Social media is without a doubt less popular in the public imagination than it was when the global experiment began around 2004. While online forums and communities had existed before, the world would never be the same once Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, and Myspace all emerged over roughly a three-year span. Initially revered as a democratizing force for free expression and liberal values, the social media industry enjoyed a honeymoon period that is decidedly over.

Presidential candidate Nikki Haley reminded us of this fact on Fox News Tuesday, when she ripped into anonymous online speech as the apparent cause of America’s uncivil politics. Haley proposed forcing social media companies to share their algorithms and require the verification of every user as a top priority of her future administration.

Understandably, many Americans are disenchanted with online life, but Haley’s remedy is a trap.

Online anons make life a little harder, for sure. Anonymous users come in droves, pollute comment sections, and tilt the balance of discourse in favor of those who hide behind what is essentially a modern pen name.

While those of us who travel online using our real names are bound by certain unspoken codes of conduct and concern with reputation, anonymous accounts with monikers like Comfortably Smug, the Critical Drinker, Shoe0nhead, Zerohedge, Doomcock, pakalupapitow, and pourmecoffee produce content and commentary with a little more flexibility. Some online denizens go to great lengths to remain anonymous; others operate barely in the shadows and can be found by any half-skilled sleuth. This is particularly pronounced within the cryptocurrency space.

The reasons for remaining anonymous can be malicious or driven by common sense. Rolling Stone reported on HBO executives who delegated the creation of anonymous accounts to attack TV critics. U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) at first operated @BasedMikeLee on X (formerly Twitter) as almost a parody account while still revealing what he truly thought about issues of the day. 

The fact is that anonymous publishing in America is as old as America itself. Benjamin Franklin wrote his pre-revolutionary pamphlets under the name Silence Dogood. “You know who were anonymous writers back in the day?” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis posted on X. “Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison when they wrote the Federalist Papers. They were not ‘national security threats.’”

Like Nikki Haley, Canadian psychiatrist Jordan Peterson is not amused by online anons. But when he polled his audience on the proposition: “By failing to separate the anonymous cowardly troll demons from real people in the comments section @youtube and other SM (social media) platforms are enabling sadistic Machiavellian psychopaths and narcissists,” 60% of 158,596 respondents disagreed.

Would it have been more truthful and democratic if, to vote in Peterson’s poll, users had to first enter their names and home addresses into a government-mandated form? Taken to its logical conclusion, that’s what the Haleys of the world are arguing: Free speech demands public accountability. Those speaking without identifying themselves are troublemakers, social deviants, and, in Haley’s words, “a national security threat.”

Maybe forcing accountability would make public discourse more orderly and civil, but you’d certainly have less of it overall. Orderly societies are not necessarily free societies. China, for example, can credit the eerie silence in the public square to social pressure and the threat of government persecution if citizens say the wrong thing.

“Don’t allow the anonymous troll-demons to post with the real verified people,” Peterson tweeted at Elon Musk, “Put them in their own hell, along with others like them.”

It’s strange to see people like Peterson, who has experienced real-world censure and cancel culture firsthand, embrace content moderation solutions that their censors would love to see imposed in the name of “national security.”

Imagine how many more bank accounts Canada might have frozen during the 2022 trucker protests if the country had a Nikki Haley-style policy banning anonymous speech online. Solidarity with the truckers would have been far more perilous for everyday people.

Scoping out an online creator’s true identity tends to have one purpose, which is to shut them up. The Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz clearly had such an aim in mind when she doxxed Libs of TikTok, as the account’s growing reach and influence became a concern to top Democrats and progressive activists.

For consumers and citizens online, there is another way that doesn’t involve the Department of Homeland Security under President Nikki Haley handing down rules of the road to Twitter executives. It’s called “discernment.” 

For the online armies of anonymous goblins with zero to 100 followers, quite possibly under the dominion of Russian or Chinese troll farms, individuals and organizations must adopt a policy of courage and confidence. Treat accounts with goofy fake names and bald eagles for profile pictures with the dismissal they (largely) deserve. They exist to cast shadows of monsters on the wall, when in fact you’re dealing with trolls stacked inside a trench coat. 

