Nice one! You seem to be one of the very few big voices on Substack who actually see the obvious here.
Berenson's infatuation is so tiresome. Eugyppius is brilliant, but like so many others can't seem to let go (of his 'Twatter' following). Meanwhile, Malone's incessant and wilfully blind cheerleading of Musk early on only served to further underline increasingly valid concerns about his Deep State ties and possible role as controlled opposition.
To anyone who has studied Musk this should have been entirely predictable. Actually, studying Musk was not necessary. All we needed to know was that if We the People were looking to another eccentric tech billionaire to save free speech, we were simply being fools played a second time around. Furthermore, Musk has never, not once, as far as I'm aware, directly questioned or criticized the Big Tech model itself, and yet it is the root of so many of today's problems, or at least the elixir that has made them all worse. On the contrary, Musk has is doubling down on the Big Tech model we've had now for over two decades, the one that finally brought us the Covid era.
Those who really want to understand what Big Tech is and what it's doing to us all should read Shoshana Zuboff's, 'The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power'. Highly recommend.
Finally, anyone in this day and age who isn't at least concerned that Twitter and Musk both are likely CIA ops isn't thinking critically enough.
F'em all! Look forward to seeing your platform come to fruitation; the only hope for all of us is freedom of thought and the ability to express them openly.
> For five years as part of my Ph.D. I’ve been working on developing an automated tokenized self-amending (right to delete content and right to be forgotten) “New Internet”.
Sounds good. And it definitely *seems* like it should be possible to develop distributed social media. All walled gardens turn to shite eventually. Substack - if it got big - would just go the way of Twitter & Faceberg. Who wants to post on somebody else's server anyway? Let me post on a blockchain or host messages on my own machine. Why should we rely on centralized servers and algorithms at all?
While killing time between nursing my mandolined knuckles for the sake of potatoes au gratin for a secular Easter dinner tomorrow and ubering-without-fare-or-tip my teen and her friends, I read your article. All this Twitter stuff is silly, as Twitter is very clunky and annoying (and thus I have never used it), so I don't get the appeal. I understand the mining of information for whatever purposes from all social media and other internet platforms, and basic logic supports that the safe harbor sites like Substack have been only temporary pit stops. I appreciate learning more about how all this operates, and your thesis - as you outline it - is fascinating. Never heard of the concepts of "attention as labor and value and digital self-governance," and I'm looking forward to following along. Good luck with your defense! (I have always found the idea that a person has to "defend" his or her years-long work to a panel of academics to be wacky, but in your case, I think "defend" might be the appropriate terminology with the state of academia today.)
Apr 9, 2023·edited Apr 9, 2023Liked by Good Citizen
Can't say I wasn't warned or claim I haven't been baselessly hoping that Elon wouldn't turn out to be a lord and master baiter. Time to further disconnect. Thanks for what you write and for the t-shirt I got here and wear with great pride.
I am not surprised by Elon's latest shtick, but I was surprised that so many fell for his Twitter "freedom" act. Dude is so dependent on government funding for all of his ventures, he literally is Deep State.
Before Covid, the only thing I used Twitter for was some comedy spots, some traffic and weather updates, and some pet stuff. My own "true love" doesn't really care what an engineer thinks about life, I'm not narcissistic enough to send out my every thought out to strangers and think they care, and, it seemed so obvious to me that all social media was just a new way for the government to track citizens. During covid, I was using Twitter more, until they banned a lot of the covid-reality tweeters I had found (and ultimately even me for awhile). I still go back every couple of days to binge read Super70sSports, I find that whole time period of clothes and attitudes too funny, based on my age.
I wish you luck on your new venture, I'll have to check it out. I'm kinda not caring too much about the next steps of our impending doom, I'll probably tune out a little bit, read real books, mostly drop substack and really think about what I need to do for the future. The Bad Guys won the Covid War and are going to win the CBDC War, mostly because the majority of people are herd animals, are afraid to be labeled apostates, and crave safety above anything else. I won't leave the USA or even California, but I'll probably move to the country and try to be much more self-sufficient. We'll see. Ah life, so exciting now in the digital age!!
Thanks mate, what a post! Im on board witcha 100%!
I wrote this about Elon few days ago, when I saw the news that twatter has a ID verification system feature built in, in my last english publication:
Because of how restricted and how easy it is to use, twitter breeds mediocrity and shallowness. No need to read and think much. Influencing the masses with trends. “Bread and Circus” as Romans put it. And what are progressive zombies using it for, it being their favorite online platform? For promotion of perversion of society and useful idiotism through propaganda and misinformation. Why do you think twitter is so popular in mass media? I would bet that at least a third of its users are either AI bots or influence-farm employees. Which is why twitter is used by politicians to be able to quickly influence the herd. Never mind that all what Musk wants is for you to be uploaded into the Starlink grid. Few days ago he tweeted: “If you do not like this reality, stop paying attention to it!“. Put on your VR set and give us your blood and bones! That is what they want! It is kind of obvious that Musk was sent in to salvage twitter from becoming obsolete. His rhetoric is designed to win over younger people who believe in the supremacy of new technologies and millions of dollars are spent on marketing him as some genius techno-messiah. Which is why I view people who are ok with what he is doing as brain-dead automatons.
