Britain’s press freedom risks being eroded by the growing dominance of deep-pocketed tech giants, Sir Keir Starmer has warned.
The Prime Minister said the rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI) could undermine independent journalism if left unchecked, adding that the delivery of trustworthy information was “more vital than ever”.
That’s what this means. Censorship plus government subsidy – the subsidy being another method of enacting the censorship of course. For peeps who say the inconvenient things won’t gain the subsidy, will they?
What if I ask some LLM what the ‘rumoured’ super injunction is about, and it tells me. That’s what the elite fears about AI, the loss of the government/media’s monopoly on lies.
Still, it won’t work save to kill off the MSM. This genie is out of the bottle.
Do I detect an initial pitch for increasing the BBC’s profits? Of course, the poor little organisation can’t compete with Big Tech, especially now it’s formed BBC Verify, which ensures there is no fake news or disinformation. After all, it can only pay its vital employees a mere pittance, relying on their patriotism and loyalty to read the news nicely for a mere £500,000 a year for the rest of their lives, or talk about soccer with in depth knowledge and insight for a trifling £1,300,000 a year for the rest of their lives all squeezed into his spare time between his social and political news service…
Boriquagato is more optimistic than others about this. I’m not sure whether he’s right or not; it seems to me that whoever controls the guns and the jails has something of a headstart.
They’ve been playing relatively nice, but if the gloves finally come off and they start rounding up and jailing substackers and tweeters for ‘crimes of disinformation against the American people’ or some such bollocks, most bets are probably off.
Will the average cop and/or soldier (given that they just signed a law allowing lethal military force to be used against Americans on US soil) go along to get along, or not? Unsure.
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/the-bonfire-of-media-and-political
It is EU policy anyway. VdL so much as said so last week, so Keith is just falling into line with that.
What Rhoda says. The old media are in a death spiral. And even throwing money at them won’t work because it’s like throwing money at Ken Loach movies. People still don’t want to watch it.
Anyone can make some news media. The gear is cheap, and easy to use. Watch how a YouTube show is put together and it’s 7 or 8 blokes in Milwaukee. They write, produce. If they aren’t presenting, they’re holding a microphone. The BBC will have like 50 people and it’ll be rubbish. The competition is fierce. The only part of TVs audience that is holding up is for retired people. Younger age groups are watching about 1 hour per day, compared to 3-4 hours 15 years ago.
Why would 2TK bother censoring the news? The mainstream media – where 90%+ of the population gets its news – already self-censors and censors its readers. All the while pushing the Establishment line.
For example, the Dirty Terriblegraph, an allegedly right of centre rag, covered the TR protest in London with a story about how the statue of Churchill had been barricaded to protect it from far right rioters. When the march went ahead calmly and safely, there was literally zero coverage.
When TR (whose real name is…) was jailed, no comments but plenty of mud-slinging. The Terriblegraph’s coverage of the ‘far right riots’ was even more biased.
Does anyone think that rag is going to print anything the government really doesn’t like?
Look at the list of Britain’s top 25 news websites: https://pressgazette.co.uk/media-audience-and-business-data/media_metrics/most-popular-websites-news-uk-monthly-2/
Expect any of these outlets to challenge the Establishment?
@WB
I’m a retired person and I don’t watch any legacy TV channels, save for the occasional episode of Match Of The Day. Rumble, Locals and YT are my sources of choice.
Not sure if TTK is actually talking about censorship or he’s dumb enough to try making tech companies pay for news, followed by them closing the service down in the UK.
Journalists see themselves as a kind of priesthood. It’s going to take some time for them realise that it’s all over.
Martin – Journalists see themselves as a kind of priesthood.
Well, to be fair, a lot of them are nonces.
“Journalists see themselves as a kind of priesthood. ”
Of course. After all, they spent a lot of money (well, someone else’s money as they had a state scholarship, but it’s the same thing right?) and a lot of time to get a degree in journalism.
They have a team with a photographer, and a makeup artist, and a whole van full of equipment that has to be maintained.
Why should they have to compete for eyeballs with some bloke who happens to talk well and uses his phone for video?
Of course, the bloke happened to catch a different point of view on the event. But that’s not important. The lunch with the minister’s assistant’s assistant has to be paid for. How else will we get the inside skinny?
We do have to make the ministry look good, otherwise there won’t be another lunch.
“We do have to make the ministry look good, otherwise there won’t be another lunch.”
Bingo. They are a sort of priesthood. And the internet is the Reformation.
“The only part of TVs audience that is holding up is for retired people.”
This retired person enjoys the football highlights shows at the weekend. You get somewhere near 10 minutes per match, far better than 2 or 3 minutes on youtube.
In my experience it’s rare that a whole football match is worth watching whereas with rugby I like to watch the whole tussle. It’s pity that I can’t watch cricket free but I suppose the Beeb feels that the cricket audience would be too biased towards Bullingdon types.
