Google senior engineer speaks out about political bias in the tech industry
“ I look at search and I look at Google News and I see what it’s doing and I see Google executives go to Congress and say that it’s not manipulated. It’s not political. And I’m just so sure that’s not true.”
https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/0...
07/26/2019 Update:
Google Senior Engineer Who Went Public Placed on Administrative Leave
https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/0...
07/26/2019 Update:
Google Senior Engineer Who Went Public Placed on Administrative Leave
Before the defenders of big-tech come on to tell us they can do what they want with their property,
1. Is it their property? Have shareholders voted to approve bias?
2. Executives testify to Congress, say one thing, do another, I understand that Michael Flynn got caught on a technical interpretation but big-tech bias is obvious, pervasive, and on-going.
Here is an interesting timeline I found while double-checking to make sure I didn't misremember:
https://www.livescience.com/20727-int...
An excerpt:
"Credit for the initial concept that developed into the World Wide Web is typically given to Leonard Kleinrock. In 1961, he wrote about ARPANET, the predecessor of the Internet, in a paper entitled "Information Flow in Large Communication Nets." Kleinrock, along with other innnovators such as J.C.R. Licklider, the first director of the Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO), provided the backbone for the ubiquitous stream of emails, media, Facebook postings and tweets that are now shared online every day. Here, then, is a brief history of the Internet:
The precursor to the Internet was jumpstarted in the early days of computing history, in 1969 with the U.S. Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). ARPA-funded researchers developed many of the protocols used for Internet communication today."
Some people think Mark Fucherberg invented Face book HaHaHaHa.
LifeLog was a project of the Information Processing Techniques Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). According to its bid solicitation pamphlet, it was to be "an ontology-based (sub)system that captures, stores, and makes accessible the flow of one person's experience in and interactions with the world in order to support a broad spectrum of associates/assistants and other system capabilities". The objective of the LifeLog concept was "to be able to trace the 'threads' of an individual's life in terms of events, states, and relationships", and it has the ability to "take in all of a subject's experience, from phone numbers dialed and e-mail messages viewed to every breath taken, step made and place gone".[1]
Contents
Goals and capabilities
Edit
LifeLog aimed to compile a massive electronic database of every activity and relationship a person engages in. This was to include credit card purchases, web sites visited, the content of telephone calls and e-mails sent and received, scans of faxes and postal mail sent and received, instant messages sent and received, books and magazines read, television and radio selections, physical location recorded via wearable GPS sensors, biomedical data captured through wearable sensors. The high level goal of this data logging was to identify "preferences, plans, goals, and other markers of intentionality".[2]
Another of DARPA’s goals for LifeLog had a predictive function. It sought to “find meaningful patterns in the timeline, to infer the user’s routines, habits, and relationships with other people, organizations, places, and objects, and to exploit these patterns to ease its task" [2] [3]
The DARPA program was canceled in January, 2004, after criticism from civil libertarians concerning the privacy implications of the system.[4]
Generically, the term lifelog or flog is used to describe a storage system that can automatically and persistently record and archive some informational dimension of an object's (object lifelog) or user's (user lifelog) life experience in a particular data category.
News reports in the media described LifeLog as the "diary to end all diaries—a multimedia, digital record of everywhere you go and everything you see, hear, read, say and touch".
Lifelong cancelled the same day Facebook incorporated. Funny that coincidence.
There are no coincidences.
The lifelog is a very interesting story! And yeah, I agree that there are no coincidences. All this time I thought Sukerburg was a college kid just trying a new, fun project. Hahah.
The increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories are not rational. Copying and pasting long tracts into multiple posts, with or without attribution, with the feeling that irrelevant John Birch Society style "connections" can't be a "coincidence" does not help.
Example: Clinton campaign , Brennan ,Strozk , Page , Glen Simpson ,Fusion GPS, Bruce And Nellie Ohr , Christopher Steele , Comey , Mueller ,Wiessman , Downer , Misfud , McCabe, Schiff
And others creating a false dossier and then making an accusation of Trump working as an agent for Putin.
