The Technology Tyrants - How to Buy Influence in Washington

As I have said before, Washington is for sale and Corporate America has proven itself quite willing to buy politicians at just about any cost.  A recent study by Public Citizen, a "nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power" examines two of the largest lobbyists in the hallowed halls of the nation's capital as shown here:  

 

This report is particularly pertinent given the growing power of the technology sector with its near monopoly on social media outlets and the current political and health (i.e. COVID-19) narrative and, in the case of Amazon, its growing presence as the world's retailer.

 

The authors of the study used data provided by the Center for Responsive Politics (i.e. Open Secrets) to analyze how Big Tech has "blanketed Capitol Hill with lobbyists and lavished members of Congress with campaign contributions", in other words, buying influence in Washington that far outstrips the meagre to basically nonexistent influence that voters have on lawmakers....other than casting their vote.

  

Let's look at a bit of history.  Back in 2010, when associations, federations, trade groups and other consolidated corporate spenders are excluded, there was not a single big technology company represented among the top eight lobbyists unless you include Verizon Communications.  In 2017, Google (Alphabet Inc.) rocketed to the top of the list and was the only technology sector representative followed by the usual defense sector players.  In 2020, this changed substantially as shown on this table:

 

Here is another table showing how much each of these corporations spent on lobbying in 2020:

 

 

Here is a graphic that looks back in time at the growth in lobbying expenditures for both Facebook and Amazon compared to two of the more influential members of Corporate America in the past:

 

Now, let's look at overall spending by Big Tech on both lobbying and campaign contributions going back to 2010:

 

During the 2020 election cycle, Big Tech spent 5.2 percent more on lobbying and campaign contributions than it did during the 2018 cycle, hitting a total of $108 million in lobbying 2020.  

  

Let's look at the two biggest technology sector lobbyists and how their spending on lobbying has grown over the past decade:

 

1.) Amazon:

 

2.) Facebook:

 

There is an upside; all of this lobbying creates jobs for one sector of the economy, lobbyists as follows (for 2020):

 

1.) Amazon - 117 lobbyists

 

2.) Google - 97 lobbyists

 

3.) Facebook - 71 lobbyists

 

4.) Apple - 48 lobbyists

 

In 2020, the biggest tech sector behemoths retained the services of 333 lobbyists, up from less than 100 a decade earlier.  It is also important to note that half of the top ten lobbyists who contributed amounts ranging from a paltry $324,258 to a more substantial $571,744 just happened to be lobbyists representing Big Tech in 2020 as shown here:

 

Big Tech also shelled out $3.2 million in campaign funds for representatives on four key Congressional committees that hold jurisdiction over antitrust and privacy legislation including the House Judiciary Committee, the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary and the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation as shown here:

In general, more of the funds went to Democratic members of these Congressional committees with $1.678 million going to the Democratic members and $1.409 million going to the Republican members.

 

Given the dominance of the American technology sector oligopoly, it is not terribly surprising that Big Tech and its lobbyists are willing to throw around tens of millions of dollars to ensure that Washington sees things its way.  Let's close with this quote from the paper's conclusion:

  

"Big Tech’s increasingly dominant role in our economy and everyday lives is worsening social problems that need a political response. Yet as Big Tech converts its enormous economic and social power into political influence, our political system is hamstrung from addressing those increasingly serious issues. This problem is reflective both of Big Tech’s extraordinary wealth and power and a broken political system that works for giant corporations but not the rest of us. It is not susceptible to easy solutions.

 

As I said at the beginning of this posting, Washington is for sale and Corporate America, particularly the technology tyrants, are in a buying mood.

Donald Trump, Twitter and the American Technocracy

This has just happened:

 

...and, according to Twitter's Blog, this is why:

 

All of that, despite some rather odd events on Capitol Hill including this where Capitol Hill police seem to be opening barricades for demonstrators:

 

The American technotyrants are alive and well and living in their own little enclaves from which they hope to shut down any discussions that do not subscribe to their limited, self-serving narrative.  Who is to say when or for what reason they will shut any of us down because our opinions are not theirs?

Censorship is alive and well and living in our post-truth technocracy.

 

As an aside, if you want to send a message to the social media companies that have been heavily censoring their products over the past year, in particular, stop clicking on the advertisements that they present you with.  That is the source of nearly all of their ungodly profits.

Twitter and Shadow Banning - Controlling the Narrative

Twitter, one of the world's leading social media networks, has implemented new terms in its Terms of Service agreement which will take effect on January 1, 2020.   While users are required to click to accept these terms in order to continue to use Twitter, it is highly unlikely that any of them will actually read through the entire 34 page document, thereby missing a key change to Twitter's modus operandi.

