#99% of everything on social media is fake and fabricated

[skoulsons]

I think one of my least favorite things on social media is when a woman films her boyfriend/husband getting an emotional gift and she has the audacity to say, in laughter, “why are you crying”

[awesomedaniloa]

Elting had created "irreparable"

asus bring the energy back to pcs and hardware For a really useful breakdown of social media usage by demographics follow this link.. Now focused on some of the most energetic processes in the universe, for short periods of time a supernova can generate enough visible light to outshine entire galaxies made up of billions of stars.USA TODAYWhy a NY businessman (and his mom) are still attacking Delaware and Joe BidenChancery Court Chancellor Andre Bouchard ruled that infighting between the company founders and ex fiances Phil Shawe and Liz Elting had created "irreparable" harm to TransPerfect employees and clients. And some sort of controversy has dogged Ronaldo practically every time that he's won.. But at the same cheap yeezy shoes time, this inexpensive food is coming to us at a high cost. Cut out the middleman and offer customers lower prices than that of retailers. 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The cord, in other words, is counterfeit almost certainly meaning inferior materials and/or design using the CSA sticker to masquerade as the real thing.That would make it one of countless counterfeit products from car parts to sneakers to pharmaceuticals plaguing the marketplace."It's a big issue and it's happening rapidly in this country," says Wayne Edwards, chair of the Canadian Anti Counterfeiting Network (CACN) and vice president of Electrical Safety with the Electro Federation fake yeezys for kidsCanada, a national association of electrical, electronics and telecommunications companies.Counterfeit goods, says Edwards, are part of a $500 billion business worldwide. The store will celebrate its opening with a very fashionable fete two nights earlier, on Wednesday, Aug. Adidas shares, which soared to an all time high last week when it released strong headline quarterly figures and raised its 2016 outlook, were up 0.9 percent at 0724 GMT, compared with a slightly weaker German blue chip index. But this ignores the fans on the margins, the ones who turn the NFL from the most popular sport in America to the most popular thing in America. Alongside the free broadband offer for its landline subscribers, BSNL on Friday announced "free voice calling" within India for its existing landline, broadband, and mobile subscribers. What if you plugged, say, a slow cooker into it and went for a walk? "Maybe it would burn your house down. They fought often, and bitterly, sometimes ending in Bodo getting kicked out of the house for short stints. His mortgage payment, including taxes and insurance, ends up costing him $1,600 per month. I've seen people be required to tear down half, or all, of their house because of permitting issues. Like, what about a 32 ounce bottle of human scent killer? You know people will be food, right? Just go start the countdown, you amateur.Napoleon Bonaparte allegedly wrote his mistress to arrange a love tryst, saying, "I'm coming home please don't wash." The magic word behind lust is pheromones, those elusive, odorless chemicals given off in response to sexual stimulation or even romantic fantasy. Body scanners and software are being be used to make more precise standard measurements that are then assembled in a largely automated process.. "The nice thing, in this neighborhood, is that in the 15 years that we've opened this center, there has been a 55% decrease in crime in the Amani neighborhood," said Schneider. As well as selling clothing, the company also owns hair salons and music labels which all help to compliment the brand. IKEA and The Socializers have esentially created their own version of the BI software, with emphasis on E Commerce and Market Intelligence, it would be interesting to see developments in mobile technology data extraction, Cheap Fake Yeezys as the industry matures.. Her superb support of the management team and temporary teaching staff during the incredibly busy Business Management English Presessional programme last summer obtained considerable praise. But, actually that not correct the ISP can only see the domain part the rest (everything after that first slash) is actually encrypted and the ISP cannot see it (see picture).. Though the app is available for all models, the Nike watch also has a colorful wristband sporting holes to help sweat dry. After one of Sam's mega size sandwiches ($11.99 for pastrami or corned beef, $.99 more for lean; $12.99 for brisket), diners could use the walk.Carb cravers, head to Little Havana.

