Obamanet and Selection of Big Tech Winners

Today, not only political discourse but also the professional and personal lives of most people younger than 50 depend on the Internet. Yet all of that is controlled by six huge Big Tech corporations: Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Twitter.

Violation of the First Amendment

The key to the current state of the Internet is the Obamanet (which its supporters call net neutrality) passed by the FCC in 2010 for the first time. This is likely the most radical infringement, or even denial, of the First Amendment by the federal government in US history. It effectively prohibited freedom of speech and the press on the Internet.

From Obamanet (2010): “Purchasing a higher quality of termination service for one’s own Internet traffic, though, is not speech.” The “termination service” phrase is somewhat ignorant. ISP fees cover all the costs of delivering Internet traffic, not just termination. That pays for the Internet infrastructure build-up, from programming routers to laying fiber cables, and maintenance.

Public speech always requires means of its replication in a physical medium. Take away them, and the freedom of speech is gone. In the 18th century, speech was reproduced on paper using a printing press: hence, the words “freedom of the press” in the First Amendment. In the 21st century, speech is reproduced by delivery over the Internet. The right to purchase this delivery, including termination services by a retail ISP, is guaranteed by the First Amendment. The Obamanet (2010) text acknowledged that it was taking this right away, although buried this acknowledgement in 55,000 words of the text.

Under Obamanet, Internet users are forced to pay for speech with which they disagree and for which they are unwilling to pay, that is, unconstitutional compelled speech. That includes foreign governments propaganda. Continue reading Obamanet and Selection of Big Tech Winners

Big Tech Terms of Service are Void

Terms of Service (TOS), user agreements, and other purported contracts between Big Tech corporations and end users are invalid and void. Neither clicking buttons Sign up or I Agree next to these TOSes nor using their services creates a contract between the corporation and the user, at least on the terms written by these corporations, especially Big Tech Social Media Platforms (“BTP”).

The substance of the Big Tech TOS violates multiple conditions necessary to form a valid contract. Continue reading Big Tech Terms of Service are Void

Russian Activities in 2016 Elections were anti-Trump

2023-03-12 update: Some attempts to re-write history by linked sites are addressed. YouTube has recently blocked RT videos, which were posted in 2016. Marked “the video is blocked by YouTube now“. The Nation deleted the linked articles, so links to archived versions are added.

2022-09-06 update: In May 2016, RT called TrumpMore Caligula than Augustus … America’s answer to Mussolini, and just like the Italian fascist dictator”. Also, the Obama administration made US dependent on Russia for the nuclear fuel and space flight.

It’s almost funny that the so-called Intelligence Community Assessment (January 6, 2017,  Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections) claimed that the Russian interference had been against Hillary and in favor of Trump, although most of the evidence in it demonstrated the opposite. RT (Russia Today TV) and IRA (Internet Research Agency, a “troll farm” in Saint Petersburg) agitated in favor of Hillary and the policies of the Democratic Party, and against Trump and the policies of the Republican Party. Continue reading Russian Activities in 2016 Elections were anti-Trump

Big Tech has Abandoned Section 230 Protection

Section 230 has never been as broad and powerful as Big Tech made us to believe. In 2016, the DC Circuit of Appeals compared Section 230 to a mousehole, in which Congress could not put anything big:

“US Telecom next claims that 47 U.S.C. § 230, enacted as part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, a portion of the Telecommunications Act, confirms that Congress understood Internet access to be an information service. … however, it is unlikely that Congress would attempt to settle the regulatory status of broadband Internet access services in such an oblique and indirect manner… (Congress… does not, one might say, hide elephants in mouseholes.)” (US Telecom Association v. FCC, 825 F. 3d 674, 703 – Court of Appeals, DC Circuit, 2016;  internal quotation marks omitted)

But Big Tech social media platforms completely abandoned  Section 230 protections in the May 2022 SCOTUS application (NetChoice LLC v. Paxton): “From the moment users access a social media platform, everything they see is subject to editorial discretion by the platform in accordance with the platforms’ unique policies.