We watch very little else – even the middlebrow drama is usually unwatchable because the audio is so crap. You’d have thought that the penny might drop at the Beeb – if our audience is old its hearing will be unforgiving of current fashion in authentic-sounding dialogue. Naturally we don’t watch the news.
Bingo. They are a sort of priesthood. And the internet is the Reformation.
Elon Musk has already hammered his theses into the door of their temple (Twitter).
– Watch how a YouTube show is put together and it’s 7 or 8 blokes in Milwaukee.
That would be a well above average sized YouTube production; most of it is one man band. Popular channels with frequent output require some teamwork but even the Joe Rogan Experience is a tiny crew.
Steve: I keep thinking back to the ’90s when everyone was saying that the internet was the most revolutionary invention since Gutenberg’s press. Well, it is. What did they think the implications of that would be? That everything would stay the same?
While the press wasn’t the spark that lit the Reformation, the masses suddenly having access to the Bible in their own languages was its fuel. It’s often said in Protestant circles that they realised the clergy had been lying to them, but in truth what they mostly saw was that much of the clergy didn’t actually know scripture any better than they did, and it fostered the idea of a personal, unmediated, relationship with God.
And that’s basically what we’re seeing now in politics and public affairs. The media, the mediators, don’t have any greater insight into events or how we should be governed than anyone else taking anything more than a casual interest in them. Many of them – see Tim’s post about Moonbat today – appear to be completely divorced from reality. Their principal purpose seems to be to cover for their friends and perpetuate their own existence.
Remember “You’re not qualified to do your own research!” during the panic? I bet 16th Century priests were saying much the same thing.
Sam – Many of them – see Tim’s post about Moonbat today – appear to be completely divorced from reality.
I reckon that’s the Chicken Winner quote.
It’s not just Georgie, our entire ruling class for want of better terms is both nihilistic and irrational.
It doesn’t make sense to want to repopulate England with Somalis, or to Net Zero the economy, or to agitate for war with Russia, or to encourage primary school pupils to change their gender, or to encourage Muslims to hold antisemitic rallies in our streets, or to denounce patriotic young British people as “useless white men” and chase them out of the armed forces.
Even a child can understand that those all catastrophically bad things, but they’re irrational nihilists.
What do Two Tier, Rishi, and the other muppets believe in? The answer is nothing. They’ll screech loudly about their “values”, but they don’t have any fixed beliefs or principles other than squirmy self advancement.
– The answer is nothing.
You’re wrong, Steve. If these politicians were only interested in self advancement they would simply reflect mainstream populist ideas. They, especially those on the left, take unpopular and controversial positions on things because they believe in them. Leftie-liberal-progressiveism is a replacement for old religion; the ideals are literally irrational and faith based. The religiosity of it is why they are so consumed and zealous.
Literally Hitler is really literally satan.
PJF – I take it they think they have a better offer from Soros/the EU/whatever, the incentives in politics are all screwed up.
If you take an issue like trannies for example, I would bet you cash money that Kier Starmer doesn’t believe Eddie Izzard is a woman. I doubt his opinions on trannies have changed since the 90’s, and nobody was in favour of this nonsense in 1996.
Unlike a religion or a traditional political position, there’s no real dogma or ideology here, only endless bandwagon jumping and the insincere emulation of empathy and other human emotions. Actually religious people or doctrinaire communists/socialists don’t change their alleged beliefs every five minutes to accommodate what’s trending on Twitter.
Steve, I think PJF is comparing it to religion in the sense that most religious types – when the runner meets the road – aren’t believers.
The Pope lives in what amounts to a gilded castle.
The Archbishop of Canterbury lives in a palace.
The old ladies in my village who do the church flowers live in £2 million houses.
They all sit there and hear the bit about the rich and the camel and the eye of a needle but they don’t really, in their marrow, believe it.
Ditto muslims who drink etc etc
It’s often said that there are no atheists on the battlefield, but even praying soldiers surrounded by the Taliban are just taking out an insurance policy.
So you’re both right – it is a religion, and they don’t really believe it.
– I would bet you cash money that Kier Starmer doesn’t believe Eddie Izzard is a woman.
Quite possibly, Steve, but as you are prone to say, we are all sinners. I’d bet that Starmer feels he jolly well ought to believe Izzard is a woman; more pertinently he’ll most firmly believe that you and I ought to comply with Izzard’s requirement to be regarded as a woman. Ask yourself why he’d adopt this highly unpopular and intensely resented stance if he didn’t believe in it at some level?
– They’ll screech loudly about their “values”, but they don’t have any fixed beliefs or principles other than squirmy self advancement.
The contrary is obviously true. The Tories just got nuked precisely because they stuck with unpopular policies in the full knowledge of that unpopularity. If they were just fair weather vane cynics they’d be sat there now. If things were as you say then our votes would be cast on the basis of their competence at carrying out our wishes, rather than on avoiding having their insane bullshit thrust upon us.
