’m not racist.
Ruckus
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Yes but if internet providers can’t fuck us for a
fewlot of extra bucks every month they will shrivel up and die. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of fucking assholes. (In case you couldn’t tell, I got my charter bill today. Fucking assholes.)But the free market will make things better. For someone. Won’t be anyone I know. Or want to know.
Corner Stone
Chris Hayes finally figured out that you can only book Julia Ioffe for a segment, and not include anyone else. Because she will talk over, interrupt or answer for any other guest on at the same time she is. That includes Chris if she wants to.
NotMax
Desperately in need of a Pai filter.
Baud
@Corner Stone: Chris isn’t the most dominant person, is he?
Major Major Major Major
I took a pretty picture. https://instagram.com/p/BcD2ZixAyVq/
Hunter Gathers
This will lead to classiest. best tiered Internet in history. People will talk about how amazing and wonderful it is. Also, my hands are yoooge.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: Bill would be proud.
RepubAnon
“Them as has the gold, makes the rules”
-Pogo
debbie
@Major Major Major Major:
Nice!
Patricia Kayden
@Baud: Bros meaning Senator Sanders’ supporters? Why are they confused? I assume Republicans getting rid of net neutrality means more money in the pockets of businesses/donors. Follow the $$$.
Chip Daniels
No one “believes in the free market”. No one ever has, or ever will.
It is an abstraction, like transubstantiation and it embraced at convenience to support whatever policy is favorable at the moment.
So tech companies have unfettered freedom over the peasants until the moment they defy a superior power.
The coming battle isn’t going to be between competing economic theories of socialism or capitalism, but between authoritarian white supremacy versus an egalitarian diversity.
Economics will be largely an irrelevant issue.
Patricia Kayden
@Major Major Major Major: Beautiful. Never heard of Japantown before.
Chip Daniels
Ack- I used the sockulism word. Can I be unmoderated?
Angrifon
I wonder how the free market operates in this situation? Is the vast diversity of providers going to reward the one that makes content the freest? Which consumer will be providing the demand for this market? The web content creators? The end users? Because a market only provides efficiencies when there are enough suppliers to create competition. The bar to entry as a supplier into this market is already very high. How exactly does Pai suggest we avoid the inevitable pitfalls of collusion and monopoly? Telecom deregulation in 1994 led almost immediately to significantly higher subscriber rates.
randy khan
I speak from personal knowledge of this, having watched Pai for quite a long time – he has a very thin skin. I have no doubt that he is very mad that people don’t see the utter logic of his position, which he’s been shouting from the rooftops for a long time. He’s also probably justifiably angry about the threats and racial slurs that have been coming into his inbox over the last week. (That’s really unacceptable, and it’s not like it’s going to persuade him anyway.)
Before he was chairman of the FCC, he was a commissioner. He devoted much of his effort to trying to troll Tom Wheeler, who was the chairman during Obama’s second term. Whenever Wheeler turned the tables, he got publicly upset.
You really shouldn’t think of Pai as a Trump person, though. (Among other things, he’s way too qualified for the job to be a real Trump appointee, having served as an FCC commissioner and having been on the FCC staff before he was chairman.) You should think of him as a creature of the Republicans in Congress, who were responsible for him getting on the FCC in the first place. Thanks to a deal reached during the Clinton Administration, while the President picks the chairman, the other four commissioners are picked by House and Senate Republicans and Democrats (one of each party for each house of Congress). Formally, the President appoints the commissioners, but nobody gets nominated until the folks in Congress pick them. It’s a terrible arrangement, and in this case it’s leading to Pai more or less trying to undo everything the Wheeler FCC did because he was there and objected to all of it.
Mike J
@Major Major Major Major: Near Isobune?
Baud
@Patricia Kayden: In the case of Reddit, Bros probably means anti-Hillary rather than peo-Sanders.
I shouldn’t be so harsh, however. There are good people among that horde who recognize there’s a difference between the parties.
Baud
@randy khan:
This is correct. He’s a Sam Brownback protégé.
Major Major Major Major
@randy khan: I remember when people were furious at Obama for appointing Wheeler. I wasn’t happy but was willing to give him time to win me over through actual actions, which he did.
Pia sounds indeed like a thin-skinned asshole.
@Mike J: Right outside Yakiniq.
NotMax
Whether or not Twitter has a political agenda* is entirely irrelevant and has nothing, nada, zip to do with net neutrality.
*Not attempting even a specious argument one way or the other – it’s eminently ignorable misdirection Pai is employng.
