Where we’re going, is to towards a censored, sanitized, corporate,Read more  "Podcast: Big Tech’s Great Leap Forward: Towards a Chinese Style Internet" The post Podcast: Big Tech's Great Leap Forward: Towards a Chinese Style Internet first appeared on nyman.media.

All Things Alt-Tech

Podcast: Big Tech’s Great Leap Forward: Towards a Chinese Style Internet

Yet again, fact is stranger than fiction, as more andRead more  "Hail the new ministry of truth: Big Tech" The post Hail the new ministry of truth: Big Tech first appeared on nyman.media.

Hail the new ministry of truth: Big Tech

In the USSR, to maintain the various official government narratives,Read more  "Censorship in the Soviet Union vs the US: is history repeating?" The post Censorship in the Soviet Union vs the US: is history repeating? first appeared on nyman.media.

Censorship in the Soviet Union vs the US: is history repeating?

Is the economy recovering or deteriorating? Does wearing masks help?Read more  "2020: News is now a branded entertainment product" The post 2020: News is now a branded entertainment product first appeared on nyman.media.

2020: News is now a branded entertainment product

What do most Big Tech companies have in common? Let’sRead more  "The fraudulent dot-com 2.0 economy: from zero-asset businesses to zero-product businesses" The post The fraudulent dot-com 2.0 economy: from zero-asset businesses to zero-product businesses first appeared on nyman.media.

The fraudulent dot-com 2.0 economy: from zero-asset businesses to zero-product businesses

We to go back to dissect the big tech hearing in the us congres, where Bezos, Pichai, Zuckerberg and Tim Cook were summoned and questioned. The big tech leaders knew very well about two core issues at hand: 1. Antitrust: they are, in essence monopolies of their respective spaces, and that’s why they came prepared with [...]

Big tech, the Tiktok ban & how the US is wrecking tech innovation

A lot has been said about how the twitter and Facebook algorithms tailored to stoke aggression and provoke conflict. If you’re Facebook, and you are optimizing for time on site and page views, it's hardly surprising they end up surfacing polarizing content. If it's engagement you want, then showcasing content that plays on primal emotions [...]

Social media culture: how big tech gamified away real conversation

A list of 400 big businesses have decided to boycott Facebook and pause their Facebook ad campaigns. This is in protest to Facebook’s so called enabling of hate speech. They are demanding that Facebook establish a permanent civil rights infrastructure to evaluate Facebook's products and policies for discrimination, bias, and hate. They are demanding that Facebook remove [...]

The Facebook advertiser boycott — does it make a difference?

Most recently, Twitter censored Trump over his warnings to protestors seeking to set up an anonymous zone in Washington DC. He said ‘if they try, they’ll be met by serious force’. Apparently, that message was not allowed by the Twitter. Because, apparently, Twitter gets to decide which of the messages of a president are fit [...]

Parler vous? A Twitter alternative surges following new social media bans

Hodler bias: you want something to go up in price, so you disagree with all the bearish facts. You see investors perform mental gymnastics around the uncomfortable facts, and this is something that unites Bitcoiners, Tesla 'investors' and Wirecard victims alike. Bitcoin will play some sort of role, but it’s not obvious that it will [...]

Uncomfortable truths about Bitcoin, Tether… and Wirecard?

City living seems to have become more and more unpredictable if not outright dangerous. Unrest and large scale protests that devolve into riots, arson, fist fights and even shootings. You would imagine a lot of business owners in the central districts of cities like Seattle are now considering their options. Meanwhile, with today’s communications technology, [...]

Counter-urbanization: has the exodus from cities begun?

Trump has put forth an Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship. It’s seeking to empower federal regulators to strip social media companies' authority to moderate speech. Corporations should not be able to selectively throttle the transfer of data across the Internet. In a similar fashion, we shouldn't allow a limited number of online platforms to throttle [...]

Trump & social media regulation

Musk is in the headlines yet again, and once more, it’s not good publicity as of late. Call it what you like, but his antics are stirring up controversy. All that aside, he’s still largely heralded as a great genius; as an unprecedented businessman with unique features. But is he really unique, and is he [...]

