House Judiciary subpoenas Tim Cook & rest of big tech about alleged collusion

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 38
    This is just BS performative nonsense designed to feed red meat to the masses who - along with too many in congress - don't seem to understand that suppression of free speech CAN ONLY BE PERFORMED BY THE GOVERNMENT.

    Boneheads - all of them.
    ronnretrogustowilliamlondonwatto_cobra
  • Reply 22 of 38
    JapheyJaphey Posts: 1,767member
    JP234 said:
    Japhey said:
    Come on! 
    Not one of you is going to blame Trump?  
    How disappointing. 
    OK, I'll jump in. Everything wrong with the GOP stems from Trump.

    They put themselves in this kill box. If they support him, and he wins the nomination, they lose the general election. Again. Just like 2022.
    They don't support him and he loses, he starts braying about the "rigged" primary, and how he won by a larger margin than in 2020. Then he either trashes the winner or runs on a 3rd party, splitting the conservative vote, and the GOP loses the general election. Again. And Again.

    Right now, he's responsible for all of it. He's poison, has been poison his entire life. He dirties or kills everything and everyone he touches. And today's GOP not only touched him, they got in bed with him. Now they have to lie in it. Face down. With him on top.

    Good enough to motivate you?
    Motivate me?
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 23 of 38
    JapheyJaphey Posts: 1,767member
    This is just BS performative nonsense designed to feed red meat to the masses who - along with too many in congress - don't seem to understand that suppression of free speech CAN ONLY BE PERFORMED BY THE GOVERNMENT.

    Boneheads - all of them.
    Absolutely. 100% political theater. One of the smaller companies may get sacrificed to appease the masses, but Apple, Google and the rest will do their part and participate in this farce. I just find it hilarious how freaked out everyone is getting. All will be fine with Apple. 
    edited February 2023 watto_cobra
  • Reply 24 of 38
    I guess they could do the Republican thing and ignore the subpoenas or attend and just say "5th"
    ronnilarynxwatto_cobra
  • Reply 25 of 38
    chasmchasm Posts: 3,273member
    Why don’t they ask him why his otherwise progressive company is so nineteenth century in it’s attitude toward labor unions. His recent memo to employees could have come from the desk of one of the robber barons who called out the armed goons against strikers in the 1800s. “Think Different” Apple. Make unions your partners like in Germany, not your enemy, like every other corporate knee- jerker. 
    Now THAT would be something the tech CEOs (generally, and in particular Musk) should be made to answer questions about.
    ronnilarynx
  • Reply 26 of 38
    Gym Jordan. if vomit was a person. oh wait, he is a vomit. 
    watto_cobraJP234
  • Reply 27 of 38
    JFC_PA said:
    “ Notably, the Committee didn't request information from Twitter CEO Elon Musk”

    How to say, not a serious hearing on the topic while not saying, “we’re just posing”. 
    They don’t need to subpoena him. He’s already released evidence of Twitter under previous ownership colluding with government officials to suppress certain views. Look up The Twitter Files from the past few months. And Twitter under his watch clearly isn’t going to collude with other Big Tech companies anymore. So why should Twitter be part of this investigation?
    ibillwatto_cobra
  • Reply 28 of 38
    hexclockhexclock Posts: 1,243member
    The classic fishing expedition. They know the premise for wanting to see the communications is fake. They're just hoping to find something embarrassing that they can leak.
    So all the dissenting opinions from doctors about the Covid response and lockdowns being suppressed didn’t happen? 
    ibillwatto_cobra
  • Reply 29 of 38
    hexclock said:
    The classic fishing expedition. They know the premise for wanting to see the communications is fake. They're just hoping to find something embarrassing that they can leak.
    So all the dissenting opinions from doctors about the Covid response and lockdowns being suppressed didn’t happen? 
    Jim Jordan is supposedly investigating collusion/coercion between the government and tech companies. Tech companies moderating their own platforms isn't what's being investigated although I'm sure Jordan/GOP are going to twist themselves into a pretzel to try and blur the lines in the media. Jordan doesn't currently possess any real information that would warrant this type of investigation. Musk/GOP lamely tried to create a reason with the 'Twitter Files' but the only government figure that appeared to be attempting to coerce/collude with tech companies to suppress information was Donald Trump.


    edited February 2023 ronnwatto_cobra
  • Reply 30 of 38
    maasj said: They don’t need to subpoena him. He’s already released evidence of Twitter under previous ownership colluding with government officials to suppress certain views. Look up The Twitter Files from the past few months. 
    The 'Twitter Files' were a big nothing burger. Twitter is a private company and can moderate/censor whatever it wants on its own platform. Notice how Musk himself believes he can make decisions on who is allowed to post on Twitter and who isn't despite the fact that he tried to insinuate there was something wrong with that when done by the previous management. 
    edited February 2023 ronnwatto_cobra
  • Reply 31 of 38
    maasj said:
    JFC_PA said:
    “ Notably, the Committee didn't request information from Twitter CEO Elon Musk”