None of the regulated broadcast networks air Stürm Trek or So You Think You Can Lynch? – does Pai’s FCC plan to crack down on that as a ‘political agenda?’
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: Reddit is a weird place but once you know that it’s quite a good resource for many things.
Major Major Major Major
@NotMax: yeah it was a pretty astonishing argument to hear him trot out.
Mike J
Australia joins the 21st century, Senate passes bill that allows people to marry each other regardless of genital configuration. House of Representatives up next week.
LurkerNoLonger
These internet providers are so stupid. Don’t they realize they are just going to open themselves up to stricter regulation once they start fucking with the way people access the Internet. If I was the head of one of these companies I would be against the repeal of these rules just like Twitter, Facebook, etc. These people are really shortsighted.
randy khan
I’m in the business (and have been since the early 1990s), and have some personal biases here as a result, so take this for what it’s worth:
I’ve actually read the draft order, and it’s definitely filled with magic of the market stuff, not to mention some real howlers about how the FTC will enforce promises made by ISPs under its unfair trade practices powers (said promises not actually having been made to consumers) and how it’s unlikely that investment in edge providers would be affected even if the big boys engaged in discrimination because there are a lot of other providers out there. (This is a business where the top 10 providers probably have 95% of the market, and the top 3 probably have north of 60%.) Because the order looks so sloppy, there’s a better chance than there should be that an appeal will succeed, but really I don’t think it’s likely. The whole history of network neutrality has been about the FCC trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, and this draft is just a continuation of that story. What we really need is legislation to create clear lines of authority and probably clear rules as well, but that’s not happening any time soon. (Maybe 2019 if the elections break perfectly for the Dems, but even then probably not until 2021.)
That said, my personal guess is that we’re not going to see the dire predictions come to pass soon, either. There’s going to be some hesitancy to take advantage of the new freedom because it might not last and because providers mostly don’t want to risk a backlash that might cause a reversal. A lot of what will happen will be at the margins – Netflix and Amazon and Hulu might cut deals to get better treatment for their streaming video services, for instance, something Netflix was doing before the 2015 rules were adopted – but stuff like blocking content or deliberately slowing down disfavored sites won’t happen on any kind of real scale. My caveat to this is that the phone companies have a history of being stupid about the Internet, and I’ve never felt they understood the business very well, so you never know what AT&T or Verizon will do. Believe it or not, the cable companies understand the business much better, and they’re more likely to focus on their end users than on skimming from companies on the edge. Or at least that’s what I think.
matt
So from now on this suit is ‘pro-Nazi FCC Chairman Pai’.
randy khan
@Baud:
He also did some time with Jeff Sessions. When Sessions was nominated, he issued a statement about how Sessions was a fine, fair-minded guy who didn’t have a prejudiced bone in his body.
matt
@randy khan: My bet is that the ISPs will use the leverage to extract fees from Netflix, YouTube, and a few others that legitimately use a lot of bandwidth, and those fees get passed to consumers making those services less attractive and slowing down cord cutting for a few years. If the fees are not paid the ISPs will then fall back to the direct billing/Portuguese ISP option.
NotMax
@Major Major Major Major
What it does is carve into concrete that he has a political agenda.
randy khan
@NotMax:
There is a building movement in D.C. to go after the edge providers because they have too much power, however that’s defined. Twitter’s not a big target (although it’s on the list); it’s more Facebook and Google. Some of it is bipartisan, too. Pai is trying to connect to that, although pretty clumsily.
Major Major Major Major
@matt: I also think this seems like a realistic outcome.
ribber
Hey, if Pai is upset that Twitter is punishing “conservatives” in response to them not giving a verified checkmark to Nazis, can we use this instance as well-established refutation when trolls trot out the tired stupid argument that nazis are liberal because socialism is in the original name?
Shana
@RepubAnon: Good God, what would Walt Kelly have made of this crew? The mind boggles.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@Major Major Major Major: like what? (I would like to find out more, but i have trouble navigating and search their threads).
NotMax
As there is an Open Thread tag above –
Thing learned about today that generated both a resounding “Meh” and a “Lordy, how many ways will they manage to f*ck this one up” – Netflix plans on showing an original Lost In Space series next year.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@randy khan: what’s an edge provider?
Gin & Tonic
@Major Major Major Major: Nice shot. I love Japantown.
Davebo
@Major Major Major Major:
It’s good and bad but never great. Pretty much like the rest of the inner tubes.