It takes pretty concentrated effort to exclude it and vote with ones "wallet" (in this case advertising influence).
Facebook got some recent ass-whipping. Maybe that can happen to Google as well, but it will take legion, not just a village.
What Does Mark Zuckerberg Fear?
Q
!!mG7VJxZNCI
9 Mar 2019 - 3:12:57 PM
Nellie Ohr > C_A?
There are others within the FBI/DOJ linked to the C_A.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/...
What access does a House member have?
What access does a House Committee member have?
Think [Brennan] spy campaign > US SENATE
What happens when the C_A targets [spy insertion] the Executive, House, Senate, DOJ, FBI, State, etc branches of the UNITED STATES GOV?
How many so-called 'former' C_A agents ran for House elections in 2018?
What party?
[D]
What happens when the C_A targets [spy + tech insertion] of GOOG, FB [LifeLog], Twitter, etc etc?
https://www.foxnews.com/tech/mark-zuc...
What happens when people wake up to the fact that FB is a cover for LifeLog [DARPA]?
What happens when people discover all RT data [inputs + listening/camera/GPS meta] is being harvested and made accessible to Langley?
Charter of the NSA? DOMESTIC + FOREIGN?
Charter of the C_A? FOREIGN (NOT DOMESTIC (FORBID LAW))
Why is the C_A conducting an active umbrella collection campaign [stringer tangents to 9] against all US citizens through LifeLog [FB] absorb/tan targeting?
Bypass data encryption on phone/tablet etc?
Primary focus on elected officials?
Primary focus on elected officials in key sub committees?
Can activation occur of 'recording' local on device pre SCIF entry?
No logs.
No keys.
Ghost in-Ghost out.
People only engage security (+ escape vehicles) when they have something very serious to FEAR.
What is that FEAR for MZ?
Q
AND:
2988
DARPA = FACEBOOK
Q
!!mG7VJxZNCI
6 Mar 2019 - 8:38:12 PM
https://twitter.com/amyboo69/status/1...
Define 'Lifelog' [DARPA].
"an ontology-based (sub)system that captures, stores, and makes accessible the flow of one person's experience in and interactions with the world in order to support a broad spectrum of associates/assistants and other system capabilities". The objective of the LifeLog concept was "to be able to trace the 'threads' of an individual's life in terms of events, states, and relationships", and it has the ability to "take in all of a subject's experience, from phone numbers dialed and e-mail messages viewed to every breath taken, step made and place gone".
Define 'FB'.
The Facebook service can be accessed from devices with Internet connectivity, such as personal computers, tablets and smartphones. After registering, users can create a customized profile revealing information about themselves. Users can post text, photos and multimedia of their own devising and share it with other users as "friends". Users can use various embedded apps, and receive notifications of their friends' activities. Users may join common-interest groups.
Compare & Contrast.
DARPA senior employees > FB?
DARPA TERMINATES PROGRAM FEB 4, 2004.
FB FOUNDED FEB 4, 2004.
DARPA = FB
Q
Hard to ignore, unless you really, really are committed to it....(not meant at you, Thor) Facts Matter, dates matter.
What is up with this "government plot" stuff? A group of people seeking power is not a government plot. It is a regular occurrence.
I like assertions such as "This would've happened with or without government funding." Nice, unsupported, just for fun. Maybe, maybe not. However, totally irrelevant. It did not happen without government funding. We might all agree that we wish it was all private, but it was not.
"Google does not have the coercive power of government". Quite wrong. Sooo wrong. Google does not have the coercive power of the US government, one of hundreds. Google could buy Somalia's constitution tomorrow, and take it over. The coercive power of a government is based on its fiscal resources. Google has more than most governments, and could take over most states.
Google has massive power, fiscal and other. Google powers 73% of all searches. They control more information flow than the US Government, and any other government. This was (and is) given to Google by the people willingly, but it represents massive power nonetheless.
That some companies or people have enough money to criminally bribe government officials if they wanted to does not make them criminals or indistinguishable from government exercise of power.