[metalshea]

The New American Nihilism

In the wee hours of the morning on 11/9/16, I joined the entire world as I sat in shock staring at my TV: Donald Trump had just won the election for President of the United States. For someone that usually has something to say about everything, I was completely dumbfounded. I couldn’t rationalize what I saw on the TV with my worldview. I had seen the signs of disillusionment with the government. I had witnessed as people began utilizing moral licensing–the phenomenon where individuals back the inclusion of an outsider only to use it to justify behavior and ideas 180 degrees different from their support of that outsider (to put it simply, electing Barack Obama and then claiming racism is dead because we elected a black president). I KNEW that was all there. But still, the moment was surreal.

It took me hours to fall asleep afterwards because my brain simply would not shut off. I wasn’t angry as many Americans were. I felt more detached and intellectually I could not connect the pieces. In the days following the election, I tried to keep my social media posts more middle of the road by focusing instead on the disruption of Trump’s election rather than directly attacking the man. I avoided reading apocalyptic liberal news sources that predicted that destruction of the fabric of American culture; and I simply refused to read “Conservative” sources that tried to rub liberals nose in it.

I have never been one to accept the root causes of action as promulgated by the press. The news media seems to oversimplify matters or sensationalize them. I have spent enough time working alongside law enforcement, engaging with movement intellectuals, and have had enough experience in the world to know that the news media—both right and left—prefers to attach a narrative to an event to make it more digestible for consumers; narratives that often are incomplete or lack substantive analysis, even if they are more or less true.

The position of the mass media on the rise of Donald Trump has once again been caught in the trap of trying to provide such a narrative… and they are failing at being able to really construct a clear reason for his win. They have presented the notion that Trump’s election was a direct reaction to the Obama administration. That it arose out of a new wave of racism, sexism, and xenophobia among white voters. That Obama’s expansion of executive power allowed for the unchecked implementation of the liberal agenda. That Hillary Clinton was unjustly targeted and victimized because of her sex by a resurrected chauvinism long held at bay by the societal pressures of political correctness.

And all this is true. But, there’s always to me been a feeling that somehow all of this is too disjointed, or feels more like an excuse for the loss of the election than a reason for why Donald Trump won. Quite simply: for all the talk of racism, sexism, xenophobia, white disillusionment, and the rise of “fake news” there’s been little talk in the media about why these things seem to be happening all at once and why the world seems to be devolving into a period of political nihilism.

…maybe it wouldn’t sell? And that’s kind of the point.

Back in 2009, if you had asked me if the Tea Party movement in the United States was inexorably tied to white discomfort surrounding a black president, I would have answered: “Yes, but…”. While the Tea Party movement itself was certainly triggered by the election of Barack Obama in 2008, it was the manifestation of a whole host of insecurities that had been brewing for some time and would have eventually come to fruition even if John McCain or Mitt Romney had won their respective elections. A similar thing can be said about the Occupy Movement on the Left. Instead, we could probably trace back the fundamental anxieties at the root of both movements to Ronald Reagan in the 1980’s with the birth of neoliberal capitalism as an economic policy of the United States.

n full disclosure, neoliberalism is something that I’m still wrapping my head around, and it seems to be poorly defined as compared to other economic models. But the crux of the ideology seems to be that market solutions and personal freedoms are the cure to fixing society’s ills and providing economic growth. As a result, everything becomes marketable in neoliberal capitalism. However, by relying on the market to address societal issues, neoliberalism ends up relying on “market cooptation” of issues to inform our ideas of correct and ethical behavior. In other words, if an action or idea can become marketable for mass consumption, it is inherently good. Ideas that are unable to be coopted sit outside of market culture and are inherently dangerous.

Neolibralism exists beyond a simple right/left divide and instead permeates all of American society regardless of a person’s individual politics. On the left is the “Whole Foods” culture, whereby a place exists that sells the ideas of promoting local business, charity, naturopathy, and food sourcing transparency, all while arguably doing very little to accomplish any of projects. Instead we as Whole Foods shoppers are left with the impression that we have somehow contributed to a larger societal project, but in reality we are only accomplishing those goals within the carefully marketed and structured confines of a nationally-run business empire. The TV show South Park did a particularly effective job of attacking this notion in their 19th season (for a breakdown of what the show’s creators did, see Wisecrack’s excellent mini-doc, “The Philosophy of South Park” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG7y8J0DXhU). Another way to look at how neoliberal cooptation works is to go online to buy your “We Are the 99%!” or “Don’t Tread on Me!” T-shirts. Congratulations, your political statement has filled the coffers of a savvy businessperson.