Innovators and sociopaths: a look at Tesla vs Enron

In the late 1990’s, many prominent figures in business, technology and economics started worrying about the so called year 2000 problem, also known as the Millennium bug or Y2K. This problem refers to how computers back then stored calendar dates with only two digits, making the year 2000 indistinguishable from 1900. Therefore, many people were anticipating critical issues at the turning of the millennium, as this would render all sorts of dated records and real-time events wildly incorrect. It was speculated that this would trip up anything from stock markets to manufacturing processes to your alarm clock. After all, if the computers think it’s 1900, surely that would have some side effects… Right? Meanwhile, Alan Greenspan, then head of the Federal reserve, the central bank of the US, took a particularly keen interest in this issue. In fact, he was particularly worried about it — or at least, the possible societal side effects stemming from the bug. Greenspan said that if Americans were worried about frozen bank accounts and disabled ATM machines, that would lead them to withdraw large sums of cash in advance, all of which would of course place stress on the system. While he was urging citizens to remain calm and not to prepare, he had the Federal Reserve banks prepare by literally stockpiling shrink-wrapped currency at nine locations across the country. All of this harkens back to today, and the scrambling for facial masks. Greenspan also promised more liquidity if needed, and he kept interest rates relatively low. All of this helped perpetuate easy credit to flow into the most speculative assets of the time — Dotcom stocks. So yes, in some small part, we do have one man’s overblown worries to thank for the creation the Dotcom stock market bubble. When it became clear that the dotcoms were not really going to change everything we knew about the world (at least not yet), and that many of the Dotcom startups were just pipe dreams, frauds and unnecessary technology for technology’s sake, the Dotcom bubble of course popped.  Of course, Greenspan’s reaction was to lower interest rates even more to try and facilitate more credit creation, and elevate the markets once again. So, throughout the next few years, interest rates were held low to try and bolster the economy, which was now sorely needed considering the country had now launched into war with Iraq. Again, the easy money flowed to the next big thing that seemed to have legs — the asset class that up until that point had never seen a secular decline in prices: the housing market. Fast-forward to 2005, when Ben Bernanke started raising rates, and as people could now no longer afford their mortgages at the rising interest rates, the bubble popped. Because you now had more leverage in the system, more credit and more instruments built on top of housing assets, the ensuing chaos now threatened the greater financial system, and the banks themselves. And as the market forces started coming into play to clean up the mess and liquidate the over leveraged banks, the fed’s solution was, of course, to lower interest rates again and to provide liquidity to save the banks. (The ones that got us in this mess in the first place). This time, with yet another sugar rush created by the fed, capital started flowing into the next set of risk assets — yes, the fed had blown up the everything bubble. In 2010 and onwards, stocks, bonds, housing — everything rallied. It rallied, of course until it found its next real world obstacle. A pin that would prick the bubble. That turned out to be, not a bug, but a virus.  Fast forward to 2020. As the market forces once again caught up with the artificial bubble, sending stocks into free fall. In fact, stock markets came crashing down at the fastest rate ever. And right on cue, as the crisis deepened, both the central bank and the greater government panicked went into hyper gear to save us all. Lockdowns were introduced, which basically strangled any traditional business or businesses deemed by the government not to be ’essential’. So, we had the most brittle conditions imaginable, and we pulled the rug from underneath of everyone. Meanwhile, Jay Powell who is now the head of the fed, decided to print money like there was no tomorrow. That gave us what will prove to be the great distortion. Big companies with a well-known online presence would actually thrive in the short term, while traditional local businesses would die by the thousands. Your local gardening store is probably closed, and the gardening section is probably even barricaded shut at your Costco, but you can buy gardening supplies from