Apple’s anti-fraud chief said company was ‘the greatest platform for distributing child porn’

 

And there you have it.

BIG TECH IS EVIL

 You might think the most powerful man in the world is the President of the United States. But you would be wrong.

Because as this past week has shown, the Big Tech companies have power over even him. No one in human history has had the kind of reach and influence now wielded by a small group of men on the west coast of America....

Despite Google’s famous early slogan, what they and other Big Tech companies have done throughout their history really is distinctly, deeply, evil.

Twitter, for instance, has become one of the most powerful companies in the world – accumulating vast sums of money for a tiny number of people.

The business model is simple. Every time some great controversy occurs, it enriches Twitter, which makes money from advertising, data harvesting and much more. (Yet it relies on others – you, me, people across the planet – to point out errors and correct what it publishes for free.)...

And as they have come to dominate, the way they have used their power has become increasingly outrageous. Before the November election in the US, a major corruption scandal emerged about the family of Joe Biden. The story was broken over successive days by the New York Post – America’s oldest and most venerable paper.

How did the tech platforms react? In the most egregious way imaginable. They censored the story.

Facebook and Twitter suspended the New York Post’s social media accounts. What is more, they prevented any and all other users from ‘sharing’ this story. So ahead of an election they decided what the American people could or could not know about one of their candidates. They did it because they wanted Joe Biden to win....

YouTube has a long history of simply lying about its own behaviour. Because it will get away with it. Because Big Tech always does.

But this week the companies made their biggest move yet, with Facebook and Twitter banning Trump. Twitter also suspended his National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and former Federal Prosecutor Sidney Powell, both Trump loyalists.

Blaming, or pointing fingers are Twitter, Facebook, Google and Apple is wrong.  A company is a curtain behind which actual people act.  In this case, actual people with actual names are committing unimaginable evil acts.  

The Curtain must be raised and these people exposed for the global criminals they are.

Paradise Papers: Apple's secret tax bolthole revealed

The world's most profitable firm has a secretive new structure that would enable it to continue avoiding billions in taxes, the Paradise Papers show.

They reveal how Apple sidestepped a 2013 crackdown on its controversial Irish tax practices by actively shopping around for a tax haven.

It then moved the firm holding most of its untaxed offshore cash, now $252bn, to the Channel Island of Jersey.

Up until 2014, the tech company had been exploiting a loophole in tax laws in the US and the Republic of Ireland known as the "double Irish".

This allowed Apple to funnel all its sales outside of the Americas - currently about 55% of its revenue - through Irish subsidiaries that were effectively stateless for taxation purposes, and so incurred hardly any tax.

Instead of paying Irish corporation tax of 12.5%, or the US rate of 35%, Apple's avoidance structure helped it reduce its tax rate on profits outside of the US to the extent that its foreign tax payments rarely amounted to more than 5% of its foreign profits, and in some years dipped below 2%.

The European Commission calculated the rate of tax for one of Apple's Irish companies for one year had been just 0.005%.

 

Let’s Bust Some 21st Century Trusts

Time to break up the tech industry monopolies.  The Trump administration is the right vehicle for this.  Read the whole thing.

In terms of stock market value, the top five companies worldwide are the technology giants Apple, Alphabet (Google’s corporate parent), Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon. In the technology industry, these firms—although hardly interchangeable—are the new Robber Barons.

Apple’s famously based its business model on a “closed platform,” compelling users to accede to its vertical integration of software, parts, apps, and iTunes inventory. Amazon, with sales exceeding its 12 largest online competitors combined, captures 46 percent of all online shopping. Aggressive pricing—to the extent of consistently sacrificing profitability—and sharp competitive practices such as below-cost pricing of ebooks to promote its Kindle sales have enabled Amazon to swamp its competitors in an expanding array of product lines.

Regardless of profitability, investors value these firms primarily because of their sheer scale—market dominance within the relevant segments. Uber and Tesla, each with a market capitalization exceeding General Motors, have never earned even a single penny of profit, defying traditional models of valuation. Investors presumably anticipate that monopoly (or near-monopoly) status will eventually yield monopoly profits.

And how have the new Robber Barons been behaving with their sky-high market valuations, overwhelming market shares, and hoards of cash? In a word, poorly. If actions were words, they would be parroting Vanderbilt’s infamous declaration.

Amid great controversy, Google summarily fired an engineer, James Damore, for thoughtfully questioning the assumptions of the company’s diversity policies. More recently, Google appeared to direct the dismissal of a scholar from the New America Foundation, a progressive Washington think tank backed by Google, for praising fines levied against the company by European regulators for antitrust violations. These are the actions of an intolerant bully.

In our digital world, the Internet and websites have become the indispensable medium for both commerce and political expression, serving as the modern equivalent of the printing press, Yellow Pages, mail delivery, checking account, and public library—combined. Companies servicing the Internet—and especially search engines—are de facto public utilities, with an obligation to operate fairly, responsibly, and without viewpoint discrimination. Unfortunately, the new Robber Barons have fallen appallingly short of this ideal.

For example, social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have been accused of censoring users’ posts; Google (through its ad placement service) has bullied conservative websites to alter their content or face financial retribution; online payment facilitator PayPal and domain administrator GoDaddy have banished or withdrawn funding services for websites whose content they disapprove of; and Google has reportedly skewed search results to omit references objectionable to certain Islamic organizations.

Most ominously of all, as reported by Paula Bolyard in PJ Media, Google is working with a coalition of liberal groups—including the discredited Southern Poverty Law Center—to monitor conservative websites for “hate events.” In reality, they’re policing expression of views they find disagreeable, such as opposition to the LGBT agenda, criticism of radical Islam, or support for more stringent immigration controls. The goal is to blacklist “offensive” sites, smear them as “hate groups,” and ultimately to deny them access to digital advertisers, online donations, domain registrars, or similar tech support necessary for sites to function. In other words, Google is conspiring with Left-wing activists to suppress their political opponents.

‘Regulate Them Into Submission’

With the unprecedented ability to control the content and operation of websites, a handful of tech companies wield greater power than governments do, with little transparency and no accountability. This astonishing concentration of power should concern all citizens, regardless of political persuasion. Yet, with a few exceptions, liberals have been strangely quiet. The reason is obvious: The Left has given the new Robber Barons a pass, because they share a Progressive political agenda, as reflected by Apple’s $1 million donation to the SPLC, and the hyper-partisan direction of the Washington Post since its purchase by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.

Should conservatives, blinded by their allegiance to the free market, condone this partisan perfidy? Increasingly, commentators on the Right recommend treating Silicon Valley behemoths as the monopolies they are and, in Kurt Schlichter’s words, either break them up or “regulate them into submission.” President Theodore Roosevelt earned the nickname “trustbuster” for breaking up James J. Hill’s and J. P. Morgan’s notorious railroad monopoly, the Northern Securities Company. In the same vein, Attorney General Jeff Sessions should investigate the nefarious conduct of the new Robber Barons.

Silicon Valley’s leftist business leaders have a peculiar notion of “creative destruction”; rather than rendering prior paradigms obsolete, they apparently seek to eliminate free speech instead.

Faster, please.