Bad Week For Media

It’s been a really bad week for the media, with at least three different significant mistakes having to be corrected. It really undermines their position as the Fourth Estate.

  • Brian Ross was suspended from ABC News for a *massive* error on the Trump investigation.
  • Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal misreported a subpoena of Deutche Bank.
  • CNN misreported on Trump Jr. and WikiLeaks.

Those who have been paying attention for the last ten or fifteen years, as opposed to only the last year, are not at all surprised.

See, there’s a reason why “fake news” established itself in the minds of so many people so quickly: It’s because mainstream news has a very consistent habit of getting things wrong in the name of pushing stories out first. This record of inaccuracy began roughly the same time Internet news supplanted print media.

While I’d love to think that news reporting today is an overall pillar of integrity, I just don’t. I think the White House press corps is a joke. Every time I see a news story about the Trump administration, I think to myself, “I wonder if they are being fed misinformation? Are they doing anything to protect themselves from misinformation? How do they know their ‘high-level contacts’ are telling the truth? It would be so easy for the Trump administration to get people in the White House to simply lie to the press and feed them whatever they wanted to hear, which would ultimately destroy the media’s credibility and hurt America in the long run by eroding the power of the first amendment.”

Every news organization isn’t terrible, but most of them are. It’s why you have to really work to find individual journalists that you trust, not a network or media outlet.

Anyway, while I don’t necessarily believe Trump is trying to “destroy America,” he is clearly hell-bent on destroying the status quo, and part of that status quo is the media monopoly. The worrying problem is that I don’t believe Trump does or can know what will happen afterward. Every day I am reminded of Michael Gorbachev and the Soviet Union in 1985. With great intentions, Gorbachev utterly destroyed the status quo in the U.S.S.R. and the consequences still resonate to this day. There came a point (less than 6 years later) where he could no longer control the changes to his country. Now there is no more U.S.S.R. and a lot of people died in protests and civil unrest. There was an entire Bosnian War, which killed some 100,000 people and displaced 2.2 million other people.

Personally, I’d prefer that stuff like that didn’t happen in the U.S.

So hey, media, get your stories right. Stop making it easy for Trump. In one single week you’ve completely erased whatever progress you might have made in the last year.

Behind The Tweet: Rage and Frustration

Saw this tweet today:

I like Al Franken, I’ve always liked Al Franken, I have a lot of respect for the work he did to transition from a comedian to a knowledgeable elected official (no small feat), and I think it’s a shame he has to resign.

But this is a political no-brainer.

Franken resigning is the Democratic side fighting. Fighting to at least bring back some shred of integrity to the current American government. They won’t have a moral leg, foot, or tiny pinky toe to stand on if they don’t clean house of anything and everything that even remotely hints of corruption right now. They simply cannot use integrity (“we are the Not-As-Bad-As-Trump Party”) as a voting issue in 2018, 2020, or ever, if they don’t deal with this quickly.

That is why Franken immediately decided to submit to an ethics committee (the right thing to do for many reasons). That showed the world that “Democrats take this stuff seriously, whereas Republicans, clearly, do not.”

Conyers blew that strategy out of the water, because most people know on some level that Democrats are just as corrupt as Republicans, and Conyers confirmed it. That made any attempts Franken could have made to transform Democrats into the Party of Integrity well nigh impossible. (Not to mention all the followup allegations against him.)

So Franken is probably resigning today, and it’s the right thing for him to do for the Democratic Party and America right now. It sucks that he got caught up in this storm, but life isn’t particularly fair.

I’m no expert, but I have also heard there is a good chance that the Minnesota governor (Mark Dayton, a Democrat) will appoint a Democrat to replace him, so there’s really no political down side for the Democratic Party.

And as I’m finishing up this post, Franken is resigning.

 

Behind the Tweet: Unwind It All

Grumpy post incoming.

Lulz. Oh look, somebody else on Twitter who would fail a basic civics class, and people retweeting it as if it’s wisdom.