Amazon. There are winners from the lockdown, and as usual, it’s going to be the ones facilitated by the prevailing government policy. Powell of course did not disperse the aid through tax rebates or using any kind of means that would have directly funded businesses. No, he dolloped out the money to the banks, which resulted in a fiasco. Many businesses will go under because they can’t secure the funds fast enough. That’s not to say that printing the money is a good idea, but it is to say that winners and losers are determined by the banks, as they administer the handouts. The point being, these are the perverting effects of fed policy. Every time the economy has faced an impending crisis (imagined or real), the solution has been to accommodate with monetary policy. This was true in 1999, 2008 and 2020. Every time the government has put its thumb on the scale, the outcome has been to fool the market into another frenzy, and to of course create further misallocations of capital, to pick winners and losers, and to allow for further unequal distribution of wealth.  This time around, it’s quite possible that we see the established dot-coms, the FAANG stocks, grow ever larger. And this has already happened if you look at the stock market. The FAANG stocks have hardly lost any value since February, while tens of thousands of businesses will go bankrupt. So what? Can’t Amazon own everything and we’ll all be happy? Well, let’s not be naive about the motives of Amazon. Only just recently, they have again found themselves in hot water, because of antitrust action, and it looks like this may open up a criminal investigation. Basically, Amazon employees are alleged to have used data from the third-party sellers in order to create Amazon’s own copycat products. We already know that Amazon prioritizes their own products in searches, and positions them as being the best in value and quality when in reality this may not be the case at all. All of this is, of course illegal, and it’s a perfect display of gross abuse of your position in the market. It’s yet another continuation of the greater trend: remember how Amazon initially outcompeted all the physical bookstores? Well sine then they have, lo and behold, gotten into the business of opening physical bookstores. And once they control the market and have complete pricing power, why would they possibly keep the prices low? And herein lies the danger of monopolies. And this is why it’s important to support the alternatives. This is why alt-tech important. Personally, I’ve made it a point to no longer shop at Amazon, even if it comes at the expense of a higher price paid. Here’s a tip for you: use Amazon as a search engine. If you find a product you liked, look up their own website. Chances are they’ll be shipping the product themselves — occasionally there’ll even be a discount if you shop around a bit, or sign up to their newsletter, or if you just ask.  Similarly, as tempting as it is to use Uber Eats, Deliveroo, Just Eat to order a meal, the restaurants are not going to make very much off of these orders, and neither is the delivery guy. If you must get the delivery, pay a hearty tip — the poor dude may be risking his health as it is. But if you want your restaurant to survive, head on down to the restaurant and grab a takeaway. You probably need the fresh air and the walk anyway! If you still have a mom & pop grocery shop near you, why not support it? I’ve found that those kinds of places are far less crowded to begin with. If you’re looking for quality meat, head to your local butcher, if you still are lucky enough to have one. A lot of people are now looking for entertainment, games, movies, etc. A lot of people are also decking out their home offices and need more furniture, appliances, electronics, etc. You can usually find a good deal on this on all of this on places like Ebay, Etsy, Craigslist, etc. Plus, a big chunk of money will go to those who probably need it way more than Amazon does. It’s a free world, and you’re free to do what you like and shop where you like. If you want to give all your money to Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple, that’s your choice. But I do want to make a point of how we got here, and where all of this is heading. With every crisis comes more interventions, and with those there are winners and losers — and the winners become fewer and fewer. Every time, we seem to end up with more monolithic businesses — the banks got fewer and bigger and now the dotcoms are about to get fewer and bigger. Unless, of course, you keep supporting the alternatives — be that choosing the local corner store, or the edgy alt-tech social media platform. Your choice. 

