“In this extract from his new book, When Google Met Wikileaks, WikiLeaks’ publisher Julian Assange describes the special relationship between Google, Hillary Clinton and the State Department — and what that means for the future of the internet.”
Google Is Not What It Seems
Published
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
The fact of life in modern global power is money and size.
Is Google any more complicit in control than, say, Lockheed? Or Exxon-Mobil? Or Archer Daniels? All of them determine policy as much as any elected officials anywhere.
ALEC, the conservative/corporate de facto legislative entity, writes law that we all are affected by.
Right now, Big Tech is the whipping boy flavor of the month.
It is ubiquitous. Everybody uses their services. The average person hasn’t a clue what Raytheon makes or what it’s suppliers are called. But as part of the MIC, American lives are literally affected by policies promulgated by them.
The days of the Pentagon Papers and broadcast media are long gone. Lots of folks think they are privy to secrets spewed by the social media. It gives a little feeling of virtual power to the powerless.
Now the question is what to do with that virtual power. So far it has cast doubt on our democratic principles and created a birthing room for violent zealotry.
Whose fault is that?
IMHO
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I don’t don’t feel the need to place blame. Rather I find it a work in progress and the last four years as providing a lot of data to consider as we move forward.
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Tough pecan to open, that is for sure.
Before the internet, few people had national and international platforms. Now everybody does.
The question then becomes should there be some kind of limit considering the volume of postings?
Junk emails and junk calls are so universal for a simple reason: there is little or no cost once the systems are in place. I had suggested years ago when email was king that persons and companies should get a certain volume of emails for free. Say a 1000/month for individuals and maybe 10,000/month for a corporation. Then charge $.10 or even $.05 per each email over that.
Considering the marketers and pols send out millions each day, those fees would at least make them cull the lists otherwise the cost per return would skyrocket.
Can we do something similar for social media? I don’t know. But when the power of pernicious influence is theoretically as strong from the president as it is for some disgruntled loner in a log cabin who wants to kill people we have an issue. Of course part of the problem is the “silos” that like minded extremists tend to gather don’t allow for much debate.
I think the first order of business needs to be the treatment of violent actors the same way we treat ISIS.
Terrorism is terrorism. Whether the impetus is the Koran and its militant followers or “The Turner Diaries” and 3% boys, the results are the same.
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Was it ever?
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