NotMax
@randy khan
Don’t discount, either, that those powerful edge providers have deep pockets bulging with scratch capable of being tapped for campaign funds and the lofting of trial balloons of threat to pry open those coffers.
Shana
@LurkerNoLonger: Kind of, maybe, like the NFL wanting legislation/rules mandating stronger helmets because if some team did it independent of the other teams they might be at a disadvantage? I may be totally off base on this but I thought I remember something about this, although it could have been helmets for motorcycles. At 58 my memory for certain details isn’t what it once was.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
It’s hard to take Julia Ioffe seriously.
In 2013 she insisted Putin was powerless in Russia and was being pushed around by the Duma.
In 2014 she blamed Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on Obama not bombing Syria. Not kidding. She insisted Putin would have been to scared to move if America staged a shock and awe in the middle east.
But she’s telegenic, so there’s that.
Major Major Major Major
@Davebo: everywhere but here ?
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: I like the various writing and worldbuilding focused ones, and of course the comics areas. Lots of great space for advice and criticism, though like anywhere else some people are dicks. r/nosleep does original horror that can be pretty cool.
Avoid politics there.
randy khan
@matt:
Netflix is a weird case. Netflix has been trying to get special treatment from ISPs for a long time (and sometimes succeeding). For a while, its big goal was to get connected to ISP networks very close to the end users, rather than at the usual interconnection points, so as to bypass potential congestion. For instance, not too long before the 2015 order, it cut a deal with Comcast that actually saved it a ton of money, but then complained that Comcast hadn’t given it exactly what it wanted.
Now, in practical terms, a lot of what Netflix wants actually is a win-win – Netflix gets better connections to its customers, overall congestion goes down (which means that ISPs don’t have to spend money to expand capacity at the main interconnection point), etc. – but the ISPs didn’t want to pay for it, and neither did Netflix. But it’s literally true that Netflix wants things nobody else has asked for and tried to use network neutrality to get better treatment than other edge companies.
B.B.A.
@Mike J: Unless that one MP can get the bill set aside so Parliament can focus on a more pressing matter – crocodiles!
NotMax
@Shana
Why quibble? Motoball!
:)
randy khan
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
Basically everybody who provides services or content over the Internet.
(Sorry for the jargon – sometimes I forget what people not in the business know and don’t know.)
Major Major Major Major
Thanks for saying nice things about my picture everyone!
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Bernie has been pretty muted about this obscene tax cut for the rich. It’s rather baffling.
Could it be he’s afraid that if he speaks out the press will reopen questions about why he’s hiding his own tax returns.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Needs post.
Major Major Major Major
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: the press never cared before, why would they start now? He’s probably doing like he did during ACA repeal, pushing for a completely unrelated piece of fantasy policy and only making the right noises when asked.
NotMax
@David Merry Christmas Koch
Why mention him? As cold, congealed and unappetizing as last week’s oatmeal.
In fact, why waste any effort yattering about him at all? Just serves to draw the Bernmites out of the woodwork, who contribute nothing but derailing threads.
Major Major Major Major
@NotMax: writing my comment made me feel good, so there’s that.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Downtown LA from Mt. Lowe.
Mike in NC
@NotMax:
Am really liking that name.
Major Major Major Major
@?BillinGlendaleCA: woww.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: Thanks. You can see where they’re building the new stadium for the Rams right above downtown. Even with 100 mile visibility on turkey day, it still needed some cleanup.
ETA: And like clockwork, I post a pic and up comes a new thread.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@Major Major Major Major: The thing is in 2010 Obama wanted to pass some very important legislation:
1) repeal DADT
2) new-clear arms reduction
3) $250 billion stimulus
4) extending unemployment benefits for 1.3 million workers
5) bring back the estate tax.
Of course the republicans filibustered everything, so Obama cut a deal, in return for votes on all the measures he would extend the bush tax cuts for 2 measly years. Pretty good deal. Not bad for an unknown black guy from Chicago with a funny mooslim name.
Well, Bernie went ape shit and staged his own filibuster for 8 hours and 36 minutes denouncing the deal.
So here we are, an obscene tax cut that dwarfs a puny 2 year extension and making matters far worse, liberals will get nothing in return and yet he’s silent.
Have to wonder why the double standard.
NotMax
In a fit of – something – ordered both a new kitchen faucet and a new bathroom faucet last night at 4:30 a.m.
Experience has shown that doing any DIY in this cottage stokes the furnace and starts a train of related problems a-chugging, but maybe this time won’t be too bad.
opiejeanne
@NotMax: Wouldn’t it automatically have to be better than the original series?