When combined with the rise of globalism and free trade in the 1990’s, neoliberal capitalism really dug its claws into Western society, and particularly the United States which has always abhorred the imposition of government in society. The result was an environment where business gained freedom of movement and capital, and where the individual worker subsequently became commoditized. In my line of work, we frequently refer to the need to invest in and retain workers through benefits and corporate culture, but this is far from the norm (and I am truly and eternally grateful for that!). Many businesses, especially large manufacturing, view human capital as an expensive commodity that affects the bottom line. As people in the United States grew more expensive through a combination of market forces, government regulation, and unionization, many large companies instead either moved their manufacturing off shore or developed task automation, leaving a number of Americans out of work. A similar problem occurred in Europe through the creation of the single market, the Eurozone, and the Schengen plan: companies located in richer parts of Western Europe were able to relocate operations to cheaper locations in Eastern Europe or instead hire migrant workers willing to be paid less than local ones.

Back in the United States, the situation was complicated by divestment in public education and the rise of business-to-business sales (as opposed to direct-to-consumer sales). As companies became less invested in selling directly to individual consumers, there was less impetus to pay those workers higher wages since those workers were not the ones buying the company’s products. The famous story of Henry Ford increasing worker’s wages so they could all buy Model T’s is no longer relevant since many of the companies that sell directly to American consumers have relocated their manufacturing to outside of the United States.

The result of all this has been a perfect storm: you have a populace with less access to education and with stagnant or nonexistent wages, while the stock market had reached its highest levels of investment in history. Wealth inequality is rampant and workers who formerly had good paying, meaningful jobs with well-funded pensions and retirement have been hung out to dry; reliant on a social safety net that they see as unethical and unable to provide them the dignity of work.

But there’s more… Flash forward to the 2016 Democratic Primary and the DNC leaks:

Bernie Sanders is in the end stages of a contentious primary bout with Hillary Clinton and it appears all but done save for Hillary’s coronation at the Democratic Convention. Suddenly the news breaks: The Democratic National Committee, which was supposedly non-biased, had actively worked against Bernie’s nomination and potentially engaged in political maneuvering—that some would call fraudulent—in attempt to undermine his ability to become the Democratic nominee. The entire primary process was outed as a shameful, undemocratic exercise that seemed to solely exist to legitimize the party pick rather than reflect the will of the people.

Several months later, Hillary Clinton would lose the general election despite winning the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes. No other candidate in history has lost the general election while commanding such a large percentage of the popular vote. Democrats were stunned as they were suddenly hit with the realization, once again, that they had little to no effect whatsoever over the political process.

Shortly after the general election, in December 2016, the State of North Carolina is ranked as one of the most undemocratic governments on the planet (http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article122593759.html), further underscoring for many the dire state of American Democracy.

While Democrats and Democracy watchdogs were stunned by political disillusionment, many Trump supporters responded by saying: “we’ve been disillusioned for years. Welcome to our hell”. Many on the right pointed to the complex economic situation wrought by globalism and neoliberalism that had devastated communities in the Rust Belt and across rural America. Despite their economic difficulties, the people hit hardest by the economic shift born in 1980’s had seen little in the way of support come from Washington. To them, the feelings of liberals in the wake of the 2016 general election were schadenfreude as they got to witness the left come to terms with its own political disenfranchisement.

Welcome, dear reader, to the age of political nihilism, where the people have realized their inability to affect real change in their governments.

There’s more to the story though. Specifically: the media and the rise of the society of spectacle.

