If you ever need to watch something to remind yourself you are not a bully, that you'd prefer to not have to vote for bullies, the combined 1O hours of public legislative broadcast questioning under oath of the past few days might have something to offer.
To be honest, I didn't buy any pop-corn, and I watched less than three hours of both combined. Others watched it, and reviewed it so that I, lazily, languidly, did not have to.
To have watched it all, live, would have been too much for heart. Heartbreakers.
The drama.
Boris Johnson and The House of Commons Privileges Committee.
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Johnson, ex-Pm, Brexiteer Virus Spreader, ex-Mayor, of Bridge to Nowhere infamy, Press Pundit Hack blustered and obfuscated and tried to bring in the entire Civil Service as part of his defence as he dished up shared blame by association. Johnson's tactic - "If I can't blind them with brilliance, I must baffle them with bullshit."
And so he tried on the "I'm obviously an idiot." without saying "Obviously, I'm an idiot." ploy. Innocence by virtue of stupidity.
He wagged his fingers, he accused the committee of bias, he opined he would not accept their ruling if it went against him. That and so much else. Raw Sewage in the river.
Apparently expensive treatment advice, piping at 5K£ an hour, to no avail.
It was exhausting, listening to slippery eel talk - the only thing he didn't do was use a Latin allusion. I might have missed it.
Tik Tok, The US Congressional Hearings and a ban
TikTok is being accused, without foundation, of being an arm of the Chinese Communist Party, engaged in nefarious operations designed to undermine The American Way by influencing America's children. They are so accused as a cover for lack of legislative regulatory protection of private data.
TikTok's response is to politely spend 1.5 Billion dollars to store all data on US Soil, under US independent Third Party control, with an all American workforce. And much else that sets a new high bar for regulation of Social Media platforms industry.
Good strategy. A strategy that the likes of Facebook, Google, Instagram, Snapchat, Youtube and a myriad of social on-line interactive user content generation platforms that carry advertising would rather not be put in place.
Surplus Behavioural Data
The real meat of this matter, privacy and the collection of what is known as 'surplus behavioural data' - in short the entire inadvertent on-line activity and behaviour of each and every user - and it's analysis and utilisation is, of course, off the books. Because there's the advertisers alchemical gold - an analysis of current observed and measured human behaviour trails among users of the digital online content creation wannabes, categorised into thousands of very specific characterisations, many of them emotionally charged, easily triggered, vulnerable to manipulation, or for other purposes. A dollar sign on every bias. Advertisers will pay well for that access. Google will never sell it's trove of 'surplus behavioural data'. The other data we create as content, etc, is largely already in the open. All our financials, company info, car licence etc have long been shared, even prior to interwebs.
Personal data, most of which is already available for a fee, is not the issue at the heart of the Internet of Beef.
The Internet of Beef.
The online argument marketing community generating arguments that never resolve into coherence, based on biases, in order to increase engagement so more eyes see more adds. As have done most News papers ever. It's nothing new here.
It was discovered again via the emergence of online Forums and platforms of any and every kind where eyes are on screens and typing to each other, and it very quickly became integrated in to Capitalist dominance of the interwebs as a marketing tool. A dollar on every bias. Hey, people can even design products no one needs, out of toxic materials, that a certain variation on biases might trigger a sale, and make just enough useless stuff to saturate that market, extracting wealth from vulnerability. This is serious stuff, my readers. One cannot look away. This cannot stand unregulated, at any level.
Surplus Behavioural Data allows mass study of specific vulnerabilities, biases, emotional state, psychological state, moods, impulses, fears, triggers, and has led to a categorisation system which the tech companies hold close to their chest. They do not sell that data.
The social media companies sell the ability to target any selection of the thousands of specific categories they have generated by analysing trillions of hours of behavioural data, and send advertisers content to targets presenting with those variable attributes, thus increasing likelihood of a confirmed sales to ad placed ratio. That is their business, the provision of free tools to create content and share it - the user/consumer experience - is their draw.
So back to TikTok's faux spy trial... and the sophisticated, layered bully tactics routinely deployed de riguer when one is plainly in the wrong, in public. Unapologetically. Self righteously. Legislators?