Governments remain in physical power by the consent of the governed or by force, not "fiscal resources". Almost everything now requires "fiscal resources" ; that not does not obliterate the distinction between government and private action. Providing a popular search service, which is generally the best of them, is not physical control and does not mean Google wields more power than most governments.
Why is it a crime to pay government officials to rewrite their laws and give control to the payer? There is no such law in many countries. You call it illegal. It may be immoral, maybe. But it is not illegal everywhere.
Lastly the "heroin" comment. Heroin is a strong addictive drug. Alcohol is a weak addictive drug. Food is addictive as well, and we have massive numbers of overweight people. It takes a lot of initiative to control one's weight after letting it go. It takes an almost impossible amount to do the same with alcohol or heroin. To stop using Google requires a significant amount of determination and effort. Certainly it can be done. This is an analogy, and before you note that they are not a proper logical argument, go back to your broad brushing of private/public funding of the internet.
And that is my purpose for participating in this forum. To find other discussions are persuasive, not dogma, that people will actually hear.
Second, I never asserted the internet was a government plot.
My point was that not using Google required a concerted effort, not unlike avoiding the use of addictive drugs. (I know it is difficult, but I (not you) get to make my point).
However, back to individual choices. Why are you asserting individuals must be responsible for their own choices? We are talking about free people.
We were discussing Arpanet, not just Google. Arpanet funded the protocol development used for network communications, subsequently adopted by the internet, not search engines and web browsers, which did not exist then.
You said Arpanet "may not" have been a government plot. Others here claim it was. It was not.
Not using Google has nothing in common with an addict not continuing to use addictive drugs. All kinds of choices require effort. That does not make them like breaking a medical addiction.
We are talking about choices because that is what people do in contrast to anything like the requirements for getting off addictive drugs, by which you mischaracterized Google.
"Individuals must be responsible for their own choices, because it is the only way freedom can exist without forcing others to deal with the individuals choices"
How about that? If you don't like it, I welcome your wording.
"Individuals are responsible for their own choices"
Exactly!!!!!!
Therefore, there con not exist individual freedom, without individual responsibility.
So perfect! So clear,. So obvious. Who can argue, except one asserting people are so imperfect they cannot be responsible; therefore, they shouldn't have freedom.
Good luck with that.
"[A]sserting people are so imperfect they cannot be responsible; therefore they shouldn't have freedom" is exactly what has happened in centuries of bad philosophy, increasingly accepted, and leading to its progressively increasing imposition today.
But notice the direction of the logical dependence. It is the opposite of the conservatives' "freedom implies responsibility", by which they have typically meant some collectivist imposition imposing some duty as a supposed 'responsibility' (like military conscription). The "responsibility" they are talking about in that slogan is collectivist, not responsibility for one's own life. I use the example of the draft because I saw that argument over and over in the controversy over military conscription.
Taking responsibility for one’s own choices (freedom) is a completely separate point than forcing someone to act to provide others freedom. I never implied the later, but the former is a massive gap in today’s society, and the term “freedom” is used over and over. Connecting freedom to the outcomes of one choices is an obvious logical point that no one can argue, without taking the position that people need training wheels, which is the same as restricting freedom.
"Why individuals must be responsible for their own choices?"
Here we are, on the precipice of the mountain of freedom!
Please explain the logic of why individuals must be responsible for their own choices.
The persecution of Michael Flynn by the Mueller-Weissmann operation had not nothing to do with technology companies.
Leftist bias is everywhere, especially among the bright university-educated because that is what they were taught. That general philosophical trend in the culture must countered with better ideas. Populist conservatives demanding more government control over business is not a solution to anything.
Agreed, tho' there are exceptions, tho' not all assets used by these businesses are their property.
More important- you can walk down a public street carrying your legal gun, carving knife or fist but there are restrictions on what you can do with them.
Shareholders who don't like what management is doing can try to pass shareholder resolutions at stock holder meetings
Agreed. But corporation law is most Anglo-jurisdictions makes such resolutions non-binding.
The persecution of Michael Flynn
Quite related as discussed very well here (by ewv etc) not so much for obstruction of justice but for lying to congress members (whether an ambush or not).