The mass media in the United States has forever been a capitalist project. Not that this is inherently a good or a bad thing: the media remains a separate institution from the government of the United States and is granted Constitutionally-provided independence. This is a right afforded to the American people that we often take for granted. However, the media in the US is dependent on streams of outside revenue, mostly from advertisers and paid subscriptions, to remain solvent. In the digital age, media is becoming more and more dependent on ad dollars as more and more people shun paid subscriptions and instead seek out “free” cable news or internet news. This desire for readership has always pushed the media towards investing their resources in stories that will gain people’s attention. Without the reader’s or viewer’s attention, media companies failed because they were unable to attract ad dollars. However, this model has occasionally served the corporate interest more than the public interests; sometimes with disastrous results. In the Golden Age of Journalism at the turn of the 20th Century, media outlets were able to steer public policy in such a way as to significantly contribute to the outbreak of the Spanish-American War. Newspapers reporting on Spanish atrocities committed against the Cubans became the de jour stories of the day led to calls for military intervention by an outraged public. While the Spanish-American War was very successful, it also resulted the American colonization of Philippines: a bloody conflict that in many ways was America’s first “Vietnam”. The news media played similar back in 2003, just prior to the start of the Iraq War. Media outlets spent huge amounts of time highlighting the inhuman actions of Saddam Hussein, helping to prepare the way for war and again precipitating a military quagmire.

In the late 20th Century, the media landscape in the United States began to change dramatically in two really clear ways: (1) The rise of 24 hour cable news networks encouraged editorialism to permeate across all forms of media and (2) the desire to market to certain audiences led to a greater balkanization of the public discourse. These might require some unpacking…

The first part is a bit more cut and dry and was summed up nicely by Jon Stewart who once said, and I’m paraphrasing, that CNN and other 24 hour cable news networks didn’t lead to more analysis, they instead focus on whomever is the loudest. I remember reading a book some time ago written by a former correspondent who had worked, I believe, for NBC (or one of the major news networks). He lamented the shift away from foreign affairs in current reporting to an over-reporting of domestic affairs. I think he was half right. Instead of focusing on the multitudinous world issues that affect us and spending the time analyzing them in depth, national news outlets have instead opted for the coverage of national partisanship in order to drive viewership. Why? Its more entertaining. Talking heads such as Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Megyn Kelly, Chris Matthews, Anderson Cooper, Joe Scarborough, and Rachel Maddow provide little in the way of true news analysis. But they are all charismatic, erudite, articulate, and entertaining. They keep you glued to the TV as they launch diatribes, some better informed than others, and resultantly increase partisanship. All while the newscreep at the bottom of the screen seemingly keeps the viewer informed of major events occurring elsewhere in the world. This is shameful and dishonest, and it has failed to effectively inform the American people of substantive facts surrounding major stories. Instead, it has allowed for political commentators to masquerade as journalists and inform public opinion in a way that is both cynical and dismissive of the other side. In short, it led to point #2: the rise of the echo chamber and the division of public discourse.

We may or may not actually be more politically divided than at any time since the American Civil War; but even if we aren’t, it certainly feels like we are. As news media outlets have stepped into editorialism and away from analysis they have helped shaped the discourse of the public at large. I remember turning on Fox and Friends one morning to see a discussion about a terrorist suicide bombing (where it was escapes me but it was somewhere in the Middle East). One of the show’s hosts at the end of the segment then made a snide remark about Islam, saying something to the effect of “some religion of peace, huh?”. That remark is a shameful one for a news outlet to make. Not only because it is disrespectful, cynical, and clearly Islamophobic, but because it injects opinion in a way that prevents the audience from developing their own informed opinion. Instead, what lasts in our mind is not the story itself or how it is relevant to the geopolitical situation of the Middle East, but the scoffing remark at the very end of the segment. Forget that the comment is a gross oversimplification of a complicated and tragic political situation; all Muslims are terrorists.

As local media dies its slow death from decreased readership, we’ve become more reliant on national media… and the national media continues to compete for our attention. I’m reminded of the words of the President of CBS regarding Donald Trump’s antics in the Republican Primary: “He’s bad for America but great for CBS”. People paid attention to Trump because he was entertaining. I admittedly watched the presidential debates with the hope of seeing a train wreck. I kind of lied to myself saying that I was hoping to be a more informed voter, but really it was secondary to my desire to see a Trumpster Fire. The media outlets for their part cultivated my desire for drama. They used imagery similar to a UFC fight or NFL promo to advertise the debates, playing off our need to see conflict; to be entertained (https://youtu.be/YlptgqP_PEA).

