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FCC Chairman Keeps Up Assault on Social Media (axios.com)
Republican FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is doubling down on his critique of tech companies, asking whether social media is "a net benefit to American society" in remarks at the Media Institute on Wednesday. "Now, I will tell you upfront that I don't have an answer." From a report: What he said: Pai made the case that social media has been key to the politicization of many aspects of American life. "Everything nowadays is political. Everything. ... This view that politics-is-all is often made worse by social media," he said, per his prepared remarks.
He is republican in the sense that he was appointed by Trump. As expected he is trying to undo anything done by the previous administration. He is also republican in the sense that he would like to destroy the internet.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Because he himself has said that is his political affiliation.
It's worse than that, and Americans should be alarmed and outraged by this.
You should be alarmed and outraged because he's pas the point of "informed discussion". He's literally counter-attacking the people who have pointed out his lies about net neutrality.
This is full on Soviet-era deflection, more or less insinuating that you shouldn't listen to Twitter when they say net neutrality is good, because after all, what Twitter does is evil and sketchy and they're probably enemies of the state.
He has outright decided that facts and informed discussion are pointless, so he's going straight to trying to portray them as not being "net benefit to American society". He's basically threatening them in public that if they continue to disagree with him, things could get messy as they pursue other options to beat them down.
This is naked thuggery, and people actively refusing to engage in informed discussion. This is making thinly veiled threats at people who point out you're a lying sack of shit.
If America has reached this point, we're deeply fucked. Because this administration is pretty much showing it will do anything it wants, and if you oppose them they're going to come at you ... basically he's going at Twitter the same way Trump the idiot attacks everyone else on Twitter.
This is appalling, and pretty much means civility and reason are dead in America. This is essentially an explicit tactic, it's not just some clown who is making false equivalents ... he is deliberately suggesting that Twitter is a bad entity to then say "so don't listen to them when they point out I'm lying".
He hasn't jumped the shark, but America is in the middle of doing so.
Ajit Pai doesn't like it because people can express opinions -- oh my!
At no point in time did he say this. The problem with social media takes a while to explain and I could do a dissertation on it but I doubt anybody would take the time to read it. However, I'll boil down some quick points.
1) People have short attention spans on the Internet and never learn about any issue to the level required to make an informed opinion
2) Because of 1, people jump to conclusions about issues
3) Social media makes 1 and 2 worse by constantly changing the topic in the feed
4) A few providers police the content to make sure their political bias is represented in promoted content and that things they disagree with are buried (example: Twitter shadowbanning, removing checkmark, etc)
5) All out bans of people expressing opinions that are not politically correct even though nothing illegal is said
6) Almost no downvote capability to bury troll content like Slashdot has