Let's start with some background on shadow banning.  Shadow banning is a technique used by social networks to block a user's content on social media sites in a way that the user doesn't know that they have been banned.  Shadow banning does not prevent the user from posting new content that can be viewed by their current followers but it does prevent content from appearing on anyone else's feed.  By shadow banning, social networks can suppress content that does not follow their narrative, a practice that has become particularly prevalent and pertinent in the post-2016 election period.

Now, being thankful that the internet never forgets anything, let's go back in time to see what Twitter had to say about the practice of shadow banning.  On July 26, 2019, this was posted on Twitter's blog:

Note the first paragraph:

"People are asking us if we shadow ban.  We do not."

The third paragraph opens with a repetition "We do not shadow ban."  Twitter also claims that it  most certainly "...does not shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology" and that its users will always be able to see the tweets from accounts that they follow.

Now, let's go to the present.  Current Twitter users have agreed to the following current Terms of Service (TOS), a that all users must digitally sign to use Twitter.  Let's focus on Section 4 Using the Services:

Note that this TOS is effective only until December 31, 2019

Twitter has recently added this banner to their Terms of Service page:

Let's look at the new version of Twitters TOS, particularly Section 4:

You will notice the following addition (highlighted and in bold):

"We may also remove or refuse to distribute any Content on the Services, limit distribution or visibility of any Content on the service, limit distribution or visibility of any Content on the service, suspend or terminate users, and reclaim usernames without liability to you.

Note that this TOS is effective on January 2, 2020.

And, just in case you happen to believe that Twitter would never shadow ban, here is an investigation by Project Veritas where it recorded a former Twitter Software Engineer stating the following:

“One strategy is to shadow ban so you have ultimate control. The idea of a shadow ban is that you ban someone but they don’t know they’ve been banned, because they keep posting and no one sees their content. So they just think that no one is engaging with their content, when in reality, no one is seeing it.”

And in case you don't think that Twitter is vindictive, here's what occurred in late November 2019:

It certainly would appear that Twitter has done a 180 degree turnaround on its pledge to not shadow ban users that offend its sensibilities.  The technological tyrants are at it again; we are living on the thin edge of the wedge when it comes to censorship of narratives that do not follow those of the companies that drive the majority of the world's media.

We live in a post-truth world where a handful of companies control the narrative.

Russia and Africa - How Facebook Controls the Narrative

Once again, we can thank Facebook for protecting us from those nasty Russians and their constant peddling of propaganda.  Here's the announcement:

Here is the key sentence:

"We're constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we don't want our services to be used to manipulate people."

This is a rather hilarious statement given that Facebook's Earnings Release for the second quarter of 2019 looks like this:

You will notice that $16.624 billion or 98.4 percent of Facebook's second quarter revenue comes from advertising, up 28 percent on a year-over-year basis.  If advertising isn't something that is used to manipulate people, then I don't know what its true purpose is.

Let's go back to the announcement.  The offenders apparently used fake accounts to post about global and local news in Africa regarding Russia's policies in Africa, elections in both Madagascar and Mozambique as well as criticism of French and U.S. policies in Africa.  Imagine, imbalance in reportage.  It's a good thing that the American media can never be accused of biased coverage of Russia, isn't it?

Here's what passes for pro-Russia Facebook-based African propaganda:

Fortunately for those of us that are easily duped by the pro-Russian narrative, Facebook also removed 17 Facebook accounts, 18 Pages, 3 Groups and 6 Instagram accounts that originated in Russia and focused on the Sudan.  Approximately 457,000 accounts followed one or more of these pages and 1,300 Facebook accounts jointed at least one of these groups.  Fortunately, the people behind these accounts paid around $160 for ads on Facebook using Russian Rubles, a dead giveaway to their real identity because no one uses Russian Rubles except Russians.

In addition, Facebook removed a network of 14 Facebook accounts, 12 Pages, one Group and one Instagram account that also originated in Russia and focused on Libya.  About 212,000 accounts followed one or more of these Pages, one account joined the Group and 29,300 people followed the Instagram account.   Here are three examples of the content posted by these pages:

According to Human Rights Watch, in October 2018, around 200,000 Libyans remained internally displaced and the United States continues its program of "precision bombings against purported ISIS and Al-Qaeda targets.  I'm certain that everyone is still very happy in Libya despite eight years of American-inspired civil strife, particularly Muammar Gaddafi who suffered this ignominious end:

On the upside, it did give the loser of the 2016 American presidential election something to chuckle about:

America's technology tyrants are still smarting over their preferred presidential candidate's loss in 2016 and they aren't about to let us forget that voters were stupid enough to swallow Russia's anti-Hillary propaganda.  Facebook's ongoing program of censorship ensures one thing; their narrative and that of their masters in Washington remains intact.  All other narratives are to be destroyed.

Apparently, we are all supposed to be thankful that the American technology giants are willing to do our thinking for us.

YouTube, Censorship and Our Technology Tyrant World

A recent posting on YouTube's Official Blog gives us a sense of the lengths that Google will go to to ensure that we are all protected from what the Google gods deem as "harmful content".  While the company admits to censoring content that violates its policies, they claim that they are "preserving the power of an open platform".