Place this media editorialism and the need for entertainment into the context of neoliberal capitalism, political disenfranchisement, and globalism, and a very odd thing starts to happen. A form of tribalism–fueled in part by the complex logarithms that social media sites like Facebook use determine an individual’s newsfeed–has formed in reaction to our political nihilism. The desire for humans to find like-minded individuals with which to associate has allowed for the proliferation of alternative news sites, including the now infamous tabloid journalism of “fake news” outlets as well as the seemingly inexplicable disregard of facts. A recent report on NPR stated that fact-checking articles received little attention from their intended audience and were generally viewed as buzzkills. In other words, the sense of belonging to the tribe was more important than the actual veracity of the information being presented by tribal members.

Ouch.

While the right seems to be more affected by this than the left, there are certainly more than a few left leaning outlets the engage in the same sensationalism. My only thought for why the left is so comparatively unaffected is that the message on the right has been more singular and transmitted by fewer outlets. I would guess that having only Fox News as a major national news outlet allows for a more targeted message to get pushed through to the public, and simultaneously allows for smaller outlets to piggy back off that message and go off into the weeds. The left, with its many more numerous major outlets, seems better equipped to present thought diversity in a way that stays mainstream, if not more diluted. Weep for the right, they deserve more–and better–than Fox News. In writing all this, I don’t believe that I’ve even begun to scratch the surface of how we got to where we are: Donald Trump’s America. The vitriol, the hate, the hyperbole, the distrust—in short the nihilism of our political situation—is all complex and multifactorial. While there is certainly a degree of racism, sexism, xenophobia, and moral licensing at work, there is so much more to what is happening nationally and internationally. Complex social anxieties, economic and political disenfranchisement, the failure of the mass media, and social media-fueled echo chambers have all contributed to the rise of Trumpism. There’s no simple solution to get us back to civilized discourse, in fact, if there are lessons to be learned from 2016, we should probably try to avoid using nostalgia as a guiding principle. But awareness of the moving parts can breed at least some level of understanding.

Hopefully.

[topicprinter]