Second, punish platforms that don’t meet your standards for reducing engagement by bots by spending time online elsewhere. X has a lot of them these days, and it’s a problem. New platforms will step up with a better model for discourse. Be patient, and trust entrepreneurs to solve problems that consumers want solved.

Haley is not alone in being tired of bots and anonymous jerks showing their rears online, but the moment the government and social media platforms coordinate on identity verification online, free speech in the 21st century will be effectively dead.

Originally published here

You would think Jon Stewart can talk about whatever he wants. The Comedy Central veteran who returned from what looked like retirement to host “The Problem with Jon Stewart” on Apple TV+, is reportedly not moving forward with a third season.

It wasn’t Stewart’s shows about COVID-19, election interference, race relations, the Middle East or socialism vs. capitalism that led to an impasse with one of America’s most innovative companies.

And it wasn’t even the program’s poor ratings. Apparently – it was China. 

It’s almost hard to still be surprised. The dependent relationship between Apple and China is longstanding and well-documented, and one would expect that any Apple TV+ content by one of America’s sharpest cultural critics and comedians, directed at China’s Communist Party, would raise red flags in Cupertino as well as Beijing.

Americans have become sadly accustomed to these sorts of stories regarding Sino-American relations in the realm of entertainment. In recent memory, there was the explosion of controversy around “Top Gun: Maverick” and Tom Cruise wearing a Taiwan flag patch on his jacket, then the disputed map of the South China Seashown in the “Barbie” movie, as well as Disney filming its live-action “Mulan” in Xinjiang province, where an estimated 1 million Muslim Uyghurs are held in detention camps.

China’s censors have long history of restricting content

The list of other PR blowups between Hollywood and China’s censors is far, far longer. 

American consumers must not allow themselves to become complacent. Our creative class and intellectual leaders are being muzzled at the behest of a foreign adversary, and it has to stop. 

Unfortunately for the average consumer, it often feels like little can be done to resist feeding an entertainment machine doing the bidding of the Chinese government. Parents and children want to see popular movies and TV shows featuring big-name stars in theaters and on streaming services.

It takes a highly informed and committed conscientious objector to resist any consumer behavior that rewards studios for censorship they accept to access China’s market. 

Watching ‘forbidden’ movies about China is a small act of defiance

Nonetheless, there is one simple thing you can do. Watch some “forbidden” movies. You can search to see the movies the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t want you to see.

Streaming now on Netflix is “Seven Years in Tibet,” an epic starring Brad Pitt as Austrian climber Heinrich Harrer. The movie follows the true story of Harrer’s departure from the Nazi military to climb the Himalayas and his brutal journey on foot to the Tibetan holy city of Lhasa. There he befriends the young Dalai Lama in the final years before Tibet’s Buddhist monks were massacred by Mao Zedong’s communist revolutionaries. 

At the end of “Seven Years in Tibet,” Pitt’s character confronts a Tibetan official who helped facilitate the Chinese takeover of Lhasa. Pitt says, “On the way to Lhasa I would see Tibetans wearing those jackets (Communist Chinese Party attire). ‘Chinese soldiers – very nice. They give food, clothes, money – very nice.’ It’s strange to me that something so harmless as a jacket could symbolize such a great lie.” 

China-hawks of today would be pressed to write such a compelling exchange that captures what so many in the West have come to understand about open relations with China: The Chinese have shaped us, and we have utterly failed to shape them. 

The film was a seismic struggle for Sony to complete and distribute in the United States during the late 1990s. Considering that Martin Scorsese’s critically acclaimed 1997 film on the fall of Tibet, “Kundun,” has been all scrubbed from cinematic history and the world of streaming, watching “Seven Years in Tibet” is a small but worthwhile act of resistance while it is still available online.  

Stop following China.United Nations is ruled by ‘we the peoples,’ not authoritarian regimes.

Here’s another. The Foundation for Economic Education recently released a wonderfully detailed documentary video on Scorsese’s “Kundun” and then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner’s ultimate decision to bury the film, per China’s wishes. “Kundun” is hard to find online and isn’t available to stream on any major platform. But you can learn everything about it and China’s campaign to block the film from American eyes by watching the documentary. 