No, random Internet person who apparently needs no intelligence to get a blue checkmark, there is still no “do over” because we don’t like the outcome. American government still isn’t a kid’s game. Doing the kinds of things you suggest usually leads to little things like civil unrest.

Just my two cents, but given today’s news about Mike Flynn, we are on track for the worst-case scenario of Mike Pence taking over as president for a full ten years.

Wait, what?? Presidents can only serve two terms!

Two *full* terms. If Mike Pence is installed in, say, 2018 or 2019, he can conceivably run in both 2020 and 2024. And given the complete lack of a Democratic field, and the number of dimwitted Americans who will say, “I don’t even know what a Republican is but at least he’s not gross like Donald Trump,” Pence will probably win both of those elections.

People really ought not to be celebrating the potential downfall of Donald Trump, but then Americans are so dimwitted that they elected him in the first place, so what else would you expect? Americans literally have no clue what is good for them.

Speaking generally, of course. I’m sure *you* are fine.

Ugh This Again?

Millennials are yelling about Nazis again this weekend, but I’m going to be brutally honest here: They’ve cried wolf so often and so loud about this that I just don’t care anymore. I’m not even going to investigate what they’re talking about. Something about a New York Times article I think? If fascists ever really do organize again, they’ll have such an easy road to power in the U.S. thanks to the left.

UPDATE

Okay, here’s the New York Times article: A Voice of Hate in America.

Everyone to NYT: “Don’t normalize Nazis!”

Me: I think people often confuse the words “normalize” and “recognize.” To observe or acknowledge a thing is not necessarily to mainstream it. The New York Times normalizing white supremacy would look like a weekly column called something like, “White Living Today.”

Behind The Tweet: Who Do We Believe?

Hmmmm.

I imagine that more-then-100-year-old journalists would have a fair amount of dementia by now.

Zing!

No, you idiot, it’s not the same people all 100 years!

Oh, then you’ve made my point for me.

Why does Donald Trump fighting with TIME magazine get way more traction on Twitter than anything else? Could this be how someone like Donald Trump got elected in the first place? Yes, yes it could.

I thought people were going nuts over net neutrality but at least that’s an important subject for discussion.

Twitter: Net neutrality in danger! Fight, fight! Memes, go!

FCC: Here’s the 210-page proposal for you to study.

Twitter: Uh… 210 pages? Hmm. You know, that’s, like, a lot of reading. Look, Donald Trump tweeted something about TIME! Memes, go!

Net Neutrality Panic, Day Three

The panic has died down a bit because of Thanksgiving Day, but just for the record, here is the actual proposal the FCC will be considering on December 14th.

Proposal To “Restore Internet Freedom”

I added the quotes to indicate where the authors decided to change the title of the document from what it actually is (Proposal To Change Boring FCC Regulations) into something that would make Republicans who don’t understand computers feel good.

I perused it, and a very large percentage of the text deals with reversing the classification of the Internet as a public utility in 2015 back to an information service. It is packed with reasonable arguments including supporting facts and figures, so it will take some time to study.

Behind The Tweet: Dear Right-Wingers

These are the kinds of tweets flying around that drive my crazy:

I agree it shouldn’t be a partisan issue, because net neutrality is a technical concept, but since nobody understands computers, least of all politicians, both sides have defined it as a partisan issue, and here we are with dumb tweets like this.

Firstly, when you begin your tweet “dear right-wingers,” you have instantly shown that don’t know or care about your supposed target audience.

Secondly, does this guy really think a “right-winger” is going to read that tweet and think, “Oh my, he’s right! Golly gee! I’ve been wrong all this time! Let’s hug it out over net neutrality!” Come on. That tweet is an applause line for an audience of “left-wingers,” period. That is not how you genuinely communicate with people of differing views.

Thirdly, that’s a ridiculous scenario that will not happen. Even if George Soros bought up everything and controlled Fox News, you know, circumventing all the applicable laws on these matters, he’s smart enough to know that Fox News makes money by selling right-wing content to right-wingers. Why would any businessperson turn off such a large money faucet?

