Internet
September 7, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Cast your mind back to Thanksgiving in 2020 and 2021, when J. Edgar Fauci was telling us that we could only have something like six people over for dinner, preferably eating outside, and all socially-distanced by at least twelve turkey-lengths, or 0.2 furlongs or something. Someone promptly produced a meme of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer saying, “No one is going to tell me how many people I can have for
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April 25, 2022 — Steven Hayward
I have no idea whether Elon Musk is fundamentally sound or not, but one of Churchill’s remarks comes to mind as the sensible way of thinking about the wider scene: “If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favorable mention of the devil in the House of Commons.” The wailing and gnashing of teeth on the left today makes it all worth it, even if we’re disappointed with
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April 17, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Watching the left lose their you-know-what over Elon Musk’s hostile takeover bid for Twitter was one of the sublime pleasures of the last week. And thus leave it to the Babylon Bee, whose Twitter feed keeps getting suspended because of their irreverent humor, to provide the suitable (and accurate) mockery of in this three-minute sketch:
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October 6, 2021 — Steven Hayward
I know that Facebook is having a bad week, between the faceplant of an outage on Monday, and then the testimony in the Senate by a “whistleblower” (who appears to be a leftist plant, so conservatives ought to be careful before jumping on that bandwagon), but this afternoon Facebook turned in an inexplicable performance. I saw several entries that showed this image as being concealed as “sensitive content” because it
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September 20, 2020 — John Hinderaker
As part of last night’s Virtual Gala, American Experiment staff prepared a video on the organization’s achievements over the past year. Unbeknownst to me, the two staffers who produced the gala (including my daughter Kathryn, who is our Event Coordinator), knowing that yesterday happened to be my birthday, reached out to a number of friends, relatives and notables to convey their birthday greetings. They added those birthday best wishes at
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September 3, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
The Washington Post reports that the Justice Department “is expected to file an antitrust lawsuit against Google as soon as this month.” The Post claims that Attorney General Barr has “overruled dozens of federal attorneys who initially signaled the U.S. government was not ready to bring such a landmark case.” Such a suit would be the product of a “competition inquiry” that, in the Post’s words, “focuses on Google’s sprawling
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July 22, 2020 — Scott Johnson
A reader alerted us to our disappearance from Google searches yesterday morning. I confirmed this myself with searches on my own posts. By the time I asked our publisher to confirm our disappearance, the same searches I had run included my posts at the top. I wondered what was going on. Mediaite’s Rudy Takala reports on the issue in “Ex-Google Engineer Says Glitch Blocking Websites Including Drudge, Breitbart Could Have
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September 10, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Attorney Generals from almost every state have banded together to investigate whether Google is violating the antitrust laws. This will be a bipartisan effort. The lead AGs are Ken Paxton, a Republican from Texas, and Karl Racine, a Democrat from the District of Columbia. The two “dissenters” are also bipartisan. Only the AGs from California and Alabama have not joined in. A bipartisan group of AGs held a press conference
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May 8, 2019 — Scott Johnson
All this week we are featuring outstanding reviews and essays from the flagship publication of the Claremont Institute, the Claremont Review of Books. We are featuring one such essay in the adjacent post. It is one of the best magazines in the United States. I should probably add that I am a proud fellow of the Claremont Institute. In my case the fellowship is a purely honorific designation that I
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May 7, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Ryan Williams at the Claremont Institute reports that Google has changed its mind: See Ryan’s complete update of the story here. One wonders whether Google changed its mind because it discerned a “mistake” or took note of the public heat it was getting over this. But a deeper issue needs to be addressed. A number of conservatives have said that although Google, Facebook, and Twitter are engaging in censorship of
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April 8, 2018 — John Hinderaker
In January 2005, I participated in a conference at Harvard’s Kennedy School on new media. A number of seminal internet figures were there–the founder of Wikipedia, a guy who was regarded as the original blogger, and others, along with some academics. The only “old media” person I recall being there was Jill Abramson of the New York Times, who seemed depressed. At one point, another participant who was also a
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December 27, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
According to CNN, British officials fear the political consequences if Prince Harry and his bride-to-be invite Barack and Michelle Obama, with whom they are friends, to their wedding, but not President Trump. I don’t know whether these officials have any reason to expect political consequences in that event, but if they do, perhaps they should also worry about the interview Harry conducted with Barack Obama today on BBC radio. The
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December 16, 2017 — Scott Johnson
In 2015 the FCC reversed long-standing practice and policy to assert control over the Internet. The FCC’s 2015 Open Internet Order (i.e., “net neutrality” as it is in the propaganda wars) reclassifies broadband Internet access service as a Title II telecommunications service under the jurisdiction of the Communications Act of 1934. Internet service providers were now to be regulated as common carriers like Ma Bell. According to Barack Obama and
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September 11, 2017 — Scott Johnson
In a message addressed to us along with Drudge Report, American Thinker, InstaPundit, PJ Media and Gateway Pundit, Leo Goldstein writes: Dear Editors, You might be interested to learn, that your websites have been almost blacklisted by Google. “Almost blacklisted” means that Google search artificially downranks results from your websites to such extent that you lose 55% – 75% of possible visitors traffic from Google. This sitution is probably aggravated
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May 19, 2017 — Scott Johnson
President Trump named Ajit Pai chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. By my lights it ranks as one of Trump’s great appointments. Having served as a commissioner during the Obama administration, Pai had a front row seat to see the FCC’s assertion of control over the Internet under the guise of “net neutrality.” As a conservative Republican of libertarian stripe, Pai forcefully opposed the FCC takeover. See Tim Heffernan’s 2015
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October 1, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
We have written about President Obama’s internet giveaway and how GOP congressional leaders effectively rubber stamped it. An aide to Majority Leader McConnell even tried to blame Donald Trump for the Republicans’ gutlessness. After Congress failed to act, four Republican state attorneys general filed a lawsuit to stop the giveaway. The four state plaintiffs were Arizona, Oklahoma, Nevada and Texas. Their AGs are Mark Brnovich, Scott Pruitt, Adam Paul Laxalt,
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September 28, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
Last week, I asked whether Republican leaders will rubber stamp President Obama’s internet giveaway. My fear was that they would end up backing a continuing resolution that does not include language blocking the transition away from U.S. oversight of the Internet’s domain name system. Without that language, the Obama administration will hand oversight of the domain name system to an international organization. This would create a danger that countries like
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