They are not threatening people with knives and guns. Restricting people from assaulting others with knives and guns does not imply it is proper for government to control businesses, least of all in accordance with demands by populists. You can't get from 'murder is illegal' to therefore government should control private property. Outlawing murder is not based on a principle of denying property rights.
Flynn did not lie to Congress, he was maneuvered under threats into a plea deal "admitting" to lying to FBI officials who deliberately set him up. It had nothing to do with Zuckerberg's weaseling in politicized Congressional hearings. You don't have to like Zuckerberg to know that private companies should not be controlled by government under populist pressure. Likewise for the Google appearance -- he doesn't seem to know what his bias is, he thinks his news sources are just right and reliable.
They sell stolen property.
An entirely different matter from the prevailing political bias, which is everywhere, is the mass surveillance. There are still no laws defining and protecting personal information as private property to stop it. It would be interesting to see what would happen to their business if there were.
Google and others fought the new European GDPR privacy law and failed to stop it, and are lobbying to minimize the newer California law, but seem to be legally functioning despite that. But "privacy" laws are not being formulated in terms of personal property rights.
Is Australia doing anything along these lines? It has recently passed bad laws undermining security, which is the wrong direction.
climate change scam
climate change fraud
... For me, I get nothing back in the immediate search results.
Type in "climate change hoax" and I get "climate change hoax proof" and this link goes on to discredit the folks that are offering evidence (and real science) to show climate change to be a politically motivated religion.
In sundry other cases, I get lists of sites that continue to both support the politically peddled climate change narrative or act to discredit the scientists that are showing "climate change as advertised" to be a fraud.
Next, I went to Bing...
Type in "climate change"
and the first immediate hit that I get is "climate change hoax"
Click the link - the topmost article asks why some people think climate change is a hoax.
However, the second link takes us to http://www.globalclimatescam.com/
Google certainly has a heavy bias and is not to be trusted.
Additionally, if you got o view YouTube videos that advance criticism toward the State's Message on Climate Change, a boilerplate blurb is affixed in the video description area that promotes the State Agenda; almost as if to say the critics are crack-pots and the State wants to ensure that you know "the real story."
The Googlebots cannot engage in real debates as their cause is baseless. Instead, they fight with religious zealotry using silencing techniques. As "true believers" they do so with the approval of their own collective conscious. It is morally reprehensible.
Restricting that general search to Google News returned "About 38,400,000 results (0.16 seconds)" in multiple pages.
News on the narrower "project veritas clinton email" returned "About 11,600 results (0.22 seconds)".
An interesting result is a recent CATO article "Misleading Project Veritas Accusations of Google “Bias” Could Prompt Bad Law" https://www.cato.org/blog/misleading-...
Try this: choose a topic with political (or other) variation in views.
Make a list of sources that you think should be presented.
(say, BBC, Guardian, NYT, Washington Post, Washington Times, Breibert, RT, Le Monde, CS Monitor, Daily Telegraph ..)
Label each by say:
far right, racist, libertarian, far left, religious, progressivist, euro left, Stalinist, etc.
Put the question into the search engine.
For the top one hundred results list each by your categories. Give ranking points by position, eg 100 for first, one for the 99th.
The criticism is not as detailed as Mark Levin's analysis, but you can find that, too. Search for 'clinton email mark levin' and it appears right after the Media Matters attack on Levin at the top, which the Google algorithm apparently rates as more important. Levin is there at the top but you still have to search through Levin's website to find something on his analysis of Clinton email scandal in particular.
A bing search returns more explicit results on Levin's analysis, but it's also harder that way to find the leftist response to Levin, such as Media Matter's. The contrast illustrates the bias -- google isn't ranking details on Mark Levin's analysis as high as Media Matters -- but it isn't true that Google does not return anything about 'clinton email'.