    How to say, not a serious hearing on the topic while not saying, “we’re just posing”. 
    They don’t need to subpoena him. He’s already released evidence of Twitter under previous ownership colluding with government officials to suppress certain views. Look up The Twitter Files from the past few months. And Twitter under his watch clearly isn’t going to collude with other Big Tech companies anymore. So why should Twitter be part of this investigation?
    I looked up "The Twitter Files" - 
    Elon Musk tweeted that Twitter had acted "under orders from the government," though Taibbi reported that he found no evidence of government involvement in the laptop story, tweeting, "Although several sources recalled hearing about a 'general' warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, there's no evidence—that I've seen—of any government involvement in the laptop story."[5][31] His reporting seemed to undermine a key narrative promoted by Musk and Republicans that the FBI pressured social media companies to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop stories.[5][38] Musk further claimed that this content moderation violated the First Amendment. However, legal experts refuted the idea that content moderation by a private company violates the First Amendment, as it only restricts government actors.[39] David Loy, legal director for the First Amendment Coalition, said that Twitter is legally able to choose what speech is allowed on their site, noting that both the Biden campaign, which was not part of the government, and the Trump White House could request specific content moderation actions.[32]

    foregoneconclusionwatto_cobra
  • Reply 32 of 38
    AppleZuluAppleZulu Posts: 1,987member
    JP234 said:
    Japhey said:
    Come on! 
    Not one of you is going to blame Trump?  
    How disappointing. 
    OK, I'll jump in. Everything wrong with the GOP stems from Trump.

    They put themselves in this kill box. If they support him, and he wins the nomination, they lose the general election. Again. Just like 2022.
    They don't support him and he loses, he starts braying about the "rigged" primary, and how he won by a larger margin than in 2020. Then he either trashes the winner or runs on a 3rd party, splitting the conservative vote, and the GOP loses the general election. Again. And Again.

    Right now, he's responsible for all of it. He's poison, has been poison his entire life. He dirties or kills everything and everyone he touches. And today's GOP not only touched him, they got in bed with him. Now they have to lie in it. Face down. With him on top.

    Good enough to motivate you?
    That's not really true. Mr. Trump has indeed coopted the GOP for his own purposes and sent them tumbling fully into the land of alternative facts, but he's done so by saying the GOP's quiet things out loud. The fundamentals were already there within the party. The GOP's romance with V. Putin goes back at least to 2014, when GOP talking points negatively comparing Obama to Putin's "strong leadership" (in the form of bombing Syrians and creating a wave of refugees into western Europe) came to the fore. A GOP-led House held scads of kangaroo court hearings about Benghazi for purely political purposes while Trump was still just a media side-show. Stephen Colbert coined the word truthiness in 2005 to mock the GOP's loose relationship with reality, a full decade before Trump's announcement of his candidacy was met with derision within the GOP, prior to their complete reversal and full embrace. So the soil was fertile before Mr. Trump planted his personal crop of poison ivy.

    That said, he's the one who turned the use of social media as a means to spread false information into an art form. Because that practice generated churn which generated advertising revenue, those platforms were excruciatingly slow to respond and to hold Trump or any other political leaders to the platforms' own stated terms of service. Finally, a violent (and failed) insurrection served as a tipping point, Trump and Co were banned, and now the House GOP has their complaint that banning incitement is the same as banning conservative speech. One would hope that their un-ironic conflation of the two concepts will backfire in these hearings. 
    kurai_kagemuthuk_vanalingamJP234ilarynxronnwilliamlondonwatto_cobra
  • Reply 33 of 38
    maasj said:
    JFC_PA said:
    “ Notably, the Committee didn't request information from Twitter CEO Elon Musk”

    How to say, not a serious hearing on the topic while not saying, “we’re just posing”. 
    They don’t need to subpoena him. He’s already released evidence of Twitter under previous ownership colluding with government officials to suppress certain views. Look up The Twitter Files from the past few months. And Twitter under his watch clearly isn’t going to collude with other Big Tech companies anymore. So why should Twitter be part of this investigation?
    Because the information from Twit is cherrypicked by cherrypicked trolls, that’s why. The Twitter Farts prove nothing other than anything can be skewed when the complete context isn’t available. It's no different than individuals crying about election fraud (proven wrong). Or the individuals trying to compare Biden to the guy that stuffed toilets with government documents. Etc. It's all false equivalence and lies. I wager an independent investigation would find a fat lot of nothing.

    A subpeona would also potentially reveal Musk’s own suppression and witch-hunting activities (which, given his documented behavior, is absolutely happening).