Net Neutrality Panic, Day Two

Well, I guess I’ll be writing about this for a second day in a row.

So just for the record, I prefer Net Neutrality.

But I’m a realist and a pragmatist. The Utopian dream of The Internet as a level playing field for all of humanity to come together will collapse as more and more businesses and governments get involved. Frankly, it already collapsed a good ten years or more ago. Mobile smart devices weren’t made to make people’s lives better and bring them together, they were made to trap consumers on a platform they can’t escape. They are antithetical to openness. The very existence of cell phones is the death of the Utopian Internet, because it was the opportunity businesses needed to get people off of “open” PCs and on to more controlled environments.

I would love to see Net Neutrality (with capital letters) become law. But people who think Obama’s FCC regulations did that are sadly misinformed. FCC regulations are not laws. I am particularly amused by all the tweets imploring people to call their congresspeople to object to the FCC changes (they’re going to be like, “Why are you calling me about this?”). In any case, Obama’s FCC regulations fell short of the ideal, which I discovered by simply reading them and noting all the loopholes. Here’s a good Twitter thread about it from a trusted technology reporter:

If the FCC repeals Net Neutrality (which is a gross mischaracterization of the facts, but people can’t understand big concepts), the world is not going to fall apart. If Verizon starts selling wireless content packages in the U.S., people are just going to buy them and keep going on with their lives without interruption, or buy the “everything” package, or keep using their desktop PCs and forget about the whole thing.

This investigation is a little troubling, but entirely unsurprising:

The “public comment process” is pretty much a joke these days. Everyone just gets out their favorite bots to spam the inbox of the committee. If I were in government, I would entirely ignore any “public comment” that did not come in the form of a personal visit or a handwritten letter in an envelope with a stamp, because there is no way to know if electronic communications reflect the real sentiment of the public or just one guy with a botnet.

Okay I’ll keep my comments short today because I need to write more for #NaNoWriMo.

Net Neutrality Homework

Net Neutrality is the hot topic of the day (so far–give it a few minutes, it will probably change).

Activists are telling us that we must act fast to save net neutrality. We are not told this specifically, but it’s strongly implied that our way of life and our immortal souls are in imminent danger! Call your congressman! Call the FCC! Call anyone, just do it now!

So obviously that’s the first alarm bell. “Act fast” usually means “act without thinking.” I set out to figure out what’s really going on.

What is Net Neutrality?

So what exactly is net neutrality?

There’s a lot of room for interpretation on this. If you’re a Democrat, net neutrality is the code word which means protecting consumers from predatory businesses who will raise the cost of the Internet. If you’re a Republican, net neutrality is the code word for unnecessary government regulation which stifles innovation from telecommunications businesses. Neither of those is exactly right, but Democrats and Republicans need to simplify things into “yes” and “no” buckets so they can rally the troops.

For a more technical definition, net neutrality is the loosely-defined principle that everyone should have equal access to Internet bandwidth (that “series of tubes”). Everyone from megacorporation Verizon all the way down to John Smith in his basement.

In practical terms, it means that if I were to create a search engine and put up a web page for it, billions of Internet users around the world should be able to access it in exactly the same way that they would reach and use Google’s search engine.

That’s what I think it means, at least. Wikipedia has an exhaustive page on the subject that muddies the waters considerably.

Currently, we enjoy a world full of net neutrality, and we have since the beginning of Internet time. In theory, at least. The reality is far from the ideal. Obviously I cannot realistically hope to reach even a fraction of the same number of eyeballs with my basement search engine as Google does with theirs, due to a vast array of insurmountable obstacles in my way.

The issue revolves around your Internet Service Provider, or the technology that allows you to talk to the Internet. If you are using a mobile phone, your ISP will be somebody like Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile (in the U.S.), and your data packets will fly wirelessly through the sky to a cell tower. If you’re using a desktop PC or laptop, your ISP will still be somebody like Verizon, AT&T, or some other cable television provider, but your data packets will most likely be skittering along a physical cable which is attached directly to your house, similar to a phone line. (Ah, things were so much simpler when we used dial-up modems.)