​I am so tired of people trying to scam, or sell some bullshit program on this subreddit, I am going to make a post on the basics of social media marketing. I will put solid content, not the fluff piece of shit most people recommend to read here. Yes looking at you seth godin.The post will be in broken english, as It is not my native language. Content: 1-The essentials.2-Why most people are doing it all wrong.3-What no one speak of: Industry best practices.4-Why most people can't sell shit. ​​1- The essentials:Well, I am going to focus on the essentials first. The basic stuff. The building blocks of any social media marketing strategy. WHY? Because it is the most important, if you fail here, everything else is going to fail. We are going to analyze the substrate of Instagram's users behavior, but it really can be applied to any other social network. First of all there is one principle you have to understand. People will follow you on social media only and only if they can get some value from that. They have to benefit from it. People won't follow insta accounts to see fucking ads. I have seen a good number of accounts that are basically ads. Justin won't follow you, or be interested in your business if you only upload pictures of the shit you are selling. You need to bring value to the table (I mean it is instagram so the bar is pretty dam low). I am bringing value with this posts (pls hire me I need to eat. - It is a joke don't delete the post-).​​Second Principle: You have to interact with people. You need to reach out. The no-scalable-shit is what matters in the beginning, YOU ALL WANNABE ENTREPRENEURS are doing it all fucking wrong if you are not doing this. Most people want to put 300 USD in ADs make 500 USD as a profit, scale the shit out of that and be rich by the end of the year. Well, not gonna happen, at least with low entry markets.​You need to talk to people, follow them, make no spammy comments, send DMs complimenting them. Those are 300-400 possible customers a day, every day, that's 10k a month, and 120k possible customers a year. YES IF YOU ARE COCA COLA you can skip this part, but if you are just starting this is the cheapest advertising you will ever get. ​Third principle: Your business will need time. I am tired of seeing bullshit posts trying to sell crappy courses to people. "I am a 18 years old, partially blind, from west Angola and I made 2 millions usd in 3 weeks powerwashing churches on the weekend. Buy my course xdxd". Real businesses take time, and effort, and overcoming all the obstacles  that will come in the way. Yes I also made a good amount of money with the spinners craze 2 years a go, guess how many spinners I am selling today? ​2-Why most people are doing it all wrong.Content is king is what most people say. Wrong. With the new algorithm of instagramwhat matter is quality. If you upload shitty photos/videos/stories they get buried pretty damn fast. Instagram looks at the amount of people who just saw your post and how many engaged. Shitty post? It gets buried and nobody is gonna ever see it again.Shitty post? They stop showing it to people. What's worse is that if you keep posting shitty content they start showing your content less and less.It is preferable to post 4 times a month, super quality post than 15 shitty posts. That's why it is also a Super bad idea to buy fake followers. Unless you have a really good reason, don't do it. If you do, also buy fake engagement.  It is way better to have 1200 followers and an average of 200 likes per post, than 5k followers and 120 likes. ​​3-What no one speak of: Industry best practices.-Influencers: Right now hiring influencers is the new "hot thing to do". Well... Not anymore. The market is saturated. Most influencers have fake followers, Fake engagement and shitty content. Most of them have 4 ADs posts for every real post.Aniway.. Hiring influencers can still be a good idea. Forget any influencer with more than 20k followers. It is cheaper, and most of the time you will get WAY MORE SALES, with ten 10k accounts, than with one 100k.  Why? Most of the time the smaller accounts have a stronger relationship with their followers than the bigger accounts. Bigger accounts most of the time are also spamming the shit out of their followers... It is also better to get influencers who are influencers because of something outside instagram. Ie : Amateur athlete, Podcast hosts, Artist,etc  than an influencer who only shows her ass. The formers will outsell the hot chick 99% of the time.​​-ADs. Marketing gurus (Or Wizards, Ninjas, Warlords, or wharever name is cool now) are going to say a lot of shit most of you already know. It is common sense. . You know the drill. Impactful copy. A/B Testing. Call to action. Target demographic. Great Picture etc.​There is a lot of written about direct sales. There are amazing books from the 20th century about direct sales copy that still works great today, you can read from them instead of fluff books.​​I am gonna introduce you, to a new pattern of ADs. The, "Try to get people to know you before you sell them your crappy products you just brought from China method"​Why? Well most of the time, people are not so sure about buying what you are selling. With direct sales ADs, you are mostly targeting people who wants to buy your product RIGHT NOW.Make an ad not trying to sell anything. Yes you heard right. Make a post bringing value in any form. Important content. Cool video. Give Away. Whatever you can think of.Once you have a good amount of followers with great engagement, you can try to make them convert with call to action stories. 4-Why most people can't sell shit. Most people can't sell shit because they haven't thought their social strategy from the bottom up. Most people follow what pieces of shit gurus says to the letter. Businesses are different guys. You cannot do the same strategy for a B2B company who sells 2k USD and expect to work on your socks company. There are certain products that work best with Influencers and some other works better with ADs, you have to test and most importantly, you have to think.  IE: Super cute coffe mug with stylish design is gonna sell way better with a cute chick influencer than a Vegan Matress. Most important You have to create a story and sell it. Give meaning to your product.I love the marketing behind BulletProof coffee. I mean, It is coffee with butter... Shitty product. Yet, their strategy was on point. They hired a bunch of productivity and motivational influencers, fabricated a bullshit Himalaya story, and made a 10/10 execution. Now they are swimming in money.​Hope it helped! If you have any question just shoot!

[askalibertarianus]

The Guise of Neutrality

Andrew Patts- Secretary of the Libertarian Party of Sacramento- July 13, 2017

A popular stance to take in the “Battle of the Internet” is to side with the FCC in support of what is known as Net Neutrality. It is such a widely popular stance that objectors are nearly demonized; who could possibly be against the fair and free exchange of ideas known as the internet (this is due to its moniker, more on that later)? For a long time I sided with the FCC; I signed petitions with John Oliver, spread awareness on Facebook, I helped my mom write a college essay in support of Net Neutrality. My loyalty to the cause was unquestionable.