Most top news search returns are higher ranked with leftist media because the establishment media is leftist. It is what most people want to see because the whole culture is leftist, which in turn is why Google is leftist. They don't know what their own "bias" is. "Center and center-left" now means much farther to the left, but they think it's just the way things are, not a "bias". Almost no one is challenging the establishment intellectuals who are causing this. Screaming about Google "bias" deliberately "rigging" search engines is not helping.
They don't know the alternate -- other than conservative self-parodies mixed with dogma, hysterical yelling (like Levin's undermining his own analysis), and a conspiracy mentality, understandably not taken seriously. Conservatives can be their own worst enemy, drowning out more serious analysis against the left and the nature of the cultural trends.
But despite the bias, ironically you can find the recent devastating Robert Epstein Senate testimony technical analysis against Google (which Coppola, the engineer interviewed by Veritas, briefly referred to but did not discuss).
Search for 'Robert Epstein Congressional testimony' and returned at the top of the results you see links for the video of the testimony and links to download his written comments: "Why Google Poses a Serious Threat to Democracy and How to End That Threat", Testimony by Robert Epstein https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/...
But you do have to know what to search for to find it. Searching on 'google bias' turns up criticism of google, including law suits, but not the details you may want.
Like you, I stopped using Google about a year ago after I got fed up with their "methodology, and their ultraliberal bias at their workforce.
I have a vert talented colleague who was looking for a new position and contacted every high tech company in Silicone Valley except Google. I asked him for his reason and his reply was: "Nah, I am a middle aged white guy. They'd never hire me."
Then the extent of Google's harmful ways really hit me.
It must be a stifling environment to work there for anyone who has a sane thinking head on his/her shoulder.
I just tried to reprogram my older Chromecast devices to a new network. The program now tells me that it detected version 8, and I need version 7 or 4. Try to find a version 7 or 4 on the internet. Somehow they managed to purge the internet of the older program because they decided not to support Chromecast for PC anymore. I don't own an Android device that might work, not even a cellphone. These compatibility issues are becoming intentional.
As FFA said, he is probably fully aware of his fate at Google.
But one has to wonder: how long Google will get away with its lies and misleading rhetoric?
Probably for a long time since it decked its rank and file with like minded leftists and they'll back the bias to no end.
But even then, long practice of inbreeding has wiped many species off the face of this Earth. It'll apply to liberals as well.
“Don’t do evil.”
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
What matter where, if I still be the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at last
We shall be free; the almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in hell:
Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.”
- Lucifer in Paradise Lost
Was Lucifer the first postmodernist?
Tom Brokaw once said that he didn't believe he wasn't right down the middle, because nobody he new or hung around with thought any differently than he did. So he must be mainstream.
They lie. That is the norm.
Not lying these days is considered simple mindedness.
A problem with these Congressional hearings is that Congress generally does not know what to ask or how to follow up. They're looking for political sensationalism.
You could break it up into its component services (blogger, youtube, gmail) but you couldn't stop them continuing to cooperate without ruining them. And so forth.
This doesn't seem to me to be a problem, until a service that is a monopoly or near-monopoly starts deplatforming people. For example, Chase Bank has begun purging conservatives from its customer base, as have PayPal, Patreon, and even MasterCard. If this is allowed to continue then e-commerce becomes a privilege for lefties only. And some domain name registrars refuse to serve free speech sites such as Gab; if they all did then we'd be cut off from the Internet (and that is a real danger now that ICANN is part of ITU, which is part of the UN).
A worse monopoly problem is if the government starts regulating social media sites, as Facebook and Google are already lobbying for. If running a site like this were to require a license, guess who would be issuing the licenses? Not you or me.
In response, the titans of this industry are starting to act like politicians. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has embarked on a seemingly endless whistlestop-style tour across the country, possibly because he plans to run for president and possibly because his company realizes that PR work is crucial to bolster the company’s image and keep regulators at bay. Mark Pincus and Reid Hoffman have launched a platform to Reddit-ify the Democratic Party and remake it in their own image. The vision these tech gurus have outlined is one that retains most of the Democratic Party’s social liberalism, while safeguarding the pro-business laissez-faire philosophy that has allowed Silicon Valley to flourish and that has come under criticism from the left.