Unless you live in one of the multitudinous rural areas of America which shamefully still doesn’t have decent Internet access, but that’s another topic.

What’s In The News Today

Now that we’ve defined net neutrality without the partisan labels, let’s take a look at what prompted people’s ire today. The headline is: FCC Chairman Ajit Pai released a statement declaring his intention to roll back Internet regulations imposed in 2015 during the Obama administration. Mr. Pai doesn’t say this, because it’s not appropriate political theater, but these are the so-called “net neutrality” regulations.

Well, that certainly sounds bad, if you liked the Obama administration and don’t like the Trump administration. Anything that Trump does to undo Obama’s work is automatically put into the “bad” bucket, if not the “authoritarian takeover” bucket, without much thought these days. (Not without some reason, I might add.)

But again, what does this press release actually mean? What was done in 2015, and what is being undone? I don’t know offhand. I certainly haven’t noticed a single change in my Internet connectivity before or since 2015. I thought I’d investigate.

First let’s get some facts out of the way. I am getting this information directly from the press release linked above, by the way, and not any of the spurious misinformative tweets flying around.

Nothing is happening on Thanksgiving Day. All those tweets saying that your government is trying to hide something by doing it on Thanksgiving when you’re busy making turkey are preposterous. I can’t even imagine any government employee working on Thanksgiving Day.

Furthermore, changes will not be made without a vote. The FCC will hold that vote on December 14th in an “Open Meeting.” So everyone jumping up and down about losing net neutrality this week is just plain wrong. (I don’t know what an Open Meeting is, but I can only assume there will be C-SPAN cameras present.)

Don’t get too excited about picketing the FCC and changing their minds, though: The vote is probably going to pass, or they wouldn’t have proposed the change in the first place.

What is happening this week is the release of the draft proposal Restoring Internet Freedom Order (catchy name), which is the plan for the new FCC regulation to be voted on December 14th. They are releasing it in an attempt at “transparency,” so we can all read it and scream about it before the meeting takes place. This is a slight dig at the Obama administration, which apparently did not release their net neutrality regulation plans prior to adopting it. I will take Mr. Pai’s word on this because I don’t remember, I don’t care to look it up, and it doesn’t really matter anyway, because they’re probably not going to change it no matter how much we scream.

At this point, we don’t know what the new rules will be. We are simply assuming that they are going to reverse the old rules. But we won’t know for sure until we pour over the Restoring Internet Freedom Order, whenever it’s released.

What Are The Current Regulations?

But before we can understand what the FCC is planning to reverse, we first need to know what the FCC did in 2015. There is a lengthy executive summary on this Obama-era White House archive page showing Obama’s long road to net neutrality. As you might expect from the source, it is replete with feel-good language, but very short on substance, so I had to look further. Here is a New York Times piece from March 12, 2015 which gives some additional context, though it is, again, very light on technical details about the regulations. (The article does confirm that the details were released after it was adopted, though.) One part stood out to me:

Lawsuits will not be filed until the rules are published in The Federal Register, which could take a week or more. The rules will take effect two months after they are published.

Whatever Obama did to “fix” the Internet, by my back-of-napkin calculations, it did not take effect until at least May 2015, some twenty-plus years after I first connected to the Internet. We can get even more precise. Here is a PDF of the extremely lengthy 2015 regulations, lifted from that New York Times article. I skimmed it to find out the effective date:

585. IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that this Report and Order on Remand, Declaratory Ruling, and Order SHALL BE effective 60 days after publication in the Federal Register…

The report shows up in the Federal Register on April 13, 2015, so Obama’s net neutrality regulations became effective on precisely June 12, 2015.

There were no sweeping net neutrality protections prior to that, beyond little bits here and there that I don’t care to research. The point is this: I did not notice any change in the Internet after June 2015 when these regulations took effect–good, bad, or indifferent.

Now you might think, “Well of course you didn’t notice, because they held up the implementation because of all the pending lawsuits.” I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it makes sense to me. According to that Obama White House page I linked above:

June 14, 2016: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia fully upheld the FCC’s net neutrality rules.

