The relationship between Silicon Valley, Microsoft, President Trump, and the ideology of hate

Windows Central

WinC Bot
Staff member
Dec 17, 2013
73,354
57
0
Visit site
White%20Supremacy%202%20_0.jpg

In an age when digital platforms are dubiously positioned as the arbitrators of free speech and the enablers of spreading hate, technology leaders have a responsibility and burden to hold accountable those who would do others harm.
We are living in troubled times.
The hatred and violence erupting in our streets put us all in peril. Those who would stand against this violence and hatred cannot do so alone. There is little one man can do without the support of another. An architect needs a carpenter. A pilot needs a co-pilot.

A country needs a leader that will stand unequivocally against hate. The world needs the heads of technology companies whose platforms have become the ephemeral stages to spread hateful ideologies to stand against the proliferation of messages that engender violence.

Many tech leaders are standing together united by that very message. Sadly, they've had to step away from a president who has been unclear about his stance.

Full story from the WindowsCentral blog...
 

hopmedic

Active member
Apr 27, 2011
5,231
0
36
Visit site
I am deeply saddened to see Windows Central dipping into the nasty realm of politics that we have today. I am even more deeply saddened to see how biased its twist on current events is.

As a white male, I do not align myself with neo-nazis, KKK, or whatever other white supremacy group is out there blowing their own horns. I want to distance myself from them as much as possible. Likewise, I distance myself from other hate groups that the author was too biased to name: Antifa (which, ironically is about as fascist as they can get), Black Lives Matter, and more.

You see, hate is not a one-sided coin. It comes from both sides, and the extremists on both sides try to paint the other as the evil ones. Fact is that they both are.

While I do wish that the racists on both sides would just go away, I also have to admit to myself that I put on a uniform to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic. With that comes the admission that as much as I disagree with the haters on both sides of the fence, they do have a right to free speech - a freedom that I defended in the United States Navy, and a right that I defend today. You see, the Constitution doesn't protect only the speech of the people I agree with. It is there to protect the speech of all. It wouldn't be a right if it only protected what I agree with. If you'd just let them do their little free speech rally without giving them all the attention of the media (which is what they WANT, by the way), they'd do their little chanting, go home, and we could all move on with our lives, unaffected by their particular brand of hate. But no, we have to pay other hate groups to show up, knowing that something WILL happen. Are we surprised someone died? No. If KKK and neo-nazis are a hate group, Antifa and BLM are just as much so. They get away with it, though, because it is politically expedient to not slander the group that "claims" to be for equal rights, even when it is a bald-faced lie.

I'll tell you this - if I have to drive through a hate-driven crowd, and someone attacks my car (did you see the video showing him driving slowly until someone hit his car with something?) I'm going to step on the gas regardless of who's in front of me. Why? Reginald Denny. All I need is that vision of an innocent trucker lying on the ground bleeding - and why? Because he stopped his truck for a mob. I saw it live on TV 25 years ago, and it's still fresh in my mind. I knew then that I'd never stop for a mob. That has nothing to do with skin color - it has everything to do with survival. And when my black grandchildren are ready to drive, they'll see that video of Reginald Denny, and be told to survive at all costs.

Sad to say, our great nation was nowhere near as divided nine years ago, as it is today. We have been driven by our government to hate each other, and it worked.
 

Generik1

New member
Apr 29, 2015
1
0
0
Visit site
I was going to comment, something I rarely do, but found hopmedic's note to so eloquently describe the thoughts of many millions of Americans that I wanted to take a moment and thank you.
There were many players in Charlottesville and just as the president expressed, some good, some bad. Life is not simple, not black or white.
Jason, this topic is much more complex than your article expresses. Tech has no right to limit free speech and it is truly a very dangerous time when tech attempts to assume that right and curate the speech of all.
 

mtf1380

Active member
Nov 30, 2015
1,845
0
36
Visit site
@hopmedic, thank you for your service, your principles are to be commended, and I believe you are valid on most, if not all points... but especially on your point that the same rights and respect should apply "TO" all people, "BY" all people. I also believe that the catalyst that is sparking the passions of the common folk is that the hate, or at the very minimum, the lack of respect towards others, seems to be condoned, and practiced by the Leader of our country. Our president reminds me of the bully in junior high that would walk through the halls and demand another's lunch money, under the threat physical harm, or humiliation. I believe that most decent people dislike a bully (I, for one, dislike NOTHING more, and I don't care who, or what, you are), and that seems to be the new norm, so of course, emotions are red-lining. Hate is a terrible thing, and scares decent people, and decent people fight hate with a passion. You can't tell me that if a hate group (any hate group, regardless of what side they say they are on) came walking down your street with guns, shields, helmets, swastika tattoos all over their bodies, with a look in their eye that reflex "you gut a problem buddy?", wouldn't concern you, and you would do everything in your power, to protect your family, and friends. Decent folk (not the zealot, from any side. or belief), feel the same way about their country, and world... and don't want the hate being spread because the haters have made it a life style to physically prepare themselves for confrontation. I know for a fact that if you get up in my face, I am most likely going to walk away (or laugh at you), but... I also know this for a fact, that if you were to touch my family, friend, the little guy/girl (regardless of color, region, sexual preference, etc.) next to me, I will be 'all in', win or lose.