In some ways the higher echelons of Google seemed more distant and obscure to me than the halls of Washington. We had been locking horns with senior US officials for years by that point. The mystique had worn off. But the power centers growing up in Silicon Valley were still opaque and I was suddenly conscious of an opportunity to understand and influence what was becoming the most influential company on earth. Schmidt had taken over as CEO of Google in 2001 and built it into an empire.1
I was intrigued that the mountain would come to Muhammad. But it was not until well after Schmidt and his companions had been and gone that I came to understand who had really visited me.
*
The stated reason for the visit was a book. Schmidt was penning a treatise with Jared Cohen, the director of Google Ideas, an outfit that describes itself as Google’s in-house “think/do tank.” I knew little else about Cohen at the time. In fact, Cohen had moved to Google from the US State Department in 2010. He had been a fast-talking “Generation Y” ideas man at State under two US administrations, a courtier from the world of policy think tanks and institutes, poached in his early twenties. He became a senior advisor for Secretaries of State Rice and Clinton. At State, on the Policy Planning Staff, Cohen was soon christened “Condi’s party-starter,” channeling buzzwords from Silicon Valley into US policy circles and producing delightful rhetorical concoctions such as “Public Diplomacy 2.0.”2 On his Council on Foreign Relations adjunct staff page he listed his expertise as “terrorism; radicalization; impact of connection technologies on 21st century statecraft; Iran.”
It was Cohen who, while he was still at the Department of State, was said to have emailed Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to delay scheduled maintenance in order to assist the aborted 2009 uprising in Iran.4 His documented love affair with Google began the same year, when he befriended Eric Schmidt as they together surveyed the post-occupation wreckage of Baghdad. Just months later, Schmidt re-created Cohen’s natural habitat within Google itself by engineering a “think/do tank” based in New York and appointing Cohen as its head. Google Ideas was born.
Later that year the two co-wrote a policy piece for the Council on Foreign Relations’ journal Foreign Affairs, praising the reformative potential of Silicon Valley technologies as an instrument of US foreign policy.5 Describing what they called “coalitions of the connected,”6 Schmidt and Cohen claimed that
Democratic states that have built coalitions of their militaries have the capacity to do the same with their connection technologies. . . . They offer a new way to exercise the duty to protect citizens around the world [emphasis added].7
In the same piece they argued that “this technology is overwhelmingly provided by the private sector.” Shortly afterwards, Tunisia. then Egypt, and then the rest of the Middle East, erupted in revolution. The echoes of these events on online social media became a spectacle for Western internet users. The professional commentariat, keen to rationalize uprisings against US-backed dictatorships, branded them "Twitter revolutions." Suddenly everyone wanted to be at the intersection point between US global power and social media, and Schmidt and Cohen had already staked out the territory. With the working title “The Empire of the Mind,” they began expanding their article to book length, and sought audiences with the big names of global tech and global power as part of their research.
From this Wikileaks link https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-w...
We might disagree with it but we have to defend their right to it just the same.
There's nothing to whistle-blow.
Coppola had some interesting insights, but nothing dramatic or new against Google. He said himself (in the video but not the synopsis) that he has no "smoking gun" and described the bias in Google in terms of personal biases that ordinarily have no impact on the company's technology, and then only in the form of choices -- made sometimes with political bias without realizing it -- of what is regarded as a reliable news source. We already know that the high tech industry is politically biased to the left everywhere, which he confirmed from his own observations.
He did not confirm the claims of deliberate "anti-conservative" filters in search results and said that his managers honestly do not realize the bias in their own selected sources, insisting that calling them liars in the response to Congress is too strong. Coppola did say that he could not go into more detail revealing proprietary aspects of the algorithms. The political weighting of search results is more subtle than is being acknowledged in the controversy.
He didn't say anything about the mass surveillance problem violating privacy, which is an area he does not work in. He could only report that in his experience engineers are very careful about handling personal data, but had nothing to say about the policies of why they have it at all and the inevitable consequences of that.