PJF: « The Tories just got nuked precisely because they stuck with unpopular policies in the full knowledge of that unpopularity. »
I’m not sure that you’ve got that right. My sense is rather that they didn’t agree amongst themselves what the game was and so didn’t bother even to consider the price of the candle. The enormous barriers against change in this country are now so great that it will take leaders with determination and energy to pursue reform. The Tories weren’t nuked, they just folded.
Interested, PJF – it’s not a religion or pseudo religion or even a belief system as such, because this is the dawning of the Age of Aspivius. The goal is to get as mysteriously rich as Tony Blair is (Aspivius!), not to promote any particular ideology. They do have definite *tendencies* and *tastes*, being the degenerate nepo-spawn of other important wankers in an increasingly rotten stratum of a society that is now failing at basic human reproduction and so naturally exhibits other generalised symptoms of illness, delusion and dysfunction. Or something. But anyway.
The woke bullshit serves a number of elite group interests (at the expense of the peasantry) which are themselves increasingly sociopathic in nature at all levels of the authority chain. Consider the endangered American. You wake up one day in your natural habitat of Bumfuck, Ohio to find that your sleepy little town of 6,000 now includes 30,000 Haitians. Why, a man ought to be concerned.
But when he reads in the local newspaper that “Big Ted” Albuquerque III, the local asshole multimillionaire and biggest local employer, is “delighted” at all these Haitians and the opportunity to undercut American workers, and some other local bigwigs are making millions in federal tax dollars housing this planned demolition of a formerly American community, well, he might start thinking the whole game is rigged. And hey, have you seen my cat?
but as you are prone to say, we are all sinners
I don’t think so, that’s Dr. Kiosk.
I’d bet that Starmer feels he jolly well ought to believe Izzard is a woman; more pertinently he’ll most firmly believe that you and I ought to comply with Izzard’s requirement to be regarded as a woman.
Bet you a Mars Bar he doesn’t. That’s not what the university Labour Club striver type was like in them days, that’s not what the Smug Centrist Dad is like now, and people don’t often change. I bet you he thinks he’s a weirdo and gives zero fucks about tranny politics, like any normal person.
Ask yourself why he’d adopt this highly unpopular and intensely resented stance if he didn’t believe in it at some level?
Unpopular with you, but not with his actual constituency, which isn’t even necessarily based in Britain. Which is the damnedest thing, they don’t work for us, they work for other interests to manage us. You can see the whole network of mutual back scratching and log-rolling going on in real time with how these useless fuckos promote each other to Quango thrones, university positions, “charities” where David Miliband somehow makes millions of dollars, and of course, Mother of all Fucks, the Bloody E.U. It’s a big gay orgy and you’re not invited, big boy.
Tony Blair (Aspivius!) didn’t have a single “principle” he didn’t betray, but by gum he is Rich and Important, somehow.
People like Starmer, and that greasy little pimp from Canada, are always writhing and jerking on that chrome-plated bathroom pole but you’re not the one they’re trying to make horny with their vulcanised rubber thongs.
PS – I forgot to tell you who it is they work for.
It’s Satan.
Goodnight.
Steve
I was wondering why Satan gives a fuck.
But of course he’s not human.
@ The Meissen Bison
I can’t argue with your behind the scenes assessment of the Tories because I don’t follow internal party politics that closely. But still, if they’re a party of no “fixed beliefs or principles other than squirmy self advancement” (Steve’s argument*) it seems they shouldn’t be so inclined to get stuck staring at their navel.
The basis of political self advancement in a democracy is to get elected and re-elected. The simplest way to do that is to figure out what the people want, offer to do it, and then do it. That we have political parties that won’t even offer to do what the people want, let alone do it, is an indication that politicians have beliefs and principles that are at least as important to them as self advancement.
* Steve’s argument then. It now appears to have gained additional details involving the forces of darkness.
@PJF
Indifference to internal party politics is neither here nor there since it was obvious by the run-up to the general election last July that the Tories were devoid of ideas and energy.
They were not nuked: 2019 Conservative voters simply sat on their hands in 2024.
Steve and his belief in the theoretical machinations of the Evil One though his political minions are nothing to me.
@PJF – October 29, 2024 at 9:09 pm
I’d bet that Starmer feels he jolly well ought to believe Izzard is a woman; more pertinently he’ll most firmly believe that you and I ought to comply with Izzard’s requirement to be regarded as a woman. Ask yourself why he’d adopt this highly unpopular and intensely resented stance if he didn’t believe in it at some level?
IMHO, Starmer and those like him (ie “The Elites”) quite possibly do believe these ideas. They exist in their own little hermetically-sealed “bubble” of self-reinforcing back-slappers and thus never get to meet those “ordinary people” (ie “The Great Unwashed”) who would point out to them that such ideas are a load of dingo’s kidneys.
Bboy – Satan is a bad guy. Told Eve to eat an apple.
Many such cases!
– 2019 Conservative voters simply sat on their hands in 2024.
It’s amazing how not being voted for can negatively affect your electoral results.
– They were not nuked
In just the same way that Labour didn’t win a landslide.
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