Dave The Web Guy
Elon Just Kicked'em Right in Their Balls
11/30/2023
This is going to be a complicated post. It's going to sound like I am defending Elon Musk's concur about the existence of Jewish conspiracies or whatever, while simultaneously defending his remarks in wake of the predictable advertiser boycott that followed. But I'll try to make a clear point.
The media blowback from Elon's "go fuck yourself" remark, in response to questions about the (now likely permanent) boycott, has outraged the mainstream profit media, which found itself offended by such an open rebuke of its corporate advertising model and the control it exerts over freedom of speech. The same model, while also a semblance of a legitimate industry, is also considered the gatekeeping governance that makes sure nothing gets "too out of control."
There has never been and never will be, for example, an NBC-produced documentary on the merit of communism. A thoughtful production that considers maybe we were wrong about all of this. No weekly cartoon for kids that features a scrappy group of teenagers uncovering alternative economic theories of any kind other than the ones that we miraculously know to be the one we happen to live in right out of the box in (and crazily so many other nations don't - weird huh?).
Your (cough) "local" news station's "Action 8 Investigation Report" isn't going to touch the shady practices of your also local new car dealership so long as those dealerships are laundering in payola in the form of local advertisement dollars, despite complaints against them being like a number one actual issue. Not that the "Action 8 Investigation Report" team isn't tough in going after some no-name contractor or some already un-popular local politician it's probably been asked to finish off by community members of the local back channels.
I hope you get the idea.
Big profit media and its control over the discoverability of new perspectives is the only reason the First Amendment has yet to be be repealed in this country. The assumption has always been, if you don't accrue money, or if you pose a threat to those who do, your message and perspective are comfortably handicapped by commercial default.
It's a system that works well enough, because you know, if it didn't, what China does with freedom of speech and online expression wouldn't look so bad.
It's also why the profit MSM is "at war" with social media or the open web, because people being able to talk and argue with each other, is a crack too much in the comfortable system it's taken decades to build. Any chance to point out why people having free access to the thoughts and viewpoints of others, is depressing teens or leading to "dangerous challenges", is taken in a snap.
There is no clearer example of such a blatantly pro-corporate-media-advertising-monopoly propaganda piece than this ridiculous order-up by CNN producers to make sure viewers focus on the triviality of Elon's response than the point he is making. In it a woman described as a CNN contributor and tech journalist -- Kara Swisher -- is invited to take a moment from emptying bathroom hampers or something (as she is breathlessly making her points from home) to pretend that there wasn't a deeper and valid point being made within the orb of all this scuffle-dust flying about.
Calls were evidently made to get this CNN presentation out there. It's absolutely ridiculous to watch, but also, an accidental insight to CNN's panic or "entitlement to narrate away" Elon's point.
Elon has tied one personality, one person, to a service once treading carefully in a sea of unspoken or perhaps more deliberate business rules that once acted as the true captains and the law of order for Twitter. They are gone, and now it is gleefully albeit destructively, him.
And yes he has wrecked quite a bit - I myself am trying to transition away from the service. But like an atom smasher, his actions and controversies have pushed unexpected matter into our view and strung them out for wider examination. Pretty much exactly how he explained his peace in the event that the advertiser boycott does in fact kill X.
I will give him credit for that.
By Dave for Personal Blog.
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Snowjobs
11/24/2023
Yeah but we're not eating the YELLOW snow at least.
Heh-heh.
Ah but seriously, the real value of this video as we may see it here in America, is to remember it when we encounter descriptions of the societies of our own adversaries. We can 't trust the characterizations encountered in the mainstream media which are designed to set a consumer's direction of thinking and to frame foreign morality. We can't trust them because they are no more less capable of putting out nonsense like this.
By Dave for Personal Blog.
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Great Balls Of Non-Encrypted Fire
12/14/2022
Encryption if it is an available technology is tough to de-justify. The best justification for not encrypting in American law enforcement is that open broadcasting was part of the original fabric of police radio communication technology.
Early AM radios were capable, indeed marked with tuning guides, to specifically tune into city wide police broadcasts.
You bought a floor radio and it was expected that you would be able to listen in to police calls as easily and directly as you would to Amos N' Andy.
However unintentionally and however wrought by lack of technical sophistication this was possible, it's because of this that open public safety broadcasting has been a fundamental component of policing, reflective of our culture's commitment to individual liberty and our angst against the potential for government tyranny and totalitarianism, for most of time.
There are excellent reasons to not encrypt if you first accept American exceptionalism as a real thing in terms of freedom and liberty.
Any other nation on earth with the technology to encrypt its public safety communication would logically and immediately seek to do so -- assuming affordable. The same cultural consideration we have in the USA simply doesn't exist to such level elsewhere. Even early UK radios probably had the ability to listen in to police calls, but they never had the American spirit that led to us splitting up from them in the first place.
Open public safety communication is one of America's unappreciated birthmarks. It makes little sense to foreign countries who balk at our liberties and independence. I would expect encryption to swell within all other nations, but I would expect the fight to NOT encrypt to roar in the United States.