Continue reading Big Tech has Abandoned Section 230 Protection

230d Technical

Weakened and defeated parental controls

One example of a parental control software, crippled by Big Tech, is Norton Family. Its limitations include:

“Video Supervision requires a browser extension on Windows and the in-app Norton Browser on iOS and Android. It monitors videos viewed on YouTube.com (but not YouTube videos embedded in other websites or blogs) and on Hulu.com (but only on Windows). It does not work with the YouTube or Hulu apps.

These limitations are caused by the conduct of Google and/or Apple. Continue reading 230d Technical

Supporting Materials 2023

Supporting material for #Obamanet and Obama’s Selection of Big Tech Winners on Substack.
A retail ISP subscriber pays the ISP monthly fees, the ISP pays its costs and the cost of bandwidth to the upstream network owner. The largest networks peer with each other free of charge, making up the Internet backbone. Total ISP fees, including fixed and mobile, were about $140B annually in 2014, and have been growing since Continue reading Supporting Materials 2023

Section 230 does not protect Big Tech from their customers

The Communications Decency Act (CDA) Section 230 was enacted in 1996[1] with the main purpose to protect interactive computer service providers that offer a family-friendly internet experience from certain claims of third parties.

Big Tech Platforms that harm their customers by removing or misdirecting content that the customer wanted to receive, or not attempting to deliver the content that the customer have sent, are not protected by the Section 230. Continue reading Section 230 does not protect Big Tech from their customers

Pandemic $Trillions

Big Tech has been the biggest financial beneficiary of the pandemic, in the absolute and relative terms. Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and Apple have collusively monopolized communication of information about COVID-19, and nearly doubled their market capitalization from $4T to nearly $8T.

Table 1. Changes in GFTMA stocks prices and capitalization from January 1, 2020 to January 1, 2022.

Corporation Ticker 1/1/2020 Cap, $T 1/1/2022 Cap, $T Growth
Google (Alphabet) GOOG $1,434 0.95 $2,726 1.81 1.90
Facebook (Meta) FB $202 0.56 $318 0.88 1.57
Twitter TWTR $33 0.03 $37 0.03 1.12
Microsoft MSFT $167 1.26 $303 2.28 1.81
Apple AAPL $76 1.25 $170 2.79 2.24
TOTAL $4.04T $7.79T 1.93
Prices are adjusted for splits and dividend and/or capital gain distributions

Figure 1. The market price increase of GOOG, FB, MSFT, and AAPL during the same time Continue reading Pandemic $Trillions

Google Removed Key Papers and Videos on HCQ

Google blocked access to An Effective Treatment for Coronavirus (COVID-19) by James M. Todaro, MD, and Gregory J. Rigano, dated by March 13, 2020. This paper was widely credited (blamed by the Fake News Media) for proposing chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as an effective treatment against COVID-19. (This was reported by ReclaimTheNet on March 25, 2020). How can someone rationalize removing information about a possible cure, amid a global pandemic? Are there still humans in charge at Google?

Google’s YouTube also removed the Didier Raoult’s presentation of his HCQ+AZM treatment, published on YouTube on March 16, and embedded in the website of the medical institute which he heads! The video was removed by March 29 with the message “Video unavailable. This video contains content from Canal Plus, who has blocked it on copyright grounds.” It had accumulated more than 1.4 million views before that. The video is restored now. It contains no Canal Plus (a French TV company owned by Vivendi), copyright, logo, name, or anything that can be mistaken for its content. Canal Plus is a French TV company owned by Vivendi. Even if it had any rights in it and submitted a take down notice (neither is likely), displaying it was fair use. Continue reading Google Removed Key Papers and Videos on HCQ

How Obamanet Created “Masters of the Universe”

2022-12-01: Obamanet is likely the worst First Amendment violation of the last 150 years. From Obamanet-2010 : “Purchasing a higher quality of termination service for one’s own Internet traffic, though, is not speech…” (p. 59221). This is Marxist gobbledygook. Purchasing Internet bandwidth (“termination service” in the FCC words) is like purchasing paper and printing press services in the time of the Bill of Rights. The freedom of the press is in the First Amendment.

2022-11-04: Added sources: Reuters and Statista, 2014. Minor corrections.

2020-03-01: wireless data costs ($90B) are added to fixed broadband costs ($50B), yielding $140B, redistributed by Obamanet in favor of Big Tech annually, starting in 2015, and likely growing. Continue reading How Obamanet Created “Masters of the Universe”