My impression from the edited video interview is that Project Veritas is hyping it beyond what it is. Coppola seems like a sensible engineer with some legitimate concerns, with a more objective perspective than what we usually get. The interviewer seemed almost disappointed as he tried to make the most of it. It would be interesting hear what else Coppola said that was edited out.
It's especially rich coming from that organization which has previously been caught trying to stage fake accusers of Roy Moore in order to create false narratives.
No one should be taking these people and their "expose" videos seriously.
They simply know nothing about politics and want private companies regulated. This makes them clueless leftists and that's all I'm pointing out to them.
You're giving them way too much credit by engaging in this level of discourse, not that I don't love reading it.
Coppola, who gets credit as an honest man with some good observations avoiding the hype, is an engineer, not one of their "investigators".
They do know about politics, and are playing the game of imagery and emotion. They don't have a rational political philosophy. They are notorious for hysterical attacks on the right of abortion and O'Keefe says he is going after Google to stop "anti-Christian bias".
I don't remember their being caught staging fake accusers of Roy "Commandments" Moore. It would be hard to accuse Moore of something worse than what he is.
Yea I know :)
"Coppola, who gets credit as an honest man with some good observations avoiding the hype, is an engineer, not one of their "investigators"."
True, but he should know what's going on and refuse to take part in it.
"They do know about politics, and are playing the game of imagery and emotion. They don't have a rational political philosophy."
That's what I mean when I say they don't know anything about politics. Without this knowledge all they have is appeals to emotions, media games, scandals, etc, etc.
That's why I refer to conservatives as the religious and politically illiterate arm of the left wing.
"I don't remember their being caught staging fake accusers of Roy "Commandments" Moore."
https://mashable.com/2017/11/27/proje...
Basically they tried to discredit the honest accusers of Moore by putting forward fake accusers.
Here is another one on O'Keefe's antics and apparent incompetence and sloppiness even in his own game https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...
This lengthy article seems to expose some documented facts about him, but is a leftist hit piece itself trying to create an image and should not be taken entirely at face value. You never know what they have left out or spun into misrepresentation. In particular it tries to whitewash the lefts' own worse political antics (including whitewashing Media Matters), but shows how systematically nasty politics has become.
But don't equate all conservative politics with O'Keefe "investigations" manufacturing and hyping scandals. There are some very good, honest, pro-individualists out there doing excellent work on specific issues in valuable alliances who should not be dismissed as the "religious and politically illiterate arm of the left wing".
Do you have links I could look at?
People who do that and who are effective are not running around evangelizing religion or subjective feelings with conspiracy theories or promoting more government intervention. It's the opposite of what you see on much of this forum.
A very different realm than grass roots action, but still focused on very specific current issues, is the realm of court challenges in 'public interest law'. Good Judicial decisions, such as Supreme Court decisions, that you occasionally see in the news don't happen by themselves with some judges happening to make the right decision.
The cases are brought by knowledgeable, very good attorneys who specialize in some aspect of public policy such as private property rights. They are long, expensive, arduous processes. They file briefs and argue cases selected from abuses with a good chance of being stopped, publicize the cases, and remain in contact with non-lawyers fighting the abuses in different ways in order to maintain an up to date 'knowledge base'.
The biggest and most successful public interest law firm has been Pacific Legal Foundation, whose cases have been discussed on this forum several times, with most here not realizing what made the court victories and the reporting on them possible.
There are other, smaller such legal organizations, such as the "libertarian" Institute for Justice, which led the battle against the infamous Kelo takings case. They lost the case at the Supreme Court but publicized the abuse so effectively that it created an enormous nation-wide backlash resulting in at least some legislative reforms and more of a reluctance by government officials to repeat the abuse.
It's good to know that stuff like this is happening.
Meanwhile a handful of gurus like Prager and Shapiro become better known by a minority of zealous followers, as they become personally wealthy while undermining meaningful opposition.
On this supposedly Ayn Rand forum, their followers are still repetitively promoting fundamentally anti-individualism, allegedly in the name of defending capitalism. The latest 'capitalism is altruism' nonsense is repeated again here https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...