My opinion of the matter began to change after reading and receiving yet another bombardment of the atrocities that would be committed by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) without the FCC's regulation. It came to the point that I found myself becoming suspicious of the one-sided, dark and hyperbolic language that was common in defense of the FCC Regulation.

The argument in favor of FCC Regulation (I refuse to call it by its purposely innocuous title) is that without it, ISPs would destroy the freedom that the internet provides by manipulating and censoring what content is visible to consumers. The ISPs would force fledgling companies to pay a fee in order to have its content delivered to homes. Netflix would be forced to pay exorbitant fees to Comcast for the privilege of having premium bandwidth; fees that would be passed down to the consumer. Netflix would be able to outbid its competition for rights to the bandwidth. I argue that these are healthy indicators of a free market. Not only does the FCC's Regulation strip the free market of these indicators, but it merely shifts oversight of these indicators from the people who find it to be in their best interest to watch these markers to people who have no vested interest in advancing technology, but rather a maintenance of the status quo.

Without the government, who would prevent Comcast from blocking Fox News or CNN from their customers? Who would prevent Comcast from charging ridiculous fees to one news organization but not the other? The free market. Comcast owns their service, it's their property and they can do as they wish with it – if they want to restrict the internet to everyone but those who were willing to pay $1000 a month, let them! They'll find a 99% reduction in subscription and their competition will love Comcast for their horrible decision to restrict the internet. In a free market and society, news of Comcast's blatant censorship and restriction of the internet would be far-reaching; even consumers who don't ascribe to the political views of the organization in question would be hesitant to continue their business with Comcast. How long could a company survive the economic pressure to remove roadblocks from their service and provide the best possible internet to the most amount of people (to make the most amount of money, those greedy capitalists!)?

The FCC, on the other hand, would have the authority to do everything Comcast did in the previous hypothetical situation. Fox News? Hate Speech. CNN? Fake news. The FCC, depending on whose administration oversees the agency (currently, President Trump and his administration), would have the power to force organizations to pay registration fees in order to buy the privilege to be on the internet in the first place. The constitutionality of such an action would be called into question. Months or years may pass while waiting for the decision of the Supreme Court, and, depending on whose administration, the Supreme Court may rule that the FCC's actions are unconstitutional or they may fabricate an obscure but justifiable reason that the FCC is allowed to charge one organization but not another. In the former situation, you could switch providers. Good luck switching governments in the latter situation.

It is Comcast's right to run their service as they please. Imagine the possibility of Comcast charging exorbitant fees to new companies who are trying to gain market entry. Suppose Comcast and Myspace have an agreement that Myspace would give Comcast x amount of money to prevent startup social media companies from posing a threat. In order to keep Myspace pleased and to make more money, they charge Facebook an enormous fee that will prevent them from solidifying any real market share. I say, good for them!

While Comcast is busy suppressing innovation, their competition is welcoming it with open arms by eliminating fees altogether. Facebook goes to ATT and flourishes. Instagram, Snapchat, Tinder, and countless other companies see that there is money to be made in rebuking Comcast and their fees so they switch to ATT as well. Comcast and Myspace would stagnate and die.

It is in Comcast's best interest (financially) to provide the most open internet possible in order to attract innovators to their service. The notion that Comcast would willingly hamstring themselves by stifling startups, I came to realize, is nothing but a scare tactic – and that's where I saw the narrative in favor of FCC Regulation beginning to lose its veneered facade.

With FCC Regulation, on the other hand, large corporations would have a method of buying votes in the government to preserve their status as primary market holders. This isn't a new concept. We see lobbyists of every facet of society bidding for the votes of politicians – the FCC would be no exception. Myspace would be able to spend millions of dollars that startups don't have in order to buy a few votes in the FCC to preserve their status as the dominant social media. In order to mask their corruption, they would obfuscate their intent by creating hoops and ladders that startups would be forced to overcome in order to have a (virtual) seat at the table. This would cost startups not only in programming, but in lawyers to make sure they comply with the purportedly “Free” internet of FCC Regulation. Instead of investing in their infrastructure to provide groundbreaking new features, startups would be forced to pay for their compliance with the law and adopt features that consumers are sick of, don't want, or don't need.