Major Major Major Major
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: because he defines himself in opposition to the democrats, not the republicans.
jl
Here’s a good twitter thread with lots of stuff against the tax cut.
https://twitter.com/SenSanders
There was also a tax debate on CNN tonight with Scott and Cruz for and Sanders and Cantwell against.
The old coot held rallies against the GOP tax bill in three states this weekend.
Some people here have just gone insane with Wilmer hatred.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: Wasn’t he a Democrat last year?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: I hadn’t heard, which states?
Major Major Major Major
@jl: good to hear he’s been active (tweets don’t count).
NotMax
@opiejeanne
Take it you never sat through the movie.
Helpful hint: avoid it like the plague.
opiejeanne
@NotMax: I did, as well as the tv series. My kids dragged me to the movie, not knowing how bad it could be…. Oh wait!!!
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: He is obsessive about his obsessions.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@jl: like I said, puny and muted. How does waiting until the votes are lined up count for anything. Guess he doesn’t want to waste energy when he can’t score purity points.
burnspbesq
@Angrifon:
Robust antitrust enforcement by DOJ and the FTC, ya big silly.
NotMax
@opejeanne
Brings to mind the comment from Lauren Bacall when her (IIRC) niece gushed over Twilight and insisted on dragging her to see it.
(paraphrasing) “It was all I could do to not strike her repeatedly on the head with my shoe.”
?BillinGlendaleCA
@burnspbesq: No, collusion and monopoly are not considered to be a problem for Republicans. The Free Market can never fail.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@Omnes Omnibus: yeah the tax cut isn’t in the news at all today, why would anyone bring that up or the lack of opposition or the role sanders played in undermining clinton, paving the way for this abomination of an administration that will next use the deficit it created to slash social security, medicaid, and medicare.
but I understand why you would be defensive.
Sad!
Omnes Omnibus
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: Why would I be defensive?
ETA: Do you think I am/was a BernieBro?
Villago Delenda Est
@Davebo: 90% of everything is crap. Of course, in Pai’s case, it’s 100%.
J R in WV
@Major Major Major Major: Picture is pretty sunset (I guess, I got bit by Raven the other day!) keep up the good creative work!
Omnes Omnibus
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: @Omnes Omnibus: OMG, you think that. You are an idiot.
efgoldman
My daughter, a DC journo (who’s job disappeared at the beginning of this month, alas,.) reported regularly on the FCC and net neutrality. She’s been to several of his press conferences and interviewed him 1- 1. She says he’s much worse irl
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@Omnes Omnibus: Talk about projection. I see you can’t stop obsessing about me.
I skip over everything you post because you’re a bore. I only notice you when you link to my name. Yet you read and obsess over every word I post.
There’s something really wrong with you.
Now, move along.
Omnes Omnibus
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: Pied. My first.
randy khan
@efgoldman:
True. He’s very impressed with how clever he is.
He has this schtick of including pop culture references in nearly all of his written statements on FCC decisions. I think he believes they make him look hip or something. Mostly they’re slightly lame, but occasionally they cross into surreal territory because he forces them into whatever the topic of the day might be. (One of the best, actually, was his statement on the 2015 network neutrality order, the one that this decision will overturn. He tried to compare the Democrats’ efforts to adopt rules to the movie Groundhog Day, apparently forgetting that Bill Murray’s character gets it right in the end.)
cain
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Like everything th free market likes to co-opt everything. Just like they co-opted the Free Software movement with Open Source and now busily trying to take over Linux. It’s annoying as hell.
Duane
In the FTFNYT interview with Hanratity, did they ask how he felt about carrying water for Putin, and how long would he’ll keep doing it? I tried to read it, couldn’t. That makes two nazis headliners this week.
cain
@randy khan:
I’m more than happy to pile on with some indian to indian slurs in addition to the racist ones. He’s an asshole and I hate to think that an Indian is the cause of the death of the free Internet.
SgrAstar
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I was wondering what that was. Fascinating, slightly confusing- to me- shot. I love LA!
Cckids
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Wow, that is stunning!
JGabriel
@randy khan:
So, Pai is a thin-skinned asshole looking to undo everything his predecessor did, because Pai felt mocked and disempowered by said predecessor?
That sounds an awful lot like a Trump person to me, even if Pai came to power via Republican support instead of specifically Trumpian efforts. But, then again, I suppose that’s why Republicans are Trump’s party – there’s really not much that differentiates them.
sherparick
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Also, before broadband, the signals that made up the internet were carried on copper telephone wires, a common carrier.