"[CIA] Amazon is also one of five companies—along with Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and IBM—that recently received a contract to provide the Central Intelligence Agency with cloud services. Simply put, the decentralized ship of power for which Pao pleads sailed long ago under the flags of oligarchs like Bezos"
Media’s Self-Induced Demise - Chronicles
https://chroniclesmagazine.org/featured/medias-self-induced-demise/
It has been a busy time for the press, that aegis of our vaunted democracy, which is about as independent as a mob enforcer and just as gentle with its enemies. Three victims, in particular, have drawn its recent punches: tech billionaire Elon Musk, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, and the owner of the popular “Libs of TikTok” Twitter account, Chaya Raichik.
Over the last few months, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Business Insider, among others, have spearheaded an effort to discredit and deplatform the aforementioned trio, ostensibly because of the threat they pose to democracy. But their real crime was challenging the power and myths of the established political order, thus wittingly or unwittingly declaring war on it.
After Musk moved to acquire Twitter in early April, the Insider helped conjure up a scandal against him, alleging sexual misconduct, while the Times observed that Musk’s “growing up as a white person under the racist apartheid system in South Africa may have shaped him”—presumably in such a way as to render him unfit to lead a company like Twitter. The Post denounced his plans to reduce censorship on the platform and brought up “allegations of incidents involving racism and sexism at Tesla.”
The Post article’s author, former Reddit CEO Ellen K. Pao, goes on to say that “Musk’s appointment to Twitter’s board shows that we need regulation of social-media platforms to prevent rich people from controlling our channels of communication.” But Pao is writing in a paper owned by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos. And whereas Musk is a maverick suffering from attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, in the choir of the wealthy, Bezos is something like a Lex Luthor wannabe.
Recall that last year Amazon booted from its web-hosting services the social media app, Parler, supposedly because of its role in facilitating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. It just so happened, the Associated Press noted, that at the time Parler was unplugged, it had just become the number one free app on iPhones after Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms had censored then-President Donald Trump’s accounts. Moreover, Amazon is also one of five companies—along with Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and IBM—that recently received a contract to provide the Central Intelligence Agency with cloud services. Simply put, the decentralized ship of power for which Pao pleads sailed long ago under the flags of oligarchs like Bezos.
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