So we might reasonably conclude that Net Neutrality (with capital letters) was not achieved until June 14, 2016, a little over seventeen months ago (as of this writing).

Again, I don’t remember a single thing about my Internet changing in June 2016.

I’ve mentioned that a couple of times now to drive home the point that the panic-ridden discussions of net neutrality as an all-powerful force that controls our Internet destiny are simply not true. It’s more of a philosophical ideal than any practical, tangible thing.

Even if Obama’s rules were the best thing to happen to the world since sliced bread, we’ve only enjoyed them for seventeen months. Who even noticed they were there? Who’s going to notice if they’re gone?

Obama’s Internet Rules

For completeness, I wanted to document exactly what Obama’s Internet Rules are, as I’ll call them, so that everyone knows what they are up in arms to protect. They are included in that 300+ page PDF up there but yeah, I’m not reading that. The four points included on the Obama White House archive page are:

  • No blocking
  • No throttling
  • No paid prioritization
  • Increased transparency

Sounds great, but extremely vague and that’s just what Obama asked for, it’s not necessarily what is in that 300+ page PDF.

Dammit, I’m going to have to read that 300+ page PDF aren’t I? At least the executive summary. Here goes. The short version is that it is the same four key points from Obama’s request.

Paragraph 15. “No Blocking.”

A person engaged in the provision of broadband Internet access service, insofar as such person is so engaged, shall not block lawful content, applications, services, or nonharmful devices, subject to reasonable network management.

Sure, I guess. Plenty of loopholes in there, though. What is “nonharmful?” What is “reasonable network management?” Plenty of wiggle room there to throttle or block torrent traffic, in other words.

Paragraph 16. “No Throttling.”

A person engaged in the provision of broadband Internet access service, insofar as such person is so engaged, shall not impair or degrade lawful Internet traffic on the basis of Internet content, application, or service, or use of a non-harmful device, subject to reasonable network management.

Same as above. Plenty of loopholes.

Paragraph 18. “No Paid Prioritization.”

A person engaged in the provision of broadband Internet access service, insofar as such person is so engaged, shall not engage in paid prioritization.

This is the point that most people worry about when they march in the streets about net neutrality. Democrats worry that without this provision, the Internet will (among other things) become “tiered” so that rich people have a better Internet than poor people.

Paragraph 21. Doesn’t have a catchy name.

Any person engaged in the provision of broadband Internet access service, insofar as such person is so engaged, shall not unreasonably interfere with or unreasonably disadvantage (i) end users’ ability to select, access, and use broadband Internet access service or the lawful Internet content, applications, services, or devices of their choice, or (ii) edge providers’ ability to make lawful content, applications, services, or devices available to end users. Reasonable network management shall not be considered a violation of this rule.

I’m a little fuzzy on this one but I think it simply guarantees we can access whatever we want on whatever device we want. Subject to “reasonable” restrictions of course.

Paragraph 23. Transparency.

The one about transparency. This one is apparently unchanged since 2010.

So now we know. This is what we’re going to be watching for, to see how the new rules affect those old rules.

Keep in mind, if those four “open Internet” rules are reversed, it doesn’t mean we go back to the Wild, Wild West of Internet. There were rules prior to 2015.

Okay, enough. I can’t take all this government documentation anymore!

P. S. Can you imagine being the person who wrote a 300+ page meticulously-sourced and researched government document that is now getting thrown in the garbage can after only a couple of years?

Waivers For Men

New joke for mythical stand-up comedy routine: I am starting to wonder if men should have a lawyer present whenever they are in the presence of women. Perhaps following behind getting signed waivers, like how filmmakers have to get people to sign waivers to appear in documentaries and such. “Did this interaction with this male make you uncomfortable in any way? Yes/no. Okay, please sign and date here. Here’s a copy for you, and here’s our copy. We’ll file it in the federal database of male/female interactions by the end of the day.”

I am joking of course … sort of.