Shoot Steel Zucked

Seen on Facebook this morning:

I’ve been reading Glenn Reynold’s new book on social media, which so far I’d recommend. As much as I think Facebook are classic monopolists, and could be regulated as such, I don’t think government regulation will be what ultimately displaces Facebook. I’m very interested in federated social networks and view that as a way forward, where we could have the benefits of social media without the centralized control that makes it probably the most potent political weapon ever devised by man.

Thinking about it, Usenet was a federated network. Usenet was also a sewer, but at least it was harder for a small group of people to manipulate.

18 thoughts on “Shoot Steel Zucked”

  1. “Thinking about it, Usenet was a federated network. Usenet was also a sewer, but at least it was harder for a small group of people to manipulate.”

    Not anymore. DCMA take downs hit Usenet within an hour of something going up and it’s removed everywhere instantly.

    Usenet’s last actual use is being removed, and I suspect it won’t survive without file sharing.

  2. Call me an old fart, but I remember doing one hell of a lot of shooting, more than 20 years before anything resembling “social media” existed. I even remember organizing regional and national competitions using snailmail, with recourse to the telephone in a pinch.

    Same goes for political communications. I’d even entertain the notion that it was a good thing when the inherent delay of the USPS put a damper on the instant exchange of nutty thoughts; and that lunacy accelerated around the time fax machines became common and affordable.

    Maybe instead of bitching and moaning about “censorship,” the thing to do would be to go ask your parents how they ever managed to get things done, without laying everything out in front of the whole world. (Like this!) ;-)

    1. This is literally the least helpful post in this entire thread.

      The fact that we have any semblance of gun rights at all, let alone a thriving competition shooting world, is largely due to the actions of a lot of people coming together via the internet.

      If the speech of people who advocate for something as non-threatening as steel targets is snuffed out by Big Social, you can kiss all of those advancements made in the last 20+ years goodbye.

  3. A simple action of Anti-Trust, via The Sherman Anti-Trust Act, is all that is needed to reign in Silicon Valley/Big Tech.

    If the Trump Administration doesn’t get on it by The Autumn, Big Tech will forever be able to fix, rig, and steal elections for Democrats. He won’t win in 2020, and we’ll have one of those leftwing piles of s*** in the Whitehouse come January of 2021.

    Should that happen, we’ll have “Net Neutrality” instead, which is good ‘ole Communist China style Government takeover of the Internet, which is what Silicon Valley’s biggest goal is going into the next decade.

    1. Without Net Neutrality, ISPs will be free to block access to gun sites when they want to virtue signal after the next big mass shooting.

      1. That can be stopped with The Sherman Act, as it will prevent ISP’s and Social Media Firms alike from acting as advertising firms, marketing firms, and political campaigns for a specific political party.

        Net Neutrality gives the Government the exact scenario of power you fear regarding big tech censorship, more so than what you believe Net Neutrality will prevent, as it would be the worst possible thing to happen.

        1. “it will prevent ISP’s and Social Media Firms alike from acting as advertising firms, marketing firms, and political campaigns for a specific political party.”

          Like it prevented the NRA from becoming the National Republican Apologists?

          1. The problem with ISPs is that there’s little to no competition at the local level. We need right-of-ways for cable that *anyone* can use, and we need judicial reform to cancel out frivolous lawsuits used by entrenched players to shut down up-and-coming internet providers.

            For net neutrality to work (and to complicate matters, *everyone* has a different idea of what “net neutrality” means) we need to trust the government to be neutral. Can you trust the government to be neutral? Perhaps you can, but I can’t.

            To further complicate matters, net neutrality opens the door to regulatory capture. Why do you think Facebook and Google are so gung-ho for net neutrality? If net neutrality were the key to reigning in these companies, they would oppose it tooth and nail.

          2. Spare me. My eyes are wide open to the villainy of ISPs. I’m just not stupid enough to believe in fairy tales like, “bandwidth is a scarce public good that needs to be regulated for the commonweal,” and, “the only way to break incumbents’ regulatory monopoly is with even more regulation, administered by DC bureaucrats who this time for certain won’t be susceptible to regulatory capture like every other time in the history of ever.”

            In other words, I understand that disempowering the ISPs involves actually dismantling or end-running around the regulatory monopoly that sustains them, rather than embracing non-solutions that actually ratify their control.

          3. Its impressive how liberals have tricked society into thinking that Net Neutrality isn’t anything but government regulation of the internet.

            That’s all it is. All the fear about ISP’s restricting things when it’ll be the government.

      2. Take a look at the TCP/IP model, and realize that there are at least four major vectors through which political attacks can be leveraged online.

  4. Walled Gardens are what the gardeners want. Frequently the plants like it as well, if they’re not judged weeds…

  5. I have often wondered how I could create a decentralized version of Facebook. I have some ideas, but I have never really had the time or energy to write them down, let alone write code to experiment with them….

    But I agree: if/when we can decentralize services like Facebook and Twitter, that is indeed the way to go!

  6. The real solution is to take back the tech culture from the left. They didn’t have it at first. They only got interest in it when our side made gains from it that they decided were unacceptable, i.e. getting ordinary non-gun owning people interested in owning AR’s and getting carry licenses. We need to rip it right out of the anti gun side’s hands again.

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