How tech became big tech, and why we need alternatives

During the Blitz in World War II; British cities were bombed relentlessly by the Luftwaffe in an attempt to destroy, kill and spread panic and fear. At least 40k people died in the city of London alone, which at the time had a population around 8M people living in it, meaning around 0.5% of the population died. Those numbers seem familiar and they harken back to today. As we descend deeper and deeper into chaos today, it’s useful to look at how we dealt with crisis in the past; the measures taken and the outcomes experienced. Have we gotten smarter, more organized, more resourceful, more resilient? Are we listening to the right people, and are the solutions that are emerging; those of locking down citizens, increasing surveillance and data collection and digitalizing healthcare going to work? In spite of all the carnage during the Blitz, it did not shut down the city nor did it stop people from doing what they were doing and carrying on with their lives. People didn’t flee the cities for the countryside even though that could have saved thousands of lives in the short-run.  Britain had a highly successful record of mobilizing the home front for the war effort, in terms of mobilizing the greatest proportion of potential workers, maximizing output, assigning the right skills to the right task, and maintaining the morale and spirit of the people. There was a nationalist spirit — something that people have come to despise today. It’s been replaced by this nonsensical notion of international solidarity, which proved very short lived at the first sign of crisis. Some of the overly protectionist, nanny state measures we’re seeing fits in well with the general coddling of our minds that we’ve seen so much in the past decade. In a way, the stay-at-home idea is making one big safe space of the entire world. The idea that we don’t need an economy, that some universal basic income confetti money will help us go back to normal if we just stay home and watch Netflix for long enough, that is just as indicative of the fairytales we have come to believe in. Nevermind that an enormous proportion of the population, the younger ones, and the ones living outside the cities, could carry on with their lives as per normal without much risk or ramifications to the greater population.  No, you see, all of us, young or old, urban or rural, have to sit this out while ol’ Bill Gates concocts a vaccine. It could take 18 months, could take 18 years, could never happen, but rest assured that halting the world economy indefinitely is the right move. Already, we are starting to hear mumblings of vaccine certificates and even chip implants tracking your medical profile. By the way, when and why did Bill Gates become such an authority in health? He’s not a doctor. He’s certainly not an epidemiologist. The only virus he knows is Windows 95, and the only thing he does best is to ruthlessly seek profit, preferably by crushing the little guy. Let’s not forget that Gates led Microsoft straight into an antitrust situation, where Microsoft illegally maintained its monopoly position in the PC software market. The court found that Microsoft taken actions to crush threats to that monopoly, including Apple, Java, Linux, and others. Yes, that Bill Gates — the very same. The saint who’ll save the world through technology. Because, if you’re a technologist, you’ll come up with technological solutions — regardless of whether the problems themselves are technological in nature. Anyway, if you dispute any of the received wisdom and the  official recommendations, say you advocate for taking vitamin-C, then the powers that be, such as YouTube, might well delete your video to silence you. Also, if you exercise your constitutional right to organize and protest the draconian lockdown measures, you may well find yourself arrested. If you are an American, you have freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to protest hardcoded in your Constitution. That’s not up to debate, it’s not negotiable, it’s not optional. But you are letting corporations such as Facebook suppress those rights on a daily basis. The crisis and the response to the crisis typifies big government action perfectly. The all-in lockdown solution is what you get when you let a small cadre of specialists call the shots. What we are finding out, is that epidemiologists make for terrible economists. Only in a top-down big government hierarchy can you have a select specialist’s conviction shut down an entire economy. Only then can a small select group foist their beliefs on an entire economy of individual participants, and halt their livelihood against their will. So, there will be protests, a lot of them. You’ll see the media suppress them (big tech are already thwarting events — on Facebook, it’s near impossible to organize protests). It’ll be interesting to watch big tech and the media try to squelch dissenting voices, but they’ll be there. This is why Trump is now letting the governors determine whether or not to open their economies. Give them the responsibility and have them preside over the backlash and the consequences. If they keep things shut down, they’ll have to deal with the protests and the political backlash. If the open up, it’s their responsibility for the continued spreading of the sickness. I’d hate to end this on such a sour note, but rest assured there will also be much more criminality, riots, looting and this will happen regardless of whether or not the reopening happens. The damage is already done. Shortages are developing, unemployment is rising, and the disintegration of the social contract is beginning to show.  It’s fascinating how the constitution and the bill of rights addresses all of the key issues we are now facing: protecting the personal liberty of citizens from intrusions by the government, protecting freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, protection from Unreasonable Searches and Seizures, etc. It’s almost as though the founders had figured quite a few things out; figured out what truly matters in a time of crisis!  Very little has happened today that would warrant tearing up of these fundamental past principles. However we may need to update our existing laws and regulations, we don’t need to update them in the direction of suppressing existing liberties. We don’t need increased surveillance, more data collection, disarming the population. There’s nothing in our laws that allows for unelected billionaires to roll out worldwide health initiatives. You don’t need to support or participate in anything against your will — what matters is your individual choice and your voluntary action. It’s still a free world — barely. 

Can tech solve a health crisis?

Digital media veteran provides unfiltered commentary on alt-tech and the emerging digital ecosystem. If you are interested in next generation social platforms & browsers, privacy & free speech issues, or general banter on the creepy online media industry, this one is for you. Fair warning: contains rampant speculation, unhinged rants and potentially infectious ideas on crypto & stock speculations!

hubhopper

All Things Alt-Tech

hubhopper