One fear tactic that proponents of FCC Regulation use is the idea that Comcast would begin charging people and companies alike for premium access to their bandwidth, or else Comcast would throttle internet speeds. This is a practice that every company does. Pay X amount for 10 mbps, or pay Y amount for 100 mbps. Proponents of FCC Regulation believe that this is extortionate. Do people have a right to demand paying less for more? Yes they do. But, it is also the right of Comcast to assess the viability of allowing an additional amount of stress to pummel their servers. It's also the right of the consumer to switch to a service that charges less for more. FCC Regulation to treat every user as equal would have detrimental effect on everyone's experience if it were enforced to its fullest sense of equality.

I argue, let Comcast practice extortion. Companies would leave Comcast's service and flock to other services, and consumers would follow - leaving Comcast to suffer a slow but inevitable bankruptcy. Preventing this from happening and forcing ISPs to adopt certain regulations only allows inefficient but established ISPs to maintain their market share while hindering startups who would be expected to comply with inefficient standards that result in the consumer paying more for less. FCC Regulation would empower established corporations, diminishing consumer choice and stifling innovation.

Let us imagine that Comcast, in a lust for greed, decided to allow companies like Netflix and Hulu to wage an economic bandwidth war against each other in an effort to buy the most bandwidth and force the other to suffer limited speeds in order to foster a better rapport among their own customers. I don't see this as a bad thing. This sort of cutthroat economic warfare culls the herd of devious ISPs. Netflix and Hulu would duke it out, buying bandwidth and reveling in the company's inability to service their customers. But truly, who is hurt the most? The ISP. When Hulu loses to Netflix and ultimately discontinues service with Comcast, others who love Hulu's service would leave Comcast as well. This scenario would play out similarly to the one outlined earlier; Comcast's decision to play favorites with certain companies would utterly backfire when the established order becomes old, outdated, and unfashionable. Comcast would suffer as a result of their greed. This is how the free market punishes the greedy.

FCC Regulation, on the other hand, would expose the internet to the world of politics and allow favorites to be played by the politicians. Netflix could hire lobbyists to ensure that regulations are written to ensure their dominance and force their competition to overcome jungles of red tape for the simple act of gaining market entry. If Comcast were to do this and Hulu discontinued service, Comcast would be held accountable and be punished by the free market. In the case of FCC Regulation, Comcast would be absolved from their involvement and the internet would be beholden to the interest of the 1%, lobbyists, and large corporations like Comcast.

The solution to this problem (if a problem existed in the first place) is to allow the free market to reward the greed that fosters innovation, entrepreneurship, and the uninhibited freedom of ideas. The free market does not reward those whose greed results in the stifling of advancement. FCC Regulation rewards the inverse of the free market. Rather than rewarding innovation, the government rewards the established corporations. Rather than rewarding entrepreneurship, the government creates barriers of entry to protect their own greedy interests. Rather than unleashing freedom, the government would have us apply for permits to practice our free speech over the internet.

Some may call me paranoid when I mention the possibility of government tyranny; they may tell me to put on my tin foil hat when I say that the FCC would have Apple surrender their encryption to the FBI. I know there has never been a single documented case in the entire history of the internet, anywhere in the world, of a government seizing control of the internet and confining its use to state-sanctioned activities, but I embrace my paranoia, nonetheless.

P.S. I find the name choice nefarious in and of itself. “Net Neutrality,” who could possibly want a restricted internet? The name shuts down meaningful conversation and obfuscates the true objective of the law – government control. I liken it to naming a gun ban the “Safe Children Act.” Who wants children in danger? It's a disgusting manipulation of emotion that should be addressed. “The PATRIOT Act” is a moniker that also appeals to emotion rather than logic; a similar bill named “The Orwellian Expansion of Governmental Powers of Surveillance” would have a snowflake's chance in hell to be passed.

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