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It was about an hour and a half into a hearing with the Senate Intelligence Committee when Sen. Dianne Feinstein laid into Facebook, Google and Twitter.
"I don't think you get it," she began. "You bear this responsibility. You've created these platforms, and now they are being misused. And you have to be the ones to do something about it. Or we will."
The tech giants were being grilled by Congress over Russian trolls abusing their services to meddle in last year's US election, and the California Democratic lawmaker had had it.
It was just one of very public tongue-lashings the Silicon Valley companies received over the course of three marathon congressional panels last month, held over a two-day span. The hearings were anticlimactic, in part because the three companies only sent their general counsels instead of their famous CEOs -- a point several lawmakers bemoaned during the public questioning.
Is it Google, Twitter, and Facebook who don't get it, or Senators like Dianne Feinstein who don't get it?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 06 2017, @08:42PM (2 children)
I have to echo DannyB here. I can, and do, find things wrong with BOTH of our dominant parties. Further, I find things wrong with all of our underdog parties. Detesting any and all of the parties involved doesn't make one anti-democracy. It only means that you oppose each of those parties.
I've always thought that you have to be a damned fool to support any party. You should support candidates, and the issues that they promise to represent. When I hear of a family that has faithfully voted for Party X for the past n generations, I visualize a bunch of inbred idiots with 4th grade educations. None of them were ever smart enough to examine candidates and issues, so they just voted for whoever Grandpa and The Party told them to vote for.
If the shoe fits, wear it - Dems and Reps alike.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday December 06 2017, @10:23PM (1 child)
Basically you're arguing in favor of some idealistic form of democracy that doesn't actually exist. Sure, you *should* support candidates, but how many people do? Almost none. In reality, voters don't really have the time or attention to learn about every single candidate on the ballot in many cases. In Arizona, for instance, the ballot will have the names of a couple *dozen* judges that you're supposed to vote whether to renew their term or not. Now how the hell is the average voter supposed to know whether some judge is any good or not? And figure this out for 20 of them? Along with a bunch of other races including the local school board, the local mayor, plus a bunch of ballot propositions (written in tricky language so you don't really know what you're voting for), as well as the usual national-level races?
When I hear of a family that has faithfully voted for Party X for the past n generations, I visualize a bunch of inbred idiots with 4th grade educations.
Yes, and this is pretty common among average voters, the people who constitute *actual* democracies.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday December 07 2017, @01:17AM
... despite that such political parties as the Whigs were in power at the time of its drafting.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]