Joe Biden has a problem. Silicon Valley billionaires think they have a solution.
Election Day is less than six months away, and Democrats are scrambling to patch the digital deficits of their presumptive nominee. And behind the scenes, Silicon Valley’s billionaire Democrats are spending tens of millions of dollars on their own sweeping plans to catch up to President Donald Trump’s lead on digital campaigning — plans that are poised to make them some of the country’s most influential people when it comes to shaping the November results.
These billionaires’ arsenals are funding everything from nerdy political science experiments to divisive partisan news sites to rivalrous attempts to overhaul the party’s beleaguered data file. They are pushing their favored, sometimes peculiar, fixes to a political ailment just like they might if on the board of a struggling startup.
This is all unfolding as the pandemic forces campaigns to pivot away from door-knocks and packed rallies and toward data mining and influencer marketing — which in many ways play to the strengths of these tech titans, making them even more influential at a time when many in the Democratic Party are uneasy with just how powerful some in tech have become.
Their investments matter all the more because of the candidate they inherited. Biden is rushing to hire more aides, create more engaging content, and build better ties with the Silicon Valley donors and talent that evaded him during the primary.
“Because the Biden campaign is the Biden campaign,” said one Democratic operative involved in these efforts, “what we are doing on the independent side matters a hell of a lot more than it would previously.”
What makes this all the more difficult is that Democrats have long struggled to coordinate their big-money spending like Republicans have, and that atomization has been exacerbated by the arrival of Silicon Valley money, whose hubristic entrepreneurs often prefer to do things their own way.
In Silicon Valley’s new political moment, four billionaires in particular — LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt — have the most ambitious plans, according to Recode’s interviews with over 20 donors and operatives. The chess moves of this power set are instrumental to fulfilling Democrats’ — and much of Silicon Valley’s — four-year quest to oust Donald Trump.
And yet each of these billionaires is moving their pieces with varying levels of secrecy, and often with minimal disclosure, scrutiny, or accountability.
Bill Gates and Mircosoft have lot to gain with Biden in the Oval Office which is one reason he and Mircosoft need to be banished from America forever
Somebody seems confused about who needs to do the catching up. This guy hasn’t had a positive average job approval rating since he was elected.
The actions twitter has taken now removes their status as a platform and fall under the auspices of a publisher. The warning placed on President Trump’s comments regarding mail in voting constitutes an in-kind campaign donation to sleepy joe roaming finders. The FEC should no conduct an investigation. Their “fact-finding” attachment to the tweet was bias and fake news as they linked the “fact-finding” to nbc “news” and cnn. Time to shut down left wing social media…
All of this needs to be considered campaign contribution to Biden. One wonders why the Democrats would field such a candidate that needs such extensive aid to be viable.
The CFR and the rest of the Globalists subversives all pushing for Globalism and a Global Government all under the United Nations
@Spurwing Plover: And we’ve seen how well the UN addresses world crises.
This isnt news kids
Alex Jones
Alex Jones
@RealAlexJones
Jun 25, 2019
·
Ted Cruz laid into Google executives during a Senate Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee hearing following a report by #ProjectVeritas revealing the tech company’s intention to meddle in the #2020Election.
https://www.infowars.com/ted-cruz-grills-google-executives-in-hearing-following-explosive-report-by-project-veritas/
Gee I wonder why Alex was axed by the internet royalty.
Why does Trump think he can use a free service provided by a private sector company as a political propaganda outlet reaching over 84 million people? He’s presently using Twitter to attack and threaten Twitter.
Political Suicide, Act I (Biting the Hand that Fed You):
May 28, 2020 – Trump targets social media companies with executive order after Twitter fact-checks his tweets
Only two flagged posts out of all the misleading posts Trump has made isn’t exactly censorship. Nor has Trump been singled out. Twitter has now flagged hundreds of factually inaccurate posts by high-profile users who have used the social media platform as a tool to mislead people—deceptive posts made by China’s foreign ministry, for example.
May 28, 2020 – Twitter adds fact-checking labels to hundreds of tweets despite Trump attacks
It’s about damn time.
@Greg: Twitter gets preferential treatment from the US government for the service they provide. When they begin being a left wing propaganda tool, the benefits from the government end. They should be regulated.
@Deplorable Me, #9:
That’s total nonsense. Twitter is a private sector business. It isn’t taxpayer funded. They make 85 percent of their income from advertising, and nearly all the rest from data licensing.
If Trump dislikes the free services they provide to him, he can stop using them. He has no lawful power to force them to bend to his will. His word does not define what is true or false. He may have fascist tendencies, but this isn’t a fascist state.
@Greg: Well, we are going to see what Twitter gets out of the government, aren’t we? Let’s see how they like being treated as they treat conservatives.
@Greg:
Would you like to provide proof that Twitter has flagged anything posted by the CCP? And were you not the one that claimed Russia was posting false information on Twitter and YouTube trying to help Trump win the election?
So which is it, Comrade Greggie?
@retire05, #12:
Sure, happy to oblige, since you’re apparently too lazy to look for yourself: Here’s a flagged March 12 post by Lijian Zhao, official spokesman of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Information Department, pitching the line of bullshit that COVID-19 was brought to China by the U.S. Army.