...
Im afraid your predictions are right on the money. Because substack owners are playing the market game substack is doomed from the start and their freedom-loving rhetoric is basically there to get more users who will raise their worth.
Issue - ‘safety’ they’ll exclaim is their reason for embedding themselves in all SM. ‘For the children’.
So that’s your biggest hurdle. The regulatory frameworks that the evil goons of UN, EU, 5EYES, etc intelligence services have or will implement that are in their entirety anti Free Speech.
After all they’ve declared like the Fascist (true definition corporate capture of Govn’t or inverse as it’s the same people) and communitarians before them, that dis- mal- information must be controlled.
And how would you keep out the brigades of operatives from infiltration?
On that note, did you know uk Govn’t gave themselves carte Blanche to break any and all laws in the pursuit of: taxes, benefits, health, education, MI6/5, CGHQ, Armed forces intelligence etc. In fact anything that’s establishment can even murder now without repercussions.
PS like you, I didn’t believe the Tw hype so never returned. Anyone who trusts a guy who dresses up in a Baphomet costume is a fool!
Nice one! You seem to be one of the very few big voices on Substack who actually see the obvious here.
Berenson's infatuation is so tiresome. Eugyppius is brilliant, but like so many others can't seem to let go (of his 'Twatter' following). Meanwhile, Malone's incessant and wilfully blind cheerleading of Musk early on only served to further underline increasingly valid concerns about his Deep State ties and possible role as controlled opposition.
To anyone who has studied Musk this should have been entirely predictable. Actually, studying Musk was not necessary. All we needed to know was that if We the People were looking to another eccentric tech billionaire to save free speech, we were simply being fools played a second time around. Furthermore, Musk has never, not once, as far as I'm aware, directly questioned or criticized the Big Tech model itself, and yet it is the root of so many of today's problems, or at least the elixir that has made them all worse. On the contrary, Musk has is doubling down on the Big Tech model we've had now for over two decades, the one that finally brought us the Covid era.
Those who really want to understand what Big Tech is and what it's doing to us all should read Shoshana Zuboff's, 'The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power'. Highly recommend.
Finally, anyone in this day and age who isn't at least concerned that Twitter and Musk both are likely CIA ops isn't thinking critically enough.
I was hoping. you'd weigh in on this, and as always, I learned something. (Didn't know about SVB connection.)
"Mao, Stalin, and Goebbels could only have dreamed of having access to these platforms and their manipulative technological capabilities. " Yup.
Can't wait for your platform. It's exactly what has to happen, and the right person/people will do it. Thank you.
F'em all! Look forward to seeing your platform come to fruitation; the only hope for all of us is freedom of thought and the ability to express them openly.
> For five years as part of my Ph.D. I’ve been working on developing an automated tokenized self-amending (right to delete content and right to be forgotten) “New Internet”.
Sounds good. And it definitely *seems* like it should be possible to develop distributed social media. All walled gardens turn to shite eventually. Substack - if it got big - would just go the way of Twitter & Faceberg. Who wants to post on somebody else's server anyway? Let me post on a blockchain or host messages on my own machine. Why should we rely on centralized servers and algorithms at all?
While killing time between nursing my mandolined knuckles for the sake of potatoes au gratin for a secular Easter dinner tomorrow and ubering-without-fare-or-tip my teen and her friends, I read your article. All this Twitter stuff is silly, as Twitter is very clunky and annoying (and thus I have never used it), so I don't get the appeal. I understand the mining of information for whatever purposes from all social media and other internet platforms, and basic logic supports that the safe harbor sites like Substack have been only temporary pit stops. I appreciate learning more about how all this operates, and your thesis - as you outline it - is fascinating. Never heard of the concepts of "attention as labor and value and digital self-governance," and I'm looking forward to following along. Good luck with your defense! (I have always found the idea that a person has to "defend" his or her years-long work to a panel of academics to be wacky, but in your case, I think "defend" might be the appropriate terminology with the state of academia today.)
The normie brigade of pillow discounters! 😂😂
👏👏
Good luck with your dissertation defense. Looking forward to your idea going live - tired of the shock collar burns from the invisible fences.
So, um, about the Lesbian Lingerie Fantasy Football Leagues in Vanuatu. Can you hook me up?
Can't say I wasn't warned or claim I haven't been baselessly hoping that Elon wouldn't turn out to be a lord and master baiter. Time to further disconnect. Thanks for what you write and for the t-shirt I got here and wear with great pride.
