Mitch's Blog

Nov 17, 2024 ↓

How to survive the broligarchy

Nov 17, 2024 ↓

From a New Zealand local newspaper: "Police responding to reports of a racist flag being flown from a Wānaka property found the home was instead flying the colours of the Klingon Empire from Star Trek."

Nov 17, 2024 ↓

The long-awaited sequel to “Snakes on a Plane.”

Nov 17, 2024 ↓

Some things I saw while walking with the dog.

Nov 18, 2024 ↓

Trump names Brendan Carr as his FCC leader. Carr has threatened to use the FCC to regulate speech that conservatives disagree with.

Nov 18, 2024 ↓

The Verge Editor-In-Chief Nilay Patel breathes fire on Elon Musk and Donald Trump's Big Tech enablers

Oliver Darcy at Status.news:

America now has an unelected defense contractor sitting in the White House doing ketamine and twiddling the algorithmic knobs of an influential right-wing echo chamber while fulminating against traditional standards-based journalism, threatening to revoke network broadcast licenses, and suing advertisers who don’t want to spend their money on his dwindling user base. What could go wrong?

On top of that, Trump's most likely FCC Chairman is Brendan Carr, who was tasked in the first Trump government to crack down on platform moderation by taking control of Section 230, literally wrote the Project 2025 chapter laying out a plan to do so, and is now begging to punish NBC for having Kamala Harris on “SNL.”

To be as clear as I can be, the second Trump administration with Elon Musk embedded within it represents the most direct and sustained threat to the First Amendment and the freedom of the press any of us will ever experience. If you’re a media executive or editorial leader and you haven’t met with your legal team to understand the current landscape of First Amendment threats, let alone the ones to come, you’re already behind. Get on it.

Regarding Big Tech leaders congratulating Trump on his victory:

All of these men are now hopelessly trapped in a problem their own platforms and algorithms created: they have to manipulate Trump’s narcissism to secure tariff exceptions and regulatory largesse, while knowing that the vast majority of their employees and half of their customers will see any engagement as moral bankruptcy.