Dana Blankenhorn

You Won’t Read This

You won’t read this because I’m in Twitmo.

My account was suspended a week ago. Repeated e-mails to Twitter support have gotten no real response.

Twitter has a legal right to do this. They are under no legal obligation to explain it.

But there is a moral responsibility.

Twitter has become a vital publicity stream for millions of people around the world. I didn’t realize until last week just how vital it was. The free web continues to shrink in size, and Twitter is an increasing part of it. In some ways it has taken the place of Google. We go to Twitter to learn what’s happening in the world. The only force that can compete with it is Reddit.

I blame Trump for that. Trump and his Trumpkins stole all our attention for years, and Twitter is where that attention was both focused and blasted into the world. Twitter’s banning of Trump was a turning point. The stock is up since it happened.

The Overnight Game

Redditors who started by fighting short sellers over Gamestop have a new game to play.

The overnight game.

I got to see it for myself yesterday. I was tasked to write about Sundial Growers. They’re on the NASDAQ, ticker symbol SNDL. They’re a pot company, a small one.

At the start of January this was a penny stock, worth just 60 cents. Then the games started. Management took advantage, watering down the stock repeatedly to get rid of debt and raise cash. This only made the punters more desperate to get a piece. As of this week there are 1.5 billion shares outstanding.

But with a market cap of $2 billion, it’s not hard to move. If you play the overnight game.

After markets close, they’re still open. After-hours trading continues for hours and officially resumes in the morning. Even during those 10 hours, you can still place an order. So, orders got placed. When I was writing at around 7 AM yesterday, shares that had risen to $3 during the day were trading at $4.50.

I told readers to sell, but the game was already over by the time my article came out. By lunch the stock was trading below $2.50.

Dave Portnoy, founder of Barstool Sports, was in on it. He bragged about his $50,000 profit online, buying, then selling in the overnight hours.

Assholes like Portnoy are going to run this game on their followers again-and-again until the suckers get wise. Those who get in with them will win, the ones who follow will be fleeced.

Reform is needed.

Facebook vs. Apple

It’s not as black and white as you think.

To hear the tech press tell the story, Facebook is promoting evil by admitting to its ad tracking and asking users to opt-in. Apple, meanwhile, is on the side of the angels by loudly promoting privacy.

But here’s the deal. Facebook services are free. Apple services are not.

The tech media is cheering for the global elite against the global poor.

The free web has been the greatest wealth production effort in history. Over the last 20 years over 1 billion people, a substantial portion of the world’s population, has been lifted out of extreme poverty by the free web. The freedom of the web, free as in beer, has been driven by the cloud, which pushed costs low enough that they could be supported by advertising.

The Big Tech Conspiracy That Wasn’t

Once you show you like something, I offer you more of it.

Is this a conspiracy?

Not unless I’m a scaled Web site. Because this is at the heart of the charge against “Big Tech,” the companies I call Cloud Czars.

• Show a preference for certain videos on YouTube and YouTube offers you more videos like them.
• “Like” things on Facebook or Instagram, and you will get more things like them.
• Follow certain celebrities on Twitter, you’re offered more like them.
• The same with Amazon Kindle books. When you buy something from Amazon, you’ll be followed for days by ads offering the same thing.

The algorithms follow human nature. Chances are that if you like a book about 12^th century monks who solve murders, you might like another one. If you like Henry Winkler, you’ll probably like Ron Howard.

The problem is that if you like crazy conspiracy theories on Instagram, or videos describing the terrors of the Illuminati on YouTube, you’ll get more of them. Like those, you’ll get more. And more and more.

Internet “Free Speech” is Dead

Extremism in the defense of liberty is a vice, for with extremism there is no liberty.

Moderation in the pursuit of justice is a virtue, for without moderation there is no justice.

Serious efforts to limit what can be posted online are finally underway, following the U.S. Capitol Insurrection on January 6.

As usual, the easy things were done first. The President, and those who wanted to overthrow the Constitution, have seen their use of Twitter, Facebook and other platforms curtailed. Censors are now going through all major platforms, erasing accounts and messages encouraging violence.

The First Amendment is not absolute. Oliver Wendell Holmes famously wrote, “You can’t shout fire in a crowded theater.” At the time theater lights were chemical. Limelight was dangerous. That’s why asbestos curtains were erected. Encouraging panic violated the letter, but not the spirit, of the amendment. It’s incitement. So inciting violence is also not protected.

Platforms have been trying to police limits for years. The question should be what authority can they have, and who will police that authority? Simply eliminating Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects Facebook from liability for what’s posted (as AT&T is protected from what you say on the phone), will backfire. It would force site owners toward avid censorship. Everything controversial would be taken down. Incitement would move to the “badda-bing” versions, where code words or pictures are used. You take these down and you’re China, where a picture of Winnie the Pooh is considered a criticism of Xi Jinping, and the government seeks to police thought. That’s why creative industries still don’t do well in China.

