Only George Orwell through his words and skepticism marked by decaying health could be so concise in emulating a middle of the 20th century military industrial complex of a world teetering at the brink of annihilation.
“Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past…”
And his words were published within a decade of the nightmares unleaded upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the resounding lexicon still relevant three quarters of century later.
In a tidal wave of propaganda, as the disassociation and destruction of journalism continues within the contemporary era, a decision by a Federal judge favoring big tech over independent news outlets sent shockwaves across the entire framework of those disseminating information and only reaffirms the trillion dollar domain of tyrants.
While social media has effectively thrashed and tarred and featured the sanctity of truth, the aforementioned independent public watchdogs continue to battle against the armies and minions of the tech majority in the early phases of the “Information Age”, where ominous falsehoods are embraced and promoted by smartphone and keyboard cowboys distributing incredulities to the masses in creating a lucrative after hours trading market of urban myths. In this racecourse of the Autobahn influenced information superhighway details are routinely lost within high speed chase to disperse the content in the shortest amount of time, a formula that emphasizes bulk over accuracy.
Recently, Alphabet, Inc., the parent company of the search engine behemoth of Google, successfully and deplorably defended their position of procedural thievery in legally staving off an anti-trust lawsuit filed by a group of complainants. The plaintiffs rightfully claimed that large media organizations should being held accountable for their actions of engaging in the practice of hijacking news content through piracy and conveniently failing to compensate the original authors. This scenario extends to the realm of artificial intelligence (AI) tools and other related applications in parroting and echoing what is construed as news.
A judge firmly rebuked and ruled against those fighting for transparency and accountability that there was no malicious intent stemming from corporations cornering the information marketplace and the overall distribution and regurgitation of news which apparently does not legally cross into the threshold of plagiarism.
As Silicon Valley possesses limitless financial resources, matters settled civilly or within the confines of the courts will possibly never favor complainants who lack the monetary funds to afford the necessary legal fees in battling against the digital emperors of software innovation and the daunting marathon of ceaseless continuations filed by the ridiculously affluent defendants.
While the trajectory of truth is gradually being redirected into obscurity and the existence and frightening precision of news aggregates dilute the journalistic fundamentals of the necessary 5 w’s (who, what, why, where, when, how), big tech has clearly declared a campaign for an achievement and monumental stake in the game that serves a nefarious purpose surpassing the insatiable quest for accumulation of wealth.
Bias has become a viral component of the construct of language and an ultimate misunderstanding in the absence of context.