Google claims that YouTube is "built on the premise of openness" as shown in this quote from Susan Wojcicki, YouTube's Chief Executive Officer, on YouTube's Creator Blog:

"YouTube is built on the premise of openness. Based on this open platform, millions of creators around the world have connected with global audiences and many of them have built thriving businesses in the process. But openness comes with its challenges, which is why we also have Community Guidelines that we update on an ongoing basis. Most recently, this includes our hate speech policy and our upcoming harassment policy. When you create a place designed to welcome many different voices, some will cross the line. Bad actors will try to exploit platforms for their own gain, even as we invest in the systems to stop them. As more issues come into view, a rising chorus of policymakers, press and pundits are questioning whether an open platform is valuable... or even viable....

A commitment to openness is not easy. It sometimes means leaving up content that is outside the mainstream, controversial or even offensive. But I believe that hearing a broad range of perspectives ultimately makes us a stronger and more informed society, even if we disagree with some of those views. A large part of how we protect this openness is not just guidelines that allow for diversity of speech, but the steps that we’re taking to ensure a responsible community. I’ve said a number of times this year that this is my number one priority. A responsible approach toward managing what’s on our platform protects our users and creators like you. It also means we can continue to foster all the good that comes from an open platform."

Apparently, offensiveness is in the "eyes" of Google and the content that the company determines falls outside of its community policies. 

Google has created four principles that outline its approach to responsibility:

In the current posting on YouTube's Official Blog, Ms. Wojcicki focusses on "Remove".  The posting starts outlining improvements that Google/YouTube has made to removing inappropriate content since 2016:

The company claims that it walks a fine line between preserving free expression and protecting and promoting a vibrant community by enforcing its policies.  YouTube's quarterly Transparency Report for the months from April to June 2019 saw the following occur:

Since you cannot read the data, here it is with the percentage and total number of channels removed for each reason:

Spam, misleading and scams - 90.3% (3,676,012)

Nudity or sex - 6.3% (254,482)

Child safety - 1.8% (73,504)

Promotion of violence  extremism - 0.5% (18,831)

Hateful or abusive - 0.4% (17,818)

Harassment and cyberbullying - 0.4% (14,668)

Other - 0.1% (5,811)

When a channel is removed, all of its videos are removed; with the removal of just over 4 million channels, a total of 77,460,820 videos were removed.  Please note that these numbers do not include the channels/videos that were demonetized by Google meaning that the channel creators no longer make money from their YouTube video endeavours.  

Here is a graphic showing a breakdown of videos removed by reason for their removal:

The vast majority of videos that were removed violated YouTube's "spam, misleading and scams" rules.   While YouTube makes a really big deal about removing videos and channels that promote hate, in fact, these videos make up a very small portion of the total number of videos removed in the quarter.  In total, because of a breach of YouTube's hate speech rules, the company removed a total of 111,185 videos or 1.2 percent out of the total of 9,015,566 videos that were removed .   These videos appeared on more than 17,000 channels, five times the previous number of channels that were removed  thanks to YouTube's new rules regarding hate speech.

In addition to the removal of channels and videos, YouTube also uses a combination of people and technology to remove comments that video watchers make.  In the quarter between April and June 2019, a total of 537,759,344 comments were removed, 99.3 percent of which were automatically flagged and 0.7 percent of which were flagged by humans.  This is nearly twice the number of comments that were removed in the first quarter of 2019 thanks to an increase in hate speech removals. 

As I noted above, YouTube is relying heavily on machines to review and flag bad content.  Here is a quote from the report:

"In 2017, we expanded our use of machine learning technology to help detect potentially violative content and send it for human review. Machine learning is well-suited to detect patterns, which helps us to find content similar (but not exactly the same) to other content we’ve already removed, even before it’s ever viewed. These systems are particularly effective at flagging content that often looks the same — such as spam or adult content. Machines also can help to flag hate speech and other violative content, but these categories are highly dependent on context and highlight the importance of human review to make nuanced decisions. Still, over 87% of the 9 million videos we removed in the second quarter of 2019 were first flagged by our automated systems.

We’re investing significantly in these automated detection systems, and our engineering teams continue to update and improve them month by month. For example, an update to our spam detection systems in the second quarter of 2019 lead to a more than 50% increase in the number of channels we terminated for violating our spam policies."

Across Google's world, the company has hired in excess of 10,000 people to address content concerns.

It is quite interesting to note that all of this concern about content on Google's YouTube platform appeared after Hillary Clinton lost the election that she was destined to win in November 2016.  As users of Google's YouTube product, we have to trust that this massive and highly influential arm of America's technology tyrants is really looking out for our good, protecting us from the evil that lies out there just because they are so concerned about our welfare...but only since 2016.