Something more flexible is called for. Guidelines need to be promulgated, advisors on the guidelines must be hired, and a complex system of notice must be created, for public Web sites. Sites that aren’t scaled generally do a good job of moderation, unless the sites are set up by those who want to break the rules. Larger sites, like Facebook, may face a “tax” on their revenue, to pay for the new bureaucracy.

They’ll be happy to pay because the tax will act as a moat against competitors. They are a barrier to entry for anyone else. They will solidify monopoly. It reminds me of what John D. Rockefeller was reported to have said on a golf course, after being told the Supreme Court had broken up his Standard Oil monopoly. He calmly hit his putt and said, “Buy Standard.” Buy Facebook.

Flexibility

When the nation state came to glory in the 19^th century, it was as a bulwark against religion.

The great threat of our time is the unity of the state and religion.

It’s happening everywhere. The dominant religion unites with the local dictator, then oppresses or exterminates all opponents. The religion threatens those who see faith differently. The state goes after secular critics.

The result can be stability, even short-term prosperity, if a nation’s business leaders throw in with the dictator. This has kept Latin America in bondage to its “iron triangle” of church, police, and oligarchs for two centuries.

This is the real threat to American democracy. It’s not Trump.

We pretended it was Trump because he was an easy target. He was such a clown, so obvious. Yet he only lost by 7%. He still got 47% of the vote. People ask how. It was the iron triangle. Churches, in this case evangelical protestants, right-wing Catholics and orthodox Jews. Wall Street, the oligarchs who run money instead of making it. Police, especially the unions.

The victory of secularism and democracy was narrow. It was top-down. Republicans still dominate the Congress and the courts. The crisis of our time is not over.

Look around the world. The situation is worse.

The Phony Profession

Back when I was at Rice University in the mid-1970s I was told that journalism was a noble profession.

It may be noble, but it’s no profession.

Even at Northwestern’s Medill School, where I received a year of training before being tossed into the world in 1978, I knew different. It’s a trade, the teachers told me there. They insisted I not call them “professor.” Journalism is a job. It’s writing for someone who buys ink by the barrel.

The problem with the journalism business is that it’s still locked in that mindset. Even after the print business is long dead, journalism is still measured by advertising linked to dead trees. There’s a reason for this. The business refused to adapt.

When people began seeking information online, a quarter century ago, journalism did not come along for the ride. I feel the blame. I knew then, after a decade covering the Internet, just how we should move forward, and I wrote about it. I asked publishers, “How hungry are you,” suggesting they seek commission income from business partners rather than selling billboards.

No one listened.

Defending Facebook

Let’s start with something that should seem obvious.

Facebook is no longer a social network. It’s the global telecommunications company.

It became this by offering free services on a global scale. This came about thanks to its investment in cloud, beginning early in the last decade. While AT&T sat on its assets, along with all the companies once known as PTTs (Postal, Telegraph and Telephone services), Facebook put $1 billion/quarter and up into a network of cloud data centers.

Facebook did it the same way Amazon did, with cash flow. It made its services free, like Google.

Better Days Are Coming

When you hit bottom, when you are at the end of your rope, when you're in true despair, you can’t imagine getting out.

America is at the bottom. We’ve found that what we said about ourselves was tissue thin. The economy has collapsed around our ears. Death is all around us.

But better days are coming.

We can beat COVID-19. We know how to do it. Other countries have done it. Europe and much of Asia are opening, coming out of their cellars, living again.

The key is cooperation.

That’s all it takes. Wear a mask when you go out, or a face shield. Try to stay home. Wash your hands. Stay away from other people. Love thy neighbor.

The virus travels on the droplets you expel when breathing. It travels fastest when you sneeze, but even those droplets don’t travel much further than 6 feet. If 95% of us cooperate with each other, then the rate of transmission will drop below 1 and we’ll be back on the downward slope again.

Why Black Lives Matter to Me

You’re looking at the face of an old white guy and wondering about the headline.

Here’s the story.

I was brought up racist, on Long Island. I didn’t think that was the case, but I know now it was. I knew people like Roger Stone, Eugene Delgaudio and David Keane when they were kids. That’s because during the height of the Vietnam era I was part of a group called Young Americans for Freedom, a right-wing agitprop created by William F. Buckley when the SDS was getting started.

I’m not proud of it. I got falling-down drunk at age 16, and the hangover lasted until the day after school started. I told my parents I was sick.

We weren’t rich, but we had a lot of white privilege. It helped me get off Long Island and into Rice University, even though my parents had saved nothing for college. It got my dad a small business loan when he fell through a false roof and became disabled. The parents of the girl I married turned out to be well-off too. Most Rice parents are.

I was blind to my own good fortune. I saw myself as an idealist. I went to Northwestern, got a job at a business newspaper, and covered the end of the Houston oil boom.