Like anyone reading this, I am not optimistic. What I have concluded and what I am now promoting is a flat-out balls-to-the-walls replacement for police scanning, which would involve the evolution of a parallel human network of enthusiasts, working journalists, activists, and good people roaming or spotting in their cities and regions, and reporting on public safety drama in a very concentrated and channeled way. These spotters would have their own openly broadcast radio network that would be scannable by regular people everywhere and anywhere.
Regurgitation of my post in a Radio Reference thread. Please review my regurgitation policy.
By Dave for for BuffScan.
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Giving Local Media Police Radios Resolves Nothing
05/07/2022
One of the most bizarre compromises to emerge between public safety officials and open broadcasting advocates in some areas, is the idea of giving designated media houses access to encrypted police communications, but not to what they consider the general public.
While such a compromise somehow feels apt given the supposed professional foundation of the mainstream media and of the people who work within, the premise collapses instantly on the idea that the mainstream media can somehow be trusted more in principle to never sensationalize or to somehow commodify the police radio traffic they maintain privy access to.
Sensationalize and commodify are what they do.
All these types of agreements would likely wind up doing is creating an alignment between government officials and local brokers of the news, with access to the police radio traffic turning into the "currency of compliance" between them. If the local sheriff finds himself bothered by a probe into its practices by a pesky reporter for a newspaper, for example, that sheriff might find it all too easy to "de-classify" said newspaper as a legitimate media outlet, and pull the newspaper's plug. The newspaper would be at a significant disadvantage against its media processing competitors.
There's that, and then, there's the outdated presumption that anyone operating a media center is doing anything exceptional anyway. In 2022 everyone is a journalist, and those we would deem journalists it turns out, are just people. Vulnerable, greedy, and biased.
Giant media houses are just profit-suckers who happen to present a more polished and frequently agitating tweet than your crazy uncle might. Filled with cheap-to-produce superficial insight and biased interpretations and positions which are often designed to invoke ever-profitable conflict, it makes zero sense to make every city and jurisdiction dependent on them for information.
By Dave for for BuffScan.
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Replacing Police Scanning With Human Networks
05/07/2022
Public safety radio moving to encrypted systems has left me trying to self-formulate and explain what a replacement for public monitoring looks like. I have yet to articulate an idea well, let alone document it. And, unfortunately, I have to assume that's because I haven't yet imagined or conceptualized a solution well first.
What I do have are a loose array of outlines going in one direction or another, with the idea that most excites me being that of a human-based reporting network. That is to say, I hope that as average people lose the ability to eavesdrop on police or fire radio signals, they will form human networks of radio teams that "patrol and report", spotting on and contributing to local newsfeeds in real-time of various sorts and platforms. Digital tools for that exist today in off-the-shelf social media tools like Twitter and other platforms, as do cheap analog radio backbones such as old-fashioned CB radio.
Linkage
- Encryption trend continues as does resistance...
- YouTuber Perspective on Public Safety Encryption Systems...
- Goodbye to police scanner chatter (story from my birth town county newspaper)
By Dave for for BuffScan.
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Facebook as the Murderer of TikTok Found in the Parlor
03/30/2022
Boom yah!
My hunch that news stories on the negative effects of social media on teens or anyone are astro-turfed has proven largely correct in this Washington Post piece, Facebook paid GOP firm to malign TikTok.
Specifically prescient to the news above I wrote last December:
I'm surprised by none of it of course. I'll just fall back on my mantra that this happens because the more social media is discredited, the more value old school media retains. Important because the value and authority of mainstream media are deflating at an unbelievable rate.
There's just one twist to the specifics of my conspiracy theory, though -- it wasn't the legacy mainstream media doing the turfing. It turns out, at least according to the story linked above, that it was Facebook that was secretly pushing the narrative. A social media competitor.
Or so it seems. As we consider the story we must also consider that the revelation is being brought to my attention from an entity of the legacy mainstream media itself, The Washington Post. And, I was tipped off by an old-fashioned TV station's tweet.
So, is it really Facebook, or is this an example of legacy mainstream media cleverly attempting to conquer social media by dividing its industry players?
Folks, this thing may run deeper than any of us imagine.
By Dave for for BuffScan.
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Keeping Social Media Bad and Dumb
12/19/2021
I love this Tech Dirt article, Which Went More Viral Challenge: Local News Stories Or TikTok School Violence 'Challenge'? . The question puts mayonnaise news media on the spot about so much coverage over something that wasn't actually happening.
Worse, it makes the mainstream media look complicit.
I'm surprised by none of it of course. I'll just fall back on my mantra that this happens because the more social media is discredited, the more value old school media retains. Important because the value and authority of mainstream media are deflating at an unbelievable rate.
The collective strategy of giving so much coverage to every threat circulated on TikTok or whatever, in my view, is to highlight the dangers of low barrier publishing and to accent its unreliability. That it also provides cheap content for them is just a side benefit.
You may have noticed you pay attention less to overworked local media folks pumped into uniform productions by their corporate overlords. The mainstream media knows that you are and that's why it's important for "bad" social media examples, and the WWW by native extension, to find their way to the daily news cycle.
It's okay you can admit it, mainstream news houses are no longer an authority.
By Dave for for BuffScan.
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