Tactics
One tactic was for an official to cut short his or her speech, having made and allegation or attribution, so that Mr. Chew could not take time to answer the question, to explore it for better clarity. Bloody rude behaviour anywhere. Mr. Chew was stoic. I think the Congress has bitten off more than it can chew. We'll see why below.
Here's a more moderate instance, there were many more, in quick succession, that were downright repulsive and arrogant.
A staring, glowering semi-circle of angry men and women, nursing a well paid anger, implying that Mr. chew and his company might well be supporting genocidal , secretly grooming American children for the Chinese Communist Party, to undermine American culture; they accused his company of numerous other wild conspiracy theories. The same group had within it people who did not understand how WiFi works as part of the internet.
Congressman A : "If I have TikTok on my mobile phone, does TikTok have access to my Wifi?"
@cnetdotcom 😳😳😳……… #TikTok #TikTokNews #Congress #TikTokCEO #ShouChew #Wifi #internet #congressionalhearing #TikTokban #tiktokhearing ♬ original sound - CNET
The viewing public : "WTF? Did he really ask that question? Really? OMG!"
Case Closed. Ban TikTok!
Or this?
@djkirstyjay #duet with @The Herman Cain Awards #tiktokhearing #tiktoktrial #tiktoktrials #tiktokusa #algorithmtiktok #algorithm #texas ♬ original sound - The Herman Cain Awards
Knowledgeable they are not.
5 hours of this kind of behaviour, with some attempts by Mr. Chew to present a rational, evidenced case, and irrationality and conspiracy theory being presented as a righteous rebuttal of TikTok's case.
Belief and bile. Bible. Make believe, Mystical World. Fantasy and Imagination. Patience and equity. These are things I think about. A life examined and all that wisdom guff.
The presence of cruelty and bullying eradicates wisdom as the base of the dynamic, which is not restored in full until the cruelty and bullying is stopped, and further harm prevented, with an eye to a long term solution. Prevention is better than the cure, though in the case of FacebookGoogle vs TikTok, what they are preventing is a mature regulatory system for all social media, one that is democratic, transparent and effective.
Backstory - money cows chased.
A better product gains more users because it is a genuinely better product for sharing social content, in terms of it's ease of use, ability to share, algorithm designed to enable natural virality. The users inadvertently decide what is most popular, most effective. And yes, it is designed, like all social media to draw eyes to advertisements. TikTok intentionally chooses a more democratic content selection, Period.
All the social media platforms sell advertising access. That is the business model. They sell access to users who create content who, whilst viewing content, will see advertisements. Simples.
TikTok's algorithm is much more attuned to emergence, democratisation of content feed, and the deliberate restriction of content that is inciting harm in any way is part of what enables that democratisation.
TikTok has made it clear in their current operations that they are going to set new standards, beyond those in place for the social media industry, to a higher standard. Facebook et al do not want those higher standards turned into commercial legislation.
That's the service that has drawn 15O million US users in. Democratic flow of information. It's what 'the interwebs' was redeployed to do, away from the Military Industrial Complexes hegemony.
Now who is likely the most pissed off about all of this loss of advertising market share? Who might want to kill the neighbours golden goose, out of spite and malign business practice? Hmmm... Those who will lose profits, and those who will lose voters might form an alliance in such a situation.
And of course, Meta contributed donated funding to Democrats and Republicans alike to help make their case water tight, and carefully built their political combat troops, up, to fight for their Freedom from healthy competition.
Free Market my arse!
So what I think about these two visual overloads of bullies in action is this - in both cases we see what bullies do when they internalise political power as if it was a part of themselves, at which point it becomes blind entitlement. The freedom to make false accusations in public, to repeat known falsehoods set out as rumours as if they are true in public as their natural, God given right. The freedom to shout down the person representing TikTok, caricaturing him as a Chinese Communist Party asset for the public gallery since there is no verifiable, reliable evidence supporting that claim at all.
The Freedom to bully, using language to bully, to incite more bullying. Without consequence. By right.
Indict Putin and Blair and Bush?
Corneilius
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