I know we didn't have much of a choice this last election ( at lease I didn't think so), and, I too, am sick of the rich and powerful shoving a broomstick up our arses and calling it a panacea (and charging us for the broomstick); and the inability of our leaders to earn their money, finding solutions to the problems of the people and our country, working with each other and other nations to find solutions for all the people of the world - not just act like kindergarteners. I hope that Trump will grow up and start acting like an adult, I really wish Tillerson, or Kelly where the president, I wish I wasn't so ashamed of my president.

As far as "Back Lives Matter", yes they do (but they didn't, not one bit, >50 years ago), I understand their bitterness, I also believe poor lives matter... "all lives matter" - but it is NO excuse for spreading an atmosphere of hate.

With regards to Reginald Denny - that poor man, I still feel sick that a person(s) could do that to another person, just sick - that was the direct result of the hate inspired by 4 LA police officers beating the living hell out of Rodney King on a back road in Los Angles... AND getting away with it - "SAY WHAT!"

I know I'm NO better than anyone else, and that's OK...I don't want to be.
 

dkediger

New member
Aug 29, 2013
671
0
0
Visit site
Another consideration: Generally, web hosts, ISPs, name registrar's, and CDNs have been accorded a safe-harbor legal deference from liability or prosecution arising out of specific content in or on their systems. The obvious example being child porn.

The essential argument is that they are "agnostic" and a "black box" to all content, and it is beyond reasonable means, technically and logically, for them to attempt to identify illegal​ or objectionable content.

But, demonstrating a willingness and a capacity to do so on their own, without a Court's direction, could very well imperil, or open up to outside challenge, that safe harbor deference.
 
Last edited:

Narr

New member
Jul 2, 2011
326
0
0
Visit site
It's difficult to know where to start with such a biased article, that Windows Central would be biased in favour of Windows is obvious, but writing a political article that is so one sided has me lose respect for the writer and the website that allowed it to be published.
"Counter demonstrators" is code for far left, Antifa and BLM, neither of these is in favour of free speech and they turn up to demonstrations with sticks, baseball bats and gas masks..... I'd make the assumption that these aren't the wonderful people that Jason mentions in his article but why ignore these agitators completely? They are, in many ways, worse than the badly organised KKK with it's declining membership. Removing free speech from the KKK pushes them to the dark web, which is harder to police and monitor.
The most honest statement about the riot didn't come from tech leaders or Democratic politicians but from Trump when he said there was violence on both sides; unfortunately that doesn't fit the narrative of the left leaning media.
 

techiez

Member
Nov 3, 2012
832
0
16
Visit site
This article shouldn't have been on a tech website plain and simple. I can understand that WC/especially Jason is running out of topics to write about but this article is simply not relevant. Either change the website's name to politicscentral or be limited to Windows / MS topics.

Now waiting for another rehashed surface phone article next week from Jason.
 

jlzimmerman

Member
Jan 3, 2013
815
7
18
Visit site
:eck:

Stop with the political garbage, WC! I come here to get away from the vitriol. I don't care if it's pro-left or pro-right. I'll go to other "tech" sites if I want to invest time in that.
 

fatclue_98

Retired Moderator
Apr 1, 2012
9,146
1
38
Visit site
When governments make unilateral decisions without properly consulting with the parties directly affected, it deserves a public forum. The topic is the tech world and WC is completely within its rights to report on it. The pieces can stand on their own without the editorials but that's what happens when bloggers start believing they're journalists.

Sent from my HP Elite x3 on mTalk
 

dkediger

New member
Aug 29, 2013
671
0
0
Visit site
A feature in the Sunday New York Times Magazine - certainly not any alt-right bastion - is also not comfortable or impressed with privately held technology ban hammers as solutions for social issues:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/21/...ne-platforms-to-reveal-their-true-nature.html

The platforms’ sudden action in response to an outpouring of public grief and rage resembles, at first glance, a moral awakening and suggests a mounting sense of responsibility to the body politic. You could be forgiven for seeing this as a turning point for these sites, away from a hands-off approach to the communities they host and toward something with more oversight and regulation.
...
But this is an incomplete accounting of what happened and one that serves two parties and two parties alone: the companies themselves and the people they’ve just banned.

These companies promised something that no previous vision of the public sphere could offer: real, billion-strong mass participation; a means for affinity groups to find one another and mobilize, gain visibility and influence. This felt and functioned like freedom, but it was always a commercial simulation. This contradiction is foundational to what these internet companies are.

A community of trolls on an internet platform is, in political terms, not totally unlike a fascist movement in a weak liberal democracy: It engages with and uses the rules and protections of the system it inhabits with the intent of subverting it and eventually remaking it in their image or, if that fails, merely destroying it.
But what gave these trolls power on platforms wasn’t just their willingness to act in bad faith and to break the rules and norms of their environment. It was their understanding that the rules and norms of platforms were self-serving and cynical in the first place.

This was also a moment these hate groups were anticipating; getting banned in an opaque, unilateral fashion was always the way out and, to some degree, it suits them.
...
Their persecution narrative, which is the most useful narrative they have, and one that will help spread their cause beyond the fringes, was written for them years ago by the same companies that helped give them a voice.
 

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
322,910
Messages
2,242,883
Members
428,005
Latest member
COME ON WIN ANDROID (ADI)