Consumers will have to demand more from our nation’s storytellers and media companies if open discourse is going to survive. 

Jon Stewart must have known what he was getting into with Apple when he began to pursue an episode critical of China, and he should be lauded for walking away. We can only hope whatever it is Stewart had to say that Apple couldn’t tolerate, he’ll say by other means.

Midway through “Seven Years In Tibet,” the young Dalai Lama asks Harrer, “Do you think someday people will get Tibet on their movie screens and wonder what happened to us?”

When Tibet itself is a forbidden subject, known as one of the Forbidden T’s, the answer to the Dalai Lama’s question is, of course, yes. 

Originally published here

North Carolina is entering a new era with the recent legalization of sports betting statewide, set to take effect on Jan. 8, 2024. Gov. Roy Cooper signed HB 347 over the summer at Spectrum Center, home of the Charlotte Hornets, but already industry advocates and gamers are wondering if this was a half measure in need of a broader vision for leveraging the potential for gaming in the state. 

iGaming, shorthand for online casino-style gaming, was left out of HB 347. State budget negotiations have been slowed by ongoing disagreement over how to incorporate iGaming into the new gambling status quo.   

NC lawmakers need to be proactive and create a framework for this activity.   

There’s a reason Gov. Cooper christened the expansion of betting on the Charlotte Hornets home court. Americans are wild for sports, and any conflicted feelings people may hold about the proliferation of gambling can be somewhat smoothed over by the love of sports. It’s an easier sell from a cultural perspective, and lawmakers from both parties know that fans see betting as an obvious extension of the sports fan experience.   

There is no getting past the financial benefit for North Carolina either, and Republicans in Raleigh were not gung-ho to turn down an estimated $74.9 million in new revenue from betting taxes and licensing fees for the 2024-25 fiscal year. Even better, that figure is expected to rise to nearly $100.6 million by 2028. Revenue will come from an 18% sports wagering tax placed on sportsbooks licensed by the North Carolina Lottery Commission and players will have access to mobile betting, as well as in-person wagering.   

iGaming is different, and it doesn’t have the benefit of association with ultra-popular professional sporting leagues and household names like FanDuel and DraftKings to place bets. This is access to state-sanctioned casino apps on a personal device or computer, so consumers and gamers can play the odds wherever they’d like, without having to set foot inside a brick-and-mortar casino.   

Casinos are a prickly subject in North Carolina, like anywhere else. They’re a hugely consequential from a development and job creation standpoint, as articulated by Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger, who said of traditional casinos, they’re “the only form of gaming where you’re going to see a significant creation of new jobs to the state, whereas you’re not going to see that with something on people’s phones.”   

That’s a fair point. For politicians working to strike a balance between practical benefits to their constituents and moral concerns, casinos represent a bargain they can present as tightly controlled. Mobile gaming comes with more question marks.  

Will it undercut investments made in physical casinos? How will iGaming account for age verification, an increasingly hot debate happening in state legislatures regarding social media access and pornography?   

These questions have been answered in Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, where iCasinos have already been legalized for residents. Consumers like to have options when it comes to bets and gaming, and the argument that casinos would be undercut ignores the fact that they serve a different audience than people who enjoy iGaming. Age verification of gamers is also accounted for by the business model of gaming apps, where the cost per verification is baked into their profit outlook.    

The money generated for state coffers isn’t bad either. Connecticut’s iCasino sector generated $40 million in taxes, compared to a meager $13 million driven by sports betting. New Jersey had the same experience, with iGaming more than tripling revenue from wagers on sports. In both cases, physical casinos still raked in vast sums more than their digital counterparts.   

North Carolinians who want to gamble online, will gamble online. An unregulated market for this activity already exists, and the best response is always to create legal frameworks that protect consumers and benefit the state. A gaming commission would need to be established, and North Carolina could start by looking to Maryland as a model for bringing gaming and the lottery under the roof of a single commission.   

Half measures don’t make for good policy, and North Carolina opening the spigot on betting revenue should be based both on what consumers want, and what will maximize revenue for the state in return. It would be best to get out in front on iGaming and not have to play catch up on expanding consumer choice. When it comes to responsibly regulated online gambling and sports betting, everyone wins.  

Originally published here