@NuclearHeart169
Free speech is not and has never been "free." What is free is one's "free will" to pick the hill they want to die upon. ALL ELSE IS FOLLY!
As Dave below said if We the People are looking for $ to save our ability to speak, we are done!
Here is what I have to say to We the People.
When the people of a nation
Have been shackled in monetary chains
Via fraudulent usurpation
Of what THEIR Constitution contains
It is the responsibility of that people
To declare themselves again
And state that slavery is not acceptable
In whatever form it came
And so it is with us
In OUR country here today
We have been filed as "Chattel Property"
And our every ounce of energy
Is how their debts get paid
They have placed us in multiple "Federal Trusts"
Where our "Private Property" stays
And they refer to us as "Belligerents"
As per the First Convention of the Hague
And all our Federal and State Agencies are "Beneficiaries"
Of an "International Trust"
Called the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Not The United States of America
If I may be so bold to say
And so the time has come
As the walrus once did say
But not to talk of many things
Because we are past that stage today
There is only left to do
Or die along the way
For how safe can we be
When the future that we see
Has life itself a prisoner
Of these sickly wanna-be's
And with confidence as our hand
We must take our "Lawful" stance
Using every skill we can
Against this "de facto" high command
Until it clearly understands
That "We the People" are the "de jure" source
Of jurisdiction in this land
Dean
How do we know you’re not one of “them”?
Nothing good lasts forever, especially in this hyper-censorious environment. Free speech is dead; it just doesn't know it yet.
I am not surprised by Elon's latest shtick, but I was surprised that so many fell for his Twitter "freedom" act. Dude is so dependent on government funding for all of his ventures, he literally is Deep State.
Before Covid, the only thing I used Twitter for was some comedy spots, some traffic and weather updates, and some pet stuff. My own "true love" doesn't really care what an engineer thinks about life, I'm not narcissistic enough to send out my every thought out to strangers and think they care, and, it seemed so obvious to me that all social media was just a new way for the government to track citizens. During covid, I was using Twitter more, until they banned a lot of the covid-reality tweeters I had found (and ultimately even me for awhile). I still go back every couple of days to binge read Super70sSports, I find that whole time period of clothes and attitudes too funny, based on my age.
I wish you luck on your new venture, I'll have to check it out. I'm kinda not caring too much about the next steps of our impending doom, I'll probably tune out a little bit, read real books, mostly drop substack and really think about what I need to do for the future. The Bad Guys won the Covid War and are going to win the CBDC War, mostly because the majority of people are herd animals, are afraid to be labeled apostates, and crave safety above anything else. I won't leave the USA or even California, but I'll probably move to the country and try to be much more self-sufficient. We'll see. Ah life, so exciting now in the digital age!!
NOSTR?
Thanks mate, what a post! Im on board witcha 100%!
I wrote this about Elon few days ago, when I saw the news that twatter has a ID verification system feature built in, in my last english publication:
Because of how restricted and how easy it is to use, twitter breeds mediocrity and shallowness. No need to read and think much. Influencing the masses with trends. “Bread and Circus” as Romans put it. And what are progressive zombies using it for, it being their favorite online platform? For promotion of perversion of society and useful idiotism through propaganda and misinformation. Why do you think twitter is so popular in mass media? I would bet that at least a third of its users are either AI bots or influence-farm employees. Which is why twitter is used by politicians to be able to quickly influence the herd. Never mind that all what Musk wants is for you to be uploaded into the Starlink grid. Few days ago he tweeted: “If you do not like this reality, stop paying attention to it!“. Put on your VR set and give us your blood and bones! That is what they want! It is kind of obvious that Musk was sent in to salvage twitter from becoming obsolete. His rhetoric is designed to win over younger people who believe in the supremacy of new technologies and millions of dollars are spent on marketing him as some genius techno-messiah. Which is why I view people who are ok with what he is doing as brain-dead automatons.
...
Im afraid your predictions are right on the money. Because substack owners are playing the market game substack is doomed from the start and their freedom-loving rhetoric is basically there to get more users who will raise their worth.
Issue - ‘safety’ they’ll exclaim is their reason for embedding themselves in all SM. ‘For the children’.
So that’s your biggest hurdle. The regulatory frameworks that the evil goons of UN, EU, 5EYES, etc intelligence services have or will implement that are in their entirety anti Free Speech.
After all they’ve declared like the Fascist (true definition corporate capture of Govn’t or inverse as it’s the same people) and communitarians before them, that dis- mal- information must be controlled.
And how would you keep out the brigades of operatives from infiltration?
On that note, did you know uk Govn’t gave themselves carte Blanche to break any and all laws in the pursuit of: taxes, benefits, health, education, MI6/5, CGHQ, Armed forces intelligence etc. In fact anything that’s establishment can even murder now without repercussions.
PS like you, I didn’t believe the Tw hype so never returned. Anyone who trusts a guy who dresses up in a Baphomet costume is a fool!