When deciphering the motivations of modern tech titans, often more important than: ”What are they lying to us about?”, is the question: ”What are they lying to themselves about?”
The tech industry has gone down to cosplaying the innocent child, Google in particular with primary colors and bouncy castles, to keep telling itself it can not possibly be evil.
Burn Book by #KaraSwisher is not just juicy takes on the techigentsia
It also shows how she was prescient in warning about privacy and safety concerns of tech, and how she has become increasingly focused on the need for effective government regulation
[Vanity Fair, Podcast, Inside the Hive]: "They Knew Better,” Says Kara Swisher: Why Big Tech Turns a Blind Eye to Trump’s Depravity
Brian Stelter, Kara Swisher. Interesting tech players conversation.
A day after the Journal reports that Musk is loopy under verious influences, the editorial page praises him for going after the administrative (read: deep) state.
...letter’s signaturies are “unable to work for or with people that lack competence, judgment and care for our mission and employees.”
Technology journalist #KaraSwisher has posted the letter on X (formerly Twitter) – and points out that OpenAI’s chief scientist, #IlyaSutskever, has signed it, even though he is a member of the board that fired Altman.
As flagged earlier, #Sutskever has posted on #X today that “I deeply regret...
RE
Catholic church... slave trade.... conquered natives ... enslave Africans and Filipinos
Italy... African Muslims selling Christians to the Ottomans...
If there's one thing I took away from ProPublica@newsie.social's explosive #IRSFiles, it's that #TaxAvoidance (which is legal) isn't a separate phenomenon from #TaxEvasion (which is not), but rather a thinly veiled euphemism for it:
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
In cases like these, #TheProcessIsThePunishment: Microsoft's dirty laundry was aired far and wide, its swaggering founder was brought low, and the company's conduct changed for years afterwards. Gates once told #KaraSwisher that Microsoft missed its chance to buy #Android because they were "distracted by the antitrust trial." But the Android acquisition came four years after the antitrust case ended.
Please join me as I defend my PhD thesis proving Elon Musk is Pennywise the clown…
Pennywise lives in a sewer.
Sewers are full of excrement.
X is full of excrement.
Therefore X is a sewer.
Elon Musk lives in X.
Therefore Elon Musk lives in a sewer.
Therefore Elon Musk is Pennywise.
Thank you.
Please leave in an orderly fashion through the comments.
#WalterIsaacson and Kara are friends — but that doesn’t mean she’s going to go easy on him as they discuss Isaacson’s new hit biography: Elon Musk, which is causing much consternation among readers and reviewers. Kara pushes Walter on whether the book equivocates or excuses too much of Elon’s bad behavior. And Walter, well, he pushes back
Since 2020, I’ve been at the epicenter of a wide-reaching campaign to intimidate social media platforms into backing away from their investments in safety and security. It worked.
@yoyoel I appreciated #KaraSwisher and her defense of you in her interview with #WalterIsaacson re his #biography of #ElonMusk. Please accept my gratitude for your decency and truth telling self. You are a gem and do not deserve the treatment you have received.
Meta is not gonna buy Mastodon or any server, this is based on absolutely nothing and untrue.
Yes, some of us indeed got contacted by Meta/Insta because they are working on a new social platform (this was in the news) and they are looking into joining the Fediverse (Mark Zuckerberg also told this in the recent podcast)
SO.
This contact was about a "heads-up" for a potential big platform to join the network and not for a "take over".
@stuxIf US and EU antitrust / competitiveness authorities cannot secure compliance from Facebook and Zuckerberg for existing and longstanding orders, what makes you think a rag-tag bunch of Fediverse admins will fare better?
Facebook are manifestly bad-faith and untrustworthy actors. Preblock, now.
Facebook is a repeat violator at the FTC. There was a consent decree that goes back close to a decade, which the FTC in 2019 found that they violated. The recent news suggests that they may have also been in violation of this latest consent order. And that is really prompting a step back and a close look at: What does it take to make sure that firms across the board are actually complying with the law? ... I think when you have companies that are repeatedly before a law-enforcement agency, you need to ask serious questions about whether these companies are recidivist and whether they have a challenge in abiding by existing laws.
-- Lina Khan, Chair of the US Federal Trade Commission, interviewed by Kara Swischer,15 May 2023
At the very least, a precondition for any cooperation would be full compliance with existing antitrust actions, sanctions, consent orders, and the like, for a period at least as long as noncompliance (so, four years in the case of the 2019 order).
It's always amazing how little so-called "law and order" Republicans seem to know about the law. Carlson signed a contract(s) and now claims Fox is violating his 1st Amendment rights
a) its not the government stopping him from speaking, its his contract
b) this is no different from signing an NDA, just another contract
c) you can speak any time you want to but it will violate your contract which has consequences.
Sounds like Kara Swisher things the exact same thing as me:
"On Twitter, the tech writer and podcaster Kara Swisher said: “Free speech? Hardly. He made a new show. Twitter is a media platform. He just wants to get out of a binding contract he signed and got paid big money for.
“As with Musk, he thinks legal agreements don’t apply to him because he is a special snowflake.”