Trump is full of it. Placing little blue exclamation marks at the bottom of two of his posts sure as hell isn’t “stifling free speech”. Anyone with a brain can read what he said, follow the link to fact-check what he said, and then make up their own mind. If someone wants to remain ignorant of a significant factual inaccuracy, they can just ignore the alert. Ignoring a warning should be an easy matter for Trump supporters. They’ve had much practice.
@Greg: Its fine by editorializing on any tweets it makes them technically a publisher, and personally responsible for every tweet posted.
@Greg:
He doesn’t dislike the platform they provide and he’s never said otherwise. He even said today that Twitter serves his purposes..though they’d lose money if he stopped using them.
What he, and any sane American, dislikes is Twitter shifting from an online liability-free forum for all voices to a partisan propaganda site, like CNN.
That makes them a publisher.
It’s framing the information in a way that is towards twitter’s leftist agenda…where they are not supposed to have an agenda if they wish to benefit from being liability free for legal free speech. That makes it an infringement of Trump’s words, when they tell you he’s lying rather than you doing the research yourself.
Hehe…the “fact-check” is meant for Twitter to tell you what to think, not for you think on your own.
This is Un-Constitutional, un-American, and illegal in the context of how Twitter is established as a non-partisan open bulletin board for the world. It’s just a step towards fascist-style censorship.
Jack Dorsey is un-elected, and does not get to propagandize on the behalf of the Democrat Party for either his, or his employees, personal views.
Trump has been waiting…WAITING…for these idiots to finally take the bait and “flag” him.
So much winning. This is why I voted for him.
@Nathan Blue, #15:
Jack Dorsey is Twitter’s founder and corporate executive officer. He was elected by his company’s board of directors. That’s how things work in the private sector.
Trump has no authority over company policy whatsoever. With respect to the social media platform, Trump is nothing more than a non-paying user of their services. It’s their platform, not his.
There was a time when “conservatives” hated any governmental intrusion into private sector business. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t so long ago that they went totally nuts about what they perceived as government overreach with Net Neutrality. They repealed it, asserting that market forces would keep everything in order. Apparently their hands-off philosophy has gone the same way as their professed concerns about fiscal responsibility and a balanced budget.
Only two posts out of thousands—not removed, but only flagged because they’re materially inaccurate—and he’s claiming they’re “stifling free speech”.
That’s not censorship. Nothing was stifled or suppressed. He just doesn’t like it that his deceptive comments about mail-in-ballots were flagged, and links to a different source of information were provided. He also needed another distraction from the fact that U.S. COVID-19 fatalities just passed the 100,000 mark.
@Nathan Blue:
Says who?
Their only potential liability would be for content that they themselves produce or endorse. The manufacturers of blackboards are not responsible for what other people write on them.
@Greg:
But being forced out of a public forum because of their political views is not censoring. Well, at least we got that clarified.
One thing Trump can do is mobilize the FBI and CIA against Twitter. He can have Dorsey’s phone calls unmasked and collect up a “dossier” of all his conversations. Then, the FBI can pay him a visit and ask him questions about his phone conversations and when he makes the slightest mistake in remembering what he said, they can arrest him and charge him with perjury, or worse. Then they can put him in solitary confinement. Once they’ve done that, they can investigate his company with a blank-check mission to find ANYTHING that can be turned into a crime. Anyone that supported Dorsey can also be persecuted and then, if they would tell some lies that support charges against Dorsey, they could be let go.
He can also turn the IRS loose on them, harass them, rake them over the coals, delay everything they attempt to do and increase their costs of doing business. The IRS could also go after anyone that advertises with Twitter.
Obama showed us there are numerous completely legal, proper and ethical things that can be done to resolve the situation.
Except Trump’s comment was factual and the “information” linked to was false.
@Deplorable Me: Greg does not see the horrendous political bias on Twitter, hell he doesnt know what shadow banning or suspension or even what an AI algorithm is. To try to include an ignoramus into the thread is futile.
By editorializing or fact checking one account with false information it does mean they endorse a false narrative. By endorsing any point(voter fraud doesnt exist) makes them not a simple blackboard. By removing posts on HDC they have shut down the blackboard and control the conversation.
Twitter has long outlived its purpose and its the few bluechecks that Dorsey really needs to keep it limping along. Trump should take his account elsewhere, leave the retard echochamber to its natural death.
Most of the hundreds of millions of followers will go with him and feel better for it.
@Greg:
That is irrelevant. He is not an arbiter of political information unless he decides to be a publisher of opinion, which is what he’s doing. Also called propaganda. He’s un-elected as a source of governmental authority and cannot use disinformation to sway elections. That’s called tyranny.
@Greg:
Says the law, greg. That’s how a Constitutional Republic works.
That’s patently false. You illustrate the issue: people like you can just lie and say it’s the truth.
That’s why Twitter is being shut down.
You have large monopolies colluding with a political party to decide our government.
Not on my watch.
@kitt: They never see it or the danger to our way of life because it’s always in their favor. They can’t see such power turned against them… because no one but them are likely to be such scumbags.
@Nathan Blue, #20:
Twitter isn’t being shut down. Trump doesn’t have that power. Maybe he should focus his anger on destroying the U.S. Postal Service to rule out any possibility of mail-in ballots, or go out on the White House lawn and hook a few golf balls into the undrained Washington Swamp.