    Also, for the last time... who gives two shits if they were supressing anything? These businesses are not public squares, nor public property, and are entitled to their own free speech rights given their structure as a legal “person”. Given that places like Twitter didn't sue, leak info, or publicly push back, one could surmise they didn't feel undue pressure from the government. (Which definitely has the power to censor a host of types of speech btw — so a government sponsored forum won’t help much).

    PS - Musk would love to collude or get his snowflake tantrum bully way, it’s the other companies that won’t let him. Not the other way around. 
    ronnwatto_cobra
  • Reply 34 of 38
    JP234 said:
    Japhey said:
    Come on! 
    Not one of you is going to blame Trump?  
    How disappointing. 
    OK, I'll jump in. Everything wrong with the GOP stems from Trump...
    Arguably false. Much of the policies promoted by 45 were long-standing policy proposals of the GOP going back decades. The difference being the ham-fisted approach and saying the quiet parts out loud. You can go back to the administration when the original polycarbonate iBooks were out (Bush Jr), or when the PowerBook Duos were out (Gingrich), or going back to when the Mac Plus and Mac 512Ke were out (Reagan/Zappa):


    You can even go back to before there was an Apple Computer, Inc. ("Democracy in Chains" - MacLean, "Twilight of Democracy" - Applebaum)

    IOW - 45 was a symptom, not a cause. 

    ronnwatto_cobra
  • Reply 35 of 38
    JFC_PAJFC_PA Posts: 932member
    maasj said:
    JFC_PA said:
    “ Notably, the Committee didn't request information from Twitter CEO Elon Musk”

    How to say, not a serious hearing on the topic while not saying, “we’re just posing”. 
    They don’t need to subpoena him. He’s already released evidence of Twitter under previous ownership colluding with government officials to suppress certain views. Look up The Twitter Files from the past few months. And Twitter under his watch clearly isn’t going to collude with other Big Tech companies anymore. So why should Twitter be part of this investigation?
    They kowtowed to Trump to block tweets he didn’t like that accurately named him. The former administration pressuring private business to censor speech that hurt its dear leaders feelings. Proving the descriptions accuracy along the way. 

    Trump's White House asked Twitter to remove Chrissy Teigen's expletive-filled tweet insulting the former president, ex-employee testifies”


    Under oath is different than selective PR leaks. 
    edited February 2023 ronnilarynxwatto_cobra
  • Reply 36 of 38
    JFC_PA said:
    maasj said:
    JFC_PA said:
    “ Notably, the Committee didn't request information from Twitter CEO Elon Musk”

    How to say, not a serious hearing on the topic while not saying, “we’re just posing”. 
    They don’t need to subpoena him. He’s already released evidence of Twitter under previous ownership colluding with government officials to suppress certain views. Look up The Twitter Files from the past few months. And Twitter under his watch clearly isn’t going to collude with other Big Tech companies anymore. So why should Twitter be part of this investigation?
    They kowtowed to Trump to block tweets he didn’t like that accurately named him. The former administration pressuring private business to censor speech that hurt its dear leaders feelings. Proving the descriptions accuracy along the way. 

    Trump's White House asked Twitter to remove Chrissy Teigen's expletive-filled tweet insulting the former president, ex-employee testifies”


    Under oath is different than selective PR leaks. 
    Also, more Teigen:

    >>> Trump administration officials and Twitter employees tell Rolling Stone that the White House’s Teigen tweet demand was hardly an isolated incident: The Trump administration and its allied Republicans in Congress routinely asked Twitter to take down posts they objected to — the exact behavior that they’re claiming makes President Biden, the Democrats, and Twitter complicit in an anti-free speech conspiracy to muzzle conservatives online.

    “It was strange to me when all of these investigations were announced because it was all about the exact same stuff that we had done [when Donald Trump was in office],” one former top aide to a senior Trump administration official tells Rolling Stone. “It was normal.”

    https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-trump-twitter-files-collusion-biden-censorship-1234675969/ 

    Didn't Musk "collude" with Big Tech™ Tim Cook to convince him not to remove Twitter from the Apple Store (even though Tim supposedly said it was never considered)?

    ronnJP234watto_cobra
  • Reply 37 of 38
    1348513485 Posts: 343member
    bluefire1 said:
    While they’re at it, subpoena AT&T/DirectTV executives to find out why
    Newsmax is no longer available to their subscribers.
    DirecTV hosts the channel with no carriage fee paid to Newsmax. This is DTV's common practice for smaller rated and newer shows. Newsmax wants $1 per DTV customer. DTV says no, because that is their policy, and also  because Newsmax offers an app that carries the news service for free. DTV is under financial pressure because of streaming, and says Newsmax is free to sign on with another hosting service.

    Conservatives are all about free market until they think it's not in their favor, then they want an investigation, dammit!...with Jim Jordan running point, the Man Who For Years Never Saw Anything at OSU and if You Did He Wants You to Recant.
    watto_cobraronn
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